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If you tend to pack the pounds on your tummy or your butt or your upper arms, you’ll continue to tend to put fat there. Forever. Sit-ups and squats can help shape our bodies differently, but no amount of diet or exercise will turn you into a person who naturally stores lipids in a different place. In fact, there’s really only one way to do it: change your hormones.
Specifically, your sex hormones. Testosterone and estrogen are two of the biggest drivers of fat storage—they’re the whole reason that men and women tend to have different body shapes when it comes to chub. Biologically female bodies stash the stuff in thighs and butts, whereas male bodies tend to pack pounds onto the stomach. This is also partly why men tend to have more cardiovascular problems. Abdominal fat exacerbates metabolic issues and triggers all kinds of metabolic changes that have a negative impact on your cardiovascular system.
But it’s not as straightforward as “testosterone makes you put fat in your belly.” In fact, it’s men with low testosterone who start storing lipids there, which is why, as they age and their natural testosterone levels decrease, they generally start getting that potbelly look.
Both testosterone and estrogen actually promote leanness overall, and androgens (that’s the class of sex steroids including testosterone) seem to have very different effects depending on sex. It’s a complex system, and is made only more complicated by the fact that it’s very hard to study differences like this—the majority of people in the world remain either biologically male or biologically female for their entire lives. This means there are only a few windows where we can see how a significant change in sex hormones impacts body fat.
The most obvious is puberty. As teenagers’ hormones kick into high gear, they undergo all kinds of bodily changes because testosterone and estrogen (and, to a lesser degree, progesterone) are responsible for a lot of our secondary sex characteristics. Women develop wider hips and breasts. Men can suddenly put on muscle, especially in their chests, and their voices deepen as their testicles mature. Everyone starts growing body hair and experiences confusing new feelings of lust and romance that inevitably lead to some heartbreak.
