Yesterday I spent some time going over my CEC’s and decided I would start on a new webinar — truth be told, I have been very lax about doing CEC’s for my personal training cert. Note to self: Do better.
The webinar I had in my inbox was about exercise for diabetics & for preventing diabetes. I am not a diabetic, however, I have family members who are and also members of my family who are pre-diabetic (so it runs in the family) and we currently hired a girl at my job who is as well., so this seemed important enough to keep my attention.
The guest speaker during the webinar said something that really grabbed me, it spoke volumes to me and it definitely made me think about fitness/wellness and health in a whole different mind-frame as both a trainer and athlete. The guest speaker said “Exercise for health, not for fitness” and at first I wasn’t so sure what to make of that statement but after giving it thought .. I liked it. It made sense and in terms of training clients, I feel like it definitely could be useful. He used this statement to reference how a client may feel like exercise is good for looking fit (and while it does help with this) he said people who are borderline diabetic or have diabetes need to utilize exercise for health reasons, not for the appearance of being fit. We all know there is nothing wrong with wanting to be fit physically but when someone exercises, if we only focus on the appearance, we lose sight of the more important factor, such as: living a longer life span because we take care of ourselves <—- this is what I got out of it.
I always tell people , “just because someone looks fit, doesn’t mean they are healthy” & this statement holds true till this day. I have known people with 6 packs and huge biceps with health conditions or they have poor eating habits that will eventually catch up to them if they don’t become more mindful of their food choices. Having a beach ready body doesn’t make them any less susceptible to diabetes if their eating habits aren’t good and they live a sedentary lifestyle when they aren’t working out. While sometimes it comes from genetics, other times it can be from harmful choices we made, so if we workout for health and make that the sole purpose, we will find that exercise can impact our lives in other ways besides physically.
FitnessWonderwoman
Shay-lon Moss
