With holiday parties and all kinds of revelry approaching, some people want to exercise to drop weight quickly and fit into their favorite party dress. You may be hitting the gym hard or getting up early to get an extra workout in on your Pilates reformer, but your effort for weight loss may be frustrating your body’s efforts toward increased physical fitness. In short, focusing so much on weight loss can compromise your overall fitness goals.
This post explores how to reframe your efforts to focus more on health and well-being than pants size. This change in perspective can impact your long-term health and keep you in peak condition during the holidays, even with late-night parties and indulgent food.
Fitness vs. Fat Burning: The Best Strategy to Focus Your Workouts
Scroll through social media for a quick second, and you’ll encounter numerous ads and posts that show new ways to use Pilates equipment at home or hyped-up never-seen-before workouts that promise to melt fat and make you look amazing. However, fitness gains over fat loss should be your focus heading into the holiday season. In fact, recent research suggests that an increase in physical fitness with a weight-neutral strategy offers more health benefits than a focus on weight loss.
Yo-yo dieting is not a thing of the past. Sometimes called weight cycling, focusing on numbers on a scale opens you to any and all new fads (aka ideas) that pop up on social media, in your book club, or in the coffee shop. With the information overload on the information highway, you can skip from one fad diet to another each week, which is likely to frustrate your weight loss efforts, not enhance them.
When you focus on weight loss, you frame food differently. Instead of looking at food as fuel, you consider food choices as bad or good and allow food to drive your fitness plan. Some foods become something you might regret or have to trudge through, and other foods become a treat to be enjoyed. So you never eat to fuel your body but you hope that this week’s new diet trick can manipulate your body to do what you want it to do.
However, researchers found that taking the focus off weight took these perspectives out of the fitness equation and gave people more freedom to exercise and actually enjoy their fitness journey. This is where Pilates comes in. Pilates fits perfectly into any fitness regimen. Whether you’re new to exercising or a competitive athlete, Pilates can support your fitness goals and offer an enjoyable way to increase your fitness and overall health.
With a Pilates reformer from Frame Fitness, you get a sleek piece of fitness equipment to use at home where you can set it up for whatever environment you choose. The space-saving design of the Frame reformer allows it to be left in a room without taking up much space, or you can use the convenient wheels to place it in another room when you need more space.
A Pilates reformer gives you more than just a pretty piece of equipment for your home. With its LED display, you can stream workouts directly to your equipment at home, giving you a one-on-one studio experience in the comfort of your home. If you’re cross-training with your reformer, you can select specific workouts that target certain muscle groups, or you can include the entire family by selecting kid-friendly workouts.
Even if you have to accommodate special conditions, such as pregnancy or injury, you can find a workout to meet your fitness goals. If you prefer to not use the reformer, you can even do yoga or mat Pilates instead. The Frame reformer was designed with everyone in mind.
The Benefits of Long-Term Fitness versus Only Weight Loss
Only your doctor can advise you on what you need to do to meet your health needs, but anything you do to increase your fitness has a positive impact on your long-term health. Being physically active, especially if you sit a lot throughout the day for your job, makes a huge impact on your overall health. Anytime you can increase your physical activity, you also gain the following benefits:
- Your brain health improves. You gain better cognitive function, release stress and anxiety, and regulate your mood when you engage in regular physical activity.
- You increase the strength in your bones. Keeping bones and joints moving and healthy helps support your body as you move. Bones are living tissue so as you exercise, you apply force to them, and they adapt by becoming denser and stronger, which is especially important as you age.
- You gain strength in your muscles. You don’t have to be a powerlifter to understand how stronger muscles can benefit you. Even with everyday tasks like carrying groceries or doing housework, stronger muscles make those tasks easier.
- You reduce the risk of disease. From cardiovascular disease to diabetes to some cancers, regular physical activity helps decrease your risk of suffering from these diseases.
- You gain more flexibility and mobility. You can better perform everyday tasks when you increase your mobility, and you decrease your chance of injury or falling just by gaining mobility.
- You get better sleep. The quality of your sleep increases when you regularly participate in physical activity. Exercise can help you sleep better and feel more rested when you wake.
Some of the benefits of exercise can be immediate. Whether it’s the endorphins released after a workout or the decrease in anxiety, being physically active right now can offer benefits right away. In addition, these benefits continue to improve your health so that you enjoy exponential benefits in the long term.
Weight management typically follows naturally when you make fitness, not food, your focus. Plus, another benefit of focusing on fitness is that you’ll have fun. You shed the guilt or anxiety that may erupt when you eat certain foods. Instead, with regular physical activity, you have a positive outlook, less stress, and a regulated mood that helps reinforce your positive habits. In fact, research has shown that many people who enjoy their fitness regimen make good choices in terms of health, including when making food choices.
Pilates makes an excellent partner in long-term health. The benefits of Pilates go hand in hand with the benefits of exercise, and Pilates can enhance some of these benefits as well, including:
- Increased mobility: You often hear of older adults being focused on mobility, but people from all walks of life and age groups benefit from increased mobility. Whether you’re a competitive athlete who wants to do deeper squats, a parent who wants to play outside with the kids, or you just need to do yardwork without injuring yourself, mobility can help. Mobility helps you gain a fuller range of motion with your movements so you can perform better no matter if your performance is on a competitive field or just shoveling the snow.
- Increased brain health: Pilates offers a unique mind-body connection that creates an enhanced awareness of how you’re moving, how you’re dealing with stress and more. The mindfulness you practice in Pilates puts you in control. You become more present in all that you do so that your movements and attentiveness are more intentional.
- Increased bone and muscle strength: Pilates gives you a way to increase strength in your bones and muscles in a deceptively simple way, and unlike many static exercises, Pilates allows you to develop core strength that enhances your balance and movement.
- Increased enjoyment: Fitness is supposed to be fun. Not only do you get a challenging full-body workout with Pilates, but the workouts seem to go by quickly. You enjoy not only the challenge you put your body through but also the gains you make from exercising regularly.
You set yourself up for a better chance of success with your weight if you simply focus on fitness and enjoying your physical activity. When it comes to the holidays, the benefits of fitness can help you enjoy late-night parties and indulgent foods far better than simply trying to lose weight. So grab your Pilates equipment and get active on a daily basis to give yourself the best start to long-term health.
