Is it easier or harder for a 300 LB man to go down a flight of stairs then a 200 LB man?
Harder
Considerably harder, since going down stairs under control is not a perfectly smooth process. At each step, one of the man’s legs has to absorb all his weight while he moves his other leg. so each leg (ankle, knee, hip) has to take the strain multiple times. A badly-set foot can easily cause sprains and other injuries. Some of the shock can be absorbed if the man holds onto a handrail and uses an arm to control his descent.
Now, if he went down the stairs quickly so most of his body weight was in constant motion, the strain might be reduced but the risk of catastrophic stair slippage (aka a Three Stooges Event, or TSE) increases dramatically. In any event, the process involves far more strain and risk than that suffered by a 200lb man.
Actually, the real problem isn’t getting down the stairs as much as the extra 100lbs makes it far more difficult to go back up.
It’s definately louder… I know from experience…
Let me put it this way… a large person will be more careful about going down the stairs.
You just made me think of a sign I saw in Pizza Nova, a restaurant in San Diego, at the top of the stairs, facing those who are about to descend. The sign reads: PLEASE DON’T FALL DOWN THE STAIRS.
I take that to mean that everybody should be careful, regardless of weight. 
Ask your knees. Extra weight puts a lot of stress on the bottom of the kneecap which is normally a smooth surface. Going down stairs can cause substantial patellofemeral forces many times body weight.
What a weird question!
Well, I wouldn’t know about being fat, but think about your own personal experience, from walking, jogging, or moving heavy objects.
I have just a very small amount of experience jogging. Jogging on flat sidewalks, of course, is easiest. Jogging uphill is more tiring, and you go slower, but it’s not painful or more difficult to do. Jogging downhill makes you feel like you’re about to lose your balance, and your knees hurt.
Same thing with stairs, I think. Walking up isn’t difficult if you go slow.
I agree with what Bryan Ekers said about going down stairs. You could go so very slowly as to have no strain or mistakes. You could bound down as quickly as you can, which is extremely easy, just risky. If you try to go as fast as you can controllably walk or run, without bounding, you’ll feel it in your knees. In my experience, this all becomes even more difficult while carrying a heavy load.
For comparison purposes: I am just over 5’6’’, currently weigh about 260 lbs, and have intermittantly bad knees. How I walk down stairs depends on how much trouble my knees are giving me that particular day; usually I do it in a fairly rapid “controlled fall” as I’ve found that trying to move too slowly hurts my knees. If I’m having a “bad knee day” I have to move a little slower, bur in either case the rate has to be steady. I try to avoid walking down stairs with a crowd where I might have to stop to avoid bumping into someone, as the stop-and-start motion seems to aggravate my knees more.
Going up the main problem, as has previously been stated, is more related to the effort of moving my bulk against gravity than the stress on my knees.
In either case, I always keep one hand on the railing, both for balance and in case my knee decides to buckle.
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- Walking down stairs is in fact much harder on your knees than going up, because you land with your body weight on your straightened leg. - DougC
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Since you aren’t offering a statistic, I’m not going to not offer an anecdote.
Last year, when I was staying in the dorm, I tended to go down and up stairs faster than my peers. Most of them weighed less than I did. On more than one instance I was tired of walking at snails pace behind my friends so I’d jump over the railing to the other side of the stairwell to get in front of them.