I recently wrote about my experience with a personal trainer at a local gym, and the interaction we had about my doubt about the body fat number he measure for me.
Yesterday I was at another location of the same gym, waiting for yoga class to start. Another personal trainer walked by with the same apparatus, and asked if anyone wanted to have their measurement taken.
I volunteered, and I got the same inflated measurement they gave me before. Again…I told him I had two degrees in nutrition and fitness-related fields, that I'd managed an exercise testing laboratory during graduate school, and the numbers simply were not consistent with what I knew about my exercise level and my body type.
Again, he backed off and gave me a lower estimate that was almost exactly what the other trainer had given when I put pressure on him.
It's not about vanity. I actually went shopping for jeans right after yoga class and discovered that with all of my exercise over the past year I've DROPPED a size.
It's about what looks to be a scam on the part of gyms--to give you an inflated body fat measurement in an attempt to sell you personal training sessions.
Don't fall for it.
If you MUST have your body fat measurement taken, have it done by someone who has no financial gain to derive from overestimating your actual number. And/or…have it performed by two different people employed by two different organizations.
We all throw the word"fat" around as if we really know what it is. If I were to stand at the mall and take a survey, I'd likely get the following answers to the question,"What is fat?"
"Gross"
"Something I have too much of."
"Saturated and unsaturated."
"Something that unfortunately makes food taste good."
Have you ever thought about why we even make and store fat in the first place? Just a few decades ago, nutrition students like me were taught that the primary source of fat was as a storage tissue for excessive calories eaten. Oh! And it helps to insulate you and keep you warm. That was that.
That paradigm is what the vast majority of nutrition advice is based on…that fat is an inactive mass that has little value, really, so when we have too much of it we should do whatever it takes to get rid of it. Diet. Exercise. Liposuction. Bariatric surgery.
In recent years, scientists have been studying fat and learning some really interesting things. Fat is actually an endocrine organ! Just like the pancreas and the liver, our fat tissue manufactures and secretes hormones and chemicals of communication that are used by other parts of the body in other locations. Fat tissue can make estrogen, and it can also even make cortisol! Other hormones that fat tissue can make include leptin, resistin, and adiponectin.
The fact that fat has functions suggests that we should be much more respectful of its existence. Apparently it is created when we need what it does. Simply removing it, without figuring out what conditions triggered it to appear in the first place, is likely why drastic, imbalanced methods of reducing fat don't have long-term success.
I read long ago that insulin has a mild-antidepressant activity. It occurred to me, that when a person is not living their life in balance, and the nervous system is having a hard time doing its job, that we may have been programmed to have back up plans to ensure our survival. Such as not allowing insulin to be used by muscle and fat, rather rendered available to be used by the brain to keep doing what it does. After all, if our brains aren't working, we aren't working…right?
So instead of thinking we are depressed because we are fat…maybe we should consider that we are fat becasue we are depressed.
The type of fat that is found in our abdomens is commonly written about as dangerous to have. Yes, it is associated with a lot of expensive and deadly illnesses. However, it is also where a lot of omega-3 fatty acids are stored. So if we're eating the kind of fat that overpowers the ability of the body to do its job, and not eating enough omega-3 fatty acids in the first place, it's actually pretty amazing, if you think about it, that our bodies have a way to make sure that despite these somewhat self-destructive choices, the fats our brains desperately need, stay in the body and get to where they are most needed?
I stopped thinking of fat as a bad thing a long time ago. When I see someone whose adipose organ is overdeveloped, it makes me stop and think about how far out of balance they must be. If you exercise and train and work your muscles routinely over time, they become big and strong, right? If your life is imbalanced, your fat tissue will be worked out in similar fashion. If you don't need the fat, it is not likely to stick around.
When I see someone with an overdeveloped fat organ, my very first thought is,"That body is having to work sooo hard to stay in balance. That must be an exhausting job."
When you are diligent with self-care, that is you make food choices that promote better balance, you move your body regularly, you don't take on unnecessary stress, and you practice good sleep hygiene, your body won't have to be so dependent on its fat tissue to do all that work. The responsibility is better divided between other body parts.
