Posted on 08/17/2009 10:30:29 AM PDT by BellStar
As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I'll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I'll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is "body wedge" class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
There is a difference between being thin and being in shape.
If you want to get thin, do like some women, smoke a pack a day.
When I was overweight, I could run flat-out for pretty much as long as I wanted, above the recommended heart rate. Never lost weight doing it. Running is way overrated.
Both help. Exercise and diet together are my secrets to having a youthful, lithe, strong body in my mind forties. One without the other has never brought long term results as much as the combination. This article is really lacking a full spectrum picture. I love how you mention ALL the exercise you did and then said it was the food. It is about calories in and calories out. They work together. Your comment is a good example.
“When I was overweight, I could run flat-out for pretty much as long as I wanted, above the recommended heart rate”
I meant to add: on those eliptical machines in the gym. I find it somewhat more taxing to run on the real ground.
LOL. Good point.
Here it is:
Diet and exercise go hand in hand. Trying to lose weight on just one or the other usually gets minimal results.
That is probably one of the best ways to demonstrate the differnce between reducing intake and burning intake.
If you want to get thin, do like some women, smoke a pack a day.
OR
Do what the hollywood celebs do.....snort coke..
Rush Limbaugh said it best when he was dieting, and I paraphrase: You don’t lose weight by exercising. You lose weight by consuming fewer calories than your body burns.
If your weight is stable and you start running a couple of miles a day, without changing your diet, you WILL lose weight. This goes for working out as well. And if you build muscle with these activities, your body will be consuming more calories for the simpler reason that muscle consumes calories, and the more muscle you have, the more calories you consume, all other things being equal.
More accurate: Why Exercise ALONE Won’t Make You Thin
What is this wonderful piece of equipment you ask? I shall tell you.
The Couch Machine!
Its like Bowflex, but better!
I notice the meat of the article goes counter to the headline. Most of their exercisers eat, and eat junk, after the exercise. Yes diet is an important part of the equation, but exercise CAN help you drop weight as long as you don’t take the diet soda drinker approach (”I exercise/ drink diet soda so now I can eat that extra BigMac and apple pie”). It’s got to be part of a whole body whole mind whole life change.
I've been running 1000 miles a year for 15 years. I started out at 205 pounds and I quickly brought my weight down to 165 pounds which I have maintained.
I still eat like a pig.
There are always exceptions.
Have you seen Michael Phelps “diet”.
He chows down about 12,000 calories a day and most of it is junk food because, if you tried to eat 12,000 calories of salads, you would probably explode your stomach.
Most people have no idea what their exact caloric intake is and absolutely no idea what the macro-nutrient breakdown is for what they eat throughout the day.
I’ve gained weight while weight lifting and I’ve lost it rapidly while weight lifting. It all depends on knowing what your body’s metabolic rate is and knowing exactly what you’re eating.
It really is basic physics at work, but you have to do your homework to be successful at controlling body compostion.
Yes. Your body burns more calories when you exercise AND when you eat less.
That’s Olympic Athlete training...whole different ballgame. Not to mention his age! (Yes, I’m jealous!)
Weight loss is best achieved by restricting calories, plain and simple. For ALOT of people, this alone would go far in making them healthier, simply because so many people are obese.
Exercise is great, however, in that it adds its own benefits, and if you REALLY want to change your shape, you need to do some kind of resistance exercise to shape, tone, and grow the muscles.
As am I! 110 lbs. since October 2007! Diet is ABSOLUTELY THE #1 problem with the obesity epidemic, but eating healthier is only part of the equation. With exercise added to the mix, that fat loss is catalyzed ten-fold, and you don't get into the "I'm eating rabbit food but not losing weight" mentality and slip back into bad habits.
If two people cut their diets back to lean meats, lots of veggies and fruit, healthy fats, and low to no carbohydrates, they'll lose weight at a constant rate. If one of those people exercises for 30 minutes a day (walking around the block with the dog, swimming, riding a bike), they'll lose weight MUCH faster, and the person doing diet-only will look at them and think, "Gee, this doesn't work for me, I'm ordering General Tso's chicken tonight! Woe is me!"
I only know this, because I struggled for 15 years trying to lose weight with exercise alone, and I can attest that until I stopped eating 1 large cheese pizza every week, a gallon of ice cream, three to six twelve packs of ultra light beer a week, etc., I didn't shed a single pound. And sure, I chalked up the weight gain to muscle mass but the mirror tells the true story. B-cup man boobs and a 46 inch waist trimmed to no man boobs and a 38 inch waist... those are my trophies.
that’s about 2.7 miles/day, correct?
