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Scientists Study How Little Exercise You Need
Hugh Pickens writes "Millions of Americans don't engage in much exercise, if they complete any at all and asked why, a majority of respondents, in survey after survey, say, 'I don't have time.' Now Gretchen Reynolds reports that instead of wondering just how much exercise people really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need to maintain fitness and the answer appears to be, a lot less than most of us think — provided we're willing to work a bit. Most people have heard of intervals, or repeated, short, sharp bursts of strenuous activity, interspersed with rest periods. Almost all competitive athletes strategically employ a session or two of interval training every week to improve their speed and endurance. Researchers have developed a version of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that involves one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90 percent of a person's maximum heart rate (which most of us can estimate, very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220), followed by one minute of easy recovery. The effort and recovery are repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 minutes and the interval training is performed twice a week. Despite the small time commitment of this modified HIIT program, after several weeks of practicing it, both the unfit volunteers and the cardiac patients showed significant improvements in their health and fitness. 'A growing body of evidence demonstrates that high-intensity interval training can serve as an effective alternate to traditional endurance-based training, inducing similar or even superior physiological adaptations in healthy individuals and diseased populations, at least when compared on a matched-work basis.'"
Works wonders if your employer has an onsite gym. Duck in at random intervals throughout the day, bang out 100 leg presses, 15 heavyweight curls each arm, 30 heavyweight dumbell presses, 40 reps of wrist curls with 40-pound dumbbells each arm. Feels good, man, even on a diet of beer and Mexican food.
The intervals meaning that interruption to your routine is minimal since you're not doing it all at once when everybody else is using the gym, like at lunchtimes or after work.
Researchers have developed a version of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that involves one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90 percent of a person's maximum heart rate (which most of us can estimate, very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220), followed by one minute of easy recovery. The effort and recovery are repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 minutes and the interval training is performed twice a week.
That's way more than I was willing to commit to memory, let alone perform
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Isn't this a recipe for a heart attack?
This means running up and down the stairs and to and from my car could be all I need now!.... I hope.
"Now Gretchen Reynolds reports that instead of wondering just how much exercise people really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need to maintain fitness"
How is that 'turning the issue on its head'? It seems to me more like a very minor rephrasing of the question which ultimately makes no difference at all.
That's why some people think deskercise is more important than regular exercise. Especially for people who sit in front of their computer for more than 4 hours. Checkout here : http://redbeep.com .
Any amount of exercise will improve an unfit person. Fitness = fit for a purpose. What is your purpose?
Now that's how Sherlock Holmes was able to run like the hare and yet not exercise. Oh wait so many others know this secret an entire generation of geek comic book heroes did it too!!! Alas the secret is in the open, we will be teaming with too many more geeks on the streets. Too few criminals.
reading that whole thing.
Because I think it's boring. It's not that I don't have the time, but I would just rather be doing other things. I think a lot of people who say, "I don't have the time" are like that, too.
Other things like commenting on Slashdot, yes.
...30 minutes a week, every week for the past 3 years, and still getting stronger every week. Slow strength training is by far the most effective exercise I've encountered so far, and the benefits for just 30 minutes a week are *crazy*.
http://slowburnfitness.com/
No, I don't get kickbacks, but I'm forever grateful to Fred Hahn for figuring this crap out.
It sounds like this regimen could be incorporated into sex, or masturbation if you're creative.
preemptive "slashdot readers don't have sex, lol"
20 minutes assuming you get instant access to whatever weights and machines you need. Most gyms have pests that will slow you down. Then add another 20 minutes showering and getting dressed. Don't forget getting there and changing. So it's more like an hour.
I've made a point of exercising a lot lately... and I've found that my endurance has gone up considerably since I started, but I'm just as fat as I ever was. At least I'm not gaining any more weight... still undesirably obese though.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Isn't this basically the same idea as the Canadian Air Force exercise program of the 50s?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5BX
The problem with American eating habits is almost surely the massive amounts of carbs that we take in. Shoot for 100 grams of carbs per day for the next month and see what happens. 100 grams is below the recommended amount, but is not the dangerous atkins-level no-carb deprivation.
"His name was James Damore."
I've made a point of exercising a lot lately... and I've found that my endurance has gone up considerably since I started, but I'm just as fat as I ever was. At least I'm not gaining any more weight... still undesirably obese though.
The only way to lose weight is to eat less than your body can burn.
Refrigerator door pull:
1. Stand with your feet evenly in front of the icebox. Pull door open, check whats inside. Close the door.
2. Pull open, retrieve one of the 6pack. Close door.
3. Pull open, get salsa. Close door.
4. Pull open, get lime. Close door.
5. When it's time for next bottle/can, repeat #2.
Sixteen ounce wrist curls:
1. Pop open that beer/soda/caffeinated drink. 6 reps, one for each gulp, right wrist first.
2. Do 6 reps for left wrist as well.
Use your imagination, and your regular work area could be a workout area as well. Practice saying, "Yeah, I work out" with the intensity showing in your eyes.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The only way to lose weight is to eat less than your body can burn.
And excretes.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
high-intensity interval training (HIIT)
Why does this remind me of the old joke about Specialized High Intensity Training?
Try a radical wheat-ectomy: http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/
HIIT targets different muscle fibers and produces a much different hormonal response in the body than slow cardio. Some research has growth hormone increases of 700% in older women performing a 20 minute HIIT routine three times a week.
Here's a video that goes into a bit more depth. (Mercola is a bit of a jackass, but Phil Campbell is a badass.)
Fat, or heavy?
I lost 10 lbs of fat from a year of biking to work, but my total weight didn't change at all because I gained 10 lbs of muscle. That wasn't a bad trade.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
So I guess that super expensive bicycle thing I see advertized in magazines might actually not be a placebo/scam?
Keep it up, Bro. May I suggest you grab a protein shake as soon after exercising as possible - but use this as a meal replacement. And cut out high carb snacks between meals. It can be fun to be slightly hungry, especially when your fitness is improving! Regardless, I know some big guys who race bikes and whup the skinny guys.
Max HR varies tremendously from person to person. I'm 44 and my calculated goal HR would be 158.4 ((220-44)*0.9), but I regularly train at a HR of 185-190 and have a max HR of probably 200 or so.
The best way, currently known, to slow age-related cognitive decline is exercise because it produces Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor.
But did TFA even mention BDNF?
nnnnnnaaaaaaaaOOOOOOOOOOHHHHhhhhhh
Maybe the author should exercise more.
Seastead this.
Obviously you've probably heard a million different bits of dieting advice, so one more will probably go unheeded, but have you tried cutting out high calorie beverages? After gaining 30 lbs in a year by eating at restaurants too often while traveling, I've dropped 20 lbs by reducing my calorie intake without reducing the amount I eat or increasing my exercise simply by only drinking zero calorie drinks (with occasional beers as exceptions). By my estimation, that change has cut about 500 calories a day from my diet, which is supposedly a difference of about a pound a week, without making me feel any hungrier.
That is certainly a clever way to say it but all you did was prove that exercise is good for you! We already knew that.
There are countless types of exercise, their example takes 20 minutes. If you are willing to workout 20 minutes a few times a week you can do it using any method you like! This study is silly lol.
I heat with a wood stove. This sounds just like my normal day of carrying firewood. (Maple ain't light.)
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Oddly enough, that is how I start after I've been away for a while (often due to unusual work pressures or injury - @@#^%%$ P90X) - I swim, and alternate 50s of freestyle (usu to 80-90%) and breaststroke (about 70-75%) on the minute, taking breaks every 5 minutes until I drop below 60%, then another set.
Still, even when I'm in my best shape, I'm rarely doing more than 35-40 minutes total workout (prob ~30 minutes actual swimming, ~ 1 mile) 3X a week.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Maybe it is true that 10x1 min high-intensity training is just as good as 20, 30 or even 40 minutes of easier training.
But for most people I am not sure if it is any more fun or easier to commit to.
As a pretty serious long distance runner (running Boston Marathon this spring), I don't doubt that intervals can make me faster and I will do some before the race, but that is easily the worst part of my training. It is just very unpleasant to run at >90% of max capacity. I even prefer 15 mile long runs over intervals.
You're confusing 'fit' with 'slim'. Many people do. It's completely possible to have a healthy cardiac system (the most important part), but be quite obese. How thin you are is mainly a function of diet; how healthy you are is mainly a function of exercise. They have significant correlation, but they are distinct data points with separate causes.
