July 8, 2015

There was an interesting discussion this week involving representatives of four different companies working in the weight loss arena. Amongst many insights, one was by far the most interesting: all agreed that it’s easier to help men lose weight than it is to help women.

Before we all run around screaming “Typical” and “It’s not fair” and “Bloody men” and “Sexist!”, the reasons why this was found to be true are illuminating.

While we know that people with a larger muscle mass, and corresponding higher metabolic rate, burn fat more quickly, the reason was not to do with biology.

It was to do with attitude.

At the risk of making some major generalisations about the sexes here, all found that when men start a weight loss program they do what the program says. They don’t make excuses, they don’t pretend that they can make their own adjustments to ‘make it better’, they don’t look for ‘reasons’ to justify not following the program – they just do it.

Of course there are many successful weight loss stories involving women. We are a part of many of those. Unfortunately though, for every woman successful at reducing their weight is another who has made excuses, refused to listen to suggestions, blamed other people, thought she knew what to do and so did her own thing, and a range of other non-compliant behaviours.

This is not to say that every women having trouble losing weight has a poor attitude. There are many reasons for weight gain and for difficulty losing weight, but if a woman decides to follow a program and does so completely, she’ll usually lose weight.

In short, if she puts her faith in the program and in the coaches there to help her on her weight loss journey, she’ll lose weight. It may not be quick but it will almost always happen.

If this is making you think of someone you know, or perhaps it’s you, stop and think about what is actually being said and done by that person. Are the reasons for their lack of success at losing weight more about their attitudes than their body? Could they make changes to their behaviour that might actually make a change in the other factors slowing their results? Could it be that they’re not willing to listen to anything other than what they already believe to be true?

We’ve all heard the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Perhaps the women we’re referring to could put aside what they think they already know and simply do what men do – follow the program. No excuses, no blame, no resistance = results.