Fat doesn’t accumulate just anywhere; Mother Nature puts it where it will do the most good or at least not get in the way. You need a layer all over your body for warmth and padding. You also need a place to store fat where it won’t encumber movement of your arms and legs.
Men and women store fat differently. Men tend to store more fat in their belly than women do. Women store more in their buttocks and thighs, presumably to make room in the abdomen for pregnancy. Women also have a higher percentage of body fat than men–likely for the same reason, to assure adequate fuel for the demands of pregnancy.
The differences in the way men and women carry fat can be credited to the so-called sex hormones: estrogen in women, testosterone in men. Before puberty, boys’ and girls’ bodies are shaped alike—flat chests, skinny buttocks.
Then things change dramatically. At puberty, girls’ ovaries start producing estrogen, which inhibits fat accumulation in the abdomen and promotes it in the breasts, buttocks and thighs.
In boys, testosterone increases muscle mass and allows less fat to accumulate in the buttocks and thighs. Boys become more broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips
In a few years we go from looking like kids to having the bodies of mature men and women. At no other time in our lives do our bodies change so quickly and so dramatically.
The changes in body shape that come with puberty are accompanied by the onset of fertility. Because Mother Nature favors anything that promotes reproduction, the characteristic differences in body shape between men and women are reproductive cues that attract the opposite sex.
There’s another hormone that affects the way you’re shaped: insulin. It’s the body’s main calorie storing hormone. It controls the entry of fuel into cells. When you consume more calories than you need, insulin converts the leftover to fat and stores it in parts of your body where, again, it will do the most good or at least not get in the way. The way insulin stores fat differs from the way the sex hormones store it. Insulin promotes fat storage in the abdomen and actually inhibits accumulation in the buttocks and thighs–the opposite of the sex hormones’ effects. Excess insulin promotes belly fat in both sexes.
As we proceed through middle age, our bellies get hit by a double whammy. Sex hormone production dwindles and hyperinsulinemia becomes more common. Both of these changes promote redistribution of fat into abdomen—the so-called middle-age spread.
Insulin is intimately involved with sex hormone production. Hyperinsulinemia reduces testosterone in men but does the opposite in women; it raises testosterone. In women, excess testosterone counteracts the effects of estrogen, which further promotes belly fat.
The good news is that you can reverse these changes by reducing insulin levels and by boosting the sex hormones, and you can do both naturally. In this site you will find the tools you need to lower your insulin levels, normalize your hormones and redistribute fat away from your abdomen.
