Fit And Fat: Is It Possible

Could it possibly be true that your "big" friend, who you'd easily consider to be overweight and fat is, in fact, fit? Though the concepts of being fat vs fit may seem like polar opposites, being fit and fat at the same time really is possible. It actually happens more often than you'd think. Here is why.

There's more to determining whether you're fit than the BMI scale, which is in fact quite useless when it comes to assessing physical performance and doesn't keep fat to muscle ratios in mind either.

Want to find out how fit you are? Measure your performance by immediately checking your heart rate. Take your pulse from your wrist or from your carotid artery in your neck. Count the number of beats for 15 seconds. Multiply this number by 4, to get the beats per minute measure. Check the tables below to compare your results:

Excellent = <79 to 86
Good = 80 to 96
Above average = 90 to103
Below average = 106 to 120
Poor = 117 to 129
Very poor = >128

*note that results vary slightly based on age and sex.

A second test you can do is a push up test, which is designed to measure your upper body strength.

Equipment: None needed!

Procedure: Simply do as many push ups in a row (without stopping) as you can.
For men, military style push ups are the only reliable option. This means having your hands and feet supporting your bodyweight only. Women have the option of doing military style, or knee push-ups, where the knees are in contact with the floor instead of the feet.

Results: Compare your results with the charts below to find out how you did.

Men: (age factor)

Excellent = >50
Good = 35 to 47
Above average = 25 to 34
Average = 13 to 24
Below Average = 10 to 12
Poor = 4 to 9
Very poor = 0 to 3

Women:
Excellent = > 37
Good = 30 to 36
Above average = 22 to 30
Average = 11 to 21
Below average = 5 to 10
Poor = 2 to 4
Very poor = 0 to 2

* Note that results in each category vary based on age.

Exercise Doesn't Burn Fat

It is generally believed that exercise will quickly burn fat stores and render a person slimmer, the more exercise they do. This is simply not true. Burning fat for energy is one thing, but actually burning enough fat to lose pounds of fat is really challenging, even if you work out really hard. A single pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories of energy. One full hour of intense exercise can burn up to 500 calories, just a small portion of which comes from fat.

It is for this reason that exercise alone will not burn significant amounts of fat, if any. A healthy diet is absolutely essential to burning fat. Diet, in fact, makes up around 80 percent of any weight loss regimen. Some very fit people even embrace their body fat in a very active manner, a phenomenon that has also been dubbed "bear mode". They do this by combining grueling workout routines with high calorie and high fat diets.

Nutrition for Fat Burning

Changing your nutrition habits is the most effective way of burning fat up. A consistent, daily caloric deficit is required to burn excess fat off the body. While exercising certainly helps to maintain good muscle mass, and speed up the fat burning process, without creating a caloric deficit through good nutrition, no changes may come about.

Check your results from the tests above and more that you can easily check at home. Regardless of your fitness level, you may still be carrying around a few extra pounds. If that is so, it is likely because you have too much food (or fuel) going in, allowing the body to use food energy rather than fat energy.