Assessing Your Metabolic Fitness
Your exercise routine, just like your health care, should be personalized — tailored to your unique biology as well as your fitness goals.
“The one-size-fits-all exercise programs are not effective or efficient for many people,” said Johanna Casler, MD Revolution’s Metabolic Specialist and a nationally-recognized fitness expert. “Even though they are spending a lot of time in workouts, they don’t achieve their fitness goals, whether they be weight loss or improved endurance, strength and flexibility.”
MD Revolution takes a personalized approach to health and fitness. Before prescribing an exercise regimen for a MD Revolution patient, Ms. Casler assesses the individual’s metabolic fitness through a series of non-invasive tests that determine the resting metabolic rate, or the amount of calories “burned” when the body is at rest, and the target heart rate zones that will achieve the desired caloric “burn” during workouts.
A carefully planned and executed exercise program will boost the individual’s resting metabolic rate, so that more calories are burned even during sleep.
Metabolic fitness, the most validated method for objectively determining overall fitness, is used by many professional athletes to optimize their performance. MD Revolution is unique in bringing the metabolic fitness assessment and many other cutting-edge health and wellness strategies to patients.
MD Revolution is able to customize a workout program with the exercise intensity that enables the individual to achieve his or her fitness goals in the least amount of time.
To conduct the metabolic fitness tests, Ms. Casler uses state-of-the-art, medical grade equipment designed for hospitals and medical clinics. MD Revolution is one of the few private medical practices with this equipment, which also is rarely found in fitness facilities.
Armed with the test results, Ms. Casler tailors a CardioZone program that will be effective and efficient for each MD Revolution patient.
“Our clients are busy people and don’t have time to waste on inefficient workouts,” said Ms. Casler. “My training philosophy is simply to design fitness programs and classes that allow clients to have the most effective, time efficient, safe and motivating workout possible.”
Ms. Casler tailors each CardioZone program according to her metabolic assessment of the patient. The test results help identify the heart rate training zones that will maximize the expenditure of calories and improve the patient’s fitness level.
By focusing on the appropriate training zone, the MD Revolution patient improves his or her ability to use oxygen, and thereby burn more calories, particularly from body fat.
Increasing the resting metabolic rate is critical not only to overall health and wellness but also to long-term weight management, since an individual’s metabolic rate typically slows as we age.
CardioZone differs from the workout programs that restrict caloric intake to lose weight. Such caloric restriction can decrease metabolism, therefore reducing the amount of calories that can be consumed to prevent weight gain.
“CardioZone shows you how to light your metabolic fire,” said Ms. Casler.