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> Hints > Past Newsletter Editions > Articles > What women can learn from men about weight loss

What women can learn from men about weight loss

Have you ever noticed that men seem to have an easier ride of weight loss than women?

When I was losing 28 kilos of excess weight, I noticed that I needed to do it slowly, otherwise I'd end up with an insurmountable urge to binge on Swiss chocolate and Movenpick ice cream. It took me four years to lose the first 24 kilos and another two years to lose the last 4.

Years later, when I met my husband and helped him to lose excess weight by connecting with his body, I watched on incredulously as he lost half a kilo to a kilo a week every week until he approached his ideal weight, with only one major pizza pig out along the way.

How could losing 20 kilos be so rapid and efficient for my husband when it took me so much longer to shed my own excesses?

These experiences are common to many others, and they fit with biological differences between males and female brains.

A recent study by nuclear-medicine specialist Dr Gene-Jack Wang and colleagues from the Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York NY showed that men are better able to repress the urge to eat than women.

When hungry men were presented with one of their favorite foods and then asked to think about something else besides food, their hunger and desire to eat were significantly reduced, but women remained hungrier than men and didn't lose the desire to eat.

Dr Wang and his team looked at what was happening inside the brain of these volunteers by injecting them with a nuclear tracer and then placing them in a brain-imaging PET scanner. In men, consciously taking their mind off food reduced activity in areas of the brain associated with the desire for food, but in women this was not the case.

I'm sure Dr Wang would be pleased to see his observations from nuclear medicine holding true in many households around the world, including my own.

With Easter on the cards this month, our kitchen cupboard contains a secret stash of my all-time-favorite milk chocolate Easter eggs.

Whenever my husband and I contemplate having a little treat, he frequently decides that No, he doesn't really want to eat anything, after all. I wish I had the same take-it-or-leave-it attitude: once I've got those Easter eggs on my mind, I often can't stop thinking about them until I have one!

Another reason why men have an apparently easier ride of weight loss than women may be that the slightest whiff of a famine is quicker to set off a strong drive to eat in women than in men.

In my book The Don't Go Hungry Diet, I wrote about the Famine Reaction, a survival instinct that pushes you to eat and which slows your metabolic rate when you're trying to lose weight.

My research team and I are constantly looking for new ways to tame this Famine Reaction so that more people can lose weight and keep it off.

What we're discovering is that while several promising new therapeutic avenues significantly reduce the desire to eat and result in better fat loss in males, they are markedly less effective in females. In women, the natural chemicals in the brain that bring on the Famine Reaction and push us to eat in times of scarcity seem to be more tenacious than in men.

Given the strength of our desire to eat in response to inadequate food intake, particularly in women, instead of fighting against this massive biological instinct, you're better off eating when you feel hungry. You may lose weight more slowly than your husband or the latest white-knuckle diet, but you'll have fewer pig-outs and you'll lose weight in a sustainable way.

When it comes to losing weight by connecting with your body in this way, here are some things that women can learn from men.

Beef up your activity levels

Research shows that women with a high muscle mass as well as men have a higher metabolic rate and their appetite is more closely matched to their physical needs than women with smaller muscle mass.

For instance, when professional male cyclists race the Tour de France, their energy requirements as well as their food intake increase enormously, but the number of kilojoules they eat during the race exactly matches the number of kilojoules they burn. On the other hand, the more sedentary you are and the lower your muscle mass, the less precisely your hunger and energy needs match each other, and the result is often a mismatch that can cause weight gain.

For reasons that are not yet entirely clear, the higher your muscle mass and / or the more active you are, the more closely your appetite matches your physical needs. This is a good reason to keep wearing your pedometer every day and aiming for 8,000 to 12,000 steps per day. Besides walking, activities that use and strengthen all your muscle groups are also important.

Look and learn

Women at my workshops often comment on how much more in tune with their physical hunger men seem to be. Many women find this baffling and sometimes annoying, but if you live with a natural eater it's a fantastic opportunity to get more in tune with your own physical needs.

So you've both had a big lunch and he's not keen on dinner? Try using this as an opportunity to ask yourself if you're actually hungry, or whether you just want to eat out of habit. Maybe a small salad or a light soup would satisfy you, and your normal-sized dinner would actually leave you feeling over satisfied?

Or you're out for coffee and he decides to forgo the cookie or toast you usually share? Another great opportunity to ask yourself if you're actually hungry, or whether you just want a treat. If it's the latter, how else could you treat yourself without eating when you're not hungry? Remember; whenever you eat when you're not physically hungry, you're taking in more kilojoules than you need and they're likely to be stored as excess bulk on your body that you don't want.

At first, it may feel unnatural to eat like a natural eater, but if you persist you'll be amazed at how much more pleasure you'll get from your food. If you use a diary to track your hunger signals as I describe in The Don't Go Hungry Diet, you'll also shed excess weight in the process.

Enlist his support

On of the best ways to ensure the success of your weight goals is to enlist the support of someone who cares about you. The important thing is to decide exactly how you want to be supported, and if you're not getting what you need, try explicitly explaining your needs to your support person.

When you find the right support person for your weight loss adventure, you'll wonder why you ever tried to do it on your own.

Since December my husband and I have been doing our own personal boot camp, paying extra attention to eating only when hungry and being physically active. The fact that we're doing it together has made a huge difference to me.

After the kids went to bed, we used to frequently poke around the kitchen for a tasty tidbit. However, now that we weigh in together and high-five each other on the pleasing numbers we see, I find it so much easier not to snack unless I'm physically hungry.

When I do a few sets of crunches to strengthen my core muscles, I feel like an overturned cockroach and I want to give up. But when my husband congratulates me for being consistent with this exercise, I feel inspired and I want to continue.

And when we get dressed in the morning and see how easily our zippers, buttons and belts do up and how comfortable all our clothes feel, it's a giant incentive for me to stay on track.

Having regular, caring support in your mission to attain and maintain your ideal weight can make your journey so much easier.

Over to you

Here's something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

Is there someone in your life who seems to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, without ever gaining more than a couple of kilos?

If so, try watching what, when and how much they eat for a couple of weeks and you're like to learn some valuable things about how you can manage your weight naturally and intuitively.

When you see them eating particularly heavily one day, what do you notice about what or how much they eat the following day?

Secondly, take a moment to consider who's supporting you in your goals to improve your health.

If you're going it alone, do you think your journey would be easier if you had someone to cheer you on? Perhaps your spouse or a like-minded relative or friend?

To see what a difference a good support person can make to your results, you may like to register yourself and a buddy for my New Advanced Weight Loss Workshop in Melbourne or Perth. This workshop often sells out, so to ensure your place click here to register now.

Have a terrific month, and see you again in May.

Sincerely,

Amanda

Dr Amanda
Connect with your body
www.DrAmandaOnline.com