The Heartland Spa
Do you like your body? Are you overweight or underweight? What is your ideal body weight? The answers to these questions are filled with emotion, and it is often difficult to be honest in answering them. With an estimated 2/3 of Americans overweight or obese, these are important questions from both medical and psychological perspectives. Perhaps, the best way to deal with these questions is to make an objective assessment of your body from three perspectives: your body structure, body composition, and size.
Body Structure - What is your body shape? Do you have broad shoulders with narrow hips (mesomorphic), or do you have narrow shoulders and wide hips (endomorphic), or are you tall and lean with long fingers like a NBA basketball player (ectomorphic)? In reality, most of us are combinations of these three body types structures, and they are primarily dictated by our heredity. Think about your parents and ask yourself what type of structure you inherited from them. Our inherited body structure sets limits on how much we can change our bodies. Put another way, we have to play the cards we are dealt and do the best we can with the body we inherited.
Body Fat - Your body fat is typically expressed as the percentage of your weight that is fat. Unfortunately, you can’t always look at someone and determine their percentage of fat. Sometimes, a more round-shaped endomorph who is 20% fat looks fatter than a tall thin ectomorph who is 30% fat. This isn’t fair, but we have to live with the body we inherited. Unlike your body structure, however, body fat is relatively easily changed by exercise and healthy eating programs. For example if you were to lose five pounds of fat and put on five pounds of muscle as a result of a weight-lifting program, your percentage of body fat would go down dramatically although your weight would not change.
Body Size - Body size is the more typical way that we evaluate our bodies. How tall are you? What is your weight? How big are your feet? Most of us evaluate our bodies by what we weigh. Unfortunately the scale doesn’t tell the entire story. It doesn’t factor in our body structure or percentage of body fat. It certainly doesn’t measure our fitness or our health. In one sense, the scale lies to you. Are you better off if you have lost 10 pounds, but your percent of fat has not changed? Have you failed if you improve your fitness level by following an exercise program for several months but have not lost weight?
Due to the low levels of physical activity and excessive food intake of Americans, most overweight people also have a high body fat and a round, endomorphic appearance. On the other hand, if you are a highly active, low-body-fat endomorph, who has a healthy diet, you shouldn’t worry about your shape. However, if you are an active, big-boned, muscular mesomorph, it might be expected that your weight would be above average.
It is important for all of us to do the best we can with our bodies. This means getting regular physical activity and eating appropriate amounts of well-balanced food. If we do these two things, then we can learn to love and be proud of our body because we are doing the best we can to take care of the body we inherited.
