Friday, February 20, 2015

So I've heard you'd like to burn the fat off

It won't be easy 

But I'm sure you already know that. Burning fat is something we all want to do. And by burning fat I mean burning fat off on only specific places. For women that's thighs and buttocks and for men it's stomach area. And you need to get your heart rate right, too. But I'll talk about heart rate in few seconds.
So, like already mentioned, burning fat is not that simple. First off you need to set your diet straight. Avoid fat and sugar as much as possible. Use fat burning heart rate calculator and calculate your ideal heart rate for fat burning.
That would be step 1 and step 2. After that it get's a bit easier. You need to start exercising.

Exercising

Why exercising when you can sit back and watch television? Well, if you'd like that than your six pack will never be visible. Unless you're a genetic freak and have a very good metabolism. Body fat plays an important role here. Also, you will need to assess your basal metabolic rate (BMR) to see where you fit.

A study has been made on this topic. If you go to the original study you'll find one glaring omission. The group that had breakfast before exercise were given carbohydrates prior, during and after exercise. The fasting group only received them in the afternoon. Ingestion of carbohydrate prior to exercise shifts working metabolism to glucose metabolism due to the interference of insulin. Insulin, an anabolic hormone will prevent the body from utilizing free fatty acids as an energy source during exercise. Consult the first paragraph on carbohydrate metabolism in a textbook of work physiology. So it wasn't whether the subjects worked out fasting or not. It depended upon what was ingested prior to exercise.

Give the non fasting group nuts or peanut butter 30 minutes prior to exercise and re do the study. You will likely see a shift to fat metabolism as an energy source due to the use of triglycerides /fatty acids. Glute 4 transfer proteins become much more active in this situation.

I just had a thought. Many people use this study to argue that exercise might help with maintaining weight but not weight loss. 

Perhaps exercise doesn't usually lead to weight loss when people are *stuffing* themselves like they were in this study- that is eating more food than is normal. Exercise can often prevent or at least limit weight gain under this circumstance, but it usually won't lead to weight loss. Perhaps if they had two additional groups that kept to the diet they had been eating and had that group increase their exercise while not increasing their intake.

Surely, they would have lost weight.

They could have one group who exercises first thing in the morning and another who exercises after breakfast. Of course, keep the over-feeders in both the before and the after breakfast groups as well. And have a sedentary group that gorges, one that continues eating normally and a group that cuts their calories. In studies which produce weight loss by exercise, they often have a group that is "exercise without weight loss"- this group increases their exercise AND their intake. This would be the equivalent of this study. Studies in which people increase their exercise but continue eating at the level that maintained their weight before they increased their exercise usually lose weight. 

That would be it for now.

Monday, February 09, 2015

My first post in 2015

This is my first post in 2015. 


Quite late, to be honest. Anyways, here are my values for 2015. And I plan on carrying them on through the year.
  1. lose weight
  2. lose body fat
  3. get in shape
  4. run 1000 km in 1 year
The last one is a bit optimistic one, but hey, plans must be optimistic. It's the only way you can achieve something. Otherwise you do not overdo yourself.

1. I will lose weight
That's number 1. But it is harder done that said. My genetics aren't that good. I have to work hard in order to achieve this.
2. Body fat will be shredded. 
3. Point 1 and 2 will take care of point 3.
4. I will try to run 1000 km which in turn means almost 10 kilometer run every second days. Seems hard, but will try to do it.

So, let's get back to work.