Why women piled on more lockdown pounds than men

YOU may have feared piling on the pounds during lockdown. And it seems you had good reason to be concerned – if you were a woman.

For experts say women were more likely to gain weight during lockdown as they were stuck indoors looking after children – while men generally ‘carried on as they were’.

Researchers analysed data on 938,000 adults and found Covid curbs had a ‘differential impact’ on the sexes. Women were 44% more likely to grow from overweight to obese, with 13% of overweight women becoming obese compared with just 9% of men. Professor Thomas Yates, who worked on the study at the University of Leicester, suggested that many mothers bore the brunt of home-schooling and were less able to go out and keep active. He added: ‘I suspect lockdown had a differential impact on many women’s lives compared to men.

‘Men pretty much carried on as they were – they just worked from home instead. Meanwhile those school runs, supermarket shops, those types of things that are potentially getting women out of the house more often – they suddenly stopped.

‘And then you have to deal with homeschooling kids and just a very different way of living, which was probably quite stressful. So not only was it reducing activity levels and changing diet, it was stress and mental health problems probably playing into that as well.’ Asked why men fared better, Professor Yates said: ‘Men are probably quite good at carrying on pretty much as they were.

‘Obviously you had things like the pub taken away, but in terms of work patterns, I would have thought there was less disruption.’

The analysis, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Maastricht, the Netherlands, also revealed that younger people were more than twice as likely as pensioners to get fatter during the pandemic. Some 17% of under-45s went from overweight to obese compared with 7%of over-75s.

Professor Yates said: ‘All that socialising, all that need to go out of the house – to the gym, to work – was suddenly stopped, so there was a really noticeable difference. The pandemic had a marked effect on people’s mental health.

‘So if you combine a pandemic of mental health with lockdown, you’re going to get people eating more, exercising less and gaining weight, so that’s probably what we’re seeing in that group.’ Professor Yates called on more action ‘to reverse the effects of lockdown.’