How the GI Walking Diet Can Help
Getting physically active and reducing your weight is the most important action you can take to prevent metabolic syndrome.
Every day is an opportunity to make a fresh start or to build on yesterday’s success.
Many different factors may have led to you putting on weight at this stage of your life. Some of these may have been physiological changes, while others may have been psychological issues. Understanding why this weight gain has occurred allows you to put things in context and to understand what action needs to be taken. Now is the time to get excited about what you can achieve for yourself, your body, your weight and your health.
Weight gain predominantly occurs because we are consuming more calories than we are burning off through physical activity. As we have seen, however, weight gain in later life can be the result of other factors, such as a decrease in our muscle mass and a consequent lowering of our resting metabolic rate. This leads to us requiring fewer calories to perform our everyday activities. In addition, hormonal changes make it easier for the body to lay down more fat, especially around the middle.
Why Men Lose Weight More Easily
I often hear people comment that it is much easier for a man to lose weight than it is for a woman. When partners embark on a ‘diet’ together, it is quite common for the man to lose weight more quickly, and possibly to lose a little more than his partner does. Research has shown that having personal support as you embark on a healthy lifestyle programme has a major impact on your long-term success. In fact, recovering male cardiac patients whose partners showed an active, positive, supportive role in their recovery had a 74 per cent greater success rate than patients whose partners showed neutral support.
From my research for this book, I know that many of you will want to complete the six-week plan with a partner or friend. I actively encourage people to do this. The walking plan, in particular, can be a great source of enjoyment. Walking with others can be great fun, and the support aspect will be vital when your motivation naturally wanes at points throughout the six weeks.
If, however, you are participating with members of the opposite sex, it is likely that your rate and amount of weight loss will be different. This doesn’t mean that a woman’s efforts are any less than a man’s; the truth is there are strong physiological reasons why it is easier for men to lose weight. But before you give up before you have even started, let’s make one thing clear – although your rate, and possibly the amount, of weight loss may be different, the health benefits to be gained are there for both men and women to enjoy.
Although men tend to lose weight more easily, the health benefits of the GI Walking Diet are there for both men and women to enjoy.
How the Body Stores Fat
Most body fat is stored in fat cells called adipocytes. Around 50,000–60,000 calories of energy are stored as triglycerides in fat cells throughout the body, both under the skin and around the delicate organs. That’s enough stored energy to walk briskly non-stop for 500–600 miles, or from London to Land’s End. The body also stores fat between the muscle fibres, generally holding about 2,000–3,000 calories, enough to walk briskly non-stop for 20–30 miles. So before we even start to consume food for energy, our bodies are holding on to an awful lot of energy in the form of stored fat.
Where the fat is stored creates quite distinctive body shapes. Storage of body fat around the middle, resembling more of an apple or ‘android shape’, is characteristic among males and is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Storage of body fat around the hips and thighs, creating a more rounded pear or ‘gynoid’ shape, is the most common body type among pre-menopausal women. The role of hormones in the way we store fat differs between men and women and affects how each lose weight.
Two hormones are particularly associated with fat distribution. Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) and hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) directly affect whether we store fat or encourage it to be distributed in the blood and then burnt off. LPL tends to encourage fat storage, and HSL tends to encourage fat to be burnt off. The amount of LPL and HSL we have tends to vary between men and women, between individuals, in different areas of the body and at various stages of a woman’s life. Men tend to have more LPL in the belly and less HSL in the lower hip area. This creates the more pronounced apple or android body shape seen in overweight men, with more body fat distributed around the belly. Women tend to have more LPL in the hips and backs of the arms and less HSL in the upper body. This classically creates more of the traditional pear or gynoid shape. When women lose weight, they generally still have more LPL in the hips so retain a pear shape, even though they may be a smaller pear shape.
It therefore seems obvious that getting more HSL can be only a good thing for aiding weight loss. HSL is stimulated by the hormone epinephrine, and what is really exciting is that exercise causes greater amounts of epinephrine to be released, and as you get fitter your body becomes more adept at using even small amounts of epinephrine to burn fat. So that’s a great reason to get moving and keep moving.
A body that is significantly overweight or obese, however, will require higher amounts of epinephrine to stimulate fat-burning. For this reason it is vital that overweight people include gradual, progressive cardiovascular exercise into their weight-loss efforts. Walking is a fabulous way to do this.
The crucial difference between male and female fat loss is down to hormone receptors, which are located on the fat cell walls. There are two types of hormone receptor: alpha-receptors and beta-receptors. Alpha-receptors tend to inhibit fat breakdown while beta-receptors encourage it. Men and women don’t have the same amount of these crucial hormone receptors. Men tend to have more of the fat-busting beta-receptors and fewer of the fat-storing alpha-receptors in their abdomen, while women tend to have fewer beta-receptors and more alpha-receptors. The more beta-receptors there are in the abdomen, the easier it is to lose middle-age spread. So when a man loses weight, it will be easier for him to drop inches off the midriff area than it would be for a woman. Finally, the last infuriating piece of evidence that it’s easier for men to lose weight is that, even at rest, a man will be burning more calories than a woman. This is because their fat cells are smaller than women’s!
The Oestrogen Effect
Another factor in the weight-loss battle of the sexes relates to the female sex hormone oestrogen. Oestrogen has an impact on fat storage in a number of ways:
During menopause, however, the amount of oestrogen decreases, so its ability to help break down
