9 to 5 Wellness
Do you have the knowledge you need to help your organization get the best return on the time and capital invested in employee wellbeing? Are you a busy professional or C-suite leader looking to introduce wellbeing program at your work?
Discover the art and science of helping organizations grow their most important resource, their people. In this podcast we discuss how organizations can utilize the potential of wellbeing programs to deliver high return on investment (ROI) to employers. We talk about the radical impact that holistic employee wellbeing programs can have on overall quality of work and productivity. We will be sharing insights on investing in human capital. Such as:
🌟 What has helped their organizations gain a competitive advantage?
🌟 How they see the future of employee wellbeing?
🌟 Misunderstandings that are out in the corporate market today
🌟 Advice to other leaders to create a happier, healthier, and more productive workplace
Our guests are C-suite leaders, and wellness innovators across the value chain: HR managers, wellness champions, community wellbeing ambassadors, service vendors, and wellness consultants.
9 to 5 Wellness
Beyond the Scale: Understanding Body Composition
Body composition is a useful tool to evaluate your metabolic health by understanding the breakdown of body into its core components: fat, protein, minerals, and body water.
The scale and Body Mass Index which are more traditional ways to measure health, won’t tell you how much of your body is made up of fat and muscle mass. But assessing body composition can help you find that.
In this episode, I'll share my body composition analysis results and what I learned from them.
We will take a deep dive into:
What are some ways to measure metabolic health?
Why weight and BMI are not the best way to get an insight into your metabolic health?
Why your weight fluctuates?
What is body compoisition analysis and how it can help?
Different types of fat in our body?
Most common body composition tests?
How to improve your body composition?
You can find the healthy body fat percentage chart for men and women linked here- https://toneandstrengthen.com/2024/06/27/healthy-body-fat-percentage-ranges/
Tune in to listen to this episode and reach out if you are starting on your health journey and you need help.
#metabolicsyndrome #diabetes #weightloss #bodycomposition #dexascan #metabolichealth #healthyweight #fitnessgoals #fatpercentage #healthyfatpercentage #obesity #metabolichealth #healthylifestyle #health
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🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟
Aesha Tahir is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and columnist. She delivers high-energy presentations that challenge audiences to leverage their focus to what matters most at work and in life, their health. Audiences love the practical strategies she shares. She helps the organizations create a culture of wellness by implementing health programs that put organizations’ biggest asset, the employees first.
Aesha earned her Master in Exercise Science from Concordia University. She is a distinguished Toastmasters, a designation held by less than 1% of professional speakers. She engages groups from the moment she steps in front of them and leaves them with empowering tools that they can use for the rest of their lives. She has
🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟
My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!
🌟 🌟 🌟 You can learn more about ME- the host at https://www.aeshatahir.com
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Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast, a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement. I'm your host Ayesha Tahir.
Hello, and welcome to this episode of 9to5 Wellness Show. I want to share something that I did A few weeks ago with you, four weeks ago, I did something that has been on my list for a while. I went and got a DEXA scan done to know my body composition and my bone density. I recommend DexaScan to my clients all the time. So, it has been on my list for a while. I'm like, you know, I've been recommending it to my patients. I should get one done for myself. I'm so glad that I made the time to get it done. because I learned a lot about my body and my metabolic health. I figured I want to share about this with all of you. So today I'm going to share about body composition analysis, what it is, why it's important, and how it compares with other determinants of metabolic health.
A lot of times we are too focused on the number on the scale. I know my weight loss clients often tell me that they weigh themselves every single day. In most cases, I found that weighing yourself too often affects mental health and can worsen eating disorders. It's important to know that there are many factors that can affect the number on the scale that are not related to body fat.
Weight fluctuations on a daily basis are completely normal. You may find your weight goes temporarily up or down based on a number of factors. And some of those factors are your hydration level. Are you dehydrated? Did you eat a salty meal the day before? Or if you consume high salt diet, salt tends to retain water in your body and that water weight is going to show up on the scale.
