“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle to wake up to. Treat it with care. “ ~ Buddha
As a petite, semi-Asian 5 & # 39; 4 & # 39; & # 39; – People have always assumed that I am fit. However, my slim figure hid the sins of poor nutrition and exercise routine for a decade.
The truth is, being thin doesn't make you healthy. There are many hidden dangers of being called "thin fat".
Thin fat, also known as "obesity with normal weight", affects both men and women with apparently healthy weights and body mass indices (BMI). However, a 2008 University of Michigan study found that nearly a quarter of normal-weight Americans had high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
I spent all of my twenties as a thin, fat woman. I worked out arbitrarily with no routine or strategy, and mostly copied what my friends were doing or running on a treadmill. I drank too much alcohol and never consistently fed. My idea of a healthy dinner was frozen pot stickers over a bed of lettuce.
This thinking changed after my then fiancé, now husband Ryan, proposed. I shifted into high gear and used my technical background to delve into research. Six months before the wedding, I started experimenting with my body, diet and exercise to have a toned body for my dream wedding.
How do you know if you're thin fat?
Dr. Ishwarlal Jialal, director of the Atherosclerosis and Metabolism Research Laboratory at UC Davis Health, says: “They look healthy, but when we examine them, they have high levels of body fat and inflammation. You are at high risk for diabetes and cardiovascular problems, but you wouldn't recognize it by their looks. "
Don't be fooled whether you can eat Taco Bell for lunch every day or not without gaining a pound. Poor nutrition will catch up with you. Here are other descriptions to determine if you are thin:
You wake up thin, but by the end of the day your stomach has bloated like you've gained 20 pounds
You have a muffin top and you are slim everywhere except on your stomach.
They tend to reduce food intake during the day if you want to fit in a tight shirt at night.
People reject your weight fluctuations and concerns about your small or slim size.
Despite a sometimes poor diet, you don't seem to be gaining weight.
No matter how much cardio you do, your weight seems to stay the same.
You have never seen a muscle definition.
You cannot pull up to save your life and have "jelly arms".
According to InBody, a manufacturer of body composition devices, the recommended body fat ranges for healthy men are between 10 and 20 percent, for women between 18 and 28 percent. If your weight is normal or low and you still have a higher percentage of body fat, you may be thin.
Like obesity, a variety of health problems can affect men and women who are thin, including a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.
It took me years to understand that while I was thin, I was not healthy. Since then, I've taken deliberate and systematic steps to get my health back on track.
Now that we're all tied to the house, it would be too easy to maintain bad eating habits, and it's understandable and okay if we pamper ourselves every now and then. However, this could be a good time to develop new habits that can improve our overall health – which is crucial for maintaining a healthy immune system.
When you're ready to fit thin fat, consider the following:
1. Know that it takes time.
The problem with thin fat is that it takes a lot of effort to change body composition, much more than with others. After a week of training and healthy eating, I can see my husband's defined muscles. For me and others who are thinly fat, your body may just stay the same. However, you will no doubt feel better, even if you cannot see the results.
Eating and exercising well offers a whole range of benefits, from better sleep to more energy. I felt better within a week, although I didn't see any physical results for about two months. Do not be afraid. Stay consistent and follow the plan. Good things happen.
2. Forget the scales.
Many men and women are obsessed with the number on the scale. The truth is that the scale cannot tell whether it is measuring water weight, fat, or muscle. In fact, the scale for thin, fat people can be misleading. You may think that you don't have to change your unhealthy habits because you are normal or even light.
So don't focus on weight when improving your diet and fitness, but on tracking inches or taking photos as the primary measure of success.
Document your before stats by measuring the size of your chest, arms, waist, hips, and thighs. Next, take photos of yourself from the front, side, and back. Make an appointment with them and keep them in a safe place. Do not worry. Nobody ever has to see them. The most important thing is to create a benchmark to see how your health and body composition improve over time.
Once you focus on eating better and exercising regularly, you may become leaner in some areas but more muscular and taller in others. In any case, you are well on your way to becoming healthier.
3. Concentrate on five or six small meals a day.
If you only want to do one thing, you should focus on healthy eating. Eat high-fiber foods like leafy greens and beans while reducing simple carbohydrates and sugar. While someone who is skinny may not see the adverse effects of poor nutrition, consider the following: A single chocolate milkshake will not burn down on a treadmill until after 60 minutes. Be thankful for your body's metabolism, but don't take it for granted.
For all skinny, fat men and women, I recommend eating smaller meals more often. While there is a big scientific debate about whether three or six meals a day is better, studies support that smaller meals help to satisfy hunger and reduce the risk of overeating or binge eating.
When someone who fasted temporarily, ate three large meals a day, and also experimented with small, frequent meals, I found that the small, frequent meals were most effective in keeping me tall all day . It also required advanced meal preparation, which meant additional thought was put into my food and diet.
It wasn't as difficult for me to switch to five small meals as I thought. Here was a typical day of vegetarian eating for me:
8:30 am – Breakfast smoothie loaded with frozen spinach and peanut butter
10:30 am – A snack made from pumpkin or sunflower seeds and a banana
12:30 pm – Homemade cup of vegetable soup with strawberry and goat's cheese salad
3:00 pm – Half a cup of Greek yogurt with low-sugar, high-fiber muesli
6:00 p.m. – Asian vegetable pan with quinoa
This plan was enough food to keep me full and never hungry – although my colleagues joked that I always ate when they came to my office! This diet plan, along with my workouts, helped me overcome my thin fat phase.
Remember that regardless of your size, women should never consume less than 1,200 calories and men should never consume less than 1,600 calories a day. If your goal is to increase muscle mass, you may have to eat even more!
4. Stop the cardio and reach for the free weights.
Undoubtedly the fastest way to leave your thin fat behind is weight lifting – and you can even use DIY weights like rice or bean packs or paint cans.
Weightlifting is something I would never have tried without my husband first suggesting it. Six months before the wedding, I knew that my current cardio and running routines wouldn't get me there! So I got used to it and started an online weightlifting program in our home gym.
In contrast to cardio and aerobic exercises, weight lifting and other anaerobic exercises (such as sprints and HIIT) build muscle mass. Instead of burning fat and oxygen, your muscles burn stored sugar called glycogen. If you then build more muscle, there are new benefits, including more calories burned, faster metabolism, increased bone density and reduced blood sugar.
For the first few months, I was skeptical that weightlifting would do anything. For years my mantra was: "The more you sweat, the better the workout." There were a few days when I didn't even sweat after forty-five minutes of lifting! Before I wrote it down, however, I consulted my "Before" statistics and photos.
When I saw the results, my jaw dropped. As someone who had never changed figure since high school, I had built muscle and looked more alive and healthier than ever. Apart from feeling sexier and stronger, the photos showed that I was hiding all of my excess fat in my back. To top it off, my little Asian hips grew four inches.
As our wedding approached, I noticed that my perspective had changed in terms of what my “dream body” looked like. Instead, it was now clear that my goal was never to be thin. My physique had gotten bigger in some places, but I had never felt so strong, confident and healthy. I remember feeling dizzy my dress the weekend before our wedding and feeling prettier than I ever felt before.
It was a journey that opened the eyes, but it was worth sharing that men and women can switch from thin fat to a suitable fat with a few small diet and exercise steps.
About Alexandra Davis
Alexandra Davis and her husband Ryan Gleason are wellness and lifestyle coaches for couples. After working internationally as corporate engineers for eight years, Alexandra and Ryan left their high-profile jobs to pursue their true passion. Don't miss their Just Duo It program, a step-by-step program for couples to get well and transform their marriage from good to exceptional.
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