Why Men Aren’t as Bothered about their Weight as Women are?

In most countries obesity rates are higher amongst women than they are for men, and there are a myriad of diet plans, pills, shakes, meals and slimming clubs on the market which appear to specifically target women. At the very same time as people are getting larger in the West, the pressure on individuals, especially women, to be ultra thin has intensified, so that women often end up obsessing about how fat they are, even if they aren't, and thus will try anything in order to lose weight.

Although there is also a certain amount of pressure on men to be a healthy weight, the emphasis generally isn't on how skinny they can become, but rather on their ability to maintain a well-proportioned, muscular physique. It would seem that whilst women use the scales to determine whether they have reached their ideal body, men use the mirror and how fit and healthy they feel as a guide.

Women have always felt pressurised to look good, and society clearly has a significant influence on how they feel about their own bodies, and whilst once upon a time a curvier figure was revered this is no longer the case. Whilst large breasts are still appreciated, a flat tummy is also demanded by the editors of various women's magazines and representatives of other media outlets, so that more ordinary women are paying for a chest and spending most of their time on a diet in order to achieve what they believe to be the ideal body.

Everyone's body changes over their lifetime, so that they can't simply expect to remain the same shape and same weight forever. Obviously a teenage girl is still developing and will have a very different body to a woman in her twenties, whilst childbirth and the menopause are likely to have a significant impact on a woman's body. If a woman decides to have a child then she has going to have to put on some weight - she has no choice in the matter - and whilst celebrity mothers might be able to lose their baby weight within weeks, most ordinary women are too busy looking after their baby to go to the gym.

However, just because women have more pressing concerns doesn't mean that their weight isn't bothering them. Most women would like to lose the extra weight they're carrying straightaway and are worried that they could end up staying heavier than they would like forever. Obviously this isn't really a concern for men, and although a man can sometimes gain a few extra 'sympathy' pounds during his partner's pregnancy he doesn't necessarily feel any pressure to lose the weight afterwards.

Similarly, women tend to gain weight, especially around their middle, during the menopause, and though men don't have to experience any such changes they can still find they develop a 'beer belly' anyway, but men aren't always as bothered as women about their size and weight.

It is women putting pressure on themselves to remain a certain weight that can leave them constantly unhappy with their bodies, convinced that they are not skinny enough, whilst the unrealistically skinny ideal propagated in the media does nothing to help. Men are perhaps not so influenced by images of other men and, besides, those men that are in the media tend to be well-built and fit, rather than skinny. For some reason women tend to concentrate more on getting to a lower weight than improving their overall fitness and physique than men do.