Where Are All The (formerly) Fat Trainers?

We’ve been working very hard looking for our next fitness coach at The Body You Want. My wife has interviewed 20+ people so far, and we’ve found something very interesting – none of the people we’ve interviewed have ever had a weight problem in their entire life.

That is very interesting ‘cause in the US, according to the CDC, 1 in 3 adults is obese and 2 in 3 are overweight. (Those numbers are inflated to be sure because that’s based on the BMI which classifies Will Smith as overweight. Have you seen Will with his shirt off!?)

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A better number was provided by the USDA – 71% of US women and 62% of US men are trying to do something – eat better, move more, etc. – to lose weight.  This is better because it reflects the individual’s perspective of themselves – do I think I need to lose weight?

It seems very unlikely that chance alone would give us 0 in 20, while the population at large would have 6 or 7 in 10 people thinking that they have a weight problem.

Think about flipping a coin.  There’s a 1 in 2 chance that you’ll get heads.  What are the odds that you can flip it 20 times and get head 20 straight times?  It’s 1 in 500,000.

That’s the odds of winning a million bucks in the Wisconsin lottery.

I have yet to win the lottery.

What If There Is Something Weird About Fitness People?

If it’s almost impossible that something can happen by chance, then maybe there is something about the people that we are asking that is unique.

Here’s my theory: What if the people that are attracted to the fitness industry happen to be thin people – people who’s bodies just don’t do a very good job of accumulating extra body fat?

My personal experience with other people in the fitness industry says, “yes.”  The vast majority of the people I’ve worked with in health clubs over the years are men who got into working out because they were too skinny and have a hard time gaining weight; and the women where often quite thin to begin with and wanted to tone up, or where thin athletes that wanted to keep doing something physical as a career path.  The last 5-10lbs were the only pounds they could actually gain.

There were exceptions – ESPECIALLY with the aerobics instructors (often ENOURMOUS).  But, on average, the trainers had never had weight problems.  The guys would diet from 8-10% body fat down to 3-4% body fat for a photo shoot or a body building show, but, generally found it hard to get above 10%.

One guy, who was a really nice guy BTW, was actually told by his doctor that his body fat levels were too low.  He was not trying to lose weight.  He got down to 4% body fat by ACCIDENT (you have no idea how lean that is, or how hard that is for most people to achieve).  And he WORKED at getting that up to 8%!

That’s not normal.

There is a guy I know who sells millions of dollars of weight loss E-books.  I went to see him give a talk about marketing fitness information.  One of the things he said would be a great advantage in marketing your fitness information would be if you had ever been over weight yourself.  With regret, he said that he couldn’t use this because he had never had a weight problem, like it was something to be achieved, not something that happens to you.

Getting fat is usually something that happens by accident.

Maybe I am a rare bird in the fitness industry.  I was fat and couldn’t figure out how to not be fat, so I figured I should study my ass off to try and figure out what to do because absolutely nothing from conventional wisdom worked for more than a few months.

Maybe the reason that so many myths that have absolutely no scientific backing whatsoever – like aerobics for fat loss – stay around so long in the fitness industry is because the vast majority of these people have no personal experience with being overweight.

Maybe people in the fitness industry read their test books that say that for weight loss people need to do 45-60min of aerobic exercise at 65% of their Max HR on 5, 6 or 7 days of the week.  Then when their clients go and do it, and nothing happens they assume that their clients are lying to them.

I Could Be Wrong

Of course it could always be that the people we interview are lying because they think that ever having had a weight problem would look bad to a potential employer.  I find it hard to believe that 20 people in a row would all tell the same lie, plus that is weird logic.

Or, it could be something else.

Anyway, it’s something to think about.

Don’t Forget About The $200 I WANT To Give YOU

The hunt is still on for our next fitness coach, and if you are the person who refers our next coach to us I will happily give you $200 real US dollars.

Details on the job and how to apply are here.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

The Scales Can Lie – How You Can Be Normal Weight, Yet Obese

After 40 years, medical research has finally caught up with the fitness industry (well, the few competent folks in the fitness industry) when it comes to scale weight.  The “shocking” new news made it a big splash in The Wall Street Journal is that “you can be normal weight and fat at the same time.”  The “amazing” discovery is that, low and behold, scale weight is not the be all and end all after all.

