Men and Women are wired differently!
Well the cynics out there may be having a ‘no sh#t Sherlock’ moment right now!
A US team at the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 men, women, boys and girls and found striking differences. Male brains appeared to be wired front to back, with few connections bridging the two hemispheres.
In females, the pathways criss-crossed between left and right.
These differences might explain why men, in general, tend to be better at learning and performing a single task, like cycling or navigating, whereas women are more equipped for multitasking, say the researchers in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Now this is a hugely contentious area, and if you follow the link below you can see more of the debate. However it caught my eye because anecdotally my experience say in the field of weight loss is that men are more focussed on the task in hand. Typically men want to talk about portion size, energy intake and expenditure, and rate of loss. Any ‘multi tasking’ is typically closely associated with the purpose of losing weight and exercise and motivation to engage in such is the most common ‘go to’ place to work with alongside modifying behaviour around food.
However for women weight and weight loss appears to be a much more complex issue. Often historical and emotional factors are discussed, reflected upon and are acknowledged as having a significant impact in both the pathway to carrying weight and also in terms of resolutions of such issues almost being a ‘key to the door’ where achieving weight loss and fitness both in body and mind is concerned.
My initial read on this research is therefore that I see validity in what appears to be a physical variance between the sexes and actual behaviour and strategies that might most usefully be applied in context to behaviour change.
On a more humorous point it also supports the notion that women and route planning don’t quite go together… and that for us men… a focus on one task is far better than attempting to spin several plates at once! Tin hat ready…!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25198063
Russell