In 2012, a Nielsen survey revealed that almost half of all consumers in Singapore consider themselves overweight. Now if you are one of those who don’t think they need personal training because you believe that your weight falls within a “normal range”, then you may want to reconsider. You may actually be obese without realizing it.
The Body Mass Index
The extra weight itself isn’t technically the problem at all when it comes to being obese. After all, a taller man would be expected to weight more than a shorter woman. That’s what the body mass index is all about. Technically, it’s a measure based on a person’s weight and height. There’s a whole table that health organizations define as the healthy range of BMI. If you fall below the healthy range then you’re underweight for your height; if your BMI is too high, then you are obese. In 2005, though, Singapore revised the cut-off figures because of studies that show Asians have a higher proportion of body fat when compared to Caucasians with the same BMI.
Normal Weight Obesity
Therein lies the crux of the problem. Technically, obesity is not about weighing too much, or even weighing too much for your height. Obesity is having too much body fat in your system. This means that you can weigh the same as a normal person, but you can still be obese because your body fat levels are too high. This is called normal weight obesity.
By being technically obese even with normal weight, you run the same health risks as does another person who’s really overweight and obese. These risks include being more likely to get diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol level, and metabolic syndrome.
How a Singapore Personal Trainer Can Help
Every credible personal trainer in Singapore wants three things for their clients: health and fitness, a safe way to exercise, and consistent fat/weight loss. These are done through proper exercise and dieting. Taking normal weight obesity into account, it’s clear that any successful diet against obesity must focus on fat loss.
You therefore need a nutritional plan that’s customized for you, because your weight, height, and body fat levels will be different from everybody else’s. You can’t eat too much, obviously, because the calories you don’t burn are stored as fat. You also can’t eat too little, because your body responds to starvation by storing fat as well.
You also need to learn the proper exercises which allow you to burn fat. You’ll need to maximize efforts in the gym, and you can do that by working on large muscle groups to burn fat.
It’s the quality of your workout that’s important here, and not the quantity. You don’t burn fat better simply by working out longer. Your personal training can be cut back to less than an hour per session, but you’ll have to increase the intensity of your program. This will help you burn off fat and calories better.
With the right exercise program and the right diet, you can then make sure that you are fighting against obesity as effectively as possible.
Coach Sharm, MSc
sharm@gurufitness.com