The more important of the two for health is your cardiac fitness. The more desirable of the two in social situations is your BMI. Choose wisely.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Right, because the people who ate wheat for thousands of years are all wrong.
Next you'll tell me that vaccines are bad for me and peanuts are poison
You don't need any gadgets: just a stretch of road and a supply of self-discipline.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Just pay attention to what you're putting in yourself for awhile and avoid the obvious highly dense problematic foods. Also apply the ancient rules regarding sweets and snacking between meals.
Most people get fat and stay fat because of bad habits.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is not new. Programs like "Body for Life" and P90X have shown how successful this approach can be. Diet does matter. So does alcohol consumption.
The thing about exercise and diet as a way to lose weight is this:
The purpose of the exercise portion is to build muscle mass because muscle requires more calories than not-muscle does to maintain - so, by having more muscle you burn more calories all the time, at rest, when active, whatever.
The diet portion means to figure out what you actually need to take in and to do so with proper nutrition.
If you're right now obese and starting an exercise routine, the best thing would be lots and lots of weight lifting while simultaneously modifying your diet to eat as much as you do now, just healthier stuff that will also help muscle development.
Cardio and the like is good for fitness - indeed, add 2x IIT sessions per week just to improve your overall health and conditioning - but it's not really all that good for losing weight.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
WTF is worng with the human body? It should let me do what I do, not what my great great great great grand fathers did. For all the virtues that are claimed about exercice the fact remains it is a bother...
Please doctors, just fix the whole excercise problem. But fix the sleeping problem first, that easly consumes more lifetimes than excercise all types of cancer combined.
But... the future refused to change.
Also, good on ya for starting to exercise!
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The 90s called and wanted their exercise article back.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Exercise has almost nothing to do with weight/fat. If you exercise, you work up an appetite and eat more. Study after study has shown that adding exercise rarely results in any significant amount of weight loss unless food intake is also addressed.
Exercise is for fitness, diet is for fat loss.
If you want to slim down, cut the sugars and starches. If you want strong and efficient muscles, exercise intensely once or twice a week. As long as you are getting sufficient protein, plenty of calories (from fat), and vitamins and minerals (from meats and vegetables), you'll do fine.
Just compare that with the average American diet. Loads of sugar and useless carbs like bread, pasta, and potatoes. Tasty as fuck, but horrible for your health.
Used to be a time when everybody knew this. If you wanted more weight, you ate pasta and bread. Now we eat that shit way too much, and now we all wonder how to slim down, because the normal meal for, a fat guy from the 1950s is a normal meal for everyone today.
Exercise is important, but it will never make you slim.
IMHO, the obesity epidemic can be summed up by "exercise-diet mismatch". We Americans are still eating like our farming grandparents did (worse even), yet with modern conveniences and a sedentary lifestyle. I still sigh when people act astonished upon hearing that someone walked a mile rather than driving (then offer to drive them back).
For you, don't forget that water, muscle, bone, and fat all contribute to weight. Exercise increases muscle mass (which increases bone mass), so your weight may not change (or increase even) despite losing fat. Visceral fat is also more highly associated with disease, and less noticeable if you lose it. More muscle equals a higher basal metabolic rate and exercise capacity, which should lead to even greater fat loss. Keep at it, and the results will show. For now, take comfort in knowing that even a small amount of fat loss has measurable and positive health effects.
Exercise doesn't help as much as people imagine. You need to spend stupid amount of time to get enough exercise in order to make a significant dent on your daily energy balance.
Energy gained by food is by far, the biggest factor. If you cut income by a small amount and keep it that way, your body weight will reflect it.
You have, unironically, used the term "Bro" on Slashdot. Guards!
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Abdominal obesity leads to diabetes even for the fit fat.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Their lifestyle is not the same as yours. We lead a much more sedentary lifestyle, and we consume a lot more in terms of raw quantity (and with increasing frequency). The idea behind wheat belly can be extended to carbs in general -- wheat, rice, corn etc. And I've found that cutting carbs and calories is the biggest factor in getting in shape, and lowering your bf%. You can skip everything else, but if you're maintaining a caloric deficit consistently, you'll lose weight.
I was at 19% body fat, and once I started cutting carbs and working out, I just started burning fat that much more quickly. The journey from 19% bf to 15% bf was a nightmare, but the journey from 15% bf to 12% bf was much easier. And the journey from 12% to under 10% was much, much harder, only because it requires an insane amount of discipline.
Unfortunately, the holidays wreaked havoc and I'm back in the 15% range, but I am amazed at how just simple things with your diet help a lot. Complex carbs and protein for breakfast (think oatmeal and eggs), salad with fruit for lunch, a couple of protein shakes in the afternoon, and salad for dinner. No cheat days. Watch your calories carefully (I use the LiveStrong MyPlate), and maintain a reasonable protein intake. You'll see progress in no time.
How do you get the pulse rising so high for a single minute? With electric shocks perhaps? Or are they talking about the maximum over the whole exercise?
I posted a 84 word comment; health is a vast field with seriously complex interactions. I stand by my point. Though there are completely true assertions such as yours that stand in opposition to 'fit is more important than slim', I believe the significant over-emphasis in current American culture of your weight and the under-emphasis of exercise is a great disservice to our health as a whole.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I started working out due to a challenge last year; me and a co-worker vs another pair of co-workers. I lost 2 lbs in a month, my co-worker on my team lost 10. We (given my poor showing) lost the challenge.
I then decided that working out without making any change to my eating habits was definitely counter-productive. One year later, I'm floating between 25 and 30lbs down and hope to stay around there (6'3", 180 right now). I still have issues sometimes with eating, but it's much more manageable now.
The challengers who "won" our little bet? Stopped working out shortly after and gained every last bit of the weight back. It's a shame, really - we have a fitness center ON SITE....
Karnal
This is not that simple, as you body adapts what it burns to various parameters, including what you eat.
Dr Ken Cooper - the guy who invented aerobics and published back in the 1970s - was answering this question more or less. He was a US Air Force doctor and had access to thousands of subjects for testing. He wanted to answer the question: "How much exercise do I *need* to do, when a doctor tells me to get `more' exercise?"
Basically, after a 13 week conditioning program of gradually increasing exersion, his program settles down into walking 4 miles in 55 minutes, three times a week. This is not that burdensome. And there are many alternatives to walking: swimming, running/jogging, cycling, playing various vigorous sports like squash, etc. He worked out age and activity based tables for mixing and matching various activities to achieve the weekly exercise goal - all based on research into basic aerobic fitness.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Good news. If you're getting enough exercise, there's a fair amount of research to suggest that you've already mitigated a bunch of health risks that you might otherwise have been prey to if you'd been obese and sedentary.
Also, and apropos to the topic of this article, check out Mike Evans' "visual lecture" on YouTube, called 23 and 1/2 hours.
If you consume fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. No amount of adapting can get around that.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There is as much emphasis on exercise as there is on weight. Fat and/or flabby people know what they "ought" to do. They choose to do otherwise. That's their right (which is not to say that it is wrong to continue warning them).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Actually, 100 grams of carbs is right in the Atkins level, though it is at or near the top, but still within the limit depending on the person.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
Not a whole lot more to say on the subject. Do some swings and get-ups once or twice a day, and you'll be fit and trim. Unless you eat trash and guzzle carbonated sugar water all day. In which case, you're fucked no matter what you do.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
let's see, it says 20 minutes twice a week. but it says at maximum heart rate. it probably takes me a good 2 minutes to reach my maximum heart rate, and it'll take me 5 minutes if I don't plan on killing myself to do it.. And it takes a good 15 minutes to slow back down to normal in order to go about the rest of my day.
I guess I'm just too lazy to be this lazy.
The study could find that it's little as 5 minutes a day. And most would still say they "don't have time."
I mean really! Those facebook status updates won't read themselves.
Very sound advice, and the same advice I got from a personal trainer when I started trying to lose weight. But I wasn't guzzling carmel colored sugar water... I was simply having milk or OJ with my meals. Guess what? A typical glass in my house is about a pint, and a pint of even skim milk has about 200 calories. That's only 25 less than a 12 oz Coke.
Having water with my meals has greatly reduced my daily caloric intake.
