Who is better at dieting men or women The answer may surprise you

Men are better at dieting than women, a study has revealed.

Researchers have found the age-old stereotype of women being the ones to leap on the latest diet bandwagon and watch their figure is dead and buried.

The role reversal emerged following a study carried out among 1,850 adults which showed men lose weight faster and find it easier to keep off.

It also emerged men seem to have more willpower than women when it comes to fighting the battle of the bulge.

A large percentage of men even went as far as to declare that dieting is ‘easy’.

The extent to which men are breaking down barriers of the once female dominated world of dieting was revealed after researchers asked respondents a host of questions about their last or current health-kick.

Experts grilled the panel on the frequency and length of their diets, their chosen method of weight-loss and the end result.

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The stats showed men are better at losing weight over both long and short timescales.

And it also revealed if men do start putting a few pounds back on after reaching their target weight, they do so more slowly.

Combining exercise with a healthy diet was by far and away the favourite diet method of men (28 per cent) while the second most popular choice was walking more (23 per cent). Cutting out fat was third (20 per cent).

However men and women were both as reluctant to give up booze in a bid to lose weight with a mere 13 per cent prepared to give up alcohol.

And more women than men are eating their five a day in a bid to beat the bulge - 15 per cent compared to 9 per cent.

A spokesman for Marks and Spencer, which carried out the research in conjunction with the launch of their New Year diet ranges, said: “We know that January is the month most people start their new year’s resolution to lose some weight.

“In some cases those New Year resolutions start to wane and fall by the wayside after a few weeks as people begin to crave their favourite treats - takeaways, burgers and chocolate desserts, but we’ve come up with a solution to overcome that.

“Historically it has been women who have been the most vocal in their bid to lose weight, with the M&S Count on Us range proving popular, however in recent years, we have seen a shift in consumer habits, with more men expressing their desire to shift the pounds, and keep them off, through healthier eating.

“Our Balanced For You range has been created with men and women’s cravings in mind. Featuring all the delicious ‘dude food’ favourites such as burgers and pizza, that people crave on a diet but with the right balance of carbs and protein so they can eat their favourite foods and still lose weight.”

But the survey revealed that a plus point for women was that they tend to set more realistic weight-loss targets but they did admit they often lack the willpower to stick to their planned diet schedule.

Women were also more likely to combine exercise with a healthy diet than men, with almost four in ten revealing this as their chosen weight-loss method.

It also emerged a larger percentage of women than men were happy to ditch carbohydrates in a bid to shed the pounds.

Slightly more women than men said they made an effort to walk more regularly whilst dieting.

The study also looked at how the different sexes judge their weight-loss.

While women can frequently be found reaching for dresses which they have previously struggled to get in to, men will be stepping onto the bathroom scales.

Around one in three of the men who took part said they were happy to diet, but didn’t go as far as to measure their weight-loss, preferring instead to gauge their success by notches on their belts.

Another interesting detail to emerge was the fact that the average man and women who want to keep trim, diet on average ONCE a year.

And the figures also revealed women are more likely than men to start a diet in January after over-doing it during the festive period.

The spokesman added: ‘We were surprised to see that men were becoming just as vocal as women in the fight against fat. However it shows that there is a demand for diet food that suits male tastes, as well as the more traditional low calorie options.’

By Adam Gillham

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/who-better-dieting---men-4910964

True or False Older Men Have a Much Harder Time Building Strength Building Muscle Borders the Impossible!

Are you training for nothing, if you are "too old" (whatever that may be)? Find out in todays SuppVersity Article!

"The older we get, the weaker we are." Thats something most normal men accept as a given truth - according to the latest science, it does yet appear as if it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Researchers from the Department of Biology of Physical Activity and Neuromuscular research Center at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have recently conducted a study to verify the common sense assumption that older men are having a much harder time to to maintain / increase their muscle strength than young ones.

To find out, whether this would also be true for those, who are willing to succumb to a high volume, medium load “hypertrophic” resistance training, the Häkkinen et al. recruited young (28 ± 5 yr, 179 ± 6 cm, 77 ± 12 kg, 21 ± 8 percent fat) and older (65 ± 4 yr, 177 ± 6 cm, 80 ± 10 kg, 23 ± 6 percent fat) men via an advertisement in a local newspaper.

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The experimental groups consisted of 23 young and 26 older men (training groups) and the non training control groups consisted of 10 young and 11 older men. The goal was to achieve maximum strength, muscle mass and muscle activation of the lower limbs in both groups.