It's a bit of a shift to wrap your brain around, I know…but I encourage you to think about it. The very fact that you're able to make fat may have been lifesaving, up to this point. But since extra fat was more designed as a backup plan, and not the primary way to stay in balance, perhaps you can think of your choices from this point forward as ways to give that organ a break and not wear it out…not wear YOU out…before your time.
I am a regular exerciser. I'm not super buff, but I am pretty active. Over the last year I have been working out on weights to try to add weight to my (rather wimpy) upper body.
So when I was told at my gym that I had an opportunity to be analyzed for free by a personal trainer, I thought I would take advantage and see what the measurements were.
I'm not obsessive about things like this, in fact, I had to go back to the locker room to weigh myself because it had been so long since I'd been on a scale I didn't know how much I weighed. But I've been the same size for so long I know I have not been a victim of weight creep.
So when the trainer told me that my body fat percentage was 33%, I was floored. I work out 4 times a week, I run, lift, swim, rollerblade…and my clothes still fit.
What gives?
I had the presence of mind to say to the trainer…"Did I mention to you that I have a master's degree in exercise science and I am a registered dietitian?" I've done lots and lots of body composition measurements on other people and I would like to understand just how you got that reading on a person such as myself when I know how much I exercise and what I eat."
At which point he quickly said,"Well, I was just going to shave a few points off of that number and tell you that you're probably more like 27% fat."
Interesting. According to his machine I was in desperate need of his services until I asked him for some science to back up his claim, at which point I suddenly didn't look so bad.
I left the gym thinking how fortunate I was to (1) have enough knowledge to know when I was being scammed and (2) to have enough self-esteem to not be devastated by this poor attempt at marketing a service to me I didn't really need. But…I continued to think about how many women reading this blog might not have either, and who might be driven into some pretty dysfunctional and dangerous behaviors when delivered this kind of news.
A word of caution: any apparatus that claims to measure your body fat using a technique called"bioelectrical impedance" is likely to be grossly inaccurate. Those are the handy little machines you hold for a few seconds while they estimate your body water and work backwards to figure out how much of what is left, is fat. If you are at all dehydrated…you'll look fatter on those machines than you really are.
If it's really important to you to get a body fat measurement, the most accurate way to get them done is using a very inconvenient, high-maintenance technique called underwater weighing. If you can get this done, go for it! If you can't, make sure you find a trained exercise professional who can do a caliper reading. Good caliper technicians can come pretty close to underwater weighing.
You can also measure inches--waist circumference, hip circumference, thigh, arm, etc. It can be really helpful on those weeks when you may be plateauing on the scales to see that your waist is continuing to shrink.
In my case, it turned out that I'd gained 3 pounds of weight since I'd last weighed, but all my pants and skirts were fitting exactly the same, likely meaning I'd gained some muscle in my upper body. I chose to be excited about that rather than let the used car salesman…er…personal trainer…ruin my day.
Be sure you focus on the right reasons for exercising and do it for the fact that you sleep better, have more energy, and are helping to balance your hormones, not because you're making money for someone else who doesn't deserve to have it.
Normally I wouldn't promote a show like this on a blog like this, but a recent client shared that last season a woman was diagnosed with PCOS after competing. She happens to be someone who really struggled with weight loss during the competition. My client shared with me, that she remembered thinking when hearing about the PCOS diagnosis,"Wow, if a show of experts can't even help someone like me, I don't have much hope."
Until that conversation, I'd kept my thoughts about this show primarily to myself, but realizing it may be important to provide hope to a segment of the population for whom this show may not be entirely productive…I've decided to make it a regular blog entry throughout this season of Biggest Loser.
And, I have a team of experts to help! The contributors to this blog will be taking turns sharing their thoughts, expertise, and insights. We'll be so much better at this with all of these viewpoints than if it was just me. I hope you enjoy our little series.
Now, about Episode One.
I'm going to use my turn to talk about something that has bothered me since the show's inception--how"progress" is described. Weight loss is the only measurement used in this competition. And it is never mentioned, anywhere, anytime, that weight consists of several things: fat, muscle, water, glycogen (how carbohydrate is stored) and bone, primarily.
