Women and men calories burned infographic

While at the gym, you have probably noticed one particular peculiarity. Maybe even discussed it with your workout buddies.

-There is this preconception that it’s easier for men to lose weight and keep their junk food diet. Is it true, though?

-Do men burn calories with a greater ease than women, despite the latter working really, really hard at the gym?

It all comes down to physiology, yes, hormones and body fat, all that jazz. And also, time.

Having a greater muscle mass means you burn more calories than body fat. We all know that women tend to have less lean muscle tissue.

Men lose more weight when they burn the same amount of calories as women – over a shorter period of time.

For study purposes, a group of men and a group of women had to go on some popular diets, like Slim-Fast, Atkins and Weight Watchers. In two months’ time, the men ended up losing twice as much weight as their fellow women dieters, and three times the body fat. There is an important but coming: but after six months of keeping the diet regime, the weight loss difference was non-existent between the genders.

Men have a different hormonal balance (less estrogen, more testosterone), and women have more body fat to help them during pregnancy. Those factors change the way each gender handles weight loss and burning of calories.

Women’s fat stores are usually more evenly spread out, especially in the areas like legs and buttocks, which contributes to losing weight less rapidly. Meanwhile, men’s results may seem more noticeable since they tend to lose weight around the belly, especially the changes of overweight men with a considerable amount of belly fat.

So we’d say it doesn’t really matter if you’re a man or a woman. When it comes to getting rid of those extra-extra pounds and calorie burning, patience, persistence and laborious work at the gym or at home is what should matter to you most.