Table 1:  Resistance training program of the young and older experimental groups (performed with resistance machines)

To this ends, both groups performed 10 weeks of whole-body resistance training twice per week with the emphasis on lower limb exercises. The training program consisted of high volume, medium intensity exercise with short inter-set rest intervals, as it is typically performed by bodybuilders (i.e. 2-5 sets of 8-14 repetitions, 1-2 min rest).

Lower limb exercises, i.e. leg press, knee extension and knee flexion, were performed before upper body exercises. At least 48 h rest was required between training sessions. Maximum dynamic and isometric neuromuscular performance, as well as lean leg and muscle mass were examined before and after the training period. The changes in body composition were assessed 3-4 d and neuromuscular measurements were performed 7 d after the last training session.

Before participating in the study at hand, the "subjects were physically active but unaccustomed to resistance training for the previous 6 months." Training and testing took place throughout the day (9am-7pm), but young and older subjects were pair-matched to avoid any time-of-day effects on neuromuscular performance measurements. All subjects were given nutritional advice in an attempt to maximize muscle hypertrophy, however, no direct nutritional intervention was performed in the present study.

Its a pity that the diet wasnt controlled for. In view of our main interest, i.e. the question "Are old guys at a disadvantage", on the other hand, its actually quite interesting, because we usually assume that older guys would have to ingest extreme amounts of protein to keep up with their younger competitors. In the study at hand, they were only told to consume ~20 g of protein within 1 hour of training and in total ~1.5–1.8 g of protein per kg body mass per day, to optimize the muscle hypertrophy response. If you add the "30g of quality (=high EAA) protein with every meal rule thats pretty much the "SuppVersity Suggested" protein intake ;-)

The resistance training program consisted of . Briefly, leg exercises (bilateral leg press, knee extension, and knee flexion) were performad before upper body and torso exercises; bench press, pulldown, shoulder press, seated row, triceps pushdown, biceps curl, abdominal crunches and back raises.

"The subjects performed medium intensity, high volume training consisting of 2–3 sets and 12–14 reps (60–70% 1RM) per exercise (weeks 1–4), then 2–3 sets and 10–12 reps (70–80% 1RM) per exercise (weeks 5–7), and 3–4 sets per exercise and 8–10 reps (75–85% 1RM) per exercise (weeks 8–10). One min rest was given between sets during weeks 1–4, and then 2 min rest was given between sets during the remaining weeks 5–10. One set was performed to failure during each training session." (Häkinnen. 2014)

As youve probably recognized by now this is a more or less classic linear periodization; a very conservative periodization technique with a lot of back up that it works (learn more about periodization).

Figure 1: Pre- and post values for 1RM and isometric leg strength (Häkkinen. 2014)

If you look at the results, youll see that this protocol led to significant increases in one repetition maximum (1RM) leg press performance in both training groups (young: 13 ± 7 %, P < 0.001; older: 14 ± 9 %, P < 0.001).

Interestingly, said performance improvements were accompanied by increased muscle activation, assessed by voluntary activation level (29 ± 51%, P < 0.05) and electromyography amplitude (35 ± 51 %, P < 0.01) in older men only. Unfortunately, only the young men showed significantly increased lower limb lean mass (2.4 ± 2.5 %, P < 0.01), which were furthermore significantly related to the strength increments (r = 0.524, P = 0.01, n = 23).

Figure 2: The rel. changes in total lean leg mass and vastus lateralis cross sectional area leave no doubt, you can gain muscle at the age of 65+ (Häkkinen. 2014)

Bottom line - true or false? The notion that you cant get stronger if youre past the 60-year mark is flawed. The common understanding that youll have a significantly harder time to actually increase your total muscle mass and not "just" your strength, on the other hand, appears to be accurate. The signficant local increase in vastus lateralis CSA (Figure 2) does yet indicate that its not impossible to grow even at the age of 65+ years (keep in mind, though, the subjects were previously more or less untrained!).

Nevertheless, in general, the study appears to suggest that young men are more likely to literally "grow stronger", while older men tend to draw on improvement in the mind-muscle connection, when it comes to lifting higher weights.

References:

• Häkinnen, et al. "Similar increases in strength after short-term resistance training due to different neuromuscular adaptations in young and older men." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2014). Publish Ahead of Print.

The Acute 24h Effects of 3 Types of High Intensity Circuit Training on Testosterone Cortisol in Young Trained Men

Its obviously to have the 24h effects on testosterone and cortisol than only those measured after the workout , but can we make solid conclusions based on the additional data?

