The Evil Gender Bias of Obesity and Weight Gain

[I Jah Rastafari]

The Evil Gender Bias of Obesity and Weight Gain
Posted: 05/21/2012 2:00 pm

The bias against overweight people is evil. I know. I was the fat kid
growing up, and it got worse for years. And I'm a guy. It was worse
for the girls. The unfairness and meanness is destructive and
disheartening. The thin kids in school weren't ridiculed in gym class
by the coach or weighed in class to jeers from the class clowns. Even
teachers and doctors used the words "fat slob." These insults
continued into adulthood, and it was often assumed I was stupid or
lazy because of my weight and that I didn't care enough about myself
to do something about it. These things weren't true. The ignorance,
bias and meanness hurt.

An excellent article posted by The Obesity Society, an association of
professionals in the field, outlines the evidence of bias and stigma
researchers have documented, including discrimination in college
acceptance, job opportunity, wages and health care provision, as well
as the hate, ridicule and insults I referred to.

However, the obesity bias is far nastier for women than men --
overwhelmingly so. They suffer all the insults and discrimination I
described, and more. It is insidious and needs to be pointed out and
stopped.

After 25 years of obesity and weight loss failure, I became an obesity
and weight loss expert and lost 140 pounds permanently when I formed
the unique program of behavioral medicine, The Anderson Method,
Therapeutic Psychogenics as a behavioral therapist. I've maintained
that success for more than 25 years, and I've been teaching others
ever since. In the years of study and discovery about obesity, its
causes and the solution, I have become painfully aware of how much
more difficult things are for women and how much better men have it.
It's incredibly unfair. Here's why:

Women gain weight much more easily than men and have to work much
harder to lose it.

My average female client, at 5'4", has a metabolic rate (MR) of
approximately 1,800 calories per day. The average male client, at 6
feet tall, has a metabolic rate of 2,700 calories per day. That means
that a man gets to eat 2,700 calories of food per day without gaining
weight, while a woman gets only 1,800. If you eat more than your
metabolic rate, you gain weight. These facts are not up for debate.
The numbers are approximates, but the principles are scientifically
valid.

If the woman eats 2,200 calories a day, 400 over her MR but still 500
fewer than the man, she can gain 40-50 pounds a year while he stays
the same! Talk about unfair! He has a drink and she has a drink. He
has desert, she has desert. She gets fat, he doesn't.

Lunch at Burger King of a Whopper, fries and a Coke is 1,200 calories.
One of Ruby Tuesday's salads is 1,700 calories. A breakfast at Denny's
can easily exceed 1,200 calories. Many of Starbucks' drinks are
400-600 calories. Think about it. It's unbelievably easy for a woman
to gain weight in our culture, much easier than a man. Restaurants
make it easy for men to get overweight. For women, it's a disaster.
There is a huge bias against women here. It's not just with
paychecks.

Think a doctor's 1500-calorie/day diet will fix things? Think again.

Before coming to me, it's not unusual for a female client to have been
put on a 1,500-calorie/day diet by a doctor or nutritionist, yet
gained weight. Then, when they went back to their doctor weeks later,
they got blamed and shamed, told they must have not followed the diet.
When my clients protested, they were essentially called liars.

Here are the facts: A 6-foot man following a 1,500-calorie-per-day
diet will often lose two pounds a week, even when they "cheat." A 5-
foot woman will lose nothing and may even gain! I have had clients
coming to me for years telling me about being prescribed 1,500-calorie
diets and then being blamed and insulted by doctors, husbands and
others when they "failed" while the guys "won." What an ugly example
of ignorance and gender bias.

It's OK for a man to be fat. For a woman, it's a shame.

When a man is obese, it can be OK, and he can even portray it as an
admirable thing. Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, hero of the Gulf
War, was quite obese. Being overweight was a part of being the "Big
Man," something to be admired. Football stars are huge, some not only
obese, but morbidly obese. They are not ridiculed for it. Fat men can
be admired for their size and maybe even feared -- certainly not
universally scorned. Obese men can present themselves in a manner so
that their obesity can be admired for its form, not reviled. They can
take on a role they can feel good about and then feel good about
themselves.

Women have no such archetypes or models that can be admired for being
obese. They don't have heroines where their large size is one of the
things for which they are admired. Obese girls hear "such a pretty
face," which is saying the opposite about her body. "It's such a
shame" is a common comment. You don't hear these things about men.
This really hurts overweight women, because we must all like ourselves
and feel we are OK in order to become healthy and whole. Without that,
it is much harder to generate the self-esteem needed for us to take
care of ourselves.

I've heard fat men make fun of overweight women as if the men were
fine just the way they were. I've had beautiful women come to me who,
in my opinion, really weren't very overweight, yet wanted to change
their body because their partners didn't approve. It's disgusting.
I've never heard a man report that his partner complained about his
too-big butt or thighs.

Not only is obesity easier to develop for a woman and harder to solve,
it can be much harder on them physically, socially and emotionally.
The gender bias of obesity is insidious. It's evil. What do we do
about it? I'll address that next week.

Reference:

(1) Fairburn, C.G. & Brownell, K.D. (2002) Eating Disorders and
Obesity, 2nd Edition.