Do men lose weight faster than women when they diet? 

Yes, according to research published in 2018 in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.

In this study, 2,000 overweight adults with prediabetes (slightly elevated blood-sugar levels that increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes) ate 800 calories per day for eight weeks, and on average, the men lost about 26 pounds compared to about 22 pounds in the women. 

And does that mean that men seem to have an innate metabolic advantage over women that makes it easier to get and stay fit?

Also yes, but probably not for the reason you think.

The real reason men outpaced women in this study and appear to generally have the best of it with fat loss isn’t genetics, hormones, or the patriarchy. 

It’s simply body composition.

Specifically, men tend to weigh more and have more muscle than women, and the heavier and more muscular someone is, the more calories they burn every day. 

And the more calories someone burns every day, the easier it is to create and maintain a calorie deficit, especially a substantial one that produces rapid fat loss.

To give you an idea of how significantly body composition affects calorie expenditure:

A 5 ’10, 160-pound man who’s fit but not musclebound burns around 1,800 calories per day at rest (excluding any physical activity).

A 5 ’5, 120-pound woman who’s fit but not brawny burns around 1,500 calories per day at rest. 

That 300-calorie difference may not sound like much, but when viewed as a calorie deficit, it represents about ⅔ of a pound of fat loss per week (a pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories).

And then consider someone like me, who’s 6’2, 200 pounds, and muscular. I burn nearly 2,100 calories per day at rest—about 700 more calories per day than our fit woman.

Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that:

Men eating 800 calories per day lost more fat than women eating the same amount of food.

Men typically can sustain larger calorie deficits than women (and thus lose fat faster).

None of that means, however, that dieting inherently “works better” in men than women or that the process of fat loss is physiologically different between the sexes. 

In fact, when you view weight loss relative to body weight rather than absolute amounts, the “gender gap” disappears. 

In both men and women, slow weight loss is a reduction of around 0.5% of body weight per week, average is around 1% of body weight per week, and fast is around 2% of body weight per week.