That's Fit

Being a recovering personal trainer (no meetings involved, no "hello my name is Chris and I'm a personal trainer" introductions. It's great), I have quite a bit of experience helping kids lose weight. For a short period of time back when I was training, I was helping members of a teenage swim team gain a competitive edge. At least, that's the way their slightly overzealous coach explained it, but I digress. Anyway, in working with kids in this capacity, you learn quickly that a fitness goal -- as well as the ability to achieve that goal -- is never the same across the board. Body types are different, levels of determination vary, and it also seemed as though body fat reduction was affected by gender.

Now, after reading about a study published a little while back in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, it seems as though these observations of mine may have been right on the money. It turns out that the impact of exercise on body fat differs for boys and girls. This discovery comes after a study of 224 children (a random sample) aged between 7 and 10 from twelve different schools in the Republic of Ireland. Unlike the girls in the study, the boys who performed the least difficult exercises were found to be the fattest. Moreover, those who led a predominantly sedentary life (video games and the internet strike again) had the thickest waists. As stated, this was not the case for the girls in the study.

It's strange to think that we live in a time where kids are going to personal trainers, not just to improve their sports performance, but to simply get some exercise. I know I pointed to the internet and video games as the culprit behind the rising child obesity rates, but also to blame are poor diets -- not eating enough throughout the day and then eating far too much in one sitting. I don't for a second claim to be an expert on why kids are getting heavier, but these reasons just mentioned seem to make sense to me. What I do know, however, especially with this new research on the topic to support my belief, is that (redundancy in 3-2-1 ... ) everybody's body is different. Some people need more time than others to lose weight and fat, as evidenced by this study on boys and girls. It also speaks to the fact that the Body Mass Index (BMI) may be inadequate, by itself, to determine the extent of cardiovascular risk in children and adolescents, and possibly even adults.