Health & Fitness
Ask a Trainer
If you have any questions about health, fitness or CrossFit, please email in your questions to crossfit@sublimeswim.com
Q. If I am overweight, does that mean I'm more susceptible to
health risks?
A. This, my friends, is another myth.
Many people see on the news or have been told that obesity leads to health risks. There is no strong evidence that shows a causal relationship between being overweight and an increase in health risk such as diabetes and heart attacks. Let’s look at it this way: health risks are a result of a poor lifestyle of inactivity and bad eating habits. Most people can get that. However, obesity is ALSO a result of a poor lifestyle. It is not the extra fat sitting on our body that leads to the health risk but rather it’s the inactive lifestyle and poor eating habits that lead to both increased weight and increased health risks. My belief is that body composition is a bad indicator of fitness, however that is another article on it's own.
Q. How can I get rid of the fat around my middle?
A. Unfortunately, we can't pick and choose where we lose weight
on our bodies.
Fat is how our body stores fuel. This fuel is the energy (or calories) we use to contract our muscles to perform our daily activities. There’s other types of fuel in our body but fat is how we store it for longer periods of time. Whether or not one actually stores energy as fat is a simple calculation of calories in and out of our bodies. If we have more calories coming in than going out, then obviously it needs to be stored somewhere. That somewhere is fat. If more calories are going out (exercise) than going in, then we need to get extra energy from somewhere other than the food we eat. This somewhere is also fat. So, in order to lose fat, we must be using more calories then we are taking in through diet. The best way to do this is regular exercise and healthy eating and cutting back on the ‘empty calories’ that we get from food like candy, chips, ice cream, pop and fast food to name a few.
Unfortunately however, you can’t spot reduce. This means that we can’t pick where our body takes the stored energy from. Usually the last place for it to leave for men is around their belly and in women it’s around their hips. Sorry for the bad news! The good news...REGULAR exercise and healthy eating (not just for a month or two) will help you achieve your goals.
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If you have any questions about health, fitness or CrossFit, please email in your questions to crossfit@sublimeswim.com
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