South Asians have a unique problem in fitness

South Asians Have a Unique Problem in Fitness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvAA-Ba2CI&list=PLVOspl3tsfnqRGlhdAzLENAIk-PF4f_ZA&index=21

Source: Youtube - South Asian Strong

Intro

If you’re South Asian, you face a unique problem when it comes to your health and fitness - something not really talked about in the west, by mainstream fitness authorities, even in South Asia. No one’s really talking about this. No one takes this unique obstacle South Asians face on the path to good health and great physique into account.

South Asians are Skinny Fat

This is something you’ve seen your entire life in the appearance of your parents, your relatives, your friends, and most of all, yourself. Your weight is normal. You look thin in clothes. But when the shirt comes off or, if you’re wearing a swimsuit or a sari, you get bodies with love handles and fat around the chest area. In recent times, this body type has been called skinny fat - when your arms, legs and face are skinny - around your midsection, there’s a bit extra. people from all over the world and every ethnicity can have skinny fat body types. but it’s almost universal in only one population - south asians. in the medical community, this body type actually has a name - although not really well known except among a few doctors and specialized researchers. it’s called asian indian phenotype also known as thin fat phenotype. and in the modern world it can be as superficial as not looking as good without clothes as we’d hoped or as serious as an early grave - not to mention a frustrating obstacle on your fitness journey. these are the signs of asian indian phenotype or what i call the south asian skinny fat body. a tendency to have skinny non-muscled arms and legs - meanwhile preferentially storing fat around your lower abdomen, your lower belly, and your hips - sometimes called your love handles and also the lower chest if you’re a man. Overall smaller stature and joints, things like your wrists and your height. Any of this sound familiar? Depending on what part of the indian subcontinent you’re originally from and where and how you grew up this can vary. But for the most part every adult in your life probably exhibits some of these traits to some degree. It can get pretty bad. Ever wonder why south asians are at such high risk of heart disease, diabetes, PCOS, high blood pressure and cholesterol? this is why. this pouch of subcutaneous fat around your lower abdomen, whether small or large is the culprit. it’s the obstacle standing in the way of you getting those six-pack abs, losing weight with the diet and exercise recommendations your doctor gives you, getting off medications, taking your shirt off without anxiety, and being able to just eat and drink like everyone else does, without gaining excess weight and just enjoying your life. it puts you at a significant disadvantage in the modern world. but the good news is it can be overcome. so why do south asians exhibit skinny fat syndrome more than other populations? to understand that we

