Why do women find it harder to shift the extra weight than men?

“It's not fair,” my friend cried. “I’m the one on a diet, and he’s the one who loses weight!” Does this sound familiar?

If you are a woman and have ever tried to lose weight, you may have observed this phenomenon yourself – and you are not imagining it.

According to a House of Commons Briefing Paper from January 2021, almost two thirds of adult women in the UK are overweight or obese.[i] Although the obesity epidemic affects both sexes, men and women gain, carry and lose weight very differently.

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.