Thursday 11/5/09
Weights 3x20 17.5lbs.
Strength Training for Weight Loss One of the questions that people find themselves asking is how strength training is capable of helping people lose weight. The truth is, when you are trying to lose weight, strength training is very, very important, even if you have no intention of becoming buff or ripped. Strength training does...
Benefits of Weight Lifting for Women Many people ask questions about weight lifting for women, because they are not sure about whether or not it is the right course of action for a woman that is looking to lose weight or to get healthy. Many people think that weight lifting for women is the same as...
Five Common Myths About Strength Training for Women Women should embrace strength training /caption] When it comes to strength training, many women are under the impression that the term refers to bodybuilding. The mental image is that you will be bulking up instead of getting fit. There are many different myths about strength training for women that are...
Free Weights Vs. Machines /caption] Whether you are brand-new to strength training or you are trying to find a better solution, one of the most common questions is whether or not free weights are better than machines. While this can largely depend on your own personal preference as well as the results do you...
How Much Should You Really Weigh While many of us would like to believe that we were meant to be naturally heavy, the fact is that each one of us does have an ideal weight. Finding it is never easy, and you can spend your whole life trying to beat the scale. Before you beat yourself...
Its Lloyd and RBS out of the high street, and Richard Branson and PayPal in. The announcements that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group are to sell off hundreds of branches has added a smile to the face of. Alistair Darling as well as the European Commission, who had insisted that the banks sell off some of their branches. In a...
End of the line for A1 Golf Yes, it's true, VW SA has stopped producing the series 1 Golf, better known today as the Citi range, after 31 years of production! VW SA isn't letting it pass with a whisper, either. Check out www.goodbyeciti.co.za to track the National Farewell Tour or add your own fond memories of...
Cap And Trade: Global Warming Solution Or Wall Street Profiteering? The world is getting warmer! Humans are polluting and their pollution is making the world warmer faster! Unfortunately even I agree with this claim. The debate is how much humans really impact the rising temperatures. But that debate is not for today. If we want to curb our use of...
Hedgeable: DIY Hedging Tools and Portfolio Analysis Start-Up Launches Ever wondered what a hedge fund really does, or how it works? Think you should teach yourself some hedging strategies for your own portfolio? It's time to take a look at Hedgeable.com, "the world's first "hedge fund for the common man." Hedgeable is a small start-up attempting to radically...
Beginner Corals When an aquarist makes the decision to either move towards a marine reef aquarium from some other type of aquarium or start straight away with a reef tank the aquarist at some type or other is most likely going to want to keep corals. When the aquarium is first set...
Can You Control What is Making You Fat? We all know that eating poorly and failing to exercise is the best way to stay fat, but there are other factors that can lead to excess weight gain. While some of these factors may be out of your control, there are a few that you can address, starting today....
How to Make Old Appliances Look New If you’re stuck with some aging appliances and replacing them isn’t in your budget, there are a few tricks that you can use to give them a facelift and make them more energy efficient, on the cheap. For this article, we’re going to focus on refreshing your refrigerator and dishwasher,...
One Of The Best Toys For My Children My kids have all the latest technology gadgets and my oldest son has had his own personal computer since he was 2, but one of the best toys we ever purchased happened to be one of the most simple and inexpensive toys you can get. MEGA Brands Bloks, ironically are...
Make A Better Budget! The following is a guest post from Bob over at ChristianPF.com. Please check out his site and add his feed to your reader. His blog is one of the ones that I was reading before I started this blog, so he was an inspiration for me when I was just...
California Fishing Report: May 29, 2009 The Feather River, which runs into the Sacramento Bay, is experiencing a number of schools milling around the confluence, and more just up from there between Boyd's Pump and Shanghai Bend. You can fish here early or late for the best results, but make sure to bring the right bait...
Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable Or Satellite Welcome to the readers of The Consumerist! Thanks for stopping by to check out my post on saving money on your TV bill, and don't forget to sign up for free daily RSS updates, or for updates via email! Don't forget to check out some of our best articles on...Sven Hagolani/Getty Images
For some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don’t necessarily lose weight. A study published online in September in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that.
How can that be? Exercise, it seems, should make you thin. Activity burns calories. No one doubts that.
“Walking, even at a very easy pace, you’ll probably burn three or four calories a minute,” beyond what you would use quietly sitting in a chair, said Dan Carey, Ph.D., an assistant professor of exercise physiology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who studies exercise and metabolism.
But few people, an overwhelming body of research shows, achieve significant weight loss with exercise alone, not without changing their eating habits. A new study from scientists at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver offers some reasons why. For the study, the researchers recruited several groups of people. Some were lean endurance athletes; some sedentary and lean; some sedentary and obese. Each of the subjects agreed to spend, over the course of the experiment, several 24-hour periods in a special laboratory room (a walk-in calorimeter) that measures the number of calories a person burns. Using various calculations, the researchers could also tell whether the calories expended were in the form of fat or carbohydrates, the body’s two main fuel sources. Burning more fat than carbohydrates is obviously desirable for weight loss, since the fat being burned comes primarily from body fat stores, and we all, even the leanest among us, have plenty of those.
