Your goal is to be fitness or fatness? Which is more important in terms of health status, having a higher level of physical activity, or having lower body fatness?

The age-old Diet vs Exercise debate rages on. The answer to which is more important for our general health lies mostly in our goals. I have witnessed many times those who become obsessed with weight loss and a minimal body fat percentage.  No obsessions are healthy and balanced, like most things in life, is the key to a healthy lifestyle. I prefer to work for a long-term healthy life than a specific body fat percentage.

Certainly, we know that regular physical activity directly correlates to healthier body weight.  However, there are many benefits of physical activity that are somewhat independent of our weight. 

Here are a few examples:

• Cardiorespiratory health: reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke, lowers blood pressure.

• Metabolic health: decrease the risk of Type II Diabetes

• Musculoskeletal health: slows the loss of bone density that occurs with aging, lowers the risk of hip and bone fractures, increases and preserves muscle mass

• Cancer Risk: significantly lowers the risk of a variety of different cancer types.

• Mental health: lowers the risk of depression and age-related decline and improves the quality of sleep.

As always, our primary focus is on BALANCE.  You don’t need to workout for multiple hours every single day.  You can see amazing returns for your overall health by training 3-4 times each week in 30 or 45 minutes sessions.

My personal recommendation about a fitness lifestyle

That is to say, let’s think on long-term health. First, let’s make a routine to include exercise in our daily activities and enjoy it. Make exercise a consistent lifestyle choice. 

In other words, in Fitness your goal should be not only to enjoy the returns but to enjoy the PROCESS.  Exercise should be fun!  Ultimately, this really is the only way we will consistently exercise throughout our entire lives.   

Try out a variety of the fitness programs I’ve outlined here on the website to find the one that works best for you.  Once we establish your best routine, let’s then work together to set goals and establish things like an ideal, target body weight that works for you.