Skinny Fat Genetics

need to first understand our genetics. our genetics are shaped by our environment. the traits that appear in us now are the ones that were useful in our past and allowed our ancestors to survive in their time and pass on their genes to us today. so what was our environment in south asia? well it was one of relative abundance and fertile soil - the reason why we’re here. but also frequent famine. famine has been a regular occurrence in south asia since ancient times. with droughts and resulting crop failures happening intermittently for thousands of years since the dawn of agriculture. during the british rule alone from 1769 to 1947, there were 24 major famines, which resulted in an estimated 85 million lives lost. for perspective, that’s more than the population of any european country today. so why is famine so frequent in south asia? well south asians were early adopters of agriculture - similar to the sumerians and mesopotamians. and agriculture of course heavily relies on the climate. like much of the tropics with monsoon seasons and a part of the el nino southern oscillation weather system, climate in india can be highly variable and unpredictable. monsoons can fail, causing droughts and crop failures. other times, they can cause flooding. add to that heat waves, hail damage to crops, cyclones, and you get a recipe for periodic famine. so given all that how did our ancestors survive well the ones that did had survivor genetics genetics that adapted to periodic undernourishment - meaning not enough food. how? by storing extra energy for times that we might need it in the form of fat. not only that but we also adapted to have less muscle or lean mass - because muscle is metabolically expensive - meaning it takes up a lot of calories and energy which is not a good thing when times are scarce. you might be wondering are these traits really genetic or are they just because of our diet and lifestyle habits? well diet and lifestyle definitely do play a role. i’ve heard and observed myself of many reports of south asian children who grew up in the west with a better diet and they ended up taller and naturally leaner, meaning have they less fat than their parents. but the fact is these traits are actually noticeable even before we are born, as a fetus in our mother’s womb, which indicates that there is some genetic predisposition. now at this point maybe you’re feeling a bit hopeless, thinking, great i’ll never be able to lose fat or build muscle. or maybe you’re mad because you think i’m saying somehow south asians have inferior genetics. of course not. nature does not care for whatever we judge as superior or inferior, better or worse. it’s just survival or death. the fact is that in all of our physical characteristics, whether it’s our heights, our appearance, our skin color, the genetic lottery deals us all different hands. and rather than complaining about the things we can’t change, what matters is how we play those hands. by understanding how we’re different, we can actually use this knowledge to reverse the processes that we can control and maximize what we do have. it’s crucial to remember that up until recently these adaptations served a very important purpose. they’re the reason we’re here today. now though they’re at best a nuisance causing confusion and disappointment on your journey to your goal physique, and at worst a life-threatening condition for you your family and your friends. our modern lifestyles of abundance no longer need this extra reserve of energy that protected us when food was scarce. but our body is still wired to survive our ancient environment of periodic famine. and that is what we as south asians have to take into account when it comes to achieving our health and fitness goals. so how do we do that? we know why we as South Asians are different. but we don’t know what’s happening in our bodies as a result of these differences.

Insulin Resistance

The main difference in how our bodies function as a result of asian indian phenotype is something called insulin resistance. i’ll go into more detail about how insulin resistance affects us in other videos. but for now, all you need to know is this. when you eat food and the carbohydrates in your food get broken down into sugar. once the carbohydrates are broken down, your body needs to find a place to store this sugar for later use as energy. this place is most often your muscle cells. for the sugar to get into your muscle cells and be used as a quick source of energy, the sugar molecules in your blood need a ticket. call this ticket insulin. normally the sugar you eat and get into your muscle cells at a healthy rate. and the sugar in your bloodstream doesn’t rise abnormally and become out of balance. but what happens with insulin resistance is that your muscle cells stop accepting insulin as a ticket for the sugar in your blood to get in. what happens is your blood sugar levels rise and your body needs a place to send this sugar? and the next place on the list is your fat cells. the sugar that can’t get into your muscle then goes to your fat cells and is stored as triglycerides as a long-term source of energy. and this is how south asians and anyone else who is insulin resistant gains excess fat, especially around the midsection. our bodies as south asians are more insulin resistant than other ethnicities. which results in our bodies more preferentially storing the carbohydrates we consume in our fat cells. particularly on our abdomen rather than our muscle cells. in the modern world this puts us at an increased risk for almost every non-communicable disease and chronic lifestyle disease known to man. and since we’ve all been conditioned by western popular media it’s also not as visually appealing. insulin resistance is not only the result of our skinny fat genes but it also perpetuates as we get older. meaning it builds on itself like a snowball. this is the reason why older south asian adults gain weight primarily around their abdomen and are at such high risk of conditions like heart attacks and diabetes. so now you know the reasons why south asians are skinny fat and how our bodies function differently, to get the best results when it comes to achieving your health and fitness goals, you should use this knowledge. on this channel i’ll be covering the exact strategies we can use to reverse insulin resistance improve our health and build the body we want. so if you like this video and want to learn more please hit the like button below. for now we’ll go over what not to do using my journey as an example. when i first started trying to get in shape the mainstream advice in

