Posted on February 08, 2016 by Kate Halsall

This week the results of a country wide survey (albeit actually of only 2,000 people around the country) revealed Leeds to be the 5th Fittest City in the UK. GO LEEDS! However, when you start to look at the survey in more detail, it raises a number of questions – so sorry Leeds, you may not be as “fit” as we are being led to believe….

The difficulty with surveys such as this stems from how many people are actually questioned, the company running the survey (in this case a pre and post workout supplement company) and the types of questions they ask. We’re not given the full extent of the questions asked via the media – and it’s not listed on the company’s website. However, it would seem that the questions which were asked to the population included how many times people worked out a week, about nutritional diet plans and if people knew what macronutrients were.

• Weekly Workouts: Other than the accessibility to fitness facilities/events, this is the only question that makes sense to me. The only way one city can be fitter than another is if the population of one city did less weekly workouts than another city. But it would have to be a fair representative of those cities populations.
• Macronutrients: The people who understand what macronutrients are, are more likely (and this is a generalisation)  to be those people who train regularly either by themselves or with a trainer and/or read fitness blogs and websites. So yes, these people will be fit. But there will be people who run or walk regularly, go to classes or the gym on a regular basis who don’t know what macro nutrients are – this doesn’t make them less “fit”!
• Nutritional Diet Plans: Personalised nutritional diet plans don’t come free! And generally they are used for very specific goals i.e. weight loss, weight gain, muscle or strength building (ironically exactly the type of clientele a supplement company would be interested in). So is the survey suggesting if you can afford a plan and gym membership and other training aids (be it PT or supplements) that this makes you fitter? I wonder then if this is why Oxford was top of the list!?

The fact is, everyone has a level of fitness and everyone’s levels of fitness are different – it’s all subjective. Take the picture of the shredded guy above – I’m not just talking fit to look at…because let’s face it, fitness is not measured by how you look – just look at the Worlds Strongest Men and their massive bellies!! Individual fitness is measured by how active you are, what activity it is you do, and how much effort you put in when you do it.