We cannot deny the fact that the fitness industry is on a surge, and it will continue to rise with time. Just a few years ago, fitness and a healthy diet were considered a high maintenance lifestyle, and it was tagged with the elite class. However, tables have turned now, we are living in an era where everyone is working out, and people who are not working out are discouraged and called lazy. We know that our busy and unorganized life is the core of many issues. With the economy crippling more every day and the high need for money, everything has become a race. People are now investing time only in activities that will get the money. On the contrary, anything that doesn’t result in the form of material goods or financial gain is simply considered useless. Due to this lifestyle, most people were working day and night, while only a few were investing in their health. As a result of this bizarre lifestyle, obesity, hypertension, cardiac arrest, and other health-related issues became very common.

Fitness Industry Evolution

As a result of these issues, the fitness and health industry evolved, and body transformation stories were thrown at us from left and right. Everyone wanted to get ripped and invest time in health, but they were not aware of what to do and how to do it. Fitness for men was related to body shape and gaining more, but for women, fitness was just linked to the yoga mat only. A few years later, things started to change, and women shifted to weight-loss regimes, but men were still stuck at the weight gain, getting buff, tightening core, and getting beefed up. This distribution of the fitness industry became an issue for most, and they started assuming that women in the fitness industry are just looked at as eye candy and not as leaders. Whereas women felt that they were objectified, and the only thing that they were focusing on was losing weight and not a healthy body image. Fast forward to the era we are living in right now. Women from all walks of life are now considered leaders, but the fitness industry seems to be stuck at trivial myths. For the beginners who are figuring out why men and women fitness regimes are different? Why body image plays an important role and how the fitness industry can be made more inclusive, we have listed up details that can help you understand the evolution of the fitness industry and the way forward in a better way.

Difference in Metabolism

We have seen people debating about the fitness industry and how it is not at all gender inclusive. Most instructors will sell you a fitness plan or diet plan, and they will tell you that it is just for you and no one also should use it. Additionally, we have seen people debating about the use of personal trainers and health professional or gender-specific workout regimes. No matter how much we disagree about the mental differences, we all agree that physical differences are there. When we compare the body of a man to the body of a woman, we see that men have a better metabolism rate as compared to men. Some debate that this is linked to the daily activity and men perform more daily activity as compared to women, but there is a biological factor as well. Men require more food as compared to women, and they can digest the same amount of food in less time. There is scientific evidence supporting this theory, and hence, there is no way that the same exercise regime can be offered to men and women. Men and women have different body types, and their bodies react to the exercises differently. Moreover, women only want to improve their metabolism so they can eat more and gain less whereas men want to gain more but not in terms of fat, only in terms of muscle content.

The difference in Body Fat Content

Metabolism is not the only different thing in men and women instead; there are so many other things as well. If the fitness industry studies the fat content in both genders, we will observe a discrepancy; according to anatomy, women have higher fat content in their bodies as compared to men.

If we dive into the stats, we can see that fat content in women is 20 to 25 percent in an average and healthy female body. However, for a man, an average and healthy body contain 10 to 15 percent of fat content. Similarly, unhealthy fat content falls into a completely different range in both genders; when we talk about the fat, unhealthy level of fat content in men, it starts from 20 percent, which is a healthy fat content in women; however, and when we see unhealthy fat content in women it starts from 30%.

An unhealthy level of fat content represents the level of obesity, and hence we can say that obesity is different in both genders. Additionally, the basic construction of the body changes over time, and for women, it has been designed for reproduction which makes them more prone to an unhealthy level of fat content.

Body Image and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Our society is a major role player in how we see our bodies and what we perceive when we see our bodies. We have seen that people either hate their body because it is too thin or too thick, but the question is, who determines if a body is too thick or too thin? This is where society comes in; for years and years, our society has been dictating how much weight we should have or how much weight we should gain or lose.

Men are typically encouraged to be strong, beefy, and bulky whereas women are taught to be lean and thin. When the discrepancy between the dictated image of society and the actual image of a person clashes. As a result, the person is pushed into a crisis of negative body image and Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

 It is time to change the conversation about social norms and accept the difference in bodies at least; this brings us to the ways people try to adjust their bodies into the already devised body structure of society.

Eating Disorders and Acceptability

We have seen that women get affected by the negative body image, and they try to switch to starvation, crash diets, and eating disorders which is a painful aspect of society. However, things are finally changing, and we are leading towards acceptability. To cater to the issue of social acceptability, fitness industry instructors and fitness gurus are now promoting healthy body image for both men and women.

Inclusive Exercises

In an attempt to promote healthy body image, fitness industry instructors are now ditching the extensive and harsh workout regime, and they are trying to shift everyone on the natural way to tone up the body; instead of using various machines and weight lifting techniques, they are taking everyone back to the jogging, running and meditation-based therapeutic exercises. Additionally, workouts are now designed to be based on various jogging exercises and small but concrete lifestyle changes. People are now ditching the workout plans where they need gym memberships, and they are completely switching to the workout plans that require them to ditch the active gear and liberate them from shackles of time and resources.