Regardless of a person’s goal weight or where they are in their fitness journey, one thing will remain true—shedding those pounds is challenging! In theory, losing weight may sound easy if you have a meal plan and a complete training schedule to guide you.
However, when it comes to real-life applications, you’ll find that controlling your food intake and performing the workouts will be much more complex than you imagined. The road to your fitness goals will be rocky and full of countless obstacles; every possible thing that could stray you away from your fitness journey will attempt to throw you off.
From having friends tempting you to skip training to feeling mentally exhausted because of the difficulties in your weight loss journey, anything can make you lose your focus and quit trying to slim down. As a woman, even your body may work against you!
Women’s Barriers to Successful Weight Loss
Although losing weight is hard for everyone, the difficulty level rises a notch when you’re a woman. Despite having a similar training regimen and meal plan as a man, you’ll notice that you’ll be a bit behind him in terms of progress.
Of course, your choices, discipline, and self-control have a lot to do with how much weight you’re losing. However, your body also plays a role in how fast you shed those pounds—your genetic makeup could make the weight loss struggle even more challenging than it has to be.
Read on below if you want to find out why women have more trouble losing weight:
1. Hormone Imbalance
If you’ve been quickly gaining weight and have difficulty taking it off, your hormone imbalance may be the cause. Women are more susceptible to hormone imbalances, especially when they get older.
Women can experience several periods of hormonal imbalance during:
- Puberty;
- Pregnancy and breastfeeding;
- Menstruation; and
- Perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause.
Eating less and exercising more will not help with your hormone imbalance! To help you advance in your fitness journey faster, you can try hormone replacement therapy, take hormone replacement medications, or ingest anti-androgen drugs.
2. Lower Metabolic Rate
Females usually have more body fat and less muscle than males, which affects their metabolic rate. Women’s bodies utilize fewer calories to fuel their daily body functions, so the unused calories are stored as fat, leading to a muffin top, jiggling thighs, or sagging arms.
Men are more likely to have more weight because of their muscles, which is convenient because muscles burn more calories than fat. Unfortunately, this means you have to work harder because of your body composition.
3. Psychological Pressure
Your mind can also be your biggest enemy when it comes to losing weight! With the pressure on women to look thin and pretty, it’s understandable why so many of them feel unhappy and frustrated with their weight loss progress.
Given the societal pressure on women, they can end up spending a lifetime trying out fad diets, emotional eating, and carrying the burden of meeting the expectations people have. As a result, women will be in a negative state of mind, impacting their fitness journey.
Conclusion
There’s no denying it—losing weight as a woman will be a few times harder than a man. However, just because losing weight is more challenging doesn’t mean your goal isn’t impossible to reach! As long as you get hormone replacement therapy, speak with a therapist, or take other necessary treatments, you’ll undoubtedly reach your fitness goals!
Do you want to deal with your hormone imbalance with hormone replacement therapy? Then, let our team of experts at Infinity Medical Institute help you! At Infinity Medical, we offer pellet hormone therapy to take the complication out of the hormone process for our patients and give excellent results. Book an appointment today!
