Men Have It Easier
"British experts agree that men and women respond differently to the energy demands of exercise. Dr Neil King... says that women tend to reward themselves with fatty foods. 'Literature reviews on this subject suggest that female exercisers are possibly more vulnerable to overcompensating on calories than males,' he explains. 'That, combined with the fact that they tend to hold on to their fat stores, means that they have more difficulty losing weight.'”
Not only are men more straightforward about weight issues, their bodies are more efficient when it comes to diet and exercise. Damn them!
Not only are men more straightforward about weight issues, their bodies are more efficient when it comes to diet and exercise. Damn them!
4 Comments:
Don't be mad at men, they can't help it, first of all the study is bogus it doesn't give the whole story, more woman eat (based on so called statitics) after exercise because so many, if not all, are restrictive eaters, exercise stimulates the appetite that is underfed in the first place.
second our bodies remain in aerobic state at higher intensities then men and thus burn more fat during and after exercise then men.
men are not as restricitive in their eating because they are not critised or hindered by a little extra fat as far as society is concerned, they don't get (usually) less pay or lose their jobs, except in extreme overweight and a need to be able to physically do the job like be a police officer.
third you have to be careful about feeling like men are shown to be superior in most ways, I fell into that trap because studies said things like men are faster stronger and have more red blood cells per ml blood, more muscles to carry their weight etc, by the way they explained it made it seem we woman are just inferior in everyway when it comes to exercise and such.
but I am realizing that is not true, where does it say it is healthier to have a larger heart due to exercise, I mean if you have more muscles I would think you would need a larger heart, and also people with high blood pressure have a larger heart so does a larger heart automatically mean better?
I read in a 1977 academy of sciences book about studies done on runners and marathoners in particular, they said exercise caused a slower resting heart rate, but they said that anything lower than the mid fifities causes too much time between beats allowing blood to pool causing clotting and other problems.
woman's hearts stay at higher idle in woman exercisers than men, smaller hearts will do that, but that doesn't mean a smaller heart is necessarily a bad thing, it means it can stay at higher idle without ill effects.
men also seem to (as far as history has shown) have heart attackes at younger ages then woman. woman excell at ultra marathons, and woman excel at cycling up hills, (so I read) and woman use more fat than men at rest or exercising.
if stamina is the game woman excel, if strength men do on average. so while it may seem unfair remember men have strengths and weaknesses and so do woman it just is in different areas,
woman are also more attuned to what others think and a desire to please others, I guess that is the maternity instinct or something don't know for sure, and this alone can set a woman up for eating disorders and yo yo dieting in an attempt to please others and woman tend to be more strigent dieters and their bodies tend to be more sensitive to restrictive eating then man, and respond with more fat and less muscles in dieters than non dieters.
of course that trend may be changing in some ways as some woman, and some men too get fed up with all this dieting and starvation and getting fatter all the while.
so chins up, take these studies with a grain of salt, I got so upset when I read a bunch of stuff about how "inferior" we woman are because we don't have this that and the other thing like men, only for me to realize that maybe the so called positive traits that make men "superior" as far as fitness is concerned may not be so positive in all situations.
RR
I don't think women are inferior, but I do agree that we are physically different from men. We do have better stamina, and better resistance to pain (surprise, surprise).
But I also don't think that if men do find it easier to lose weight (and from experience, I would say they do) that that would make them superior, exactly.
I'm slightly peeved that my body is apparently designed so that I would survive (and, I guess, be able to nourish a baby) in a famine. It's not a situation I expect to be placed in! However, I can see that this would probably have conveyed evolutionary advantage at some point in history.
Our Western society has changed a lot faster than our bodies can adapt. We're fighting ancient instincts to get as much fat and sugar as we can, because these are rare commodities and we might not find such a rich energy source again in a long time hunter-gathering.
I don't really have the right to complain, given that so much of the world's population would still find my body-type a survival advantage.
(And as a woman with Asperger Syndrome, I often wish women didn't have a reputation for being "attuned to what others think", because I'm really not. I try my best to be sensitive, but bear in mind that for me it's an intellectual exercise, not instinctive. So I hope I haven't said anything you find dismissive, Roberta!)
No I am not dismissed as it were, it was just the way those articles talked about woman's ability compared to men in regards to athletics, of course the articles I was reading was for runners.
anyway if one is carrying around excess fat they are probably experiencing a famine, they just don't recognize it as such, we live in a world where words like famine are usually in the context of extreme malnourishment, but famines don't have to be no food or very little, it could be eating late (10-15 minutes past hunger cues) not recognizing hunger cues, possibly from habit of ignoring it when dieting in the past, or it could be just stopping eating when food still appeals which for some of us means mild famines as far as the body is concerned.
anyhow my use of inferior was how I interpreted the studies because they made us look like we are physically weaker, but I don't think any man can survive giving birth, I heard (never experienced this myself) it is the hardest thing a woman can go through, your heart rate goes very high, your in so much pain it could kill, but alas our bodies have built in mechnisms to counteract that like endorphins or whatever.
I remember my sister who had a very long and complicated childbirth, where ceasarean section was almost opted, that she said no man could survive that 24 labor with complications.
so who is the stronger sex, she asked. I said woman. anyway men do on average only diet moderatly, seldom to they restrict to much, not as much as woman, and woman tend to step on the scales alot when trying to lose weight, when my hubby was trying to lose weight he only changed his eating slightly, but never weighed himself thank goodness.
weight on the scale is not an accurate picture of health or fat muscle ratio or anything else.
of course the news media is a culprit of pushing dieting on woman more than men, as have you ever seen a fat woman in the movies or sit coms? how about fat men? I see alot more of them and they are not there to be made fun of like fat woman tend to be.
in fact I was asking my hubby a rhotorical question, why don't the woman on tv look like what most woman look like? most woman do not act, dress or look like that?
some of those actresses look sick they probably are. taking drugs and not eating right or enough, it is a wonder they don't collapse on screen.
RR
Heh, heh, when I read "they tend to hold on to their fat stores" I thought they were saying women liked shopping at the plus-size stores. Like they wouldn't lose all the weight because they just couldn't give up Lane Bryant. It took me a second to figure out what they were really saying.
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