Consider looking into what some call a Paleo or Caveman diet. Basically drop out grains, legumes, sugars, starchy roots like potatoes (yams and such in moderation are fine), prepared foods as much as possible, and any so-called "foods" that have a long list of ingredients. Dairy is in or out as you wish. Cook (Gasp*) with fresh meats, veggies, nuts, certain oils, fruit in moderation. Even bacon, the Candy of Meats, is in. Brownies made with almond butter instead of flour, high-cocoa chocolate and a bit of honey are great, for instance. And enjoy stepping outside Paleo eating once in a while; it's not an ascetic thing. Just different. We've been human for 100-200,000 years, depending on who you ask. We ate "paleo" for the vast majority of that time. We're evolved/designed to do very well indeed on this sort of fare. Anecdotal for sure, but my relatively inactive wife dropped 60 lbs in about 6 months with this diet change alone, no deliberate extra activity. My oldest daughter dropped about 15 (all she wanted/needed), started a Cross-Fit routine and at 34 is very, very fit. Myself, I didn't have much extra, maybe 10 lbs; it vanished with no change in activity level. We all eat as much as we want. At 60 I feel great. And the cost isn't much more than what groceries, junk & fast food altogether were costing. Seems to work for us! *Yikes, I had genuine alarm at the prospect of grocery shopping more frequently and, you know, actually cooking. Turns out this wasn't really an issue.
If you want to get strong or fit, exercise. If you want to lose weight, change your diet. The two are not really related, contrary to popular opinion. You can be fat and strong, or thin and weak. I recommend an ultra-low-carb diet. I've lost 11 lbs in a month and feel fine. I limit my carb intake to between 20 and 50 grams/day. I also lift weights. Do your research and find what works for you.
Yes, it's that simple. I lost 40kg just using that rule alone. Exercise is for fitness, not for losing weight. Fitness in turn assists in metabolism. And metabolism counts for calorie burn. The best weight loss is the calorie deficit. Initially I thought my body would adapt to the change in diet, and there are times where it stalls but then it picks up and keeps going.
Friend of mine, above 65 years old, joined that calorie counting program - www.loseit.com - and lost over 40 pounds. He's about 5'5, but weighed over 170 when he joined. Started this program, kept track of his calories religiously, if not obsessively, and is now around 125. He might have gained a few pounds since joining his local gym and spending his retirement as a gym rat, but, last I saw him, he looked pretty good for a non-athletic desk jockey.
I don't pay as much attention to my caloric intake as he did - I work out longer and more often - but it really was a function of watching what he ate vs. what he burned off. It was amazing to watch him lose all that, too.
I do not have 20 minutes twice a week to work out. I am working on my invention for Shark Tank.
We don't need to work out anyway in the USA, just go to the hospital early enough and they can fix most things these days.
Wasteful and pointless. No aesthetics involved. Makes you smell and then you have to change clothes. Requires special equipment that costs money.
The Chinese broke this code centuries ago. Slow, smooth movement. Weight shifts from foot to foot. Keep a level head so the otic structures and parts of the brain that control equilibrium and proprioception don't have to stress. Fills you with serotonin and a sense of beauty and harmony. Strengthens the core muscles more than pilates. Develops an almost supernatural sense of balance and coordination. Requires no equipment, no special clothing. Just a little floor space. No need to change or shower afterwards. No injuries, no hurting, no wrenching, no grunting and acting foolish. Can be done by anyone of any age and level of condition. You get benefit from the start, right away.
Plus, it will promote and maintain cardio-respiratory health as effectively as swimming, and without the stress injuries of running. Without raising the heart rate or breaking a sweat. No need to worry about "target heart rate" or "zones" or "reps". Just an evocative form based on movement of animals (including primates) and refined by centuries of smart, dedicated people. Did I mention that it floods your body with chemicals that make you feel really really good?
And, when you're done, if someone raises their hands to you, you are able to help them to the ground. And chicks dig it. Chicks see some aging frat boy pumping iron and they think, "what a tool". They see a guy doing tai chi in the park, they walk up and say, "Where did you learn that? I always wanted to learn how to do tai chi." Oh, and tai chi will put lead in your pencil. That's why there are like billions of Chinese. All that tai chi.
But wait, there's more! Once you learn the tai chi form, you get to play with swords (jian) and broadswords (dao) and staff (gun) and spears. And when chicks see you jumping around with a broadsword? They can't get out of their drawers fast enough.
I'm serious. You wanna look like a douche, play around with some machines or dumbells (guess why they call them that). You wanna be healthy, feel great and get all the poon you can handle? Tai Chi.
You are welcome on my lawn.
20 minutes of HIT training will be the longest 20 minutes of your life.
This is actually how human beings evolved to live.
The interval training takes the place of what used to be occasional but reasonably frequent activities for millions of years of human evolution:
* Fighting with other people
* chasing after game
* running away from lions.
I'm having the flu right now, and yet, my buddies and I just had an intense workout out for over an hour at the gym, and I didn't even feel tired.
I'm glad you feel so healthy, but please stay away from the gym while you're coughing, sneezing, or barfing.
and therein lies the problem.
HIIT has actually been around and been discussed in running groups for a number of years. Lest you think I am pulling this from where the sun doesn't shine, I write this from some personal experience; I am an experienced ultramarathoner (six 50 milers). HIIT is extremely difficult for "normal" people to do as an ongoing exercise program.
The great majority of Americans are simply not capable of pushing themselves as hard as is required for a successful HIIT regimen. If you're not capable of pushing yourself to do this type of strenuous exercise, you're not going to do it. It's as simple as that.
HIIT will work extraordinarily well for people that are already moderately fit or even overweight if they are capable of pushing through their pain (not the physical pain, the mental pain). Again, and again, and again; and each iteration is harder than the last.
Most people - especially the great unwashed overweight masses (pun intended) - aren't willing or capable of doing this, and simply aren't going to do it. They would be better served starting out just walking briskly for 30 minutes four or five times a week.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
If you consume fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. No amount of adapting can get around that.
If only it were that easy. Metabolism varies depending on what you do, and what you eat. It can vary as much as 700 calories for people with similar body composition. That is, I may look exactly the same as you, and exercise the same amount, but I can eat 700 calories more than you each day without gaining weight. Furthermore it varies within the same person.
And that is ignoring body composition and nutrition. If you have a high sugar diet, you can still lose weight if you eat few calories, but you will not be very health. You want to lose weight in a way that makes you more healthy, not less healthy.
These are problems that can be overcome, of course, but claiming it is a simple inequality is ignoring a number of complications, tautological, and not particularly helpful.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Consider changing your diet. Maybe eat less sugar, eat more broccoli and spinach, or something (I have no clue what your diet is, so I can't give you any real advice, but if you keep experimenting, you'll get something). If you drink sugared sodas, switch to diet (or water, better). You do need a lot of fat in your diet (20-25%), but watch out for food like McDonald's, some of which has 50-60% fat. If you eat that kind of thing too often, you'll run into trouble. 15% protein, and the rest carbohydrates is a decent starting balance. Try eating more fruit. These are all generic pieces of advice that work for some people.
Most programs that result in healthful weight-loss include a dietary adjustment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
by burning fewer calories: your metabolism slows down as you lose weight. Imagine you have an identical twin. You're both the same weight now, but until 6 months ago your twin weighed 10% more than you; 6 months of dieting got him down to your weight. Now to stay the same weight as you, he'll have to eat several hundred calories per day less than you. Even if you both have exactly the same daily routine. His metabolism adapts to weight loss by slowing down and burning fewer calories. Not only that, appetite hormones react to significant weight loss by adjusting to levels normally associated with starvation.
This was the key for me a few years back. Don't drink calories. No soda, no iced coffee, no milkshakes. Just water/coffee/tea.
Studies show the muscle burning calories at rest thing is mostly a myth. The only exercise that really directly affects weight loss is cardio - real cardio. My metabolism switches over to fat burning after about 28 km of running.
What exercise DOES do is suppress appetite (yeah, it doesn't seem like it does, but the constant boredom snacking adds up). People who get some exercise seem to almost automatically start eating healthier too.
I do both cardio (of the marathon variety) and gym-type strength building. A two to three hour a day gym workout doesn't have anything like the weight control effects of even forty or fifty km a week of running.
Love it or hate it, you can tell that most of what they do on the biggest loser is HIIT(though they rarely come out and say it). They make the people go relatively fast on the treadmills, do pretty intense but short weight lifting routines etc, and yet they very rarely do anything long distance steady pace(like a 10k or half marathon etc) on the show. There is probably a reason for that, the HIIT is much more effective at burning fat than doing long sustained exercises are.
Monstar L
It is a *risk factor* it is not a *precursor*. Get the terms right.
People that tend to enough abdominal fat to be of any concern are not actually fit. We are not talking about extra 2 or 3in here.
I have been on a HIIT program as well as my usual workout for about a month, and I have already lost 10 pounds.
