Health and Fitness: Understanding your personal fitness journey

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: UDRA (THINKSTOCK)
Figuring out your fitness journey isn't always the easiest thing to do, but Fanshawe's Student Wellness Centre is here to help you along the way

How much should I weigh and how many calories should I be taking in? These are two very common and related questions we as fitness trainers get asked every day. Unfortunately, the answer is not simple and if someone gives you a simple answer on this point, I hope they are backing it up with multiple assessment data and also by telling you that their answer is generally speaking or based on estimates.

How much a person should weigh first of all, should really only matter to them and maybe their coach or team if that has bearing on their sport. The total amount you weigh does not give an accurate picture of health, even to a medical professional.

Medical and fitness professionals alike have a basic chart to look at in terms of age, height and gender as to a healthy weight range, but this chart does not take into consideration your build (ectomorph, mesomorph, or endomorph), percentage of muscle vs. percentage of fat, body fluid and also many other factors bearing on your health such as arterial blockages, lung capacity and health, cardiovascular system, digestive health, renal health and so on. This is why we have specialist and special tests. Unfortunately, in the medical world, this is most often only available to you when you get sick and then they need to see what is going on in the inside.

In fitness and at your Student Wellness Centre, we have assessment protocols available to you to help tell you where you are at physically and hopefully help you prevent something becoming worse. We can help determine whether we can work with your physical training, nutrition and lifestyle habits in order to reverse or prevent illness, injury and disease. We can refer you to medical or specific therapeutic professionals based on our assessments.

One assessment we do is called the InBody. We measure your height, weight, total body water (fluids which can make up 60 to 90 per cent of your body weight and fluctuate as much as 10 pounds per day), dry lean mass, fat mass, muscle mass, body mass index and percentage of body fat. We can also tell you whether your proportions are normal and discuss with you your body shape and type. We can give you an estimate of your total fat and muscle to lose or gain based on the results (not from your total weight which will fluctuate as you gain muscle and lose fat or vice / versa). We can also talk about Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) which is the estimate of calories you need to take in at rest. From here we can give you recommendations of the types of exercise you could focus on and also start the conversation about nutrition. We can register you for our orientation and individual program to get you on the path to your goals.

Another assessment we do is called the CSEP-Path assessment. CSEP stand for Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and it is the gold standard in exercise certifications, one that all of our full-time staff must have and that our part time staff either have our are currently working toward during their education here at Fanshawe. In this assessment, we can measure body composition, muscular endurance and power, aerobic (cardio) output, flexibility, and lifestyle. From here, we can prescribe and exercise routine during your personal training sessions that is tailored to your goals and specific physical and health requirements. During our personal training sessions, our trainers are also constantly assessing your movement health with a series of movement tests. We can also analyze your nutrition habits and make recommendations for improving healthy eating*. Referrals are generally made when someone has a medical condition we are not equipped to deal with. *Note: we do not give prescribed meal plans to those with medical need and for the general population we work with you to create your meal plan based on multiple assessments and sessions.

As for the second question of how many calories should you be taking in: again, this is based on so many factors.

First, let me start by letting you know that calorie counts are largely inaccurate and based on rough estimates. Refer to scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ or to businessinsider.com/calorie-counts-arent-accurate-2013-7 for more information on how calories are measured. For example, one publication could say an apple is approximately 60 calories and another could say 90 and they both could be right and wrong, depending on many factors. There is also a huge margin of error in online calorie counting apps and fitness devices that tell you your calories amounts for the day (see: theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/24/fitness-trackers-out-of-step-when-measuring-calories-research-shows). We can give a rough estimate of how many calories a person needs and this is backed by years of research, but it is nearly impossible to measure how much a person is actually taking in. You are burning calories all day long and in your sleep and also most foods release more calories for absorption when heated, so if you entered it into your app as raw or uncooked, the calorie amounts can be significantly altered.

What to do? You can still follow your app if that is what is working for you to stay in control of your eating habits. A better method for food control is to look at your portions. Several weeks back I wrote an article about how much food we need. Take a look back in the Interrobang archives to refer to this article. Most people are much better off referring to portion control and using their hands as guides for measurement. Your hands are relative to your size and give you a more accurate choice based on what your body needs. We also need to learn to tune into the feelings our body has for hunger and fullness. You can actually train your body feel less hungry using a few techniques and some time and effort.

So when people ask me these questions, my answer is: less assess and re-assess and figure out what is right for you.