The Road to Good Health and Fitness – How to Work Out Safely with a Big Body
Lifestyle
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Sep 11, 2020
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9 MIN READ
The author and her friends from Zumba class. Image source: Layla Abdullah-Poulos
Editorial Note: In our lead up to the launch of our groundbreaking Haute Hijab Sport collection near the end of this month, we are focusing on all aspects of health, fitness and sports on the blog! Our writer Layla starts us off with this piece on the challenges of working out for bigger bodies and understanding what obesity is.
There was a trainer at my gym. His name started with ‘D,’ so I will refer to him as Big D, which was exactly what he was to me. He didn’t have an ounce of noticeable body fat on his muscular frame. Many women at the gym swooned when he strutted into the workout room to teach the next class – not me though.
I would just smile politely as I made it as quickly as possible through the glass doors, rubbing my shoulder – the one that blew out during a one of his boot camp-type classes, when he insisted I could do a ton of burpees, push-ups and mountain climbers.
I spent weeks trying to write at the computer with burning pain surging through my muscles and wanting to cry while I home school my kids. If my body had not been a mass of agony, I would have kicked myself for not telling Big D to take a hike and just do my own thing. I paid a hefty price for a moment of wimpiness. As I wrapped the heating pad around my shoulder on the 10th night of hurt, I swore by Allah (S) that never again would I suppress my voice to satisfy the whims of anyone certain that the workout they wrote on the board is just the thing for everyone. Because I, and my obese body, am not everyone.
What is Obesity?
Obesity is primarily a medical term, indicating that an individual carries an excessive amount of body fat. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a person is categorized as obese when their Body Mass Index (BMI) exceeds 30.0 points.
Although an abundance of adipose tissue (body fat) is not an exclusive indicator of someone being unhealthy, the CDC correlates obesity with a number of metabolic health issues, including high blood pressure (hypertension); high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (dyslipidemia); Type 2 diabetes; coronary heart disease; stroke; gallbladder disease; osteoarthritis (a breakdown of cartilage and bone within a joint); sleep apnea and breathing problems (source: Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences; CDC).
In addition, people categorized as obese face higher morbidity and increased body pain and limited mobility and are more vulnerable to clinical depression, anxiety and other mental disorders. Pretty scary, right?
There are three categories of obesity, classes I (BMI 30.0–34.9), II (BMI 30.0–34.9) and III (BMI 30.0–34.9). Each category comes with increased risks for diseases. While BMI is not the greatest metric for body weight, people may be able to appreciate a high index number as a red flag to talk with a medical professional and get themselves checked out and make any necessary changes to try and stave off some debilitating and deadly illnesses.
My laundry list of metabolic illness is what sent me into Big D’s class, where I was jacked up. I knew that it was important to do the things my body needs to work better, but I had not anticipated encountering a trainer whose approach would result in me feeling physically worse. The end goal for me was becoming healthier and not falling prey to these metabolic health issues.
Getting Better Training
A trainer lacking sufficient knowledge about the special needs of obese clients can be dangerous, causing prolonged injuries and derailing the trajectory of a person’s weight loss and health goals. I moved in agony through the gym, spying Big D. strutting around and heaping more torture and weights on the backs of people. They loved it, even people heavier than me.
I cringed at each morbidly obese person under his “no pain, no gain” thumb, because I knew the more he pushed, the higher the potential that they would break – literally.
“It is important for someone who is morbidly obese is that when they go to a trainer is to make sure that [they] are the type of client a trainer works with,” explains fitness trainer, Mubarakah Ibrahim. “If you are 350 lbs and decide that in two years you will be so fit that you will be in a fitness competition, you don’t want to go to the person who trains people for fitness competitions at 350 lbs. That is not their specialty. You want to get a trainer who specializes in weight loss. Then when you get closer to training for a competition, the switch to the trainer who can sculpt you for the competition.
“It is like going to a doctor. You don’t want to go to an orthopedist because you have asthma.”
Fitness doctor, Muslimah 'Ali says that ideally, trainers should and will approach each client with empathy and acceptance.
“Accept people where they are in their journey, then encourage, build, support how you can. I try to be an accountability partner instead of a taskmaster,” she says.
Safe and Knowledgeable Training Spaces
Unfortunately, the very spaces that purport to offer a means for obese people to engage in exercise are not always conducive to their bodies and needs. Ibrahim, who caters to obese clients, describes some of the obstacles trainers and their clients face when trying to buy home equipment and at many gyms.
“The biggest challenges for trainers working with people who are morbidly obese are them being physically able to move. [Morbid obesity often] comes with knee problems, hip problems, [etc.]. They have physical limitations that you must work around. They may not be able to do what you want them to do, which changes day-to-day.
