Gaining weight isn’t necessarily bad, considering you’re maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But if you’re a woman and you aim to lose weight, there is a specific exercise you should avoid.
Eating healthy and engaging in physical activities are among several common habits proven to add more years to your life. However, not all forms of exercise show the same results.
Women should avoid common exercise to lose weight
Women fitness coach and podcaster Natasha claims that running doesn’t help lose weight and contributes to increased body fat.
She uses one of her TikTok videos to break down the impact of endurance exercise on a woman’s body while not branding it as unhealthy. She recommends against it only if you want to lose weight.
Stating her example – from when she was an active runner – Natasha said her body fat percentage was much higher when she indulged in it.
She goes on to explain that women are hormonally more sensitive and running causes the cortisol level to shoot up, causing fat storage around the stomach region and fluid retention in the body.
The fitness coach said she naturally reduced weight and dropped the fat percentage when she stopped running actively.
How running affects hormones in women
Running and any other endurance exercise puts your body under stress supposedly affecting the menstrual cycle, claims Natasha.
You can either have irregular periods, long cycles, or no period at all. Furthermore, running is said to affect the “hunger hormones”.
Even though running helps burn calories, the body doesn’t secrete the same amount of leptin – a hormone released by body fat to maintain a normal weight.
So, she doesn’t recommend against running if you enjoy it, but if aim to lose weight, you may want to consider other forms of exercise.
Natasha Eve Wakefield is a fitness coach and nutritionist, who has dedicated herself to transforming women’s lives. She is a successful content creator and podcaster with a huge fan following across social media.
She holds certification in Pre and Post-Natal Exercise and worked as a Physical Fitness Technician at the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association.