I've made a point of exercising a lot lately
OK, I really don't mean this to be rude, but what do you consider "a lot"? For example, some people consider walking or yoga to be exercise. That's a start, but it's pretty low on the calories-per-unit-of-time scale. Swimming is one of the highest, as is cross-country skiing and cycling.
If you have tried running but found it to bore you out of your skull, I would heartily suggest Ultimate Frisbee - the people can be really cool (it's a sport started by hippies, so it tends to appeal to a somewhat more friendly crowd), it's a no-intentional-contact sport, and the action will keep you distracted.
Yep, it doesn't take long to notice a change in strength and endurance!
but I'm just as fat as I ever was. At least I'm not gaining any more weight... still undesirably obese though.
Make sure you're exercising in the right heart rate zone - the kind that burns fat is actually pretty low effort. A heartrate monitor, even a really cheap one, will help.
Beyond that, it's a fairly simple equation of calories burned versus calories consumed. Portion control is the name of the game. Lots of studies have found eating a good breakfast will help with through-the-day appetite issues. Nancy Clark's Nutritional Guidebook is a pretty decent read, with a lot of good generation nutritional advice (the short version: eat breakfast, eat enough carbs, eat dairy, don't overeat protein, and eat lots of different colors of foods.)
Also, from someone who got into a lot of exercise/active stuff in the last couple of years: avoid over-use issues and boredom by doing a few different activities. For example: bike, swim, walk/jog, etc. I did a lot of running to start with and had tons of issues with my joints and tendons. When I switched to a bit of biking and running around and swimming, the overuse issues disappeared.
Please help metamoderate.
The vast majority of people could be told to do HIIT twice a week for 20 seconds, and they still wouldn't do it, except for maybe once or twice. They'd come up with some excuse why not: It hurts too much, I'm too tired, I forgot, I have too much else to do, etc etc etc. People won't exercise unless they have an open-ended reason to do so -- and "to be healthier" is too vague a reason to keep people motivated. The most common reason to "get in shape" is to attract the opposite sex -- and it's also the worst reason you can use, because it's not open-ended, and it is ultimately self-defeating: You either lose weight and get in decent shape, attract a mate, and then lose your motivation because you've reached your "goal", or you give up on the whole idea because you decide that you aren't going to succeed at attracting the opposite sex no matter what you do. The best reason to exercise regularly? Because there is a sport you're interested in training for, especially an endurance sport like running or cycling. If you're training properly for an endurance sport, you can't help but to lose excess weight through sheer calorie burning and through the proper diet that goes with it. But even if it's not an endurance sport, as I said above you'll do better if you have an ongoing, open-ended reason to exercise and eat healthier.
By the way, this is coming from someone who at one point weighed around 320 pounds and had very bad knees. I now weigh about 200 pounds and road race bicycles and get top-10 finishes. If I can do it, everyone should be able to do it -- if you have the proper motivation.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I think we need to be careful with this sort of thing. Animals tend to undergo very extreme exercises in the wild when running from and chasing each other (predators and prey), they run faster than us humans and are stronger than us, yet their lifespan is shorter than ours. All that abuse on their bodies, the fact that they are built strong and designed to run faster for longer periods of time and carry more weight and take more severe hits, has its negative aspects to it as well. Likewise, putting too much pressure on your car engine can cause more breakdowns in opposed to driving it regularly at a normal speed. Sure, your body will adjust to compensate for what it perceives to be a need to be faster and stronger (lose weight, gain muscle) but that's not to say this comes at no expense.
It's said to refute nonsense claims people make. It's not even in disagreement with what you said. If I burn 2,500 cal a day and you 3,200/day and we both eat 2,400 a day, you're going to lose a lot faster than I am. The simple claim is that if you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. It IS that simple. Yes, restricting your calories can cause your body to adapt. That simply resets the number, it doesn't invalidate the fact. If I cut back on calories and drop to 2,300 cal a day, eating 2,400 isn't going to work anymore. My personal choice is not to restrict calories, but to exercise more, but I'm still playing the same inequality. I may eat 2,600/day, but I burn 3,000/day.
People want simple cures. They want to look fit without exercising. They want to lose weight while eating like a pig. It's simply not going to happen. If people would accept this and just do what is necessary, the US wouldn't have a 33% obesity rate.
The simple claim is that if you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. It IS that simple.
It sounds simple, but unless you have your body hooked up to a calorimetry laboratory, it's hard to know how many calories you've burned in a day.
People want simple cures.
That's basically what you're prescribing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The way I read this is, they want me to go from normal heartrate to 90% of max in an instant? My maxpulse is probably in the 19x range (haven't tested for 3 years, but last time I hit 202). Getting to 150 is fairly easy in a short timeframe, 160-170 need a bit of workup - 180+ requires my body being under heavy load and then pushing for that burst; and there is no fucking way you go at 90% of your max pulse for 1 minute 10 times, without being in damned good shape - or your breakfirst is coming up...
Considering that (depending on which survey you choose to believe) your average American spends somewhere between 2.4 and 5.0 hours a day watching television, I generally don't believe someone when they say they don't have time to exercise.
When someone in a modern nation says they don't have time to exercise, what they are really saying is that their physical health is not very important to them. This is true whether you work 10 hours a week or 80. The extra money is not likely to buy you a new cardiovascular system.
Being physically healthy is not something you can push a button to get to. Whether it is through interval training, endurance training whatever, just having fun being active, you have to devote significant & consistent amounts of time to it - it has to become part of your life, not just a 'thing' you do to keep the fat off and the potato chips flowing. If you don't find a way to enjoy it and bring it into your life in a meaningful way, you'll get tired of it and quit.
Personally, I think the way to get people active is to make it fun - integrate it into social activities, play with a team, track your stats, do endurace travelling, bike to and from work with friends, hike through different parks on different days, rock-climb, kayak, surf, swim, whatever gets you going, where you want to spend MORE time doing it, not less. There is a native joy to being active that has been neglected. Remembering and capturing this joy at physical exertion, rather than concentrating on minimizing the time you need to 'suffer' exercise, I think would bring more people into it
True. My solution was just to weigh myself every day immediately after waking up and take a 2 week moving average. If the average wasn't holding around -5 pounds/month, I'd eat a little less or exercise a little more. I don't need to know the exact number, I just need evidence the balance is tipped the right way.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it. It's conceptually simple, but hard to execute. I hate being hungry. I like running in moderation, but whenever I commit to a serious distance or fitness goal, it honestly becomes a real pain in the ass. Even a short run costs me an hour (dress, run, shower after). Long runs are a couple hours, so you're basically planning your weekend around them.
Call it what you will, though, we have never had more experts willing to tell us the simple, easy way to get in shape, and we've never been fatter.
It looks it is already applied at Kieser training fitness centers, very popular in Germany and gaining momentum worldwide.
http://www.kieser-training.com/en/training/training-principles/
True. My solution was just to weigh myself every day immediately after waking up and take a 2 week moving average. If the average wasn't holding around -5 pounds/month, I'd eat a little less or exercise a little more. I don't need to know the exact number, I just need evidence the balance is tipped the right way.
It's great that it's so easy for you, but you probably had a good dietary balance to begin with. A lot of people eat too much fat, or too much protein (I got caught in that trap for a while), and even though you can lose weight like that, you feel horrible, and not healthy at all. You end up worse than if you'd stayed at a higher weight.
Call it what you will, though, we have never had more experts willing to tell us the simple, easy way to get in shape, and we've never been fatter.
lol true dat.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In Denmark, scientists at a university showed that running a program called 10-20-30, which is basicly 30 sec slow run, 30 sec higher speed, and 10 secs all out for 5-10 reps was giving a speed boost for experienced 5k runners on 5k distance. The problem was, that the experienced runners were missing the longer runs.
Since 10 secs all out is easier, than the long intervals found in the US, this would be easier to get people to do. and 10-20-30 is an easy catch phrase for the program. I have been trying it a few times myself, and it does give something, but it is also boring. Then I would rather do longger runs with increased speed every few minutes.
This is the minimum? You'd have to be some kind of fitness freak to keep up with this. No way I'm going to keep up with this.
Well, if this is the minimum, I might as well not bother with riding my bicycle to work, and start using my car instead. Well, except that would be too expensive. And forget about swimming once a week, because it won't matter anyway.
Way to kill any fun in exercising for those of us who aren't fitness freaks.
Right, because the people who ate wheat for thousands of years are all wrong.
