Shorter Height, Bigger Weight Loss Challenges
There are a whole range of reasons why losing weight is hard. Most people don’t like feeling hungry. Temptations surround us all the time. We can’t exercise ourselves out of a bad diet, and the things we eat are deeply ingrained habits. But one of the lesser-known reasons is height.
If you’re vertically challenged, it’s not your imagination. It IS harder for a short person to lose weight. Here are four issues you might be dealing with.
First, there’s something called body mass index (BMI) that’s used to measure body fat based on height and weight. We have data going back decades on Americans’ BMI numbers. On average, shorter American men and women had significantly higher BMIs than taller people.
It’s believed that short people may be born with a higher percentage of body fat than tall people. But don’t worry; over the past 40 years, tall people have been catching up. The difference in body fat between short and tall people keeps getting smaller as the obesity epidemic rages on.
Second, there’s the issue of metabolism. Metabolism is the process by which the body converts food into energy. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories, even at rest. Short people may have a more challenging time losing weight because they have less muscle mass than tall people, even when adjusting for body weight.
With less muscle mass, short people have a slower metabolism and burn fewer calories at rest than tall people. It’s unfair, but doing nothing but sitting on the couch, the taller you are, the more calories you will burn. The differences over an hour aren’t much but carried out over an entire day, weeks, or months can be significant.
Third, you might have incompatible meal partners. If the people you eat meals with are taller than you, it’s not uncommon to see the same serving size on every plate. But since shorter people have a slower metabolism, you can’t eat the same amount of food, even if you’re engaging in the same activity level.
Fourth, it might have something to do with what you ate as a child. Researchers know that some of your height is partially determined by the food you eat when you’re young. People who eat a poor diet during their formative years don’t grow as tall.
It’s possible that continuous stressors from not eating appropriately can alter your gene expression (known as epigenetic changes). The gene that says, “you need to hang onto every calorie because you don’t know when you’re going to eat again,” gets switched on to prevent you from starving. Because that gene never gets shut down, fat and calorie burning stay slow, and the weight creeps up.
The shorter you are, the less energy your body needs—and the less it burns.
To fight back:
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Eat for your needs.
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When you eat at home, match your meals and snacks to your actual hunger levels, not the portion sizes you see on labels or what you might be serving taller friends and family.
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If you’re eating out, cut every meal in half and put that extra in a to-go box.
Exercise is on your side. If a short person and a tall person do the same activity, the short person will burn more calories. Let’s say two people are both walking a mile. The short person has to put in more steps to finish that mile than the tall person. The short person will burn more calories to cover the same distance.
Short people will also see quicker changes in how muscle appears. Because the muscle is spread across a smaller area than on a tall person, when those muscles are worked, they’ll look larger, quicker. So a short person can look fitter, faster than someone tall. By incorporating weight training exercises into your weekly schedule, you’ll also build more of that calorie-burning muscle.
Reference Links:
Skeletal muscle mass and distribution in 468 men and women aged 18–88 yr
Ian Janssen, Steven B. Heymsfield, ZiMian Wang, and Robert Ross
Journal of Applied Physiology, Published 01 JUL 2000 https://doi.org/10.1152/jappl.2000.89.1.81
Short stature and obesity: positive association in adults but inverse association in children and adolescents
Anja Bosy-Westphal, Sandra Plachta-Danielzik, Ralf-Peter Dörhöfer and Manfred J. Müller
Cambridge University Press, Published Online 02 March 2009
Body mass index is increasing faster among taller persons
Deborah A Cohen, Roland Sturm
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Published: 01 February 2008 Volume 87, Issue 2, Pages 445–448, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/87.2.445
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2/2/2023