Alcohol consumption, caffeine consumption, because a caffeine acts as a diuretic, so you lose water. if you are a coffee junkie like me, well, you might be dehydrated, and that's gonna show up on the scale. What you ate the night before. If you had a big meal the night before, and you're weighing yourself first thing in the morning, it's gonna show up on the scale.
If you are biologically female, Where you are in your menstruation cycle will also impact the weight on the scale. The type of workout you did the day before, , if you did a really hard strength training session, well, your muscle is going to store more glycogen and that is going to impact the weight on the scale.
And then there are certain health conditions, especially chronic health conditions that can affect the weight on the scale. Your weight is not an ideal determinant of your health or fitness level. It cannot tell you how much fat or adipose tissue you have in your body. Now, another measurement that we often use to grade patient's health is their BMI or body mass index.
Your body mass index is your weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. BMI is an inexpensive and easy screening method for healthy weight, but only moderately correlates with direct measurement of your body fat. BMI and weight on a scale are a good starting point, but they don't give the whole picture of your metabolic health.
Why? Because a scale can't tell the difference between a pound of fat and a pound of muscle. Sedentary people can gain fat and lose muscle without any noticeable change in their weight. On the other hand, individuals who exercise may not experience a large change in weight, yet. their muscle mass is likely increasing at the same time as they are also losing body fat. For example, a muscular athlete may have a higher BMI because of extra lean mass, and consequently, they could be wrongly categorized as overweight or obese. However, someone who has a lower weight and a much higher body fat could fall under normal or healthy range. So BMI and weight is not a good indicator in that case.
Also, BMI and weight doesn't account for gender, age, or ethnicity. So both of these tests are not equally valid tests for all populations. That's why BMI and your weight may not give you the whole picture. Having a normal weight and BMI doesn't always mean you're healthy. If you're only focusing on the scale and you live an unhealthy lifestyle, you might be someone who we call is skinny fat.
One of the best ways to measure body fat and lean skeletal muscle mass is body composition analysis. Body composition is a universal term used in health and fitness industry. Body composition analysis gives us the total fat percentage of your body weight and percentage of your lean muscle mass. Your body is made up of water, protein, fat, and minerals.
And if you get a body composition analysis done, you can learn how much of each of these components you have in your body. This test is particularly helpful to establish a baseline when you're starting out on your health journey. And then I recommend that the patients periodically measure the change in their body.
every three to six months after starting or tweaking an exercise program or making dietary changes. This way we can track the changes accordingly and we can also manipulate our training program or our nutrition program. So, now that we have established that scale and BMI, don't tell me or another healthcare practitioner how much of your body is made up of fat and muscle mass.
Let's talk about body composition in detail. Healthier body composition is less fat. and more muscle mass. And the healthy fat percentage and muscle mass depends on your age, biological gender, and even your ethnicity can play a factor. There is a table with optimal fat percentage ranges. I've attached the table in the show notes.
So take a look at it. Too much body fat can lead to chronic diseases and health problems like cancer, diabetes. heart disease, and other issues. When considering body fat and health, it's important to distinguish between different types of fat in the body. When you're considering body fat and its impact on your metabolic health, it's important to distinguish between different types of fat in the body.
There are three important types of fat that we should all know about. First, There is essential fat. This type of fat is required for good health. It plays a role in regulating body temperature, vitamin absorption, and the production of fertility hormones among other essential roles. Essential fat isn't highly visible, but is located throughout the body.
The second type is subcutaneous fat. This type of fat is located just under the skin. Subcutaneous fat accounts for approximately 90 percent of your overall body fat percentage, commonly accumulating as fat. stubborn thigh fat in females or around the abdominal region in males. Subcutaneous fat is responsible for the sex hormone estrogen.