What Not To Do

the fitness industry was to eat six to eight smaller meals spaced throughout the day, eat a low fat high carbohydrate and high protein diet, avoid foods like red meat eggs and full fat dairy, train like a bodybuilder with each day dedicated to a different body part with lots of exercises sets and reps, divide your training into fat loss and muscle gaining phases, also known as cuts and bulks, and take tons of supplements to support these goals. does that sound like fun to you? following this advice i ended up getting bigger and stronger. but i still wasn’t able to shed that skinny fat look. i would either bulk up get too fat or try to lose fat and just end up looking skinny. not to mention these strategies made life a lot harder than it had to be. no one wants to skip social events to hit the gym or bring their own food to parties. for the better part of my teenage and college years, i worked out twice as hard as my non-south asian friends and was twice as careful with my diet but still managed to look like i had less muscle and more fat than others who weren’t as careful - which eventually led to me questioning it all. why didn’t mainstream workout routines and diets work as well for me as they did for my non-south asian friends? so i went looking for some answers and found some. over the next few years i did the opposite of everything i did before. some of these strategies you’ve probably heard of. i practice intermittent fasting skipping breakfast eating only twice a day. i tried low carb high fat diets like keto. i did more power lifting style workouts with heavier weight less volume and less frequency. i did high intensity interval training with short bursts of exercise multiple times a week. i cut out all supplements and focus on eating like a caveman with only healthy whole foods that our hunter gatherer ancestors supposedly ate. i even practice odd lifestyle self-improvement habits. and although i got much healthier and felt much better, i was still skinny fat. on top of that these diet and fitness habits were also not sustainable. nobody wants to skip breakfast and avoid carbs forever, especially south asians. so once again i did some digging and thinking. finally after the better part of a decade of trying almost every popular workout program, diet plan, and self-improvement habit i glimpsed the truth and started on a journey to the physique i wanted in optimal health. how? by realizing that in all these protocols something was missing. us. both modern and traditional health recommendations didn’t take into account our unique genetic and cultural makeup as south asians. western fitness and health authorities gave everyone the same advice and promised the same results. meanwhile every study or experience they based their recommendations off of, were done with people from very different genetic and cultural backgrounds. does that make sense to you? after years of experimentation, trial and error, hope and despair, failure and disappointment i came to a conclusion. since we as asians are built differently we should do things differently. you might be thinking that due to our genetics we may have to exercise more than other ethnicities and be even more strict with our diet. but this isn’t the case. for now, know that you don’t need to exercise constantly and kill yourself in the gym every day or with high intensity workouts. you don’t need to give up the foods you love and grew up with. in fact, i would argue that these strategies can do even more harm than good. over the last five years i read everything i could find on skinny fat

Transformation Plan

body types and south asian genetics. from both traditional south asian and western sources and came up with a three-step transformation plan to help you reverse insulin resistance. build the body you want. and achieve good health/ i’ll be covering all this information in future videos. so if you want to learn more about how south asians are feel differently and what to do about it, hit the subscribe button below. and if like nick hill was you’re sick of being skinny fat and you want to start transforming immediately, you can also check out our transformation program designed to take you from this to this in as little as three months at southagentstrong.com. the south asian strong transformation program is delivered via a mobile app that provides you with a step-by-step plan to lose fat build muscle and achieve your goal physique - all while taking into account our unique genetic cultural and lifestyle needs. all you have to do to sign up is go to south asianstrong.com click on the coaching tab, select your experience level, any dietary preferences you might have, and what equipment you have. and upon sign up you’ll get a link to download the south asian strong mobile app on which all the details of your customized plan will be delivered including an exercise plan with a full video guide for each exercise, the ability to track your workouts and diet. you’ll also get access to a short e-course that goes over all the transformation protocols in detail, as well as a full meal plan and recipe guide to ensure your success. regardless of your experience level or starting point, the south asian strong program is designed to help you lose fat, pack on muscle and improve your health and quality of life, all while catering to specific cultural needs. that’s it for this video. if you want more frequent updates you can also follow me on instagram and tick tock south asian strong. for daily examples of how i eat, exercise and live to best support my fitness goals and improve my health, while not having to spend hours in the gym each week and still eating the foods i grew up with. thanks for watching and see you next time