The dreaded belly

yeah.. I can see it.... ''audiophile fat club'' !!

 

I foresee endless arguments over the best in-ear headphones and encoding methods for use on ipods while exercising...

 

LOL

 

Ditto

Actually, just been there too. After years of old-style in-ear and then the more recent further-in-ear style using various sources I finally succumbed to an MP3, a Sony Walkman NW-A3000. I love it. I'm ripping everyting at 352kb, got a mix of about 500 tracks so far of classical, jazz, rock, world, latin & all sorts on there and used about 6gb, got another 12gb to play with. Based on forum reocmmendations I bought Senn PX100 at the same time. Brilliant headphones, clever folding out, case to protect them, comfortable as they're light on-ear design and I'm amazed at just how good they osund, I prefer them to all the in-ear phones I have and don't fell the temptation to go for expensive Etymotics, Shure or Stax SR-001 as a result. At £20 more easily replaceable too should they get damaged or pinched.

They just might get me back into a gym although whether running, cycling, rowing or anything else, there's just no substitute for doing it properly. When my hefty weight wa sout of the saddle yesterday in 42 x 23, heart rate at 180 and counting pedal revolutions, lower back smarting, it came to mind that if I were in the gym there is no way I would put in this level of effort.

The scales are my friend this morning. They're telling me that in a two weeks, my weight is down from 16.5st to 16st. Cycling muscles I have not seen for years are returning and if I just keep the routine going it looks like it's going to achieve what I have hoped for.

 

I think i'll give this a chance before trying any gyms or buying of weights. Its free, and that appeals to me

 

I was bemused by it at first, but not now. He has an advantage that he runs a little clothes shop which is often quiet so he pops out in the back room and just keeps adding 20-30 to his daily tally.

On the other hand - for more effective cardio/aerobic workouts - HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training.

Basically:
22 - 25 mins per session. Three sessions per week (typically on the off days between resistance training). Running, cycling, skipping, or similar.

Involves warmup (2 mins), three peaks of intensity during the session, then cool down (1 - 2 mins)

The intensity is always based on your current level of fitness. So if not doing much then level 5 might be a brisk walk.

The thinking is that with LISS (Low Intensity...) your body being very clever quickly adapts to provide better muscle coordination and tone to deal with the exercise burining fewer calories. So on one hand long sessions feel like a real bind and on the other hand your progress quickly slows.

With HIIT you constantly change the load so your body can't easily adapt - progress should be consistent and it is thought if performed before breakfast when there is less blood sugar available the body can burn up to 300% more fat per session (this fat buring can continue all day after the session).

So an example might be...

2 mins level 4
2 min level 5
1 min level 6
1 min level 7
1 min level 8
2 min level 5
1 min level 6
1 min level 7
1 min level 8
2 min level 5
1 min level 6
1 min level 7
1 min level 8
1 min level 9
2 mins level 5
1 min level 4

This kind of program should be performed with care for your health - ie. level 9 must not push your heart rate past the peak for your age. It's all supposed to be relative to your health and fitness.

 

Paul....dumbells are pretty dull things. Lots of people I know have them stashed in dark cupboards! The plus side is that you could probably put a wanted advert in the paper as everyone seems to have some somewhere. I've been thinking of getting one of those big rubber bands like Dennis Rodman had in celebrity BB! That seems like something you're more likely to do while watching tv and takes up less room when you get bored of it! Plus he is pretty ripped!

Chin ups are good by the way. A year or so ago I was doing 3 sets of 15 with 3 varying grips. Really good work out especially as I was bringing my knees up to my chest whilst pulling up which worked the abs. Got bored of that eventually as I don't really have the motivation to do press ups and chin ups. Exercise has to be enjoyable hence I cycle, play footy and surf etc. I always encourage people to find something they enjoy as Gyms can be dull and a waste of money. Then again some people get really into it so try it out. Usually lots of nice women to motivate you to go!

 

I completely agree doing exercises as opposed to sport can be v boring, but equally if your goal is to regain strength and vitality the end can motivate your progress if you see some results.

You're right I reckon - the exercises I personally do (when I manage to do anything) are chins, dips, pressups, hanging leg raises - ie. all body weight resistance. The only weight bearing exerices I would supplement are squats and deadlifts which are dangerous to try at home when the weight creeps up.

At the end of the day - as with diets - if you can't sustain what you choose to do you end up back at square 1.

Better to plan a fun program of exercise or sport which you'll stick to than start the ultimate in scientific body changing and stop cos its too complicated, boring or difficult.

Having said that the end results are directly linked to the workload - there's no harm in upping the stakes for a few weeks to try and see big gains - this can be very encouraging.