At one point in the show, Jillian was showing how the Body Bugg works. She stated that the calories burned in a typical day are about 3,000. One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. So if we use her statement and calculate out a week, the average Biggest Loser contestant burns 21,000 calories in one week. That works out to about 6 pounds. Any loss over that is coming primarily from water and possibly even muscle.
In my exercise physiology program, we learned that different fuels are burned at different intensities. The more intense the exercise, the more likely it is that fat is not being burned. At high exercise intensities, the body switches to burning carbohydrate, which it gets from breaking down glycogen. Each gram of glycogen is stored with 3 grams of water. So at the intensities I saw in this episode (which involved working so hard that some people literally fell off of treadmills while others retreated to corners to vomit), my guess is that fat is not what was burned.
Remember, this is a commercial television show that depends on ratings. Higher weight losses draw in bigger audiences and more advertising dollars, so what are you going to do to get there if time only permits a"measly" 6 pounds a week of weight loss? You're going to do what it takes to purge as much water and glycogen out of the body as you possibly can. I realize purging is a bad pun given the fact that people were throwing up, but it leaves me wondering if the trainers are truly aiming for health, or if they are focused on goals outside of the welfare of the contestants.
It seems to me, especially since two contestants this season aren't even cleared to fully exercise because of medical risk, that there would be some sort of attention paid to calculating target heart rates and staying in the AEROBIC range in order to maximize loss of body FAT. But then my goal would be the long term health of the person I'm working with, not my professional reputation in a televised weight loss competition.
When working with women with PCOS, I always have to keep in mind that they hit the top of their aerobic range at lower levels of exercise intensity than other women. They tend to be those clients who exercise harder and longer than anyone else…only to gain weight. It is one of the hardest things I do in this kind of work, to convince my clients to trust that if they drop the intensity, it will help to facilitate the right kind of weight loss. Especially when competitions like this one push for the exact opposite mentality.
But the wall these contestants always hit a few weeks into the season? It's about having completely run out of glycogen to purge, muscle weight gain that is occurring at the same time fat is lost, and more rapidly if target exercise heart rates are not respected.
If the measurements used to calculate progress were a combination of weight AND a body fat measurement from which total muscle gained and total fat lost were factored in, you'd see very different results. You'd probably also see a lot higher self-esteem in the contestants and fewer contestants trying to throw the weigh-ins with water loading when they start to panic about whether or not their hard work will show up on the scale.
If you're one of those people who tends to lose weight slowly or even gain weight when you feel like you've really worked hard, try this.
1. Calculate your target heart rate as follows. -Subtract your current age from 220. This is your maximum heart rate. -Multiply your maximum heart rate by.6, and then by.8. -The numbers you get when you do that are the lower and upper heart rates you need to be in, in order to be most efficiently burning fat.
2. The next time you exercise, stop a few times and take your pulse. If your heart rate is exceeding the upper limit of your target heart range, you need to drop your exercise intensity.
Many women I've challenged to do this are very surprised at how less intensely they need to exercise. And how much more pleasant exercising can be when it doesn't have to entail losing your lunch in front of a crowd of people.
I enjoy a lot of physical activities. One that I particularly enjoy, likely because I have spent so much of my life in a hot climate, is swimming. Since junior high, one of my very favorite things to do, is get into the pool and swim a mile.
It has always bothered me that fitness experts give this form of exercise such a thumbs down. It's not weight bearing. It doesn't burn fat. Yadayadayada.
Tell me, does this look like the body of an out-of-shape woman to you?!?!?
Of course Dara Torres is genetically blessed, and of course, she lifts weights. But you can't argue that she spends a whole lot of time in the pool. It's not working against HER from what I see!
I wish fitness experts would stop talking about swimming as if it's a useless exercise.
The other night when I was swimming, there were a couple of people in the pool who were clearly getting back into fitness after significant time away. They would never have survived a half hour on the treadmill, or an afternoon hike, or a round of tennis. But they were in the pool and they were working hard. That is what was important.
Here are some reasons I love water fitness and why I encourage you to try it for yourself.
1. Swimming is gentle on your joints. If arthritis keeps you from a lot of activities, swimming might be an answer. You can move your body without pounding the parts of you that hurt.
