Why Do Men Keep Getting Fatter? And How Do We Break the Cycle?

Statistics show that today 71 percent of American men are either overweight or obese. Compare that to 1994, when 61 percent of men fell into this range — or to 1960, when just 49 percent of guys were overweight or obese.

What’s even more concerning is that men’s waistlines are expanding at a faster rate than their body-mass indexes are, according to a study on JAMA. The problem with extra fat around the midsection is that it’s mostly visceral fat, a deeper, more hazardous type of fat than the subcutaneous flab found elsewhere on your body. Visceral fat secretes pro-inflammatory hormones that easily enter the bloodstream and reach vital organs, wreaking havoc on everything from insulin sensitivity to triglyceride levels. These negative effects, in turn, can increase your odds of diabetes and other diseases.

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So why do guys keep gaining weight? Dr. Lisa Neff, an endocrinologist at the Northwestern Comprehensive Center for Obesity, gives five reasons, and some were a little eye-opening:

• Larger restaurant portions and wider availability of food are leading to many more calories being consumed.

• There’s been a huge decrease in physical activity, and the balance of calories in and out has shifted for the worse.

• Many prescribed medications these days, including depression and blood-pressure drugs, promote weight gain

• Staying up late and working long hours is prevalent in our culture and can affect hunger, fullness, and metabolism, causing men to gain weight.

• There’s now been a whole generation of mothers who were too overweight while pregnant, and those babies—who are know grown adults—are much more likely to become overweight or have obesity-related diseases.

So why do we stay fat? And what can we do to change things?

Neff partially attributes our inability to lost weight to our slow-evolving brains. The hypothalamus—the brain’s regulation center—protects you from starvation and can really screw you if you gain weight and keep it for a while.

Here’s how it works: The hypothalamus has a weight “set point” that it tries to keep you within range of. If your weight dips below the set point, it sets in motion starvation responses, including a drop in metabolism, which can hinder weight loss. If you pack on extra pounds and keep them on for a while, your brain will see your heavier weight as the new normal and make it the new set point to defend, instead of your previous healthy weight. Then, if you try to get back to your original weight, your hypothalamus will think you are starving.

This is why it’s crucial to just prevent weight gain in the first place. Neff says:
“It’s so important to stay stable as much as you can… Don’t just accept weight gain and say, ‘Oh well, I’ll just lose it after vacation.’ There are ways to take off weight once it’s on — healthier eating, physical activity — but the brain and body make it extremely tough.”

Curated Articles from Men’s Journal and JAMA