This year, my friend Alexandra and her boyfriend, Jesse, made a New Year’s resolution that’s all too familiar to many of us—lose those extra pounds they’d both gained since moving in together. The Santa Monica, CA couple started strong—joining a local gym, biking with their dog along the beach, and swapping buttery morning croissants for low-fat granola and yogurt. And it worked. Well, for one of them, at least. Two months in, Jesse had lost all the weight and then some.
“He was in the best shape of his life,” Smith laughs. “Despite the fact that I was working just as hard (if not harder to try to compensate) as he was, my jeans were maybe a tad looser. It seemed like so much less work for him.”
Reality or Our Imaginations?
As if the whole childbirth thing wasn’t enough, many women have felt the frustration of packing on the pounds faster—and holding on to them a lot longer—than their testosterone-packing counterparts. Why is it that a man can turn his stomach into a six-pack faster than you can say “beer belly,” while quitting carbs and working out six days a week barely moves me down a pants size?
The good news is that women aren’t imagining this. Men do tend to lose weight more easily according to fitness and nutrition experts.
“Men tend to weigh more, so they burn up more calories,” says Mark Jellinson, a San Francisco-based personal trainer. The bigger you are, the more calories you burn through just living day-to-day, sort of like how my tiny apartment barely eats up any electricity, but my friends’ bigger suburban homes go hand-in-hand with much bigger bills.
And the size difference isn’t the only thing women have going against them.
HSL vs. LPL: What’s the Difference?
There are physiologic reasons (meaning we can’t fight ’em) for why men and women store fat differently and lose it at different rates. It’s no random coincidence that most women develop soft curves, where men stick with their beanpole shape (give or take a few muscles) from childhood into their senior years. These differences in our body shapes stem from our different concentrations of two hormones: lipoprotein lipase (LPL) and hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL). LPL encourages fat storage and HSL stimulates fat removal. Women have more LPL, especially in areas like our bellies, hips, and thighs, making it a lot harder to avoid and lose fat in those spots.
Those Dastardly Hormones
When it comes to losing weight, our hormone receptors (found on our fat cell walls) play into things, too. Alpha receptors inhibit fat breakdown and beta receptors stimulate it. Again, guess which one women have more of? That’s right, women have more alpha receptors—especially in the hip and thigh area. This is why men—even if they start out with larger bellies than us—shed them much easier and faster than us beta-impaired ladies. Our fat cells just aren’t as willing to break down and leave us behind.
The Estrogen Factor
Women also have higher levels of estrogen. This hormone keeps fat on our bodies because more fat makes it easier for us to get pregnant and successfully carry a baby. (That darn survival of the fittest thing, again.) Since birth control basically tricks our bodies into thinking that they’re already pregnant, this is why starting the pill causes some of us to pack on a few extra pounds. Our bodies plump up as if they were preparing to care for us and our growing fetus. Fattier breasts, hips, and thighs are Mother Nature’s way of preparing us to reproduce.
Fat vs. Muscle
Yet another weight-loss windfall for the men—muscle burns more calories than fat. Men have a higher mass of muscles than women thanks to the higher amounts of testosterone they have coursing through their bodies. This means that even at rest, men are continuously burning more calories than women. “The more muscle you have in relation to fat, the higher your resting metabolism,” says Jellinson.