 

This is a problem for me... motivation. I do tend to find excuses not to do exercise. A lot of exercise i find boring, and if you find it boring, then you wont stick to it.

The diet has been different, because it turns out i actually really enjoy some of the things i've started eating so its turned out alright.

 

I was wearing a heart rate monitor having been to the gym, and was mowing the lawn in the back garden.

I looked at my heart rate - and it was right in the zone for fat burning.

Strenuous bicep bulging workouts get me in anaerobic training, and therefore are very bad at burning fat.

If you want to beat the belly, you need large amounts of moderate exercise - brisk walking and the like.

It might not be macho, but use the right cure for the right disease... do you want big muscles with a fat beer gut hanging over the top? - is big daddy your role model?

 

yes - i wanna be shirley crabtree.

 

I don't mean to offend, but what you're describing is advice from 10 years ago.

 

I thought I posted it earlier today?

 

. To clarify my point - the first thing to determine is what one is trying to achieve.

Moderate/gentle exercise will of course, if done regularly (read every day) help to burn calories. Assuming you don;t increase what you eat, as long as you're burning more than you consume you'll lose fat. But you will end up simply a slimmer version of the you when you started. This isnt what everyone wants.

Also you'll find that even though the blood supply to your muscles increases and the number of mitochondria also increaes (thus helping you to burn more energy per minute), your muscles will adapt beautifully to help you achieve the same workload whilt burning fewer and fewer calories (presuming you continue to perform the same moderate exercise).

An exampe is a friend down the road. She took up power walking. She started walking 2 miles on mondays, wednesdays and fridays. She increased the distance week on week. After six months she was walking 8 miles four times per week and 16 miles on a saturday or sunday. She peaked with a 10 day charity walk on the great wall of China.

The results: well she put in HUGE efforts and masses of time - she's fitter, healthier and probably extending her life, but apart from being a little slimmer and having slightly more toned calves she looks exactly the same - big arse, bit of a tum. Her body quickly adapted to the load. Unless you love the exercise (for me cycling would qualify) I just don't see results justify the efforts. If you don;t enjoy the exercise or don't lots of spare time this type of thing is almost doomed to fail.

I've seen this time and time again. With runners less so because it is quite a load in the first place. If they up the pace and distance they do definitely see results, but they also LOSE muscle mass as their body adapts. If they stop running (as most people do after three months or so) their metabolism is probably lower than when they started due to less muscle mass.

Increasing muscle mass through resistance exercise is good for your health in certain ways and is not all about being big (of course it is for some). And the right program combined with the right diet can result in fat loss AND huge improvements to your shape, confidence and well being.

HIIT training can result in the same fat burnt for 1/3 and even 1/4 the time and effort of typical moderate exercise programs such as brisk walking. Why do 50 mins four times per week when 22 mins three times per week acheives more?

If you had seen my press up fanatic pal three months ago you would probably describe him as the average picture of an unhealthy 38 year old man. If you could compare the difference to how he looks now - measurable fat loss 4.5" off his waist, flabby post belly to flat stomach, from skinny arms and pidgeon chest he know has good shape to his arms and chest. I would add that he ought to do some cardio work to assist his heart health.

 

Greg's HIIT is pretty similar to a regime recommended by my badminton coaching coach and if I were really dedicated that's what I'd probably do, however, I don't really think that that kind of intense fitness is really Paul's bag TBH.

I'd go along with Bottleneck's lots of moderate exercise idea I must say - certainly thats what my gym told me on the aerobic/ anerobic thing but I'd also suggest cutting down on carbs in the evening - and that includes beer etc.

I've lost a good stone I suspect over the past 6 months mostly by cutting down on evening carbs and vino to try and keep my blood sugar readings down. I was expecting my levels to drop but instead I seem to have lost a lot of weight!

Jeff

 

First Greg, I find it very interesting what you wrote in general.
One thing makes me perplex about the sentences I quoted above:
I always heard from all the "specialist" I talked to, that the body starts to switch to burn fat only after 30-35 minutes. When this is the case, I don't see how the example which you wrote here can work.

 

i find hiit difficult to do on a real bike as i tend to wobble fall off after a high intensity interval . i can only do it on an excersise bike and then i get bored after about 15 minutes. i must say though that from personal experience hiit really does work but it absolutely knackers you. i keep meaning to start doing it again but then go for some epic ride at the weekend that kills my legs for the week.

