One of the primary factors that separate women and men is the presence of the menstrual cycle, the roughly 28 day cycle during which her primary sex hormones estrogen and progesterone change in a fairly “standard” pattern. During this time, nearly every aspect of her physiology changes. Specific to today’s article I want to look at the impact of the menstrual cycle on energy balance (i.e. calorie intake vs. calorie expenditure). In doing so I will be primarily looking at the following paper.
Women and Body Composition
As I discuss in extreme detail in The Women’s Book women get the short of the end of the stick when it comes to body composition. Their bodies fight back harder, they lose both weight and fat slower (even given an identical intervention), they tend to gain fat more easily, they gain muscle more slowly, etc. … Keep Reading