Synergistic Fitness

Our culture is obsessed with being thin and often people assume that thinness equals fitness. However there is a difference between just losing weight to achieve thinness and attaining a level of fitness while developing a lean, strong physique!



"Fitness" refers to a synergistic combination of a variety of elements such as work capacity, muscular strength and endurance, balance, and flexibility. Healthy body composition (ratio of fat mass to lean body mass) is also an important part of the fitness equation but it's just one element of it.


For example, I have met people who exhibited many of the qualities of fitness I described while still carrying excess body weight. This scenario is very common when someone exercises regularly but has less than optimal nutrition.

I’ve also met people on the opposite end of the spectrum who are relatively thin but don’t have a very high level of fitness. Carrying groceries, picking up their child or walking a flight of stairs can leave them exhausted and out of breath.


Even more common are folks on the more extreme end of the spectrum who have both excess body weight (as body fat) and a very low level of fitness.

For these people it can be very difficult to know where to even begin the journey of transformation into the realm of fitness. 


Because there is so much rampant misinformation out there I usually like to speak to this by first saying what they should not be doing before advising them on what to do.


1. From a nutritional perspective they should not start out by drastically reducing calories or eliminating everything they enjoy eating.

This never works because deprivation tends to create a “rebound” effect where at some point or another that person is going to binge and make up for everything they’ve deprived themselves of and gain back any lost weight (and often gaining more weight than they lost).

Also, often the worst damage is psychological as people who experience that scenario can convince themselves that they are hopeless and will never be able to turn things around.

Rather than making extreme changes, make them incrementally. In fact, my first advice is to start logging what they actually eat before they even change anything else.

This gives them an awareness of where they are starting from and that makes it easier to plan out what changes need to be made. They can then proceed to make small changes here and there, trying to clean up their nutrition a little more each week.


2. From a fitness perspective they should not try to “whip themselves into shape” or try to incorporate too many hours of exercise per week.

This is because it takes time for the body to adapt to the stresses of exercise, both from a musculoskeletal and cardiovascular perspective. Trying to do too much too soon is not only a miserable experience for most people but is often a recipe for injury as well!

Besides just being difficult to deal with physically, injuries can also have psychological consequences. If one feels they can’t exercise without getting injured then they won’t be in any hurry to start an exercise program even after they've fully recovered.

I recommend using just the right amount of intensity (it should be "somewhat difficult" in terms of one's perceived exertion) to create enough of a challenge to the body while maintaining perfect form.


In terms of finding time for exercise, developing the habit of exercise typically doesn't happen over night. It usually takes a while to integrate it into one's life.

If the exercise program places unrealistic demands on one’s time they are bound to give up on exercise altogether and end up back where they started, convinced they can never make it work with their schedule.

It's much better to plan a realistic amount of time devoted to exercise, even as little as 2 days per week for 20 or 30 minutes per session, and make that work for a while. You can always add more frequency or duration later on.


3. They should not choose between only dieting or only exercising.

I referred to these scenarios at the beginning of this post and it is perhaps the most common mistake I see people make. Folks often fall into the “diet” group who don’t exercise at all, or you have the dedicated exercisers who would rather run a 5 K daily than be deprived of being able to have free reign with their diet.

The first group are willing to be very meticulous and methodical regarding their diet but even the thought of exercise makes them break out into an uncomfortable sweat.

What I've found as a trainer is that often when these folks are taught to exercise at an appropriate level of intensity they find that exercise can be very enjoyable. 

Unfortunately their previous experiences with exercise, often experienced in gym class or other less than ideal situation, left a bad taste in their mouth and it really takes a positive  experience with exercise to remove that taste.

The second group of people can usually attain a certain level of fitness but will unfortunately rarely come close to attaining "optimal" fitness because their body composition will usually tend to have a high percentage of fat mass  (adipose tissue).
The fact is that most people can't "out-train a bad diet".



Ultimately the way to achieve optimum fitness is to find a synergy not only between diet and exercise but also in finding a way to make exercise synergistic with the rest of one’s life.