He’s Fit, She’s Thin The Language of Weight Loss

Same meeting. Same buffet table. And yes, both Marcus and Jada are committed to losing weight. There is one major difference: Jada freely describes herself as being on a diet, while Marcus talks about getting into shape.

An interesting facet of weight management is the language that men and women use when talking about their experiences. It’s especially interesting because so much scientific research has been done on excess weight and related health problems, but very few studies have looked at gender differences regarding the words and language women and men use when talking about weight loss.

This is surprising, given that language is such an integral part of life, affecting our ability to understand one another and communicate effectively. Yet although academic scientists have not spent a lot of time looking at the language of weight,Weight Watchers has done extensive internal research on the topic, having talked for many years with both men and women from all over the world. The goal of this article is to share the results of that research and to explore the gender differences in the language of weight. Helping both women and men understand these differences can go a long way toward increasing awareness of how word choices have the potential to affect each other’s weight-loss success.

Choose Your Words Carefully: How Women and Men Talk about Weight

The process of change that women and men go through to lose weight is very similar.To lose weight successfully, everyone must travel at his or her own pace through the various stages of change. Regardless of one’s gender, the first step is to move from an area where weight is not even on one’s radar screen to an area where one recognizes the excess weight. From there, the person prepares a plan for losing the weight, then acts on that plan, then begins to shed the excess pounds. Finally, once the behaviors that produced the weight loss are engrained in the person’s daily life, the job of maintaining the new lifestyle takes hold. While the process of changing one’s behavior is the same, the words that women and men use to describe the experience are very different. A variety of market research techniques used on behalf of Weight Watchers demonstrate that women and men have their own preferred words and phrases that they use to talk about weight. In general, women talk about their weight in terms of how they look.

The majority of men, on the other hand, talk about their weight using words connected to health and fitness. The way that women and men typically describe their current weight status follows that pattern. One area in which there is agreement between the genders is in the description of obesity. Understandably, neither men nor women like to be called obese. In a quest to find more acceptable language,Weight Watchers researchers asked obese women and men to describe their weight.The women tended to describe themselves in terms that related to their appearance, covered a variety of body parts, and had negative connotations.

Examples include “I look fat,”“I have flabby arms,”and “My rear end is huge.” On the other hand, men typically answered the question using more neutral or positive phrases, such as “I’ve always been big”and “I’m on the heavy side.”And when men did talk about their appearance, they focused almost exclusively on one body part the stomach.They said things like “I’ve got a beer belly”or “I’ve got a big gut.” Another example of women’s tendency to describe their appearance and men’s tendency to talk about health and fitness is in how they describe what they want to achieve by losing weight. When researchers asked women and men to describe their weight-loss goals, women primarily used appearance-related words and phrases that have to do with looking thin.

Examples of their responses include “I want to be skinnier” and “I want to wear a size 6.” But descriptors relating to appearance weren’t the only ones that the researchers heard from the women who wanted to lose weight.They found that women were also interested in their health, but it didn’t seem to be as motivating compared to their appearance. In the same research, the male response was very different. The researchers noted that none of the men surveyed ever used the word thin to describe their weight-loss goals (more on this in the next section). Instead, the men focused on health- and performance-related phrases, such as “I want to be fit”and “I want to get in shape.”One man summed up the typical male response when he said, “I want to feel better. I hate being tired and sore all the time. I can’t do the things that were once natural to do.” Just as there were exceptions with women in the appearanceversus- fitness divide, so, too, were there exceptions with the men. In the researchers’work with men, they heard men, particularly younger men, express concern about their appearance.

Many said that they wanted to look better and fit into clothing that had become too tight or too small. One male study participant reported, “My fat pants were getting tight, and I just didn’t like the way I looked.” Based on years of Weight Watchers research, we have concluded that the way in which women and men talk to each other appears to have a profound impact on their weight-loss efforts. Many of the words that women and men tend to use can also have either a positive or a negative effect on the emotional reactions of someone of the opposite gender, and that effect can make a difference to the other’s weight-loss success.

FROM A WOMAN’S VIEWPOINT CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY: HOW WOMEN AND MEN TALK ABOUT WEIGHT

Most men want to encourage the women in their lives when it comes to losing weight. But when women talk about their experience, they tend to use words and concepts that are alien to most men’s weightloss vocabulary. For example,women often talk about their feelings of being sabotaged in their weight-loss efforts. In a study that looked at this notion, the idea of sabotage was not a concept that the average man could relate to when talking about weight loss. In the same research, women were also much more likely to describe feelings of disgust or remorse after an episode of overeating. Again, the men had a hard time relating to those emotionally charged descriptions. So what happens?

Women may feel that their partners are not listening or don’t care when they talk about the weight-loss issues they are dealing with. To overcome that barrier, women need to keep the word differences in mind when they talk about their weight with the men in their lives. A lack of understanding should not be automatically equated with a lack of caring. Finding a common language with which to express the feelings can make all the difference.

FROM A MAN’S VIEWPOINT CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY: HOW WOMEN AND MEN TALK ABOUT WEIGHT

Men often use sports terminology when talking about their weight, such as “I’m as big as a linebacker” or “I’ve got a wrestler’s body thick and stocky.” Men also tend to see those self-assessments as factual, even complimentary.Weight Watchers research has found that male-dominated descriptions often go back to childhood, when boys played sports and were encouraged to be “muscular” or “big” or “fast“ or “strong.” Even though many women also played sports when they were young, the words that are complimentary to guys do not necessarily cross the gender divide. In fact, girls who played sports and were described as big, muscular, or big-boned did not generally take the words as compliments.

For many women those words translate as “fat.” So when guys are talking with women about weight, they need to leave the locker-room language behind and be sensitive to the fact that most women do not appreciate being called “a big woman” or having someone notice that they have “really bulked up” since they began working out. Men would be much better off using language that compliments a woman’s appearance, like “nice curves”or “you look so much more toned since you began working out.”