Trying to Be Less of a Man
Allow me to boast a bit: I chalked up another one in the loss column this week. Another pound, that is.
On Jan. 2, I was among the countless overstuffed Americans who stepped onto bathroom scales and gasped in horror. The digitized numbers between my toes had climbed to an all-time high--a lousy way to start a new year. Five weeks later, I’ve lost 6 pounds and I’m still counting calories, skipping desserts and exercising for at least half an hour every day. I’ve also discovered that men and women are different creatures when it comes to shedding pounds.
For starters, women have far more dieting experience than we do. According to the American Dietetic Assn., at any given time 25% of the males in this country are attempting to lose weight. At the same time, nearly twice as many females--45%--are trying to trim down. Statistics from the National Institutes of Health suggest that women also tend to embark on diets more often and stick with them slightly longer.
Most everyone agrees that women are more health-conscious than men, which may partly explain their more frequent weight-loss efforts. After all, carrying around too much heft can have serious implications. In December, Surgeon Gen. David Satcher reported that 61% of Americans are overweight, and he added that obesity contributes to 300,000 deaths per year in the United States.
However, University of Minnesota behavioral epidemiologist Robert W. Jeffery suspects that women diet more often primarily for aesthetic reasons. They simply feel more social pressure than men to be thin.
Jeffery and several colleagues surveyed nearly 1,000 people involved in a weight-control program and found some other subtle differences in behaviors and attitudes.
For example, Jeffery has found that men and women are likely to offer different explanations when they abandon a diet plan. When a woman slips off the weight-loss wagon, she’s apt to blame mood. That is, she ate an entire bag of peanut butter cups because she felt depressed. Men, meanwhile, are less likely to cite a psychic need for caloric comfort. Instead, we deflect responsibility from ourselves altogether and blame circumstances for sabotaging our diets. We go on business trips and complain that there was nothing but pizza and chocolate chip cookies at the airport. We go to a ballgame with the boys and, heck, you’ve gotta have a couple of hot dogs and a few beers, right?
Registered dietitian David Grotto, a spokesman for the ADA, adds that men frequently blame their wives for buying and preparing foods that are too fattening. But you can’t pass the buck when it comes to fixing a bad diet, insists Grotto. “A man needs to take the bull by the horns and make those changes himself,” he says.
Jeffery says that men tend to be more confident than women about their ability to lose weight. But though we may pare off more pounds than women do, male and female dieters tend to lose about the same percentage of body fat (since we start out heavier to begin with). Furthermore, adds Jeffery, women keep weight off longer. “I think that’s because they have a more consistent support network,” he says. “It’s easier for a woman to find sympathetic friends.”
And if a woman doesn’t have any friends who are dieting, she’s likely to go out and look for support elsewhere. Jeffery and other researchers have found that women are far more likely than men to join organized weight-loss programs such as Jenny Craig, TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) or Weight Watchers. For instance, Weight Watchers has about 675,000 members nationwide--and only 6% are men.
Grotto, who is also director of nutritional education at Block Medical Center in Evanston, Ill., thinks more guys should consider joining a diet club or group. These groups usually meet once a week. Members get weight-loss and nutrition tips, but the highlight of any session is the weigh-in. Members who have dropped pounds receive praise and token rewards for reaching milestones, such as 25 or 50 pounds; gainers get encouragement to keep trying.
Sound hokey? Think again. “We know that accountability works well,” says Grotto, who once ran a weight-loss center. “There’s a lot of benefit to group support.”
At least one study backs up Grotto’s observation. The New York Obesity Research Center is conducting a two-year study of more than 400 obese people, who have been divided into two groups. At the start, half of the subjects met with a nutritionist for diet advice a few times, received some self-help literature, then set off to lose weight on their own. The rest of the group was enrolled in Weight Watchers. Initial data from the study, reported in the American Journal of Medicine in 2000, showed that after 26 weeks, the people in the Weight Watchers group lost, on average, more than 10 pounds; the self-help subjects, meanwhile, were only down about three pounds.
Another study shows that people who lose weight through commercial programs are less likely to pack it all back on over time, the fate that befalls many dieters. Researchers at MCP Hahnemann University in Philadelphia found that 70% of people who lost weight with the help of an organized diet program were below their initial weight five years later.
Grotto believes that men may avoid these programs because we’re uncomfortable sharing our health concerns with strangers. If that’s the case, ask around and form your own diet club with a friend or family member.
It’s working for me. Each Wednesday morning I hop on the scale and then e-mail a weight update to two of my sisters, who are also dieting.
Maybe it’s the guy in me, but I frequently have to remind myself that I’m not battling in the Diet Bowl, that we’re supporting one another and not competing, and that it doesn’t make any difference that Cathy has lost twice as much weight as I have. However, when I pass the cookie aisle in the grocery store all I have to do is think about typing the words “I gained a pound this week,” and I find the motivation to keep walking.
*
Massachusetts freelance writer Timothy Gower can be reached by e-mail at tgower@mediaone.net. The Healthy Man runs the second Monday of the month.
