Men and women have about the same number of glucocorticoid receptors in their belly and under-skin fat, so the reason men and women store fat differently isn’t because of how many of these receptors they have.

Your belly fat around the organs (visceral fat) has about four times more receptors that respond to stress hormones than the fat just under your skin, which might make it more sensitive to those hormones and affect how your body stores or burns fat.

Women’s belly fat cells have fewer receptors for stress hormones than men’s, which might mean their fat tissue responds differently to stress.

Researchers looked at several genes related to stress hormones in fat tissue from women's bellies. They found that only one specific gene (11β-HSD1) in the omental fat was linked to belly fat obesity in women, even after accounting for other factors that might affect the results.

The fat around your organs has four times more receptors that respond to stress hormones than the fat under your skin — which might explain why belly fat is harder to lose when you're stressed.

When scientists look at fat from different parts of the body together, they find that more glucocorticoid receptors tend to show up with more fat-breaking enzymes—but this only happens when they mix the data from belly fat and under-skin fat. When they look at each type of fat separately, there’s no link at all.