Special Features / July 2005

Tipping the Scales

Although sixty percent of the US population is overweight or obese, women have higher rates of obesity than men. Women and men gain, lose and carry weight differently and for different reasons. Many women dieting with a mate watch with dismay as their man sheds pounds more quickly and with less effort.

It isn’t because they are cheating on their diet. There are biological, psychological and social reasons affecting the battle of the bulge.

Most experts agree men tend to lose weight faster because they typically have more lean muscle mass and a lower body fat percentage than women. Said simply, men generally have a higher metabolism, or rate at which they burn calories, because they have more muscle. Women generally have a higher percentage of body fat than men, and there are indications that basal fat oxidation is lower in females, contributing to higher fat storage in women. When losing weight, men tend to lose fat within the abdomen, but women tend to lose fat just under the skin.

In addition to muscle mass differences, men and women tend to carry excess weight in different ways. Men tend to gain it in their stomach area, while women usually carry it on their hips and buttocks.

Pregnancy and menopause are significant factors in women’s extra weight, suggesting that fluctuations in reproductive hormone concentrations may predispose women to excess weight gain. Fluctuating female hormones also cause women to retain water, making weight loss slow to register on the scale.

Both sexes are influenced by serotonin, a powerful chemical neurotransmitter in the blood which contributes to the regulation of food intake and appetite behavior. As body mass index (BMI) increases, the amount of serotonin synthesis decreases, presumably to indicate satiety at lower levels of food intake. In males, the decrease occurs when men reach a BMI classified as “overweight”. Women don’t experience the drop in serotonin synthesis until reaching a BMI classification of “obese.”

Leptin, a molecule produced by fat cells, may be another major factor in how each gender packs pounds. Leptin is an important signal in the regulation of appetite and energy expenditure, thought to play a key role in body weight control. The blood level of leptin is correlated with BMI, and is far higher in women than men at every BMI level. Testosterone seems to play a large role in the regulation of leptin blood levels.

Differences in amount of exercise add to weight loss discrepancies. Generally, men are more physically active. Men are socialized to gravitate toward formal exercise and sports, while women tend to rely more on “lifestyle” physical activities - housework, walks during lunch, playing with the children - to burn calories. At social gatherings, men may play basketball while the women visit in the kitchen.

Contemporary women must fight Mother Nature’s adaptations that enabled cave dwelling and nomadic women to sustain their unborn children through hard winters and hot summers with no ready food source. Women’s bodies are still graced with convenient storage areas to maintain a steady supply of convertible energy for themselves and the child they might be bearing. Grocery stores and fast food restaurants have made the endowment obsolete, but hips and thighs still prepare for a bad year of buffalo hunting.

Historically, a woman’s place was in the home, specifically, in the kitchen or at the stove. Most women still spend much of their life in the planning, purchasing and preparation of food, followed by the clean up and put up of dishes and leftovers. A woman who isn’t cooking or serving, is still bombarded with food messages in every newspaper, every magazine and from a million neon signs and billboards emblazoned with a variation of “Eat here, now!” There is no escape from the food stimuli. Every television commercial break, at least six an hour, features some sizzling suggestion for eating.

In addition to making breakfasts, packing lunch bags and baking cookies for fundraisers, women are still in charge of special occasions, holidays, reunions, birthdays, anniversaries- all the occasions that call for an excess of food preparation and eating opportunity.

And, women socialize over food. They meet to eat. Sometimes eating is the only purpose of the meeting. Plans are hatched, problems solved and heartbreaks are healed, with food and drink.

Any woman who can actually shed a pound or two has accomplished more than just a simple weight loss. She has confronted a battery of entrenched historical, physiological, psychological and social obstacles and come out on top.

At the very least, she deserves a cookie. PL

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