It doesn’t matter what I eat or don’t eat. If I don’t exercise, I blow up like a balloon, not a look that I like. When I broke my foot last year I gained 15 pounds and I had to up the exercise to get rid of it as soon as it healed. It’s like brushing your teeth, you just have to do it.
yeah, and he burns at least 12,000/day. most of us burn about a 10th of that i would say.
I run about 6.5 miles three times a week. I ws up around 7.0 miles three times a week but I'm getting old.
My excercise/diet routine:
1) Hershel Walker workout—5,000 pushups a week in sets of 80
2) 30 miles a week at a 10:50 clip
3) 9 hours on the elliptcal machine
4) 1/2 hour of daily stretching
5) various weight training throughout the week
I love to excercise and look forward to it DAILY!!
Diet:
1) lean meats,fruits, and veggies
2) Less ingredeints the better
3) I avoid starchy carbs
4) ...and I take a two meals a week and eat whatever the hell I am craving.
However, according to the BMI charts,I measure a 25 which makes me overweight...
The real lesson from the Michael Phelps diet is why athletes get fat 5 minutes after they retire. Unless he’s very studious he’s going to keep eating like that after he hangs up the trunks, and gain about 20 pounds a month.
It must be different for different people. Years ago, I taught aerobic dance 5 days a week. I ate whatever I wanted, and I kept my weight at 117 with 17% body fat. Literally, I ate ANYTHING in ANY amount. My diet was terrible. I quit teaching aerobics and stopped exercising. My weight ballooned. I have lost weight in years since then dieting, but it’s difficult to keep off.
I think it’s likely a combination, and calories do matter, however metabolisms are so different that some people CAN eat more calories than others and not gain the same amount of weight.
Light exercise probably doesn’t help much, for most people (altho it certainly doesn’t hurt).
i do plyometrics/kenpo/yoga as well as lacrosse leagues to keep my cardio up.
diet is extremely important though. when i eat like crap, i can see it.
According to the NY Post, the Olympic swimming sensation eats... 12,000 calories per day.
Here’s what a days food intake looks like:
...three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.
He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.
At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.
For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.
Apparently he “washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks
Fat doesn’t start to burn off fat until you have been working hard for about 3 hours. That is when your sugar reserves are gone. Watch “The Biggest Loser” on TV and you will see them working their butts off (literally) as they burn 6000-7000 Calories a day but take in only 1500.
I combine exercise with eating and drinking. Lifting the donuts to my mouth and chewing is a lot of work. Also, always keep your beer glass full so that you lift more on each swig.
It all depends on knowing what your body’s metabolic rate
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How do you measure metabolic rate?
Yes diet is important. I would say it's half the battle.
There's the money line...and that's what I meant by Olympic Athlete TRAINING. I'll will give you that it seems like an unorthodox diet, but given the results, who am I to argue with it?
Uh...I'm not sure where you got that notion but it's wrong.
Yeah, going hard for 3 hours is going to put your body in a catabolic state. That is not good, unless you want to be a stick with no muscle mass whatsoever.
Lydia - I broke my foot last fall, too. And I live in a hillside home with many stairs. Unfun, to say the least! I cut back on my calories and still gained weight. It is obvious to me that exercise and proper diet go hand in hand.
Oh, sure. But litheness is the leading cause of jelliness in the spelling center of the brain. Always the first to go. ;^)
I eat 12,000 calories a day but really don’t like to move much.
Coupla grams of Pink Peruvian Flake a day will make you thin as a willow.
If you want to get thin, do like some women, acquire a bad meth and heroin habit.
I made a spreadsheet to do the calculations, but here’s the breakdown of it:
BMR= 66+(6.165 x weight in lbs.)+(12.7 x height in inches)-(6.8 x age)
Then take the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and multiply by activity level:
1 -Sedentary-(do nothing all day but eat potato chips and watch TV)
1.2 -Very Light- (desk job, no training, some walking)
1.4 -Light (no training, job might require some light physical labor)
1.6 -Moderate -(a physically undemanding job, but training on a regular basis)
1.8 -High - (daily training plus a somewhat physically active job or lifestyle)
2 -Very High -(twice-a-day training, sports + training. or training + a very demanding job)
BMR x activity level = daily Energy Expenditure (DEE)
This will give you the amount of calories you will burn through during a day. Once you know this, you can have a good idea at what caloric levels will enable weight gain or loss.
The article that lays all of this out can be found here:
Congratulations!
I’m down 50lbs since January now sitting in the low 190’s and a 34 inch waist but cannot seem to lose the last 15 lbs and associated love handles.
I run 5 miles 3 times a week and lift on the other days. I eat 6 meals a day and try to stay around 1500 to 1800 calories a day.
Those last few pounds are a bitch...
I would have to really cut back to get to 12,000 cal/day. I don't think I am ready to make that kind of sacrifice.
It's not hard; just lose 5 cheesecakes and the steaming hot gallon of bacon grease.
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