Shake, Shake, Shake Señora

Has a fitness trend caught on in the Latina community?

The public has seen Honduran-American actress America Ferrara slim down since her first season of Ugly Betty, and Puerto Rican-American entertainer Jennifer Lopez just completed her first triathlon. Yes, Hollywood standards are exceptional, but according to Iconoculture, a new Midwestern program aimed at Latina immigrants is holding classes in nutrition and conducting group exercise excursions. Is there an emerging fitness trend among Latinas?

The Hispanic community is particularly at risk for suffering from obesity and its related health problems, Perry says. “Hispanic women have a higher rate of diabetes than white non-Hispanic women,” she explains. “For this group of women, walking, exercise, and proper diet, is key.”

Researchers and health experts have expressed increasing concern over the obesity rate among young Hispanic females. “We have shown that in the school system, the Hispanic adolescent girls have the highest percent body fat, compared to whites and African-Americans,” she adds. “They can benefit more than many others from supervised exercise, counseling, and nutrition classes.”

Perry says that there needs to be organized efforts to reach this group when it comes to nutrition, exercise and maintenance. “It is very important to have more community outreach programs,” she maintains. “We need to do something to help women to sustain this type of lifestyle once we intervene, not just a 12-week program.”

“Getting more women to exercise, especially more Hispanic women, and to get them to maintain that level of exercise, is important, but maintenance and sustenance is just as important as starting a program,” Perry notes.

Perry adds that to discuss the Hispanic population, researchers must be sensitive to the vast diversity within that group. “There are different types: Cuban, South American, and so on. When we research the Hispanic population, we need to look at different groups, because non-Mexican individuals may have different risk factors than Mexican, for example,” Perry explains. “The Hispanic population is really broad, we need to zero in on it in terms of the different groups. Overall however, Hispanic women as a group are very open and receptive to learning about how to lead a healthy lifestyle, and are a great group of women to work with.”

Miami, FL-based Gaby Cora, MD, MBA, a psychiatrist with an expertise in the Latino culture, agrees, adding that in addition to the cultural diversity, there is also a wide range of socio-economic difference among Hispanic women. “Latinas have a very diverse background. Some may be very sophisticated and others, who come from other socioeconomic means, may not be into fitness at all,” she tells demo dirt.

Cora says that many Latinas take great pride in their appearance, but that may not necessarily correlate with healthy habits. “It is a bit of a generalization, but there are many who are extremely into looking good,” she explains. “You may have some who do not eat properly, because they just want to look slim, but others are extremely healthy.”

For example, Cora explains, “In Spain many women keep weight off by smoking, but don’t eat well. Are people starving themselves or are they fit and healthy? Argentina has a very high index of breast augmentation, even in teenagers, and many of those women may be quite skinny, but we need to make a distinction between being slim and between being fit and healthy.”  

And, as cosmetic procedures tend to be most prevalent among the wealthier segments, so is thinness. “When you see someone going up the socioeconomic ladder, they get slimmer as they go up, no matter what their ethnic background,” Cora adds. 

Age is another factor that researchers like Perry would like to further explore. “It is very important to start with the adolescent Hispanic population,” she says. “We can do more good by starting earlier, and we need younger groups to spread the word.”

As young Hispanic women and adolescents become increasingly acculturated, they consume more junk food and become more sedentary, Perry says. At the same time, their body image and self-esteem plummets as their standards of beauty and thinness also match those of their white counterparts.

“The more acculturated Hispanic women and girls tend to develop the Western lifestyle of junk food and large portions,” she explains. “Non-acculturated Hispanic women may actually do better in terms of health, at least nutritionally-wise, and they don’t eat as much.”

“In general, the Hispanic and black cultures seem to be more accepting of a larger size, and more self-confident with a larger size, and they are not looked down upon [within their cultures],” Perry notes. “In whites, any excess weight is looked down upon.”

Perry maintains that as young Hispanic girls and women consume the Standard American Diet (SAD), and increasingly accept the white American standard of thinness, they suffer a heightened risk of both physical and psychological challenges. ”In the younger Hispanic population they are starting to attach negativity and low self-confidence to weight and body size, resembling the whites,” she explains. “They are then more prone to high-risk behavior. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to engage in substance abuse, and perform poorly academically. There is no question that there is an age difference, as younger girls are adopting the white way of thinking.”

Therefore, Perry contends, future research should focus on age differences as well as ethnic variation within the Hispanic population.
“Older generations may see themselves wanting to be a little bigger, because centuries ago being big was an index of being wealthy, and meant you had enough food,” Cora adds. “But you also have a huge push for everyone to be extremely skinny, and many want to look slim.”

While trend watchers may not be able to say a fitness trend has totally taken off among Latinas, Perry says that it is emerging.

“We have different pieces of studies and evidence that this be can be successful and work well, that we have to get out into the community, and make it a trend,” she says. “We are moving in the right direction, but we need a little bit more of a push, but the pieces are starting to come together.”

Perry adds that there has also been a move toward fitness within the black community. “Things are starting to change. Studies show that some church-led programs are starting to get a greater amount of activity in adults,” she says. “There are a lot of programs in primarily black schools that are working well with younger black kids.”