Get Healthy!

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I was halfway finished with my blog for this week when I realized I wasn’t finished with the obesity topic that I so mildly touched on last week. Like I said then, I’m highly sympathetic to people that struggle with weight. I know it’s difficult and it’s hard to go through life with bullies and staring eyes. Trust me, in my life I have watched the demise of a loved one struggle with obesity their entire life.

How do you take a hard line at the obesity epidemic without coming off as insensitive to over-weight people in our society? Further more, how are you, as a club owner, supposed to convince your target audience that exercise is the solution when so many doctors and researchers around you are continually looking for another solution?

The truth is that most people don’t really have any idea how to lose weight, and keep it off, in a healthy way. I had a female friend recently tell me she thought she was putting on weight. She said she hadn’t been eating really well. This girl is smart and typically seems to understand the balance between a healthy diet and exercise. However, her solution to balance out what she had recently been eating was to fast for a day.

Now, being in the fitness industry, I scoffed. I don’t believe that fasting is the solution to getting back on track. However, I have also read studies that suggest that fasting is great for the body. But, I have never been into a gym where all the signage suggests that members remove eating from an entire day. If you’re like most club owners and GMs I know, you probably want your members purchasing food and supplements from your club, not avoiding food altogether.

But the real way to lose weight gets lost in translation. My Assistant Editor, Rachel Zabonick, tossed me an article in Elle Magazine this morning. Writer Rachael Combe discussed this new mail-in test to discover if you’re genetically destined to be over weight, obese or thin. Combe, being a fairly in shape woman and vegetarian, discovered that she was supposed to be obese. The outcome — she realized that the tests are kind of a scam. However, with this going around, how do you tell your over-weight demographic that they may not have to be obese, when a study says otherwise?

As the frustration mounts, it’s time to really put our heads together. I’m talking about marketing departments, GMs and executives, putting their heads together to figure out how to reach out to our world. It’s not just about people that are over weight, obese or thin. It’s about a world that is quickly moving away from a healthy lifestyle. We discover ways to prevent disease, but we discover how to kill ourselves from something we must consume daily.

It’s time we make a U-Turn back towards normalcy. Being super thin isn’t normal; being over weight isn’t normal; and being obese isn’t normal. Exercise and a healthy diet isn’t about looking like a runway model, or being built like a bodybuilder — it’s about living a healthy life and feeling good.

After last week’s blog I actually received responses from some readers. With this blog, I expect ideas. I’m encouraging you to brainstorm with me and embrace this movement towards health. You will help me develop next week’s blog.

Today we stop pushing people towards fitness — we push them towards good health. We embrace the reason WHY you own fitness clubs — to help the population of our world feel good and live a healthy life.