At least in the middle and northern parts of Western Europe, people eat wheat only for about about one thousand years actually. And if you define "wrong" as "unhealthy", yes they were ;-)
The simple claim is that if you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. It IS that simple.
Yes it's simple but rather useless when you're trying to figure out the details of how stuff works. What you've said is about as enlightening as saying if you don't eat you will lose weight.
Fact is if you eat 2400 calories and "burn" 2400 calories, you will also lose weight.
Because:
1) you won't have enough to maintain the cells that fall off (hair, skin) or are excreted.
2) the bacteria in your digestive system take their cut of the 2400 calories and some of them are excreted.
3) Some of the 2400 calories also get excreted undigested, and this proportion differs depending on the gut flora and the person.
Scientists have found that gut flora affects weight gain (and even insulin resistance, albeit in rats but I'm sure it applies to humans).
Not all calories are the same, a protein calorie is not the same as a carb calorie. There are even different types of proteins, and different types of carbs (google for resistant starch).
Given this you could have two people of the same weight same muscle-fat-bone ratios, eating the same amount of calories, and doing the same exercises, but one could lose weight and the other might gain weight. Might even happen if you have two people with the same weight etc, eating the same stuff, not just same measured calories. Just one happens to somehow shit more often.
I'm just as fat as I ever was
Try cutting out sugars for 3 weeks (other than fresh fruits).
It caused me to drop 60 lbs. If you're like me it will be an arduous 3 weeks, but it's only 3 weeks out of your life, and you may never go back.
I've had people tell me, "I could never do that ... but I'm totally not addicted."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
> 'I don't have time.'
Personally I think that is usually just an excuse, and it is more about motivation (as a test: ask someone who has 'no time' for exercise if they have time for 3x30 minutes great sex a week, and I bet a heck of a lot could 'find' the time for that !!).
here is the problem As the professor says there - almost no amount of exercise will help you to lose weight, it's all about sugar.
You can't handle the truth.
Taxes should subsidize not only automobile roads and sidewalks, but also quiet green alleys, which really lead from point A to point B in the city, and where any kind of motorized traffic is forbidden.
The clothing style of British peasants of the 19th century, i.e. suit & tie, should be strictly limited or banned as an anti-ecological one. The new style of business clothing, light, elegant, ecology friendly, suitable for walking and cycling should be developed and promoted instead.
It is absurd to drive for an hour to a gym to have 40 minutes of exercise there. But if walking and cycling are incorporated into the infrastructure of the society, it would save millions of lives, let alone ecology and oil issues. Americans and people in other countries would start to look again like people, not as giant jellyfishes.
But several minutes of exercise is just too little too late.
Yeah, about that discipline thing... http://www.norcalblogs.com/bullfight/archives/fitness.jpg
Losing weight via exercise requires quite a lot of work. It is doable, and worth doing, but that paper suggests 250 mins/week of fairly intense exercise. That's quite a lot - I get it through running 25 mins/day during the week and a fifteen minute cycle commute, but not everyone has the luxury of being able to find that much time in a week.
[FUCK BETA]
May I suggest you grab a protein shake as soon after exercising as possible
May I suggest to shop around for the protein shakes/tastes? I'm getting something called UltraMeal, and it comes in several flavours: Banana+Ass, Chocolate+SourAss and just plain SourAss (labelled as "Peach").
(i.e. - stay clear of that brand, if you have tastebuds)
Find a health-store that carries various brands, and ask if you can get taste-samples.
On your bike!
I live in England and have a 70 minute commute into London each day by train. I could walk to & from the station but cycle because it's quicker and I don't miss the train so often! It's only a mile on the bike each way, so I didn't expect to feel any health or fitness benefits.
But how wrong I was. Within just a week or two, I was pushing up my speed on the bike, getting into top gear, standing on the pedals, and EXERTING myself. I can feel my fitness improving day by day, and I'm now toned and feel in great shape.
Sure, I ride more gently in the mornings (who wants to start the day hot & sweaty?) but I make the effort in the evenings.
I also use the bike for short trips to the shops, post box, library, etc, and do an occasional longer ride in warmer weather.
That's my sole fitness regime, so no, exercise isn't difficult at all, and certainly not boring. I'm in my early 40s and am maintaining a good build, healthy blood pressure & cholesterol levels, and a weight of 150 pounds. And I eat cakes & drink booze without worrying about calorie counting.
But... I have to admit it's easy for me because I've *never* been over-weight. Perhaps the bigger question we need to answer is how to encourage the obese to exercise? You only have to watch the biggest loser to see how it can be done, but that's that's not the answer to the "obesity crisis". What is?
Also, prevention is better than cure; there's absolutely no excuse for kids growing up obese; this needs tackling urgently.
The clothing style of British peasants of the 19th century, i.e. suit & tie, should be strictly limited or banned as an anti-ecological one. The new style of business clothing, light, elegant, ecology friendly, suitable for walking and cycling should be developed and promoted instead.
No-one wears a tie anymore, that was a 20th century thing. I wear a suit and walk 15 minutes each way to work and it's fine. I keep the fancy shoes at work, and wear runners on my commute.
Right, because the people who ate wheat for thousands of years are all wrong.
I'm sympathetic to this view, but you can't deny that some people have severe gluten intolerance, and I'm willing to believe that the severity of that intolerance covers the whole spectrum from "completely tolerant" through "discomfort and ill health" to "could die".
There are realistic claims that the action of yeast breaks down the compounds in wheat that many people are intolerant of -- but that this takes time. Modern bread products made with high-gluten flour and an artificially rapid rise (Google the Chorleywood process) don't give the yeast long enough for that breakdown to occur. Bread that rises overnight is tastier and better for you.
American need lot of exercise a healthy food for their good health, Do some swings and get-ups once or twice a day, and you'll be fit and trim. It will resistance their decrease. It will help the all scientist.
plastfönster
It looks as if this study shows HIT can take someone with a current grade D and bring them up to a C or C+. I wonder if the same benefits will hold for people already at a B- hoping to make it to B+? Specifically, I wonder if 20 minutes of HIT is best turned into 25 minutes of HIT, or if at a certain base fitness level the paradigm flips back to needing longer, more endurance-based exercise? Hmm...
GeekDad, TED speaker, Wipeout loser, author of Brain Trust
actually works????
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You are seriously over complicating this. Just weight yourself every day and keep track of the calories you eat and the exercise you do outside of your normal activities. Nutrition information can be found on the USDA's website. If you eat packaged food, you can look it up on the package. Buy a small postage scale and weigh everything you eat. Yes, it means avoiding eating in a restaurant for a while (unless they can give you that information).
Keep track of how much exercise you do outside of your daily activities. Once you realize that running a mile burns about 100 calories (a ridiculously small amount in relation to effort), you will realize that your daily activities don't really burn that much energy and will average out to a fairly consistent level. I normally burn 1800 calories in a day if I don't do any outside activity. I'm 44 and not so big, so it's a lot lower than a younger guy. Weighing myself every day and keeping track of my input gives me this information. I only did it for a month or so. After that I pretty much know by looking at stuff approximately how many calories I'm eating.
Calorie guides for virtually any activity you want to mention are on the internet. Again, even burning 100 calories is a fairly significant effort, so small inaccuracies will average out.
The major disconnect most people have is that they see a relatively small item like a muffin and think that it can't make that much difference if they eat it. But it's something like 500 calories and to burn that they have to run 4 or 5 miles. If they eat that muffin every day, their weight increases until the energy required to maintain the added weight evens out (guessing something like 20 pounds). So that muffin represents either running 4 miles a day, or carrying 20 extra pounds. Usually ditching the muffin is the easiest option, which is why dieting works to lose weight initially. (Apart from muffins, the other biggest offender that I've run into is salad dressing -- you think you are being healthy until you realize that you just added 350 calories of salad dressing to your 40 calorie salad, and you would have done a lot better eating a hamburger).
It only takes 10-20 minutes for a workout and you don't need more to be healthy...
Lots of good comments under here. I thought I would add a point or two.
Browse the internet for lists of home many calories your exercise is burning. You may be very surprised at how few calories you are burning (how efficient your body is!!) Running buns 80-120 calories per mile, but most people are around 100 calories or less (the faster you go the more you burn). If you are running 10 minute miles (6 minute kilometers) and you run for 20-30 minutes, you are burning at most 300 calories. About 1 doughnut per day.
