Stott Pilates Exercises

Stott Pilates Exercises

IDEAL BODY WEIGHT

Years ago, some of our clients achieved the recommended Standard of Leanness, but still did not like the way they looked, seeing themselves as either too stocky or too bony. The first type would say something like, “I’m lean, but I look like a truck driver.” The other kind might say, “I look anorexic.” From these experiences, we realized that we had not taken into account in our measurements the relationship between weight and height.

One day, as Aniela was arriving at the house of a client in Santa Monica, a woman approached her and said, “Hi, I’m Jackie. I’m sorry to bother you, but I live next door, and I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve been watching you for months, and I’d like to tell you that I’ve tried everything to have a body like yours. Are you a dancer?”

“Hi, Jackie, I’m Aniela. No, I’m not a dancer, I’m a weightlifter.”

She was surprised, but nevertheless, she said, “I do yoga, Pilates, jogging, lifting weights, and all kinds of diets. I’ve even had a personal trainer for years. But at five-foot-five and ninety-nine pounds,

I still feel fat. I’m tired most of the time, and my body is sore and weak. What am I doing wrong?” “You feel flabby,” Aniela said, “because you have too much fat, and you feel weak because you don’t have enough muscle. You’re two inches taller than I am, but weigh thirteen pounds less. So, for your height, you are actually too thin. To get the right proportions, you need to lose some fat and gain some muscle, and weigh more than you do now overall.”

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“I can’t believe you’re thirteen pounds heavier than I am! How can that be?”

“Because muscle is denser than fat and heavier by volume. So, having more muscle makes you look slimmer. Don’t worry about gaining weight overall, because you could be ten pounds heavier and look slimmer.”

“Can you help me to do that?”

“I would be delighted.”

After that experience, we both had many encounters like that in all kinds of social situations and came to realize that we should calculate ideal weight based on a person’s height, using the proportions of Jerzy’s body for men and of Aniela’s body for women. Once we had that insight, it became easy for us to estimate whether a client should lose or gain muscle or fat and exactly how much of each.

For example, a woman who is 5’3″ tall, weighs 145 pounds, and has 25% body fat would be overweight but not obese. She is carrying 36.25 pounds of fat. The rest of her, 108.75 pounds, is lean mass. According to The Happy Body standard, she should weigh 113 pounds and be 13% body fat (14.69 pounds of fat and 98.31 pounds of lean mass). She should therefore lose 21.56 pounds of fat and lose 10.44 pounds of lean mass.

To take another example, a woman who is 5’3″ tall, weighs 105 pounds, and has 35% body fat would be obese but underweight. She is carrying 36.75 pounds of fat. The rest of her, 68.25 pounds, is lean mass. According to The Happy Body standard, she should weigh 113 pounds and be 13% body fat (14.69 pounds of fat and 98.31 pounds of lean mass). She should therefore lose 22.06 pounds of fat and gain 30.06 pounds of muscle. Although she will gain 8 pounds overall, her body will be much leaner than before and look slender.

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