We've been working on building our reputation in the area of fitness to complement our expertise in other areas. One project I've been working on is coordinating our certified exercise professionals in a weekly feature called Fitness Friday.
I have a master's degree in kinesiology myself, and I've run exercise testing labs in several fitness facilities. I have come to believe that there is a lot of misinformation and quackery in this profession. There is no required license to be a personal trainer. You can get a certification, but it is not necessary. And because of that, there are a lot of people out there who like to hang out in the gym and want to justify it by making a living at it. Their reasons for being there are not always healthy — they can have an eating disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, compulsive exercise behavior…a whole host of things. And when you're a woman with PCOS, it's easy to look at some of those people and assume that if they look like they do, and you look like you do, that they must know what they are doing.
Au contraire!
The rules for exercising with PCOS are very different from those that work for other people. In fact, often times, following what an uninformed fitness professional advises you, when you have PCOS, can work in the opposite way that you want it to. That counterintuitive process can flush a lot of unhealthy attitudes to the surface in the trainer such as disdain for fat. All you have to do is watch The Biggest Loser to see it. There can be a tendency to act as if the person reaching out for help deserves to be yelled at, pushed past a reasonable limit, etc., just because they've got fitness goals to achieve.
Fitness professionals, I have found, often have very dysfunctional ideas about food. They can be rigid, limiting, and encourage all-or-nothing behavior.
We've tightened up our own rules at inCYST about who can and who cannot be marketed as a professional with this expertise, as we've learned what does and does not work with our own mentality here.
Hopefully, as you read the Friday blog posts, written by professionals who have taken the time to formally study the science behind exercise, above and beyond the inCYST formal training, as well as understand what the complicated environment that a hormone imbalance like PCOS to mess with those rules, you'll begin to develop a better ability to discern just who in the fitness world has YOUR best interest…and health…in mind.
I'm really excited to be starting this feature as we have such a great team of experts in this area you need to be hearing from, be benefitting from, and to be inspired by!
Not a bad way to start off the New Year!