Exercise Advice for Overweight People

“Overweight people who are avoiding moving around aren’t lazy – they’re sensible.” So says Krista Scott-Dixon, a researcher and nutrition coach who lost 23kg (around 3st 8lb) over three years. “Being heavy changes your physical experience of the world,” says Scott-Dixon Unless you have experienced the physical discomfort of significant surplus weight, she says, then it can be difficult to comprehend the dangerous cycle of inertia that heavy people inhabit.

When weight is gained, it becomes harder to move. The harder it is to move, the harder it is to shift the excess weight. “You have all the mechanical stress of excess weight, but then you also have the metabolic problem.” The internal hormonal environment of someone who is obese (someone with a body mass index of 30-34.9) is different from that of a person with a healthy weight, says Scott-Dixon. “Fat is a metabolically active organ. It’s not just storage, it actually secretes hormones that affect your energy levels.” In short: “Even if you don’t really feel that much pain, you just feel like crap.”

For many of us, exercise simply isn’t part of our daily lives, and for people who are significantly overweight this can be compounded by the fact that conventional advice about exercise sometimes just isn’t possible to follow. Personal trainer Steve Barrett explains: “Exercise is stressful for the body – but for those who are severely overweight, their bodies are already stressed, their blood pressure is already raised, they are already fatigued, their joints already strained.”

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