In spite of the fact that the acute testosterone and cortisol response to exercise appears to have little direct effects on the overall training outcome (Schoenfeld. 2013), acute increase in cortisol and reductions in testosterone, i.e. a decrease in the testosterone:cortisol ratio is a classic feature of overtraining and can very well blunt, if not reverse the beneficial effects of exercise on your health and body composition.

Against that background a recent experiment that was conducted by researchers from the University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy could be of great interest to everyone who is performing high intensity interval training on a regular basis. Why?

Well, in contrast to previous studies, Blasio et al. investigated both the acute and 24h effects of a high intensity interval resistance training regimen in trained young men.

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To characterize the effects on heart rate and hormonal responses the subjects, eight trained, healthy trained men (28.61 ±3.51 yrs), performed three different workouts which had the same exercises, the same load and number of repetitions for each exercise, but different exercise order, recovery and speed of execution.

• RANDOM workout: the assigned goal was to complete the assigned repetitions respecting only two duties. The first one was don’t stop until all of the repetitions were completed; the second was that there were no assigned order of execution of exercises and no assigned consecutive repetitions to complete.
  
  Participants were thus free to choose both the order of exercises and number of consecutive repetitions for each exercise (i.e. 2 repetitions of kettlebell swing, 10 repetitions of medicine ball slam, 20 repetitions of squat, 4 repetitions of spin with Bulgarian bag, etc.).
  
  No recovery period was assigned, except the time necessary to move from a station to another, and no speed of execution of exercises was assigned: participants were free to choose the preferred speed. 
• LADDER workout: respecting the following order of execution, kettlebell swing, medicine ball slam, spin with Bulgarian bag, squat, pull-up, burpee, participants had to complete the total repetitions according to a pyramidal scheme (e.g. 1st lap 10 repetitions at each exercise, 2nd lap 9 repetitions at each exercise) until the total number of repetitions of each exercise was executed.
  
  Each lap of the circuit was followed by 1 minute of recovery. No speed of execution of exercises was assigned: participants were free to choose the preferred speed. 
• AS SOON AS POSSIBLE (ASAP) workout : respecting the following order of execution, kettlebel swing, medicine ball slam, spin with Bulgarian bag, squat, pull-up, burpee, participants had to complete the total volume in six laps executed as soon as possible.
  
  During each lap participants had to complete the sixth part of total number of repetitions of each exercise without rest among exercises. Each lap of the circuit was followed by 1 minute of recovery.

Salivary samples were collected before and after each workout, at 11:00 p.m. and at 7:00 a.m. of the following day. Salive was also collected during a non-training day. Similarly, before and after the workout, plasma lactate was measured while a beat-to-beat heart rate recording was executed during each workout. Cortisol (C) and testosterone (T) were measured in salivary samples.

2h before the workouts the subjects who had to abstain from sexual intercourse, stimulants and alcohol from 2 days before to the experimental days and until 9:00 a.m. of the following day, consumed a standardized meal that was lower to 400 and consisted of 33 cl of water, 35 cl of orange juice and two 30 g energy bars (Power Sport Double Use, Enervit, Milan, Italy).

Lets look at the results

While the protocols elicited the same heart rate response (the major part of each workout was spent between 80 and 100% of maximal heart rate, confirming the high cardiovascular intensity of the workouts), they elicited different hormonal and lactate variations with the LADDER workout producing the lowest lactate increase and the RANDOM workout eliciting the highest lactate, cortisol and testosterone increases.

Figure 1: Relative changes in hormone and lactate concentration in response to the workouts (Di Blasio. 2014)

When C was considered in ratio with T no significant differences have been shown among workouts-induced variations. Results of the analysis of covariance, executed on significantly modified variables, confirmed that basal hormonal and lactate values did not influence their variations.

When they studied the effects of workouts on prolonged hormones production (i.e. until the morning following the morning, di Blasio et. al. found that observed that observed that

"C had both time (F=179.723; p < 0.001) and group × time effect (F=10.942; p < 0.001): while during non-training day there is a physiological decline of C production at 11:00 p.m., during training days its decline is not present but seems to have a continuous increase from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m." (Di Blasio. 2014)

For the testosterone production the authors found both time (F=443.340; p < 0.001) and group × time effect (F=3.254; p=0.008) even if the group × time effect seems determined by the samples collected at 7:00 p.m., so that the effects cannot be ascribed fully / exclusively to the workout.

Figure 2: 23h hormone profile after the RANDOM, LADDER, ASAP workouts on a control day (di Blasio. 2014)

What is most interesting, though, is the cortisol to testosterone ratio. It shows the greatest inter-group differences and could potentially be of great physiological relevance (Crowley. 1996). In that, the LADDER workout has the most negative effect, as it will totally blunt the natural decline of the C:T ratio at noon.

