1.Emotional Eating - Only a Semantic Difference
When you ask a women if she eats emotionally, she will say yes or no. But when you ask a man the same question, he will generally say no. Yet, if you ask him if he eats when he's stressed out, bored, or when he's out of sorts, he will say yes. So clearly, men do eat emotionally, they just don't always label it as such. In other words, the only difference in the realm of emotional eating is semantics.

2.Expression and Repression - Advantage Men
When you ask women if they have trouble asking for what they want or saying no when they mean no, most will admit to having trouble with one or the other or both. Most men, on the other hand, will say that asking for what they want, going after what they want, and saying no are all a piece of cake. Even in 2010, it is still much more acceptable for men to go after what they want and say no to what they don't want, than it is for women. Consequently, far more women repress their feelings and eat out of anger when they have difficulty speaking their truth or giving themselves permission to live the life they really want to live. So advantage men - when it comes to expression and repression.

3.Understanding Food, Calories, and Portion Sizes - Advantage Women
Women have the advantage when it comes to knowing which foods are healthy, and understanding calories and portion sizes-perhaps because for the most part, they've dieted and cooked more. Changing your diet, rather than going on a diet, is one of the main tenants of Skinny Thinking. Diets are temporary and changing your diet is permanent. If you want to stop yo-yoing change your diet. When you change your diet, you get most of your calories from healthy food and you monitor portion size, either by eyeballing or by counting calories.

4.Being Active - Advantage Men
When it comes to exercise, it's advantage men. Movement is natural and enjoyable for many men because many men have been doing it their whole lives. Weight problems showed up only after they left college, started working, and stopped playing sports. All of a sudden their toned, lean bodies were no longer a foregone conclusion. Bellies grew where there once were washboards and they learned quickly that they couldn't eat whatever they wanted as they had when they were kids. It was a rude awakening. But the body and fitness advantage for men doesn't stop here:

• Men have both actual memories and muscle memories of what it means to be fit.
• Their bodies like growing muscle and shedding fat, leaving women green with envy and in the proverbial dust, in the diet race.

So where does this leave us? Men and women have different advantages and challenges in their relationships with food and their bodies. But this doesn't mean that either sex is more likely to kick their eating or weight issues to the curb. The key point for both sexes is that to have any easy relationship with food and to get lean, healthy bodies that they can keep for the rest of their lives without struggle or worry, men and women have to do two things:

• Fundamentally change their relationship with food by changing the way they think about it. They have to bring awareness to their food thoughts, learn to stop romanticizing food, and stop imagining what food tastes like.
• And change their diets.

A great way to jumpstart this new relationship with food is to join the Free Skinny Thinking 91 Day Challenge. It's only 5 minutes a day! Go to www.skinnythinking.com to sign up for the challenge and to buy the Skinny Thinking book, go to http://amzn.to/9v3hnR.