“If you work in a fitness facility, [it’s] another limitation. Unless your facility works specifically with the morbidly obese, you can’t use a lot of the equipment. For example, the average treadmill a person may get in their house [usually] has a maximum capacity of 350 lbs.
It may seem like 350 lbs is more than enough weight for a machine to handle, but there are much heavier people, and the machines with that high a limit cost in the thousands. I shopped more reasonably priced treadmills, and they tend to have a weight capacity of 250 lbs. I couldn’t find one I could afford that could handle my weight. Consequently, me and many obese people may be pressed to go to a facility, which may not have what we need or be where we want to go.
Ibrahim explains, “If you work in a fitness facility, [not enough available equipment can be] another limitation. Unless your facility works specifically with the morbidly obese, you can’t use a lot of the equipment.”
I contacted the big chain fitness facilities Planet Fitness and L.A. Fitness to find out the weight capacity of their treadmills. After multiple calls, no one at Planet Fitness was able to give me an accurate number. One representative estimated it between 400-450 lbs. An L.A. Fitness, Patchogue (NY) representative informed me that the weight capacity of the treadmills at their facility was 350 lbs. At my local gym, Unique Fitness in Shirley, NY, the representative told me the maximum weight their treadmills can handle is 400 lbs.
According to a RAND study, the percentage of severely obese Americans (people who are 100 lbs or more overweight) rose to 3.9 percent by 2010, making the weight capacities at gyms significant. Millions of Americans who may want to engage in more exercise are potentially disqualified from using many fitness facilities.
Unless a facility knows that their client base includes people who are over that weight, they won’t have the equipment for them to use.”
However, says Ibrahim, limited access to facility equipment does not have to stop anyone from moving their bodies and increasing health and well being.
‘Ali offers some advice for obese people to start. “Walking is enough to start. Build up to 20 minutes continuously. If five minutes is all you can do, try to do it for a week. The next week, see if you can build from there. Move your body in a mind-body format (yoga, tai-chi, etc.), where you are thinking about your breath and visualizations. Own your body and enjoy moving it.
She adds, “People tend to go from sedentary to’ now I have to run a 10k marathon.’ No. Walk for five, 10, 20, 30 minutes, and see how that feels. [If you’re housebound,] create a path around your house. There are some pretty good YouTube walking videos that will help build walking stamina. Be creative in what you can do.
“Start with realistic and attainable goals and be okay with that,” advises ‘Ali. “Alhamdulillah, we’re here, alive and have the desire and intention to do something about our physical health states, no matter what that is.”
Realistic Goals and Milestones
Ultimately, we all need to take stock and responsibility for our bodies, which can be scary. There is a lot of information out there that may drive us to think that we are at physical and character deficits because of limited capacities to move certain ways. Yeah, I can tell you that it is pretty much garbage. Not being able to do a burpee does not make a person ineligible to being healthier.
“Fit and health can mean different things to different people,” explains Ibrahim. “For somebody who used to be an athlete, fit may mean running a seven-minute mile. For a mom with two kids, fit may be ‘I don’t pass out with my kids when I put them to bed.’
“What has to happen in order for you to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m healthy?’ Tell me exactly what that looks and feels like?It is about the individual. Fitness is a state of being. Looking good is just a side effect. For some clients, we focus on if they can move better instead of the scale.
“Every [health] goal has to have a number to it,” Ibrahim says. “If the number we are shooting for is not the scale, that will influence the activity. Is [the goal] cholesterol, blood pressure A1C or number? Activities in an individualized program will be based on that number. The protocol for someone with high blood pressure will be different than someone with diabetes. For high blood pressure, we will focus on cardio. There is research that shows that it helps bring blood pressure down. For diabetes, we will have more resistance training, because research tells us that is what gets that number down.”
Individualized exercise plans are wonderful, but many of us walk into the local gym and either hit a machine, the weights or stand in a row at the next class, making it important to learn to listen to body cues and be the best advocate for ourselves. So, if a Big D is teaching your class, either bolt or tell him to back his muscles up and do the best you can do.
“Understand the science of what is happening to your body so you can make an informed decision,” advises Ibrahim.
Obese bodies often need tailored workout regiments. Certain moves can put a lot of stress on joints and muscles, increasing the risk for injury and sitting on the sideline frustrated. I love HIIT along with everybody else, but I had to learn to do it in a way that allowed me to optimize the benefit and minimize damage to myself. Once I appreciated my physical limitations, I found ways to protect and strengthen my body. I also used the pain I suffered to assess what I wanted from myself to achieve my health goals as well as what to anticipate from a trainer or class.
It is not unreasonable to expect awareness from experts about the spectrum of ways people’s bodies move, but the reality is that many don’t. So, people must be proactive about whose services they use to attain better health and vet, vet, vet the heck out of everyone. Our bodies are important. We should examine the person designing classes or personal workout routines with the same scrutiny when selecting a physician. There is too much at risk if we don’t.
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