If you are obese, that means you have historically been gaining weight. As you gain weight, your resting metabolism increases (it costs to maintain higher weight level). So it is entirely possible that you have been eating an extra 300 calories (a doughnut) above your ideal diet. If you think honestly about it, do you think it is possible that you have been eating more than a doughnut a day above your ideal diet? And if you are running 20-30 minutes a day (or something equivalent), I have found that the activity makes me hungry. It is tempting to reward ourselves with a small snack (like a doughnut).
In other words, it is very easy to actually increase your weight even if you are exercising moderately hard.
The good news is that a pound of fat is about 3500 calories. So if you want to lose 50 pounds in a year (one a week), that's only cutting back 2 or 3 doughnuts a day (after you have gotten to a place where you aren't increasing any more). And if you are running 20-30 minutes a day, as you lose weight it will get easier and easier. It will get more and more fun.
But usually you have to tackle diet *with* exercise to see real weight loss.
One word of warning: You will see people who claim to lose 20 pounds a week or something like that. I like to keep an open mind, but 20 pounds of fat is 70,000 calories. That's 10,000 calories a day. If their resting metabolism is 2000 calories a day and if they eat nothing, they still have to burn 8000 more calories. I guess they run 80 miles a day too.
Yes. It is quite easy to evaluate reasonable claims for weight loss...
It's not actually THAT hard. I mean, it's hard, but it's not an intractable problem.
First, go and find a formula for BMR or RMR. Estimate your daily calorie burn. That's a good basis to start.
Start weighing your food. I do this at least once a year for at least a month at a time. I race bicycles, so there are times where I need to be extremely aware of my intake and output. Now that I'm coming off my off-season, I have to reset my thinking about what constitutes a reasonable meal. Just KNOWING how many calories something has is a big deal. For instance, peanut butter is a killer. 1 Tbsp is about 100 calories. You're actually better off eating a handful of chocolate chips from a strictly caloric standpoint.
You can get tools to help you. You can go to a gym with a body fat and metabolism measurement system. You stand on it, hold some electrodes in your hands, and it measures your weight, fat composition, hydration, and heartrate. It makes an estimate of your BMR based on those factors.
If you've got money to burn, buy a bicycle or bike trainer that can measure your output in watts. Power expenditure on a bicycle is easily measurable (relatively speaking) and directly mappable to calories burned.
Thermodynamics works. It ALWAYS works. You need information to make use of it, but I'm not sure how doing some basic measurements is harder than making arbitrary decisions about exercise and food and hoping that it turns out for the best. There is a moderate amount of effort involved in the measurements, but the frustration factor essentially goes away. You're in control. You know what's going on. It is, actually, easy. What it ISN'T is effortless. They aren't the same.
Man, this is the sort of stuff that we geeks should LOVE. You get to use interesting gadgets, examine and tinker with a system. In the end, you can have measurable results and more opportunities for study and tinkering. Win/win, man.
When respondents say the reason they don't exercise is time, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. I think what they really mean is that their lives are so busy it is too difficult to use that 30 minutes of time you have towards exercise. Suggesting doing intervals is counterproductive. Intervals are painful. If they don't hurt then its not an interval workout. This is what scares people from doing these everyday. Its hard to get out of a warm bed so you can feel pain. Its sucks coming home from work and feeling pain. That's why we should be encouraging lower intensity workouts everyday (instead of hard workouts twice a week). Your mind can relax, and you get a tremendous health benefit from even just 30 minutes of light exercise everyday. If you do it everyday it becomes a habit, part of your lifestyle.
You'll still be fat. 40 minutes of exercise even at 'high intensity' burns an insignificant number of calories.
I've made a point of exercising a lot lately
Define "exercising a lot". There are some forms of exercise that don't burn so many calories, even when you do them intensely, or do them for a long time. If you want a clue as to how effective a particular form of exercise is in changing body shape given some period of daily exercise, then look at the people who do it professionally. A typical pro swimmer tends to have quite a more bulky muscular physique, and will spend maybe 3-4 hours a day in the pool. A typical pro long distance runner will have a slim, toned physique, and run something like 13 miles a day in 65-75 minutes. Cyclists have similar physique to the runners, but will do 5-6 hours a day cycling. Martial artists tend to vary in shape, judo for example being bulkier than karate, but they will also spend several hours a day training in the dojo and doing cardio and weights sessions. My non-scientific conclusion: the slimmest and most toned physique achievable given the minimal hours per day is from some exercise like running. There aren't many forms of exercise where only 70 minutes a day can put you into the elite (or "pro-am") category.
My personal experience pretty much corresponds with the above analysis. I have done many forms of exercise: cycling, swimming, martial arts, running etc. Of these, running was easily the best way to lose weight - I saw 13%-15% mass reduction in 8 months from running 60-90 minutes a day. Like everything, it feels slow and an effort at first, but your body adapts and by the time you are up to 10 miles a day you are starting to feel very fit. Of the other options, cycling is good but for large parts I found I was coasting, which isn't using that many extra calories, swimming (front crawl) is great for upper body exercise, but I found that the limiting factor was not my energy expended but my arms getting tired, martial arts was great fun but it's very stop/start, several minutes of intense activity seperated by much longer periods of observation and learning. My real world conclusion is that running is one of the optimal exercises when considering the calories likely to be expended per hour by the average person. It is also easily the most accessible: you just need a pair of trainers, and you can do it 24 hours a day. All other forms were less accessible, requiring more equipment, or being constrained to certain times that training facilities were open.
people always want to know what percent is exercise and what percent is diet when it comes to health. It's 100% exercise and it's 100% diet. HIIT is an amazing form of cardiovascular exercise but it won't help much if the person continues to maintain a 10 Kcal a day diet.
I had to laugh at this.. because it's the truth.
I use Optimum Nutrition's natural whey protein, and when I first started everybody I spoke with said "oh, that stuff tastes great!".. More like, tastes tolerable. And yeah, before I went with the stuff I use now, I had tasted some truly egregious stuff.
I have noticed that improvements leave quickly when doing interval training for some time then stopping. The cardio goes way down, almost even worse then when you started, until you start back up again, I do not know if this is related to interval or just exercise in general, or an age thing, but I would be interested in seeing this being studied in conjunction with interval training.
The problem with American eating habits is almost surely the massive amounts of CALORIES we take in. Asian diets consist of rice (carb) as the primary calorie source. The difference is in quantity. I've seen too many fad diets, like South Beach and Atkins. It isn't some silver bullet. It's not carbs, or proteins, or fats. It's calories. There are dozens of calculators online that will tell you how many calories (roughly) you burn in a day in general, without exercise. Make what you eat less than that, and you will lose weight. Eat exactly, or slightly more than the resting caloric intake, and exercise, and you will lose weight. I agree, that some of our eating habits encourage overeating. Simple carbs get burned up quickly, and leave us feeling hungry. Sugary drinks are quick easy calories that don't do much for taking away hunger. But the root is truly calories.
While in general I agree with you, my own experience tells a different tale. I currently weigh about 20 lbs more than I did about a year and a half ago when I switched jobs. This new job is about an hour commute each way from where I live now compared to about the 30 minute commute that I had before. I would say that my diet hasn't really changed too much from then.
What did change was certainly my exercise regimen. At the old job, I would play racquetball twice a week for at least an hour. Occasionally I would get out to play tennis after work as well. I was also going on hour long bike rides on Saturdays pushing myself pretty hard. I also had a pretty good weight lifting routine. Fast forward to the new job I lost on out on most of the these opportunities to work out after work. One reason being the longer commute and the second being that I work for a much smaller company and just don't have exposure to enough people of similar hobbies to do some of the things mentioned above. And as a result I have added the above weight. I have certainly been making an effort to fix this lately, but it is still difficult to find time with the long commute.
Now I will also admit that i can improve my diet. The Mrs. loves the carbs (pasta, breads, etc.) and she does most of the cooking and menu planning. I get the feeling gives me a look of disdain when I suggest salads even when I think she knows they are the right choice (even I admit that salads are boring). But this is just one battle that I have let her win. Fortunately in the last week or so, she has joined weight watchers which I think has been a bit of an eye opener on what she was eating before. As a plus, it means that she will be cooking more lean meals so I get the benefit too.
You don't say anything about how long you've been exercising, or what kind of exercise you're getting (I hope it includes resistance training). Did you alter your diet? Anyway, significant weight loss is a long road. No way around it.
Ride a BIKE
I smoke, drink, and eat some godawful crap, I'm nearly 30 and I still run up and down stairs two at a time like a ten year old. Because rather than all this pretentious exercise, I go out and play in the mud once a week like god intended!
