Let me tell you a story of hormones and calories.
In my younger days, I was a bit..."confrontational" at times. Back in 1999, over Christmas break during my freshman year of college, my friends came to visit. I think it was the week between Christmas and New Year's. We were doing pretty much nothing out of the ordinary - just hanging out like college kids normally do. One dreary Tuesday afternoon, we got hungry - very hungry - and decided to hit that wonderful bastion of obesity, Ponderosa Steakhouse.
There were only five customers in the restaurant - the three of us and two women positioned as close as possible to the buffet. As we ordered and finished filling up our first plates, we passed their table and its associated odd harmony of wheezing, heavy breathing, and overworked hearts frantically trying to push some unholy gelatinous mix of lard and blood through their calcified arteries. We noticed that the fried chicken and macaroni and cheese were both empty, which was (at first) odd given the lack of patrons.
We sat down and started to eat, drink, and be merry. The two sows looked at us frequently while they inhaled whatever grease-laden slop was on their plate, obviously considering us competition for the next round of fried chicken and macaroni. It was uncomfortable, you see. One time I went fishing at a relatively remote lake in Maine. When we'd take the trash outside, there were always raccoons waiting to pillage it. This was a little like that, with the exception that the raccoons weighed about four bills each.
As we heard the double doors of the kitchen swing open, we realized that more food - that food which we actually wanted - was coming out. We all got up and went to get some, but we made the fatal mistake of following Ponderosa's rules and we got a new plate. This allowed the two sweaty bipedal elephants an opportunity to get ahead of us and proceed to take exactly 100% of the tray of macaroni and cheese and all but one chicken wing. For those wondering how they did this given the size of Ponderosa's trays as well as the size of the plates, they each carried two plates. One was for macaroni (topped with chicken, naturally) and the other was for chicken. For that which didn't fit, they had pockets, and yes, I did actually witness two morbidly obese women place fried chicken drumsticks in the pockets of their size 60 polyester pants.
At this point, we were a little upset that we were being chicken-blocked by nearly a half-ton worth of landwhale flesh. We picked up some consolation food and sat down, where we proceeded to somewhat loudly deride the slovenly patrons who had hogged the entire fucking trays of macaroni and cheese and fried chicken for themselves. Of course, while the fat deposits in their foreheads had rendered them nearly mechanically blind, their bodies hadn't yet stored fat near their ears so they were more than capable of hearing us. Naturally, they took offense, and after loudly threatening to get the manager, we engaged them in conversation.
This is where I learned that they were obese due to thyroid problems, hormones, and their genetics. They specifically mentioned they had parents on the "large side," which was clearly why they were "blimped out" to borrow a turn of phrase. You see, it is actually due to hormones, thyroid problems, and hereditary factors, and definitely not because they were camped out in Ponderosa on a Tuesday afternoon fiercely protecting their trays of fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.
I'm reminded of that when I read that the laws of physics don't apply to women, and that "hormones" are to blame. Hormones don't change the laws of physics. They drive behavior. No, it isn't equally easy for everybody to gain or lose weight, but the rules still apply. Anything else is simply an excuse or bad math. But then again, this is the world we live in, where nobody is responsible for anything they do.