Misguided by the Health and Fitness Industry
- Lance McCullough
- Mar 29, 2017
- 5 min read
You are being misguided by the health and fitness industry!
They are not truly promoting health and fitness...
In fact, what they are promoting is aesthetics - a certain body type. The are misleading us to believe that in order to be healthy and fit, you have to have a specific body type – the one the industry has determined is healthy and fit.
Two factors account for this: Body Mass Index (BMI) and industry profits, neither of which has anything to do with health and fitness.
In a previous blog post titled BMI is Contributing to Obesity, I explain the reasons why using BMI as an assessment tool is problematic for society, and how it has allowed the health and fitness industry to misguide the public into believing that the body type they are promoting is the only way you can be healthy and fit. The medical and scientific professions – which includes nutrition experts -- have provided justification and misguided credibility for the body type promoted by the health and fitness industry. My blog post Diet vs. Exercise explains the influence BMI has had on the nutrition industry and how the goal or focus has become about weight loss and not about being healthy and fit.
This post, Misguided by the Health and Fitness Industry, is the third in this series showing how BMI used for health and fitness has negatively influenced society's view of health and fitness. Our culture and the health and fitness industry have become very judgmental and subjective. You are judged on your looks and the shape of your body even though your shape or looks have very little to do with how healthy and fit you are. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. The health and fitness industry has no business imposing their standards on what is an appealing body type. Consumers bear some responsibility, too. The health and fitness industry is a for-profit industry. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying sex sells. Well, it does, and the health and fitness industry takes full advantage of that. The industry has found the body type that sells products and services to customers, promoting BMI as the healthy and fit body type justifies a thin body type.
In the defense of the fitness industry, it does use body fat percentage instead of BMI as an assessment tool. The problem is that the health/medical industry still uses BMI for all their health statistics. So even though the fitness industry uses body fat percentage, the recommendations and guidelines are determined by – you guessed it – BMI, making the information misguided.
While BMI claims to measure body fat percentage, the measurement is nowhere near accurate. The margin of error is 15%, making it a random guess at best.
Here’s an example from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition titled Healthy Percentage Body Fat Ranges: An Approach for Developing Guidelines Based on Body Mass Index.
The aim of the study was to examine a potentially new approach for developing percentage body fat ranges, one that linked healthy BMI to the guidelines established by the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization with predicted percentage body fat.
Here is the significant finding of this study:
“The information needed to directly associate percentage of body fat with morbidity and mortality is, unfortunately, unavailable and inconclusive even though there is increasing interest in ranges of body fat associated with optimum health.”
Source: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/3/694.full#fn-2stimulate further interest in such models.
Weight loss does not always translate to health.
My problem with BMI and the general recommendations of the health and fitness industry is that the industry is dominated by weight loss and not really focused on helping people get healthy and fit. Most of the suggested types and ways to work out are not safe, effective or efficient. A good workout means doing better tomorrow than today – in other words, building gradually on a solid base. Most suggested workouts at the gyms are not a true workout. Instead, they create stress and hope that something will be beneficial. It’s no surprise people feel alienated and intimidated, along with anyone struggling with their diet or has never participated in a muscle-strengthening program.
Is it any wonder that the thought of going to the gym is dreadful for the majority of people?
Let me share a few facts to back up my statement according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and IHRSA (the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association):
22% of Americans have a gym membership and 67% of people with a gym membership never go to the gym.
21.4 % of Americans meet physical activity guidelines for muscle-strengthening and aerobic activity.
28.5% meet physical activity guidelines for aerobic only.
3.2% meet activity guidelines for only muscle-strengthening activity.
46.9% do not meet either guidelines for muscle-strengthening and aerobic activity.
50% of the American population are sedentary.
More than one-third (36.5%) of U.S. adults are currently obese, and recent reports project that by 2030, half of all adults (115 million) will be obese.
29 million Americans currently are living with diabetes.
Preventable chronic disease accounts for 86% of total health care costs.
More than a 1/4 of all Americans and 2/3 of older Americans have multiple chronic conditions.
The burden of chronic diseases encompasses a much broader spectrum of negative health consequences than death alone.
These are just a few examples showing how the health and fitness industry could be doing better.
Going to the gym should not be intimidating or dreadful, and you should not feel alienated if you are not familiar with the gym environment and the latest fad workout that gym regulars have adopted. The gym should be a sanctuary for anyone with a desire to better their health and fitness. It should be a place where everyone feels equally welcome and encouraged. It should offer a safe, efficient and effective workout in a friendly environment.
That is not what usually happens to someone new to the gym. Have you ever seen the commercials and ads and social media postings? The very fit, thin and young people demonstrating the program makes doing extremely complex and potentially dangerous exercises look very easy. Maybe it is easy for the seasoned fitness professional, but for a beginner who hasn’t done anything strenuous since high school, even basic exercises could be extremely difficult – especially a body weight exercise.
Some gym instructors give passive-aggressive encouragement, such as "Come on, you can do this" or "it’s easy" which is very belittling and defeating, Is it a surprise these instructors are doing a poor job of getting the average person to exercise?
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