According to the study women and men tend to experience different benefits from low-calorie diets. Also, the study mentioned, “More than 2,000 overweight individuals with pre-diabetes who followed a low-calorie diet for eight weeks, men lost significantly more body weight than women, and they had larger reductions in a metabolic syndrome score, a diabetes indicator, fat mass, and heart rate.”
Dr. Pia Christensen said, “Women had larger reductions in HDL-cholesterol, hip circumference, lean body mass (or fat-free mass), and pulse pressure than men. Despite adjusting for the differences in weight loss, it appears that men benefitted more from the intervention than women. Whether differences between genders persist in the long-term and whether we will need to design different interventions depending on gender will be interesting to follow.”
The doctor also mentioned, “However, the 8-week low-energy diet in individuals with pre-diabetes did result in the initial 10% weight loss needed to achieve major metabolic improvement in the first phase of a diabetes prevention programme.”