However the people that did this study caution that “the findings [that body fat % is as important or more important than scale weight] need to be validated with additional research.”

Well, while they take 10 years and $100 million to do additional research here’s how you can apply this NOW for FREE.

#1.  Ignore traditional advice

It takes a lot of time to do and it sucks when it comes to results.  Case in point – the Women’s Health Initiative 2006:  The experimental group reduced their saturated fat and cholesterol intake and cut their overall caloric intake by an average of 360 calories per day for 8 whole years.

Let’s do the math on that to see how many pounds that they should have lost if the whole “calories in vs. calories out” thing worked in the human body:

360calories/day x 7days/week x 52 weeks/yr = 131,040 calories (food calories, so, technically, that’s kilocalories).

A pound of fat has 3,500 calories.  So, they should have lost 37.4 pounds per year.

However, on average they lost about 2 pounds.  BUT, and this is particularly apropos to the article, they GAINED in waist circumference!  In other words they got fatter at a slightly lower weight.

#2.  Measure what matters

What matters most is what your body is composed of – body composition.  How much of you is fat and how much of you is lean?  This determines how you look naked.

It is entirely possible for a woman to drop 2 sizes (i.e. 8 to a 4) but to only drop 5lbs on the scale.  If she were to just go by the scale, then the 3 months that it took to achieve this would seem like a waste – only 5 pounds in 3 months!  But, if she looked at herself in the mirror she would say, “wow!  No more cellulite!”  And if she looked at how her clothes fit, she’d notice that her pants don’t stay up.  (By that I mean that her pants are too big for her now.  What were you thinking?)

It’s possible for a man to gain weight while loses body-fat.  If you just went by the scale, you would say that he failed – he gained weight.  But if you looked at him in the mirror, you’d see exactly what most men want – more muscle and less fat at the same time.

Traditional weight loss programs emphasize the number on the scale, and have people on low-fat, low calorie diet doing lots of aerobic exercise.  On this type of program 25-50% of what you’ll lose will be lean body mass.  So, if you drop 10 pounds, up to 5 could be lean body mass.

In body composition, losing fat and gaining muscle are both positives.  On the scale the above person would be a success.  But, in terms of body composition, they made no progress at all – 5lbs of lean lost, and 5lbs of fat lost = 0lbs net progress.

The most practical way for most people to measure their body composition is with a tape measure.  It is simple, fast, reliable (if you get spring-loaded tape measure so you always use the same amount of tension) and does not require you to be dunked underwater with no air in your lungs or to be exposed to radiation.

Most health clubs offer skin fold caliper readings, BUT, these are neither accurate nor precise (reliable) unless you happen to get somebody who has done several thousand skin fold measurements in a research setting.  That is unlikely with the low pay and high turnover at health clubs.

The electric scales and hand held devices for measuring body fat (bioelectrical impedance) are horrible in my opinion.  I’ve measured myself twice in a day and been 9% mid day and 13% in the evening.  I don’t even think that they’re useful to measure change with.

If you really, really want a very accurate, direct reading of your body composition there are 3 options:

•    DEXA – a machine that uses x-rays to measure both bone density and body composition.  (The draw back is that you have to be exposed to radiation, so you can’t do this very often.)

•    Hydrostatic weighing – underwater weighing.  This is a way to get your density – body composition.  Just unpleasant, but no radiation.

•    Bod Pod – uses a chamber of pressurized air instead of water and a scale to get your density.  This seems to be less accurate the leaner you are.

If you’d like a fool-proof, time efficient program to optimize your body composition for life, check this out.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.

Straight Talk on Supplements: BS or A Body To Impress?

You know those before and after photos in supplement ads that you always thought were BS? Well, now you have proof. Here’s what Rick Schaff (a photographer who does many of those photo shoots) has to say about HIS own involvement with them:

“Some of the before and after photos can be taken on the same day… I have taken some of them on the same day.”

- Rick Schaff (Photographer in the fitness industry)

Watch him saying those words, AND doing a fake before and after in this interview from the movie Bigger, Faster, Stronger.

If you thought that was cool, then click here to read the rest of the article (FREE) at Primer Magazine. There is:

-Another video

-40 references

Please leave a comment on the article.

Josef is also the author of The Body You Want, and a Washington, DC based nominee for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine. Click here to find out more.