You know that friend you have who doesn’t believe it’s necessary to exercise because he or she is thin? They might be surprised to know they are gaining body fat every day
even though it isn’t obviously visible.When someone isn’t exercising particularly when they are past their 20s, they begin to lose muscle every day. This alone is not a healthy situation, but what compounds the problem is that the body is replacing the lost muscle with fat.
Years ago, one of our members dragged his wife in for a fitness evaluation. At the time, we were doing evaluations which included body composition measurements, which measures the amount of fat in your body. She insisted she hated exercise and saw no need to do it, because as she said “look at me dear, I’m very thin, what do I need exercise for?"
Well, we tested her and she was somewhere between 40 to 45% body fat, actually scoring as obese! It was an amazingly high percentage of body fat, which at her weight indicated she had almost no muscle. As a result, her risk of heart disease, cancer, and a myriad of other diseases was extremely high, yet she believed that being 'skinny' was healthy and that she was protected from these diseases.
Dr. Stephen Blair nationally known epidemiologist confirmed with one of his landmark studies that it’s not body weight that gives us a protection from disease, but actually fitness level. Dr. Blair’s study followed a group of obese men who were moderately fit as tested with a treadmill for over 20 years. These obese, moderately fit men had the same premature death rate from all diseases as thin men who were moderately fit and remarkably a five-times lower premature death rate than then thin men who were in the low fit category.
Conclusion = skinny is not fit.
The assumption has always been that thinness protected a person against disease and if somebody was obese the likelihood of disease skyrocketed. Dr. Blair has undeniably confirmed that its fitness, not weight, that provides protection from disease. Dr Blair's message to physicians at medical conventions is “get off your patients backs about losing weight and get on their backs about exercising!”In today’s world, with the overabundance and focus on food, staying thin is quite a challenge. It is great news for a large portion of our population that anyone can protect themselves from deterioration and disease with exercise, even if they don’t lose weight.
The body as it turns out is also quite deceiving when it comes to body fat. As we age we lose muscle - the new scientific term for this is 'sarcopenia.' As muscle fibers shrink, the muscles simultaneously begin to fill with fat, making our bodies appear to be the same over time when in fact our percentage of body fat is increasing. It’s only when the muscles accumulate all the fat they can hold that the fat begins to accumulate visibly. In women usually it begins on the hips and with men around the midsection.
If you’re inactive and this fat begins to appear it’s a mistake to believe that you’re just beginning to get fat. The reality is you’re already quite fat and beginning to spill fat subcutaneously, under the skin. At this point you’re already at a very high risk for multitude of diseases.
Fat generally comes of in reverse order from how it was added, but you can break this cycle. With exercise you can rebuild the muscle tissue and begin to clean the fat out of the muscles first, before you lose the subcutaneous fat.
So, now that you get how fat works, it's time to get rid of it!
- Mike
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