The short answer is no. A lot of marketing gimmicks are done to make women want to believe they need different supplements, workouts, and diets to diet down compared to men. The reality is, while there may be slight alterations throughout the diet depending on the individual client, there really isn’t a difference.
If anything, women don’t need to get as lean to have an amazing physique as compared to guys (guys usually need to diet down to 8-10% women on the other hand, 18-20%). The trick, whether your male or female, is to find what your body responds best to.
I put on weight easily!
If you are the type that finds if you even look at a carb you’ll gain three pounds, then you may find yourself in this category. I find clients who can put on size easily, but struggle to lose it, tend to do better of higher fat, lower carb diets. That’s not to say you have to completely eliminate carbs. Focusing on higher fats though, may help resensitize your body to insulin, so when you do include carbs in higher amounts, your body will be more efficient at handling it. I would recommend keeping it around the pre and post workout period and having the remainder of the meals be predominantly protein and fat. For those into counting macros, start with 100-150 grams of carbohydrates for 2-4 weeks, and see how you feel. If you find after a couple weeks you are feeling sluggish or losing energy in the gym, start including more carbs back in.
3 Steps You Must Be Doing for Fat Loss
For the majority of my clients, by the time they get to me, chances are they’ve probably already lowered their calories and are doing a ton of cardio. Which basically gives me no room as a trainer to help them. Their body is so efficient at adapting, that it took their 900 calorie diet, and 7 days of cardio as the new normal after a month or so. From this, it learned to SLOW down the metabolism and get it to burn less and less body fat for the sake of keeping you alive. You’ll recognize this after an extended period when you normally see your weight no longer going down. You can’t let your body get to this state for too long. You need to be working with a metabolism that's not going through hours of cardio a day or very little calories. Focusing on more resistance training and less cardio will help put on more muscle mass which will get you burning MORE calories at rest. You heard that right. The more muscle you have the more calories you burn doing nothing.
Before you even consider losing weight, consider what your starting point is. If you are only eating 1500 calories then you are not ready to start dieting. You want to build up as much of a metabolism to be able to handle at LEAST 2000 (for women) to 2500 (for men) calories so that you have more room to lower when you inevitably plateau. Then once you establish a healthy starting intake, you can gradually bring the calories down by 200-300 calories and use this bigger range to preserve muscle and last longer on the diet. It’s impossible to lose weight taking in more calories than you are expending.
It’s not just about calories in versus calories out. What is making up those calories is just as important. Eating a meal high in carbs and fat (chips, fries, pizzas), is going to react very differently and more likely to store as fat compared to say a higher protein meal (meats, eggs, etc). Your body loves to use carbs and fats for fuel, but by over feeding yourself (any of those three are very easy to overeat) your. body will have no use for it other than fat stores. Protein on the other hand, is used by many processes in the body, one of which being muscle building. It may always be associated with bodybuilding but is responsible for so many metabolic properties just for normal cell function. If you want to maintain all the hard earned muscle you gained and are on a diet, you need to keep protein intake higher (.5-1g per pound). Also, protein takes more energy to break down versus a carb or a fat so you aren’t even absorbing as many calories compared to the other two.