In case youre planning to incorporate circuit training into your schedule, make sure to have a huge chunk of beef after your workouts ;-) - "Post-Workout Steak "Supplementation" (135g of Lean Beef) Augments Improvements in Body Composition In Response to 8 Weeks of Circuit Resistance Training" | more

Bottom line: As usual, it is difficult to interpret the results in order to make concrete practical recommendations. The lactate and hormonal data does yet suggest that the "random" order, i.e. a training that involves a self-selected exercise order and rep speed, as well as little to no rest between exercises is the least, the ladder training, with its decreasing 10, 9, ... rep numbers and one minute rest between each lap of the curcuits is the most metabolically demanding workout.

Whether and to which extend this translates into an increased risk of overtraining, let alone increased muscle and strength gains, on the other hand, remains to be seen. In view of the overall effect on lactate levels and the C:T ratio, though, the study does suggest that you better be careful with high intensity circuit / interval resistance training sessions and give your body adequate time to rest and recover | Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Crowley, Michael A., and Kathleen S. Matt. "Hormonal regulation of skeletal muscle hypertrophy in rats: the testosterone to cortisol ratio." European journal of applied physiology and occupational physiology 73.1-2 (1996): 66-72. 
• Schoenfeld, Brad J. "Postexercise hypertrophic adaptations: a reexamination of the hormone hypothesis and its applicability to resistance training program design." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 27.6 (2013): 1720-1730.

Men lose weight more quickly than women

The rumor: Men lose weight more quickly than women

Many people believe that when it comes to weight loss, men have an advantage. Anecdotal stories of ladies sweating and struggling to lose a pound or two compare to tales of men cutting back on the junk, hitting the gym and watching the weight drop off. But whats the real truth?

The verdict: Men do lose weight faster than women, at first

Men tend to have more lean muscle tissue, which burns more calories than body fat, even during rest. And when men and women cut the same number of calories, men usually do lose more weight -- but its short-term.

"Over the long-term, the playing field is more equal," says dietician David Grotto, self-proclaimed "guyatician" and author of "The Best Things You Can Eat." "Its not a race to see who can lose weight the fastest. The important thing is that youre both going in the same direction."

Weight-loss programs often accentuate the difference. When sedentary men and women both start exercise programs, men tend to lose body fat, while many women dont.

In one study out of England, men and women were each put on commercial weight-loss programs such as Atkins, Slim-Fast and Weight Watchers. Two months in, the men had lost twice as much weight as the women -- and three times as much body fat. But by six months, the rate of weight loss had evened out between the genders.

If youre a guy, you can thank the testosterone you have -- and the extra estrogen you dont -- for your weight-loss edge. On average, women have between 6 and 11% more body fat than men, an assumed evolutionary adaptation to help during pregnancy. From puberty to menopause, women maintain more average body fat than men -- even when they take in fewer calories.

But its important to remember that "fat" doesnt mean "unhealthy." Yes, women have larger fat stores, but its part of their physiology, meaning its not extra weight. So if a woman has 11% more body fat than a man, it doesnt mean shes 11% "fatter." A perfectly fit woman will still hold 6 to 11% more body fat than a perfectly fit man.

Also, men tend to lose weight where they need it most (read: belly), so its often more immediately noticeable when overweight men start trimming down than when women do. Ladies fat stores are typically more spread out, which is partly why they tend to lose weight at a slower pace than guys. Even basic, regular exercise -- ideally 30 to 60 minutes a day -- tends to reduce abdominal obesity, even if guys dont technically lose weight.

Of course, ladies also lose abdominal weight quickly -- they just tend to have less of it. "Women with excess fat around the middle will lose it more or less as readily as men," says upwave review-board member Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. "Men are more prone to gain weight around the middle."

That said, carrying extra weight around the middle is also tied to increased heart risks, making it arguably unhealthier to be an overweight man than a plus-size woman. Big bellies, it turns out, are a sort of a double-edged sword when it comes to weight loss: Theyre an extra health risk for men, but give guys the edge when it comes to dropping pounds.

Ladies, dont despair: Women have weight-related advantages, too. They tend to carry more body fat on their thighs and backsides (the so-called "pear" shape), which are much healthier places to hold weight than around the middle. Plus, while women are better at storing fat, they also tend to burn more body fat during exercise than men do. "The fat women find it hardest to lose is generally the least harmful to health," Katz says.

At the end of the day, dropping pounds is hard work for women and men. And, really, it all boils down to this: Anyone can lose weight -- it doesnt matter what your gender is. You just have to be committed to doing it.