The Worst Fitness Advice for Higher-Weight People?

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As always, before I write about fitness I want to make it clear that health and fitness are amorphous concepts, are not an obligation, barometer of worthiness, or entirely within our control. In general, all of my work around fitness is done on the foundational principle that nobody is obligated to participate, participating doesn’t make someone better than those who don’t participate, and every body who wants to participate should be welcomed, fully accommodated, and given information that is scientifically accurate and not based in stigma/oppression/marginalization including weight stigma.

Finally, for the record, I got my first fitness certification right out of high school and I currently have certifications as a Health Coach and Group Fitness Instructor as well as a Functional Training Specialist.

Alright, let’s get into this:

Today we’re going to talk about common advice that has long been a pet peeve of mine. It is advice that I, myself, have been given and that I’ve heard from countless people. I recently scrolled past a video of a higher-weight woman performing textbook-perfect walking lunges. The comments were littered with randos that nobody asked telling her that she shouldn’t do walking lunges until she weighed less. The blue-ribbon loser was someone who self-identified as a “personal trainer” who said that she should only do seated cardio until she was “at or close to normal weight.” Now, there is nothing wrong with seated cardio for anyone, but there is something deeply wrong with a personal trainer taking it upon themselves to give unsolicited advice that seated cardio should be her only activity, especially while she was happily lunging herself clear across the dang gym.

In general, for reasons I write about here (in particular, the near 100% long-term failure rate) telling people to participate in fitness/exercise/movement to lose weight is the worst fitness advice. But today I want to talk about this specific piece of advice that is, perhaps, the absolute worst and most harmful single bit of advice that is given to higher-weight people.

It happens when someone (a fitness professional, a doctor, whomever) tells a higher-weight person that they should not lift weights/lift heavy weights/strength train etc.

This is often followed by the suggestion that they don’t want to “bulk up” and/or that they need to “get the weight off” before they start strength training. This is absolute, unadulterated rubbish with absolutely no scientific or physiological basis. In fact, it’s actually terrible advice and possibly the worst. 

Now, again, nobody is obligated to participate in fitness of any kind, including strength training. What I’m saying is that if someone is coming to a fitness professional and saying things like I want to be stronger, I want to have more ease in movement, I want to [do a specific activity] and be less out of breath,  I want to improve my general fitness/health, then adding strength/muscle mass is a big pile of obvious, in an obvious box, wrapped in obvious paper, tied with an obvious bow. To tell that person not to strength train because they are higher-weight is fully ludicrous and anyone who does that should be required to recertify to see what else they are telling people that is dead wrong (and rooted in weight stigma rather than anything resembling science or ethics.)

Now, you can tell someone that strength training may change how their body looks, but you can’t tell them in what way because we don’t know. Different people’s bodies change in different ways as muscle mass changes. We do know that long-term significant weight loss is very unlikely to be an outcome (the whole “weight lifting turns fat into muscle” thing is not so much science as it would be magic if it happened) but short and long-term gains of strength and other benefits are likely.

Whether someone is training to increase muscle strength (essentially, how much weight you can move,) muscle endurance (essentially, how many times you can move weight without getting exhausted,) or both, there are many possible benefits (with the caveat that all bodies are different so your mileage may vary and there are people who are contraindicated for strength training so check with a qualified, preferably weight-neutral, healthcare provider.) These benefits can include:

• Improved muscle strength

• Improved stamina

• Improved joint stability

• Improved mobility

• Improved balance

• Improved insulin sensitivity

• Improved blood glucose management

• Reduced resting blood pressure

• Decreased low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides and increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

• Increased bone density, decreased osteoporosis risk

• Reduced low back pain and arthritis and fibromyalgia pain

• Improved sleep

• Improved functional fitness (performance of everyday tasks)

Again, nobody is obligated to strength train and those who choose to strength train are not better than those who don’t. But everyone who wants to should be welcomed, accommodated, and provided scientifically sound advice, and, pro tip,  don’t strength train if you’re fat* is not scientifically sound by a longshot.

Every body is different and there may be considerations around the best options for strength training based on any number of factors, so working with a weight-neutral fitness professional may be helpful. Super fit hero Superfit hero has a list here. The Body Positive Fitness Alliance is a great resource for those who are (or want to be) Weight-Neutral Fitness Providers.

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More research and resources:
https://haeshealthsheets.com/resources/

*Note on language: I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, I use “ob*se” and “overw*ight” to acknowledge that these are terms that were created to medicalize and pathologize fat bodies, with roots in racism and specifically anti-Blackness. Please read Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body – the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Da’Shaun Harrison’s Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness for more on this.