Do your hormones influence how easy it is to lose weight?

If you are a woman and have ever tried to lose weight, you might have noticed it seems harder for us than for your partner/brother/dad/male work colleague. Even if you are living in the same house hold and cooking and eating the exact same food. There is a difference between weight loss in males and females– you are not imagining it! And it all comes back to (you guessed it) our hormones.    

Thanks to differences in body composition, women are at a disadvantage right out of the gate because they naturally carry more fat than men. Men have more muscle mass, and muscle is metabolically “expensive” to keep. That means it uses up energy – and that’s calories to you and me - even when at rest while fat does not. Muscles burn considerably more calories than fat, making the male metabolism 3-10% faster than the female one. No surprise then that in studies, men are consistently found to do better on the exact same diet a woman might follow.

Moreover, nature has distributed body fat in different ways. In women, it mainly sits on the hips and bum, where it serves as a vital store, for example for pregnancy. In men, fat tends to accumulate around the belly. During menopause, women lose even more muscle and some bone mass, which increases their body fat percentage. On top of that, a redistribution takes place. The padding on hips and bum reduces, while belly fat increases. The female figure changes from “pear” to “apple” because male hormones such as testosterone, which are present in the female body also, become more dominant post-menopause.

If you are overweight, you are better off carrying your weight around the thighs and bum rather than the belly. Abdominal fat is a lot more metabolically active and produces not only hormones – which, among other things, further affect weight, weight distribution and hunger – but also inflammatory compounds. This visceral belly fat is unhealthier as it promotes inflammation, increasing the risk for heart attack and stroke, but we know from studies that it is lost more quickly than fat from the hips.

Low-calorie crash diets can lead to rapid weight loss at first, but the body reacts to this “famine” by downregulating energy expenditure. As a result, the rapid weight loss soon slows down and may even grind to a halt, even though the dieter eats less and less.

In the short term, such foods provide satisfaction, but in the long run, they increase the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and dementia. It’s a kind of self-medication of the brain in an attempt to briefly dampen the constant firing of stress hormones.

Again, hormonal fluctuations play a significant role. You might beat yourself up about lacking willpower but body chemistry is near impossible to beat. It always wins!

Successful weight loss programmes for women, therefore, address the problem both from a physiological as well as a psychological point of view. On the one hand, it’s about providing the right nutrients to enable hormone balance. On the other, it’s about reducing stressors in everyday life and the negative emotions triggered by stress, which lead to eating binges.

In my programmes, self-care, stress relief and relaxation are an important pillar. Eating is supposed to be fun. A simple plan is needed, not one that would make life even more complicated and stressful. My plans are created with that in mind. They are flexible, the recipes are quick and easy to make and popular with everyone in the family.

My programmes are designed with women in mind. I don’t just provide quick and yummy recipes, but also the coaching support women need to change their relationship with food for good.

To find out more you can book into a FREE nutrition strategy call by clicking on the link below.

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