True story from the trenches!
I get many questions each week from women who have read something I’ve written, or who need some guidance with some particular health or fitness concern.
I personally answer all my emails. No administrative assistant or overseas outsourced helper EVER reads or answers my emails. I enjoy getting them and enjoy responding and offering any assistance I can.
What happened recently is a good teachable moment for us all, so I’m sharing it with you.
A woman wrote to me asking for “belly” exercises.
She wanted to turn her belly fat into muscle.
Her chief complaint was that her belly was too big and her pants too tight. She told me she was overweight. I asked her for some more information about what she already did for exercise and she provided me with answers.
Before I tell you what I offered her and how she responded, let me share a few educational pieces of information.
We are all born with a certain number of fat cells. These do not change.
When we gain fat the fat cells get larger. When we lose fat the fat cells get smaller. That’s the simplest way of looking at the process.
Next point is that muscle is muscle and fat is fat.
They do not become each other. When you get more muscular you are improving the physique and changing the composition of the muscles you already have.
When you lose fat it does not become muscle, you simply shrink the fat cells down in size. If you have muscles and let them go to waste, they become deconditioned but they are still there.
These are important points so please make sure you understand them.
OK, back to my story.
I attempted to explain to her that her belly fat is a nutritional issue and not a “I need belly exercises” issue.
You simply cannot exercise away improper nutritional choices.
Let’s just say she DID NOT LIKE my answer.
That’s okay.
Not every woman wants to hear what I have to say, and not every woman is ready to do what it takes to change what she’s not happy about.
When things like this happen, and I’m very glad that it’s RARE, I like to ask myself, “What can I learn from this and what can I pass on to my readers?”
In this case, I felt like there was something for us to learn and for me to teach.
Fat is fat, muscle is muscle and the approach to minimizing fat and maximizing muscle is different.
Proper nutrition, which I’ll admit, presents the greater challenge for most of us, has got to come first in both of these quests.
I hope you see my point!
shelli
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