2. Swimming is a great body image equalizer. Once you're in the pool, no one can really see what you look like. I think that's what keeps a lot of people out of the gym, fear that those in great shape are looking at them and judging them, rather than appreciating the tremendous effort it took to get there.
3. Swimming uses upper and lower body parts. I know I should probably lift more weights. But weights, to me, are incredibly boring. I am getting ready to take tennis lessons, but that's going to use one side of my body more than the other. I could equalize that with.you guessed it…weights…but I'd rather balance it with swimming, which works my upper body in an equalized way that is enjoyable to me.
4. Swimming is meditative. I cannot tell you how many times, after being stuck on a project or writing assignment, I've gone to the pool, started moving, and the perfect idea just popped into my head. It seems to foster brain blood flow in a way that enhances cognitive function.
5. Swimming is relaxing. I ALWAYS sleep well when I swim. In fact, I often have to force myself to stay awake past 8:30 on days that I swim, so that I don't wake up at 4 am ready to go! You all know that poor sleep encourages insulin resistance. If you're sleeping well because you're swimming, the benefit you get may not directly be from how many calories you burn in the pool, but from the improved insulin function that encourages weight loss long after you've been in the water.
6. Swimming doesn't remind you of your body size with every move you make. I agonize for Biggest Loser contestants sweating away on the treadmill. Every step they take, every breath they take, they're reminded of how out of shape they are and how far they have to go. Swimming is the great body size evaporator. You can exert yourself within reason without feeling like you have to punish yourself. The water is one environment where you can, at least temporarily, not have a constant reminder of your size. You're weightless, you can glide, you can float, you can propel yourself. It's a completely size acceptant and encouraging environment.
7. What I've never seen studied, and I've looked for it a lot, is an analysis of what happens to body fat in swimming. It may not drop, but I have a hunch it migrates, toward the skin, where it is needed to help insulate against the water temperature. But if you think about that, it may help you to look a little younger, to have a small layer of fat just underneath the skin to support its structure. I actually kind of like that my body is a little more rounded and not so gaunt and"ripped" when I swim. I think I look more feminine. It's the internal fat, the fat around the middle, that causes problems you don't want. If you're noticing that your waist inches are decreasing, your body fat may be a little higher as a swimmer, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's BAD fat. (I kind of think the reason a lot of my athlete/fitness expert/weight lifting friends don't enjoy swimming is because their body fat is so low they don't have flotation on their side and they have to work too hard to enjoy it. So they justify why you shouldn't pursue it to fit their own physiological bias!)
So there you have it. I've hopefully removed some of the excuses and barriers that keep you out of the pool. If it gets you moving, if it helps you to sleep, if it improves your insulin function…why are you listening to the people who contradict your truth? What matters is what works for YOU. Not what some lean, cut person who has sunk to the bottom of the deep end is trying to tell you.: )
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I write a lot about how not sleeping well can affect how you eat.
Have you considered that maybe the other may also be true? How you eat can affect the quality of your sleep?
Binge eating is often a night time activity. It is recognized for its ability to self-medicate, and many of you may even consciously seek out the behavior because you are aware of its sedating effects. But did you know…after the soothing effect of the binge wears off, you may actually feel more anxious? CCK, the chemical that is released to help digest protein and fat, is released in proportion to the amount of protein and fat that you eat. So if you binge, you release more CCK.
CCK is an anxiogenic agent. That is, it causes anxiety. So if you've binged, your temporary respite from your anxiety is likely to elevate not long afterward. If you don't make the association, you might turn to another binge for relief.
CCK is also a nociceptic agent. That is, it causes pain. So if, in addition to your PCOS, you have fibromyalgia or some sort of chronic pain, you might find that your bingeing is the behavior that, in the big scheme of things, is worsening, not helping your pain.
A sleep researcher once asked me about an interesting observation in one of his studies, with men who experienced excessive limb movement while sleeping. The movements seemed to get worse if they ate a large bowl of ice cream just before bedtime. We had an interesting discussion about how the CCK mechanism could have been part of the explanation for this phenomenon.
Time to connect different dots in your brain.
Carbs don't help anxiety, they worsen it. Carbs don't medicate pain, they intensify it.
