Laura Schoenfeld: I’m assuming the question is have I noticed a difference between genders in their response to weight loss programs, and that’s a definite yes. This is something that is very frustrating for a lot of my female clients. Maybe they and their significant other or their husband or their partner will go on a Paleo diet or make a big diet change, and their husband will lose a ton of weight and get in really good shape, just do really, really well on the diet, and then this woman will maybe lose five pounds or something and not really see any major physique changes on the diet. I would say that men and women definitely differ in their ability to lose weight. There are different diets that will promote weight loss better and worse in men. Men tend to do a lot better on very-low-carb diets compared to women. Men also can tolerate fasting, so intermittent fasting, better than women can. Women, for whatever reason, tend to hold on to body fat a lot more strongly than men do, and I would assume that there’s some level of fertility reason for that. I don’t know if I necessarily have any scientific evidence for why women can’t lose fat as well as men can, but that’s definitely something I see a lot.
I also see a big difference between men and women as far as history of weight cycling is concerned. The more often a patient loses and regains weight, the harder it is for them to keep that weight off and even just lose it in the future. I’m sure you guys have heard of weight roller coasters, where somebody will lose, like, 20, 30, 50 pounds and then regain it all, and then they’ll try to lose it again the same way they lost it in the first place, and maybe they’ll either lose less weight or they won’t lose weight at all doing that same method. That’s a situation where over time there’s some weight loss resistance that develops. I don’t know if this is a biological gender difference, but I think women socially … I guess … I’m trying to think if “socially” would be the right word. Well, anyway, women tend to be on diets much more frequently than men do, and of course, that’s an opinion. I haven’t done any research to show that’s the case, but my experience with the clients that I’ve worked with and just friends and family that I interact with, it seems like there’s a much more regular diet culture in women than men. I don’t meet a lot of men that are constantly on diets the way women are, so there could be some level of weight loss resistance that’s come from a history of cyclical dieting.
So, yeah, definitely a difference between men and women, and you’re going to have to approach them differently. I wouldn’t necessarily just jump into a very-low-carb, ketogenic diet or an intermittent fasting approach with women. I’d be careful there. I’ve had some female clients that do well with intermittent fasting, but I’ve had a lot that really don’t do well. We’re going to talk a lot about intermittent fasting in a couple of weeks. That’s one of those examples of a diet recommendation for weight loss that is definitely going to show some gender differences.