Is it More Difficult for Women to Lose Weight?

Yes. Losing weight is more challenging for a woman than it is for a man. It's a simple matter of body composition. While men naturally possess more muscle than women; women naturally possess more body fat than men.

Features

• The only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you take in.

Considerations

• Muscle is one of the body's great energy hogs; it consumes a lot of calories. And because men generally have a higher percentage of lean muscle mass compared to women, men also have larger calorie needs than women.

Effects

• Because of their elevated need for calories, men typically have a faster metabolism than women. A man can get away with being less active yet still manage to burn more calories than a woman who has to work harder to burn a comparable number of calories.

Other Factors

• Women going through menopause also have contend with the hormone changes involved with this process which impacts her metabolism, appetite and fat storage. All of these factors make losing weight more difficult for an aging woman than for an aging man.

Tips

• In addition to a healthy low calorie diet and daily aerobic exercise, women should include some form of resistance training as a part of their weight loss strategy. Try calisthenics, training with weights or using resistance bands to develop your muscle tone. This training will promote the growth of long lean muscles in women, in contrast to the bulky looking muscles characteristic of men, but the benefit is still the same. Muscle is muscle.