It might sound harsh, but let’s be honest. The road to fitness success is a lonely path. Sometimes people aren’t going to share your passions and goals the way you do. However, whether or not you have training partners, you should learn to do it on your own.
Some people start in a hurry but give up halfway; some people can be persistent but through injuries. Only a few have achieved their fitness goals and even changed their entire life. But why? Because it not only requires perseverance but also scientific training methods.
So what factors influence body image?
a. Genes
It’s believed that individual physique has much to do with genetic factors. For instance, if parents are obese, their children are more likely to be overweight. Studies have shown that if one parent is obese or overweight, their kids have a 30% chance of being overweight. If both parents have obesity, the likelihood of developing obesity for their children can be as high as 50%-60%.
So here we go, if you were unfortunately born with a faulty gene, you have to put your best efforts to make sure almost everything is right like exercising and eating, etc. If not, oh please, just shut up (no excuse).
b. Exercise
Exercising is the most crucial way for calorie consumption and different type of workouts affect different parts of your body. For example, with the same height and weight, people who often do weight training are more likely to have a compact body compared to those who don’t; people who regularly practice yoga will appear taller and more confident because yoga helps improve postures; And as for runners who run several times a week they generally don’t have much body fat.
c. Diet
Weight loss revolves around the concept of calories. You put energy into your body through food, you expand them through movement. Some people believe that as long as they exercise every day, they can eat whatever they want. However, the fact is that if you don’t control your eating, you will grow muscle and fat at the same time, which would inhibit you from getting your dream figure. Simply put, when you eat more calories than you expand you gain weight. Conversely, when you use more calories than you take you lose weight.
In terms of dieting, what you should be careful of is that instead of entirely quitting carbohydrates, you’d better have moderate carb diets such as coarse grains, sweet potato or potato to replace sugar, polished rice and wheat. This is because according to some experts, giving up carbs does no good to weight loss, but rather has a negative effect on your health.
d. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
It’s true that compared to the ones with slow metabolic rate, people with high metabolism seemingly cannot put on weight at all despite how much fattening foods they eat. Though this may seem like a benefit, that may not be the case always. For those with fast metabolism, some or all of them can also experience certain health problems such as rapid heart rate, fatigue, dizziness and excessive sweating, etc.
e. Others
Factors like mental illness, diseases or drug abuse may also affect people’s body type, which are rare cases though.
As we can see from the factors mentioned above, the two things beyond your control are exercising and healthy eating. Therefore, we will keep trying our best to provide you the most professional workout plans and scientific nutrition tips.
Just imagine that, if a big guy with over 200 lbs goes for a long-distance running, it’s most likely to result in lower body injuries, because extra body weight increases pressure on people’s knees and potentially damaging to the joints. Even though he starts with weight lifting, without the right knowledge of how to use the equipment, it’s hard to achieve any training effects and can even cause injuries as well. Therefore, you shouldn’t skip the very important first step — physical fitness test.
So how to assess your fitness level?
- Learn your own physical condition well, such as your weight, body measurements, body fat percentage，injury history and your experience level to avoid injuries caused by improper training.
- Know if your joints (cervical spine, shoulder joint and hip joint) are stable and flexible enough. If not, it will affect your training results.
- Learn your strength and weakness so than you can make a fitness plan to work on your weakness.
After you have assessed and fully had a better understanding of your body, you can set your fitness goals and make your workout plans. Ask yourself, why you want to join the fitness club. Is it for making your appearance look better or improving your physical fitness level? You have to be very clear that making different training strategies to achieve different goals is really important.
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