{"id":6152,"date":"2014-11-21T11:08:37","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T17:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=6152"},"modified":"2014-11-24T10:30:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T16:30:49","slug":"why-women-find-it-harder-to-lose-weight-than-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2014\/11\/21\/why-women-find-it-harder-to-lose-weight-than-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Women Find It Harder to Lose Weight Than Men! What We Can Do About It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Man-sized<\/a>Women always seem to have more trouble losing weight than men!\u00a0 I certainly find that to be true!\u00a0 Several years ago, when I switched to a Real Food diet<\/a> following the dietary guidelines<\/a> of the Weston A. Price Foundation<\/a>, I became much healthier.\u00a0 I had more energy, didn’t get sick as often, and I just generally felt better!<\/p>\n

However, I wasn’t so happy that, along with that better health, I also saw a slow weight gain.\u00a0 I avoided junk food but I had gained almost 10 pounds.\u00a0 That may not seem like much to some of you, but all those pounds were gained while eating a Real Food diet.\u00a0 I thought that couldn’t happen!<\/p>\n

The good news for me is that I have found a way that works to keep my weight where I want it and<\/em> without harming my health.\u00a0 What motivated me to write about it right now was a presentation I attended at the recent Wise Traditions Conference<\/a> in Indianapolis.\u00a0 It completely validated what I have done and helps me understand why it works.<\/p>\n

\"Konstantin<\/a>Konstantin Monastyrsky<\/a>, author of Fiber Menace<\/a> and of the website Gut Sense<\/a>, presented “The Art of Eating without Harm”\u00a0 at the conference, and a part of that topic was a superb discussion of “Why One Calorie For Her May be Half a Calorie for Him.”\u00a0 For me, it answered the question of why women find it easier than men to gain weight and find it harder to lose it.<\/p>\n

Why was this important to me?<\/p>\n

Well, earlier this year, I got really tired of the amount of weight I had gained, ans was still gaining.\u00a0 Even my larger size clothes were becoming uncomfortable, so I decided to try some new methods.\u00a0 Notice that I didn’t say new diets!<\/em>\u00a0 I totally believe in my traditional, Real Food diet<\/a>.\u00a0 I eat the right foods.\u00a0 They are healthy and nutritious and keep me well.\u00a0 However, I had heard so many times that when eating only real foods, I didn’t need to count calories, or even count carbs!\u00a0 But that wasn’t working for me.<\/p>\n

At first, I tried reducing the period of daily eating to eight hours or less, similar to the intermittent fasting recommended by Dr. Mercola<\/a> and Paul Jaminet of The Perfect Health Diet<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I didn’t make any other changes to my diet; I was eating about the same amount of food, real food, just during a reduced time window.<\/p>\n

After a few weeks, I could tell it wasn’t working–I wasn’t losing weight.\u00a0 By October, I decided I needed to do something else.\u00a0 It occurred to me (why did it take so long since it’s just common sense?) that if I was eating a healthy diet and still gaining weight (or at least not losing weight) that I must be eating too much food!\u00a0 So, although I didn’t start counting calories or eliminating types of foods, I did begin to watch my portion size.\u00a0 I also continued with eating a minimal breakfast of bone broth and maybe herbal tea or decaf coffee with cream.<\/p>\n

Specifically, I decided that I needed to eat only about half as much food as my husband does.\u00a0 He is about 6 inches taller than I and much more active, where I am a postmenopausal woman who exercises daily but not strenuously and spends a lot of time at my computer writing posts like this one. I can’t need as much food as he does!<\/p>\n

Have you noticed that restaurants never have different sizes of meals?\u00a0 I always get served just as much food as my husband!\u00a0 And that’s probably twice as much as I need. [See that man-sized steak and veggies, plus a big pile of mashed potatoes, in the photo!\u00a0 It’s twice what I need at one meal.] Not just at restaurants, but at home too, I would use the same size plate as my husband.\u00a0 Clearly, that wasn’t working.\u00a0 I started using a smaller plate (or bowl), usually a salad size plate, to help define my meal portions.<\/p>\n

It worked!\u00a0 I began to lose the weight I had gradually gained over the years.\u00a0 It’s common sense after all.\u00a0 I don’t need as much food as my husband to maintain my proper body weight!\u00a0 I didn’t have a lot of weight to lose.\u00a0 I hadn’t been overweight before changing my diet and had gained weight slowly.\u00a0 I have now lost the amount I had gained, about 8 to 10 pounds, and that is enough.\u00a0 I don’t want to be too thin.\u00a0 A little extra fat at my age provides a source of some additional female hormones.\u00a0 For maintenance, I won’t return to eating as much as I did before, and I will monitor my weight occasionally to be sure I don’t continue to lose or begin to gain again.<\/p>\n

The number of pounds I lost may not seem important compared to what many people experience with our obesity epidemic today, but the majority (not all) of truly obese people gain weight from eating the wrong<\/em> foods not from eating too much food.\u00a0 There are also other environmental causes<\/a> for weight gain, such as BPA and hormone-laden meat and milk, but that’s too big a topic to include here.<\/p>\n

I don’t think that eating less of the wrong foods would have worked at all!\u00a0 What worked for me is eating a nutritious, Real Food diet with plenty of fat and protein to keep me from getting hungry before time for the next meal.\u00a0 Hunger is one of our bodies’ warning systems.\u00a0 It’s trying to tell us that our bodies need nutrients!\u00a0 We shouldn’t ignore hunger.\u00a0 We should try to figure out what we’re missing from our food.\u00a0 It may not be amount of food, it may be specific nutrients.<\/p>\n

\"WAPF<\/a>In early November, while I was looking forward to the conference in Indianapolis, I was somewhat worried that my new-found success would be sabotaged by the delicious food that is always served at a Wise Traditions conference.\u00a0 However, my new guideline of watching portion size worked there just as well as at home.\u00a0 Since most of the conference meals are buffet style, I stuck to filling only about half of my too-large plate so that I would not waste food.\u00a0 I got some of almost everything, just not too much.\u00a0 As I said earlier, I didn’t cut out any “types” of food, I just ate less Real Food.\u00a0 I was glad I could enjoy the food without gaining any weight at the conference.\u00a0 [The photo at right was taken at the Atlanta conference in 2013–it’s the way I used to fill my plate.]<\/p>\n

Well, finally we get to the real nitty-gritty of this post.\u00a0 Why is it so much harder for women to lose weight than men?<\/p>\n

These are some of the reasons Konstantin Monastyrsky gave to answer why women have more problems with weight than men.\u00a0 I can surely relate to many of them!\u00a0 It’s both easier to gain weight and harder to lose it for women.<\/p>\n