Week 9 Blog

1. Reflect on the Big 3 in your life: behavior, environment, and genetics as they relate to you right now. Please describe how you plan to use each of these to further your health and fitness goals.

2. Why is body composition a better indicator of health as opposed to BMI?

3. What are the main factors associated with obesity?

4. Explain in your own words the importance of both nutrition and exercise for maintaining and achieving healthy body composition. Why can we not isolate one for the other

1. Currently, my behavior towards my lifestyle and weight is just to be as healthy as possible. I enjoy working out and eating healthy, so my behavior is a positive influence on my body composition. My environment is also very positive; I am living at home right now, so I have access to all types of foods, and I have my siblings around me who like to work out as well, so we all enjoy it and don’t really have any negative influences or barriers to being healthy and active. In terms of genetics, I did not get extremely lucky, but my parents certainly do not have bad genetics. I did inherit some things from them that I wish I didn’t, but I can’t complain about my genetics. My whole family has always been active, and all 5 kids played sports, so I think we all inherited decent genetics.
2. Body composition is a better indicator of health than BMI because BMI does not take into consideration the distribution of fat and lean mass in your body. A very muscular person may be considered overweight based on the BMI calculations. However, if you judged by Body composition, they would be healthy and probably above average. Therefore, if you really want to know what your body is made up of so that you can make a change if you need to, you should look at your body composition to do so.
3. The main (risk?) factors associated with obesity are unhealthy lifestyle habits, age, environment, and genetics. Lifestyle habits involve how physically active someone is or how a person eats, i.e., whether or not they have a healthy diet, how often a person eats, and other factors. Age is a factor because childhood obesity is on the rise and this is dangerous because often times people gain weight over time, so starting out obese is concerning. Environment involves one’s socioeconomic status, whether or not they have access to (healthy) food, or if they have been exposed to something that makes them prone to obesity. Finally, genetics describes family history, so DNA may be a cause of obesity, and can be passed down throughout generations.
4. Nutrition and exercise are both important for maintaining and achieving healthy body composition because you can exercise as much as you want, but if you are eating a terrible diet, you will not see any results and may actually be harming yourself by doing so. On the other hand, eating a healthy diet is beneficial for heart health and prevention of disease, but it would be even better to exercise so that you can strengthen your muscles, bones, and body as a whole so that as you age you have a better baseline since all these factors decrease in strength over time. So, doing a combination of both exercise and having a healthy diet is the best way to stay as healthy as possible over time.