Effective Weight Loss For Women

Ladies, are you having a hard time losing weight? Is weight loss a mirage on the horizon for you? Maybe you hit the gym 4-6 times a week, eat barely anything and still nothing! No inch-loss, no toning, no nothing. Do you ever wonder, 'is it this hard for everyone?' Well, maybe it's just not fair, maybe weight loss is harder for you!

Now then, assuming you have your training sorted, you periodise it, you perform HIIT intervals and resistance with compound exercises and you don't shy away from the weights room, all backed up with nutrition fit for (weight loss) queens, then maybe there is a reason you're struggling to shift the stomach fat, blast away the flabby arms, and get your body back!

Gender Differences In Response To Exercise

In a modern world where equal opportunities are taken seriously, women are treated as equals. This is all good, but is nature treating you equally to men? Is nature making it harder to lose inches around your posterior when compared to men? Well, actually maybe you're on to something here.

Are you an Android?

You've heard of the apple and pear analogy of body types, and generally men being android, holding their body fat around their mid section, and women being gynoid, or pear shaped, having slim upper body with excess body fat being held in the lower body. This storage of fat is down to our hormones, and it appears that in fact you were right all along, it is easier for (men) to lose fat deposited around the stomach (android) than it is for (women) to lose fat around their lower body (gynoid).

Accourding to Katch et al (2007) a atudy of 53 research papers on this topic concluded that men generally respond more favourably than women to the effects of exercise on weight loss. Why? Because of this difference in body fat distribution between android and gynoid morphology.

Android fat, or upper body fat, displays active characteristics of lipolysis in response to sympathetic nervous system stimulation. As a result of this, it is easier to mobilize for energy during exercise. The result of this, in a nut shell, and probably not what you want to hear if you are female and gynoid, is that males respond more favourably and have increased sensitivity to losing stomach fat in response to exercise - men lose fat more easily.

In addition to this, women are more effective at preserving body fat stores of energy in response to exercise or energy balance (calories out exceeds calories in). Eating behaviour has also been shown to be affected by exercise, with men generally having greater appetite suppression than women post exercise.

So, what can be done to even the balance? How can women lose weight more effectively? Estrogen levels are high in women so that is why body fat is distributed in the pear shape. Alpha-andrenergic receptor density increases in response and makes it extremely challenging to lose fat around the bottom, hips and thigh.

So What To Do About It?

Ignite your fat burning with catecholamines. Alpha-adrenergic receptors hinder fat loss, and are found in high density in the areas mentioned, but increasing your beta-adrenergic density will mobilize and burn fat. Unfortunately the beta-adrenergic are normally much lower levels so hindering weight loss.

The solution? Increase the beta, and reduce the alpha! Through nutrition and avoiding high GI carbohydrates alphas can be reduced. High intensity interval training or HIIT can increase the density of catecholamine, and assuming you are on a low-carb nutrition plan alphas will be blocked and betas can do the fat melting work more easily.

Foods to aid female-specific fat loss, You can work with your catecholamine and beta-adrenergic receptors to aid fat loss with the following foods:

Green tea, or extract

Forscolin

Caffeine - organic and ground fresh coffee, not instant!

General nutrition tips would be to increase your thermal effect of food TEF, by increasing protein intake and including lean protein at every meal. Eat every 3-4 hours, and no processed food as all! What ever you do don't cut your calories too much. Calculate your calorie needs, and reduce by 500kcal daily to lose 1lb fat weekly.

Don't lose more than 2lb fat weekly because leptin hormone will see that you rebound and more! If you starve yourself you will lower your metabolism (BMR) and store fat. Perform short, HIIT and weight sessions 4-6x weekly, 20mins as a main set.

Sessions need be no longer than an hour with warm up an cool down, and please, if you're serious about fat loss, don't plod. Just because others are, it doesn't make it right.

I really hope this is helpful. You can lose weight ladies, and yes it may be more challenging, but I am told that if you want a job done twice as well, in half the time, then women are the best bet. I am sure you can reach your goal of effective weight loss, get your body back and feel gorgeous again in no-time (12 weeks anyway). If you think a friend will benefit from this, please feel free to share it below, and of course if you have questions, as always please ask.

1. Prev:Weight Loss Supplements - Finding The Most Effective Ones
2. Next:Why You Should Read The Weight Loss Game: How To Lose And Win