Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs

SHELLY Bovey, author of the book The Empty Nest: When Children Leave Home (2000), has this to say of a woman: “Every day, the fat woman dies a series of small deaths.”

Apparently it must be painful for a woman to be fat. But little did she know that nature designed her body to be round, seven studies found out. And these studies agreed on one thing: Women burn fat more than men during exercise. I included four reports here to fit in our limited space. Here are the proofs.

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A study in 2001 by SL Carter, C. Rennie, and MA Tarnopolsky, published in the American Journal of Physiological and Endocrinological Metabolism, documented that women burn more fat and less carbohydrates during exercise compared with men. The exercise involved endurance training on a cycle ergometer for 90 minutes in a span of seven weeks.

On October 1988, four scientists from the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Denver) noted that the total energy expenditure of women during exercise came from fats (51 percent), and more than that of men (44 percent).

In addition, adrenalin levels during exercise are much lower among women (208 picagram per milliliter or pg/ml) than in men (121 pg/ml).

Much more, TJ Horton and colleagues found out that this gender-based difference cannot be found before exercise, after exercise, or at the beginning of the exercise regimen. The exercise used was stationary cycling, which was done for two hours. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

In August 2000, the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology published the results of the study conducted by MA Tarnopolsky and four other colleagues from McMaster University Medical Center’s Department of Medicine and Kinesiology (Hamilton, Ontario), using a moderate endurance exercise.

It indicated that during exercise, females show less carbohydrates in their blood circulation and more fats particularly in the skeletal muscles. Apparently, a female body is attuned to use more fat as their primary source of energy during exercise.

The message from these studies is clear: Apart from genetics, obesity in women can be controlled, if not eliminated, by exercise and low-fat food intake.

For those who are less motivated to face the challenge, American humorist and author of the book Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909), Helen Rowland, suggested a kind of amusing game among women: “The chief excitement in a woman’s life is spotting women who are fatter than she is.” In other words, there are still women out there who are fatter than you are, so enjoy the sight.

But then again, facing the challenge remains the best way to go for good health and positive well-being.