 

You're quite right. The science behind LISS does indicate fat burning ratio increases with duration. In fact it is thought at around the 1hr point fat burn is 90% to 95% of energy. However, the overall energy burnt gradually appears to decrease over time of doing the same routine due to the miraculous human body. Quite literally our biggest challenge in trying to avoid getting fat is our own efficient corpus.

One analogy was the Polar Bear and the Oyster. The Bear lays down fat really easy but has little or nothing to eat most of the time. The Oyster cannot lay down any store of energy but its food supply is ubiquitous. We have the fat store nature of the Bear and the food supply of the Oyster.

Regards HIIT versus LISS, the thinking goes: high intensity aerobics/anerobics burns the same amount of fat as low intensity, but the number of calories burnt is substantially greater. Additionally intense aerobics produces a higher level of fitness. The overall effect is the more fit you become, the more likely you are to use fat as fuel for any given activity.

A snppet from a summary of a Tabata and Tremblay research project:

"Angelo Tremblay, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the Physical Activities Sciences Laboratory, Laval University, Quebec, Canada, challenged the common belief among health professionals that low-intensity, long-duration exercise is the best program for fat loss. They compared the impact of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and high-intensity aerobics on fat loss. (Metabolism (1994) Volume 43, pp.814-818)

The Canadian scientists divided 27 inactive, healthy, non-obese adults (13 men, 14 women, 18 to 32 years old) into two groups. They subjected one group to a 20-week endurance training (ET) program of uninterrupted cycling 4 or 5 times a week for 30 to 45 minutes; the intensity level began at 60% of heart rate reserve and progressed to 85%. (For a 30-year-old, this would mean starting at a heart rate of about 136 and progressing to roughly 170 bpm, which is more intense than usually prescribed for weight or fat loss.)

The other group did a 15-week program including mainly high-intensity-interval training (HIIT). Much like the ET group, they began with 30-minute sessions of continuous exercise at 70% of maximum heart rate reserve (remember, they were not accustomed to exercise), but soon progressed to 10 to 15 bouts of short (15 seconds progressing to 30 seconds) or 4 to 5 long (60 seconds progressing to 90 seconds) intervals separated by recovery periods allowing heart rate to return to 120-130 beats per minute. The intensity of the short intervals was initially fixed at 60% of the maximal work output in 10 seconds, and that of the long bouts corresponded to 70% of the individual maximum work output in 90 seconds. Intensity on both was increased 5% every three weeks.

As you might expect, the total energy cost of the ET program was substantially greater than the HIIT program. The researchers calculated that the ET group burned more than twice as many calories while exercising than the HIIT program. But (surprise, surprise) skinfold measurements showed that the HIIT group lost more subcutaneous fat. "Moreover," reported the researchers, "when the difference in the total energy cost of the program was taken into account..., the subcutaneous fat loss was ninefold greater in the HIIT program than in the ET program." In short, the HIIT group got 9 times more fat-loss benefit for every calorie burned exercising.

How can this be?

Dr. Tremblay's group took muscle biopsies and measured muscle enzyme activity to determine why high-intensity exercise produced so much more fat loss. I'll spare you the details (they are technical and hard to decipher), but this is their bottom line: "[Metabolic adaptations resulting from HIIT] may lead to a better lipid utilization in the postexercise state and thus contribute to a greater energy and lipid deficit." In other words, compared to moderate-intensity endurance exercise, high- intensity intermittent exercise causes more calories and fat to be burned following the workout. Citing animal studies, they also said it may be that appetite is suppressed more following intense intervals. (Neither group was placed on a diet.)"

 

Funny thing is if you love long rides then in some ways you don't really want to focus on short intesity sessions, you're happy spending 3 hours regardless of the health hit.

More recent HIIT stuff I've been reading about even talks in terms of <10 sessions with higher intensity being more effective that 22 min ones.

Frankly though people considering it really need to build a base level of fitness first if they don;t have that already and they need to take heart health seriously. On the occasions I've pushed my heart rate too hard it left me feeling pretty ill for a few days afterwards.

 

Thats interesting stuff greg.

As you rightly point out though - high intensity training is probably a bad idea for unfit and overweight people without a good base level of fitness.

I think there's another factor to mention, which is the long term enjoyment of exercise. I firmly believe that the ''hard intensive gym'' thing is hated and loathed by many out of shape people - so much so, that many are unlikely to keep it up.

If people knew they could burn fat by just walking a lot more and being more active, I think it would be easier to keep up.

NB - My guess is that the fat bum lady simply consumed too many calories...

...or, maybe the walking wasn't intensive enough for her. I've noticed my own heart rate rises a lot more easily than others. I can't believe this is a fitness thing, it must be down to the metabolism of the individual.