This fitness freak thing is really getting old. People don't avoid the gym because they are lazy, they avoid it because they DONT WANT TO BE LIKE YOU!
Anecdotal, but my experience perfectly matches this.
I started couch-to-5k three years ago (to gain fitness and lose weight). I never modified my eating habits, but I gradually increased my running until I would run 5-6 miles a day, 2-3 times a week.
I never lost weight.
1 month ago I decided to restrict carbs (and I because I injured my calf I stopped running). I didn't try to restrict calories, watch fat, or do anything except keep as low carb as possible (usually try for under 100 grams, under 50 if possible).
With several cheat days (probably about 1 a week or more), and no exercise, I still lost 18-20 lbs. I can't friggin believe it.
I don't even feel like I have been "trying hard" to diet.
Two months of yoga under an incompetent teacher ended my 20-year-long practice of martial arts. Thankfully, I can still run and do basic lifting (high reps with relatively low weight only though...no heavy lifting with my permanently-messed-up shoulders).
If you want to be flexible, do your stretching after your aerobic exercise. In my experience you can stretch between weight sets without a problem, but keep your stretches within the normal range of motion for your joints, and not to intense. You don't need to be Gumby to be healthy.
For most people- doing forty or fifty km a week will scar heart tissue and cause heart problems later down the line. Cardio is important- but it is also important to use good sense. Weight loss shouldn't just be about vanity. If it is going to cause you medical problems you might as well stay fat. 5km at a time is enough for most people.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The people with the longest life span in the US are rural poor Minnesotans. Why would that be? They get a work out every day by just going outside. When it is minus 20F your heart rate goes way up and you burn calories at a tremendous rate. The death rate from heart disease in Minnesota is also by far the lowest, despite our extra large size.
...is still about 40 minutes a week more than anyone interested in the article is willing to dedicate to health.
Life is all about pain. you either choose physical pain in the gym, or psychological pain from bad health, or pain from electrocuting electrodes from machines that excercise your muscles for you...
The thing that looks like a rowing machine with a bicycle on the back? Range-Of-Motion or something like that?
Someone donated one of those to my last gym. Those were frickin' awesome to use. A few minutes on one of them would kill you but make you feeling much better.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
One summer I was doing 5mi/day without (serious) stretching. That fall soccer season started 12 years of Iliotibial band syndrome, ending only after a combined effort of heavy anti-inflammatory, physical therapy, and acupuncture. I can still feel it coming on if I lay off the daily stretching, so it's a lifetime of recovery for me. I wouldn't wish that pain I experienced on anyone.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
Bull. You're either making excuses or you've been scared by someone else who is. People are meant to run. If you've spent your life not running you need to work up to it, but everyone can do it. There are several running specialist stores around that have clinics that take people from nothing through 5 km runs three times a week (15 km/wk) up to marathon clinics where you're running a 36 on the weekend and a few 15s during the week (80+ km/wk). There are surprisingly few cases of heart scarring (none actually). One of the clinic leaders I met was 74 and I know of several clients who are over sixty and routinely doing half or full marathons.
Weight loss is about health. Being fat IS a medical problem. Reasonable exercise is not going to hurt you (quite the opposite) and the top end of "reasonable" is a LOT higher than most people think.
Most think it is the exercise and weight training that they lose weight with. For some it is but for most it is a few extra calories burned but not the amount that approaches what you lose during the day just living. Diet cannot be overlooked for [healthy] weight loss. It's depressing to see how many calories you burned running for 20 minutes and then realize those are just enough to cover that non-diet cola you had earlier in the day.
You also have to be careful not to eat too few calories under your normal daily usage or you start burning muscle instead of fat which makes the situation worse. It's also why it's generally not a good idea to diet with no exercise at all. You also have to take into account insulin spikes from certain kinds of food vs others as well as many other things.
Losing weight is never simple nor easy.
Find a crossfit gym:
http://www.crossfit.com/
Learn how to move properly:
http://www.mobilitywod.com/
swim/bike/run:
http://www.crossfitendurance.com/
change your diet:
http://whole9life.com/start/
measure your fitness by competing against the entire world:
http://games.crossfit.com/
This is my 3rd year crossfitting. I'm 50. My resting heart rate is 46bpm. I'm down to 8% body fat from 26%. After physicals/blood work my insurance premiums were reduced by 1/3. I recently won the St. Louis Indoor Rowing Championships. I can ride a bicycle 100 miles in 5 hours. I can run 5 miles in 40 minutes. I can lift a shit-load of weight with form, power, and speed. Yeah, Crossfit is the real deal.
Exactly, which is why I'll always take the chance to trash talk the Chair Force for it's PT testing system, where 30% of the score is based entirely on abdominal fat. And that 30% is scored in such an arbitrary manner that you can max or come very close to maxing all the other aspects of the test and still fail. A failure exposing you to being summarily dismissed from service.
When it was a concern for me, less than one whole inch on my waist made the difference between scoring in the mid 80's on the test and failing with a score under 75. I gamed the system by temporarily shrinking my waist so that I could stay in long enough to finish my contract instead of being kicked out.
Do a quick google on "heart scarring endurance".
I get plenty of exercise thank you. I run 5 miles three times a week- do an hour of weights 4 times a week.
Simple fact is- there is a very strong correlation between heart-scarring and endurance running. Maybe it is safe going through clinics and having a full staff of people monitoring you. Do you really think the average person is going to do that?
If anyone is telling you you need to run marathon distances to stay skinny- they are scamming you. If you're doing it because you enjoy it- and a doctor is supervising you- that is fine- but don't do it because some quack is telling you it makes you extra-healthy. Is your clinic mediacally approved- ask you doctor his opinion on your clinic.
Running marathon length runs for the average person on a regular basis is not good. Not trying to be mean or alarmist- but if you're doing that much running just to be skinny you have a medical disorder- that is one form of anorexia and you really need to seek a doctor ASAP.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It isn't easy. It's hard: too hard for most people.
Thus you are burning more calories than I am: enough more to equal or exceed your consumption.
Attempting to deny the existence of that simple inequality avoids the hard truth: you must take in fewer calories than you burn in order to lose weight. Yes, of course the burn rate varies over time and from one individual to another. That's why "x calories per day" diets are crap. There are only two ways to get rid of fat: cut it out or get your body to burn it for energy. The only way to do the latter is to reduce your calorie intake to below your needs (you try to increase your needs, of course, but that is the same thing),
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Diet can certainly help you lose weight, but it won't make you fit. I'd rather be moderately overweight but still capable of taking several flights of steps without getting short of breath than at-weight but winded after a single flight of steps.
Look into Mark's Daily Apple. He was a marathoner. Then, the wear and tear on his body finally got to him.
He started researching, and the info on his blog will tell you what makes you fat.
Here's a brief run down:
Grains (all, but most commonly consumed are oats, wheat (cereal, bread and pasta) and corn (including corn syrup and tortilla chips)
Potatoes (Potatoes are a starchy white carbohydrate)
Sugar
As much as possible, eat Natural meat, and a large variety of vegetables with a few fruits.
I haven't been to a gym in thirty years and I own no exercise machines. I run on the street and work out on the kitchen floor. The only weight I lift is myself.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
And by "save millions of lives" I think you actually mean "prolong millions of lives" and frankly that isn't something we need in the next few decades. Shrinking the Baby Boomer generation by a significant percentage could do wonders for our economic outlook this century. Is there really any concrete reason, other than sentimental ones, to prolong so many lives?
Taking my son to day care on my bike every morning in the hilly place called "Jerusalem" (Israel) does just that.
I go up the hill for a minute and then down, then up&down again and a longer pause to unstrap him and getting him inside. This one side interval training is around 10 minutes. Then back home to take the dog for a walk.
Short, intense bursts with light effort in between?
20 minutes a day?
Twice a week?
BRB interval training/taking a shit.
While you make a good point, as an Asian I have to say there are consequences to the rice diet. Diabetes. Modern Asian life expectancy is pretty high now, but during the times when rice diets were out of necessity..dying young was common.
Rice is a heavy component, even for westernized Asians, because it is what we are used to culturally. Our families came from very poor or rural backgrounds where it was a cheap source of calories. My girlfriend, also asian, has a family member diagnosed with diabetes nearly every few months.Compound that with western lifestyle and its pretty bad. tl;dr -- The smart and healthy Westernized Asians with access and financial capability will choose a diet with less rice and carbs too. high fiber veggies fill you up like rice, but with less calorie impact.