That's why if you take a look at the body fat percentage chart, women have a higher healthy fat percentage. The body stores subcutaneous fat as a sort of emergency backup in case of starvation or caloric deprivation. So, this type of fat is important, but at the same time, this type of fat is the hardest to target and lose. The third type of fat is visceral fat. Now, this is the dangerous fat. This type of fat is found in the abdominal area between organs. It accumulates and secretes retinol binding protein 4, which is a known culprit in insulin resistance. Higher levels of visceral fat are also linked to an increased risk of colorectal and breast cancers, dementia, stroke, Alzheimer's disease.
And so you can see how this is a dangerous type of fat. Now I'm going to brag a little bit about my body composition analysis results. And the reason I want to share these results with you is so that you can understand that this option is available to you as well. In my body composition analysis, we found that I have 0.
12 pounds of withdrawal fat. And the lab tech was like, this is the lowest visceral fact reading I have seen. And you know, it's not something special that I do. All I do is eat whole foods, move often, take movement breaks. So I try not to stay sedentary for long periods of time. And I make exercise a priority every day
These are very small healthy habits that we can all adopt and they can lead to good metabolic health. Now there are many different methods to measure your body composition. I want to discuss three of the most common ones with you here. The first one is Skin fold caliper test. So the skin fold calipers measure the thickness of the fat layer Directly under your skin to estimate the body fat.
This is like the subcutaneous fat that we are measuring This technique is great to get started, but it does have a limitation where it is using only the tissue under the skin and it's not measuring the visceral fat, the fat that is wrapped around your organs and within the abdominal wall. Skinfold thickness can be helpful in monitoring changes over time.
It does provide a data point to work with. Also, it's cheap compared to more advanced methods. So, if that's the only option available to you, go for it. The second type of test that is very common , is a bioelectrical impedance analysis. Bioelectrical impedance analysis indirectly measures body fat by sending a very weak electrical current through the body and calculating the resistance to electrical flow.
The current flows easily through tissue with high water content, such as muscle, but flows slower through tissues with low water content, such as fat. You might find this scan at many gyms. They might have the small or handheld versions that can give you a rough estimate of body fat percentage, whereas at healthcare clinics and weight loss clinics, you will find more advanced or larger machines to give you more accurate measurements.
So that's another option available to you. It is, , fairly accessible, of course not as cheap as skinfold calipers, but it is still, economical. option. The final option that I want to discuss with you is the DEXA scan, and that's what I went for. A DEXA scan is the most accurate body fat measurement available. It shows the difference between subcutaneous essential fat and visceral dangerous to your health fat. Although it's most used for calculating bone density, DEXA scans are now being used as an accurate method to calculate muscle, bone, fat distribution, and body fat percentage.
The only downside to DEXA is that it can be expensive and inaccessible, as it is done using a large DEXA scan machine in a facility with trained technicians. Also, there aren't a lot of facilities at this time , which are offering DEXA scans, , but, I'm sure that is about to change and you can find a facility close to you if you want to work with me, I can find a facility close to your area as well and recommend it to you.
So to improve your body composition, increase your Lean body tissue and maintain a healthy weight. There are some simple habits that you can adopt. Let's go over those First one is to eat a healthy whole food diet second exercise and Avoid being sedentary throughout the day So you don't want to be sedentary for long periods of time make sure you're moving around you If you're sitting for 30 minutes at your desk, that's fine The next 30 minutes, stand at your desk, and then in between make sure you are walking around , maybe you're doing squats in between.
Maybe you're doing, kettlebell swings. Keep a kettlebell close to your desk. As far as the exercise goes, make sure you are training your cardiovascular system and you're also doing some strength training to gain and preserve muscle mass. Your body composition and body fat are important factors on the road to health and fitness. So it's important that you adopt these healthy habits to have a healthy body composition. Body composition is lean muscle mass versus fat mass. And knowing your body composition will help you further define your nutrition strategy and can provide direction for your exercise plan. If you are looking to get started on your health journey and need help, let me know.
You can email me at Info at AishaTahir. com, no matter where you are in your journey, I can help you achieve your health and wellness goals. Thank you so much friends for listening to the show. I can't wait to talk to you next week. Bye for now.
Bye.
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