I've been finding http://www.bodyrock.tv/ a very effective routine with engaging presenters. I'm not associated in any way with bodyrock other than enjoying their workouts. There are also some pretty good ad supported interval timers available for android to get you up and running quickly; that coupled with a rucksack with some bags of rice in it suffice for most of their exercises.
The ON whey had some flavors that were relatively tasty that I would drink on their own (if not for the fact that as a plain beverage and not a post workout supplement they are horribly bad for you so it would be a bad idea to acquire too much of a taste for them). I think it was Chocolate Mint that was the best...and it was best mixed with milk.
Then there is the cookies and cream Muscle Milk. This one I honestly have consumed a few times as a straight beverage....will probably never buy it since it is expensive as far as protein shakes go and the temptation to drink it for the taste would be too high.
Bottles.
I now pretty much only drink black coffee, tea, water, and the occasional diet coke outside of times when I am consuming alcohol...but now I think my metabolism and food consumption have about equalized and I no longer have an easy target to cut from the diet.
Bottles.
By this definition, a good bout of healthy sex qualifies. Get your woman and have at with vigor a few times a week and you should be in good shape. Of course this being for the sake of your health, there can be no slacking! Whether you you feel like it or not you have to get to it! And no cutting the workout short either. You have to put forward that extra effort that made America great.
You don't need to know that. Weigh yourself. If you are trying to lose weight and a week goes by during which you don't lose half a kilo eat less.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> What exercise DOES do is suppress appetite
Certainly true for me. If I run my two miles in the late morning (finishing with a sprint) I find myself eating a light lunch without having to exert any self-discipline. I don't feel nauseated or anything: I'm just not as hungry.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I've just got home late, am reading slashdot and have a beer. This post could have been written for me... However, I would prefer - "Scientists find the coffee increases heart rate, eliminating the need for exercise."
The question of how little exercise is needed for the beneficial effects was asked scientifically by Arthur Jones, inventor of the Nautlius workout equipment. It was further refined by bodybuilder Mike Mentzer who was a Jones acolyte. The books Body by Science and Congruent Exercise is a relatively up to date compilation of what Jones observed over his career. Also, the concept of intervals was made popular by a Japanese researcher named Tabata, who observed that anaerobic training improved aerobic capacity, whereas aerobic training did not improve anaerobic capacity. That is, anaerobic metabolism drives aerobic metabolism.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
I hear this all the time, largely from people who have never been "medically inconvenienced" by anything.
It is true that something has to kill you, sure. But you know, most people imagine death like a light-switch. Something that happens all the sudden while you are busy doing other things.
The truth is that light-switch deaths are rare and usually the result of external trauma.
Real death. Normal gruling death, takes time. And death from things like colon cancer and the side effects from morbid health problems can take from minutes of anony to months of agony intersperced wiht profound inconvenience.
Once you get hemiroids and the other effects of age you will one day go "oh....!" but by then you will be well on the road to your chosen gruesome death.
For instance, smoking... sure... something's gotta kill you. But it isn't going to be like "I took that last drag and it was one too many" it's more "oh, so a year ago I had to have my larynx chopped out and now I eat with a tube and cannot swallow so I always feel like I am drowning in my own spit, but at least I can look forward to immune system colapse soon so I can -actually- drown in my own lung-phlegm." (not actually happening to me etc, just an example, in case you didn't understand.)
Yep... something's got to kill you... might as well be (whatever you don't care to fix just now) there little wippersnapper. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Do your part. Shorten yours.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Interval training has long been show to produce great results. Just look at the tabata study - where on;y 4 minutes of intense exercise are needed.
20 seconds of effort followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times. The exercise should be intense and the recovery is short to increase lactic acid build up.
Suitable exercises would be sprints (not on a treadmill), stationary bike, dumbbell thrusters.
> I no longer have an easy target to cut from the diet.
Alcohol. And snacks.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I found some actual research showing that there might be some heart damage in people who regularly run marathon and ultra marathon distances, over long periods of time. And some editorials and pop science pieces implying that exercise is bad for you. What was your point?
Yes, lots of average people take running clinics. That's what they're for.
Anyway, you seem to have completely missed my point in your eagerness to bash distance running. I said that only long distance running or similar cardio is going to actually help you lose weight on exercise alone. With anything else your main effect is going to come from diet.
I am, one twinkie at a time... Okay, I haven't actually eaten a twinkie in decades.
But I still wonder why we feel the need to evangelize other people into extending their lifetimes through exercise. Especially when they don't appear to be willing to do it on their own. I can see the issue of people who have hormone imbalances and such where they are not able to stay fit and trim without medical intervention. We should be trying to help them, but most of us are just too lazy and apathetic to care personally for ourselves. So where does it fall onto others to push for it?
... and I don't disagree at all with the sentiment that diet is the main way to lose weight and it takes a lot of cardio (such as running) to duplicate weight loss.
My only area of concern was if someone in internet-land read the thread and took from it- "if I run mini-marathons on a regular basis I can lose weight." Whereas that is true, and they can- it can also be long-term dangerous if they don't approach doing so from a sensible, scientific and medically approved manner.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I apologize. I didn't mean to glorify the rice diet, but rather use it as a counter point to the "carb" myth.
You do adapt. Have a restrictive diet and your metabolism will burn less.
HIIT and sprint/shot training is great and all, but most people will quickly shrug it off (or try it for a little while and quit it). Many (I'd argue most) people equate exercise to work, and many people hate work. Instead, most people envy those with fast metabolisms (even in they're "skinny fat" and are, on average, about as healthy as someone pushing obesity) and attempt to copy their lifestyles by becoming skinny with as little work and time investment as possible without changing eating patterns.
It's the same reason why microwave ownership exploded and is the raison d'etre for the oil change and car wash businesses, amongst many other things. Most people would rather pay a heap of money for other people to do the easy, simple things they can't/don't want/don't have time to do than take the few minutes and do it themselves. If people could pay other people to manage their own weight and make them look good, they would; a $60B strong weight-loss market proves this. It's not entirely their fault; it's very, very difficult to make time for things with work, kids and wife around unless the body is put first and foremost.
To make matters worse, a lot of people who try to lose weight or "look good for the beach" have horribly unreasonable plans for getting there. ("Looking good for the beach/girls/Facebook" feeds into that.) If many people (I'm tempted to say most) didn't think they could lose 30 pounds in 30 months or get rock-hard solid abs (and nothing else!) in a few weeks, then things like the South Beach diet and P90X would have failed immediately. It doesn't help that lots of parents, who were also very busy and didn't make the time to care for their bodies, didn't make the time to teach their kids proper eating habits and forewent breakfast and simple, reasonably-portioned dinners for McDonald's and frozen TV dinners. (The biggest irony about most people's weight-loss ideologies is that instead of eating the most sugary, fattening crap at breakfast time when their bodies need it the most, they make breakfast the lightest meal of the day and eat heavier as the day progresses! Willing to bet it's all because skipping breakfast became a habit.)
Staying in good shape and good weight isn't rocket science and isn't something made exclusive to sports professionals and Olympians. (Funny enough, a lot of these people have HUGE problems maintaining their figure post-career. Michael Jordan and Greg LeMond are kind of fat now, for example.) Eating reasonable portions appropriate to workload and moving around a bit are all that's needed to NOT gain weight. Moving around a LOT and/or eating reasonably is the way to lose weight, and working, stressing and RECOVERING muscles is the way to gain muscle. (Lots of dudes hit the gym and over-stress their bodies with barely enough sleep to let their muscles recover and grow.)
That's it. It's so easy, but is a HUGE mental challenge for lots of people.
Disclaimer: I lost 30 pounds from biking and walking a lot, dropped 3" from my waistline and have been able to keep it off for the last 4 years now. My metabolism isn't naturally great, but I don't think I've ever gained holiday weight.
The problem is that evolution did not create in us the upper limit for eating. 99.99% of its history time humans lived in hunger. So there was no need to limit food consumption. Besides hunger made people to move incessantly in search for food for millions of years.
It turned out to be a major fault during the new era of automatic production. It is so easy to fell victim of this deficiency in our internal design.
Why not to help, for example, a kid who got heavily overweight without even understanding - why? Especially, if by helping him, say, by creating and integrating infrastructure for walking and cycling, we help ourselves.
Having exercised for several years, and being in fairly good shape, I have found that the cure to obesity lies in what you do in the kitchen, not in the gym.
Bodyweight fitness is all you need. If you don't have access to a gym, you can still get a great workout and keep your bones and joints healthy with nothing more than a wall and a bar to hang from.
http://myconvictconditioning.blogspot.com/