The Denver researchers were especially interested in how the athletes’ bodies would apportion and use calories. It has been well documented that regular endurance training increases the ability of the body to use fat as a fuel during exercise. They wondered, though, if the athletes — or any of the other subjects — would burn extra fat calories after exercising, a phenomenon that some exercisers (and even more diet and fitness books) call “afterburn.”
“Many people believe that you rev up” your metabolism after an exercise session “so that you burn additional body fat throughout the day,” said Edward Melanson, Ph.D., an associate professor in the division of endocrinology at the School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. If afterburn were found to exist, it would suggest that even if you replaced the calories you used during an exercise session, you should lose weight, without gaining weight — the proverbial free lunch.
Each of Melanson’s subjects spent 24 quiet hours in the calorimeter, followed later by another 24 hours that included an hourlong bout of stationary bicycling. The cycling was deliberately performed at a relatively easy intensity (about 55 percent of each person’s predetermined aerobic capacity). It is well known physiologically that, while high-intensity exercise demands mostly carbohydrate calories (since carbohydrates can quickly reach the bloodstream and, from there, laboring muscles), low-intensity exercise prompts the body to burn at least some stored fat. All of the subjects ate three meals a day.
To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.
“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. People “are only burning 200 or 300 calories” in a typical 30-minute exercise session, Melanson points out. “You replace that with one bottle of Gatorade.”
This does not mean that exercise has no impact on body weight, or that you can’t calibrate your workouts to maximize the amount of body fat that you burn, if that’s your goal.
“If you work out at an easy intensity, you will burn a higher percentage of fat calories” than if you work out a higher intensity, Carey says, so you should draw down some of the padding you’ve accumulated on the hips or elsewhere — if you don’t replace all of the calories afterward. To help those hoping to reduce their body fat, he published formulas in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research last month that detailed the heart rates at which a person could maximize fat burning. “Heart rates of between 105 and 134” beats per minute, Carey said, represent the fat-burning zone. “It’s probably best to work out near the top of that zone,” he says, “so that you burn more calories over all” than at the extremely leisurely lower end.
Perhaps just as important, bear in mind that exercise has benefits beyond weight reduction. In the study of obese people who took up exercise, most became notably healthier, increasing their aerobic capacity, decreasing their blood pressure and resting heart rates, and, the authors write, achieving “an acute exercise-induced increase in positive mood,” leading the authors to conclude that, “significant and meaningful health benefits can be achieved even in the presence of lower than expected exercise-induced weight loss.”
Finally and thankfully, exercise seems to aid, physiologically, in the battle to keep off body fat once it has been, through resolute calorie reduction, chiseled away. In other work by Melanson’s group, published in September, laboratory rats that had been overfed and then slimmed through calorie reduction were able to “defend” their lower weight more effectively if they ran on a treadmill and ate at will than if they had no access to a treadmill. The exercise seemed to reset certain metabolic pathways within the rats, Melanson says, that blunted their body’s drive to replace the lost fat. Similar mechanisms, he adds, probably operate within the bodies of humans, providing scientific justification for signing up for that Thanksgiving Day 5K.
Fitbit is a tiny device that has a motion-detecting sensor that can digitally records a person walking, running, or movement distance, calories burned and steps taken as kind of pedometer on steroids. At night, one can wear the Fitbit while sleeping using a wristband in order to track one's sleep.
The Fitbit contains a 3D motion sensor like the one found in the Nintendo Wii. The Fitbit tracks your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities.
The Fitbit sends the data directly to its website via a wireless base station that is attached to your computer. One can check their data online at Fitbit.com.
The Fitbit comes with a base station, a small USB-connected stand for charging. The device will hold seven days of minute-by-minute data and 30 days of daily data.
Fitbit.com bases its website information on biomechanical studies performed by government agencies and universities over several years. It sets goals for each person according to his or her base metabolic rate, which is determined by gender, age, weight and height. Extra activities and food consumption can be manually added.
Fitbit retails for $99 and can be ordered directly on its website. Since the Fitbit is currently in high demand, only pre-orders are being taken. The device will start shipping on January 31, 2010, so unfortunately this will not be able to be a Christmas gift item.
Photos from my hike-->
I must say this walking nearly 4 (steep) miles a day is paying off when it comes to reducing my mass. In just over a week of doing this every day, I've managed to lose roughly 3 lbs. I've not altered my diet much, which I still need to do (I eat plenty of good things but need to cut down on cake...), so this is primarily down to exercise.
I'm keeping an eye on things with the inestimable FatWatch - a modern day equivalent of the equally inestimable EatWatch:
the art of being ill sickness is something i've been getting used to. i seem to be getting flus with a kind of regularity this past few years. a recent doctor put it down to some wacky sinuses which may be getting infected and then going on to infect the rest of my body....
How to Handle Bad Stress With Exercise Every day, no matter if you are a stay at home mom or an investment banker, we all have to deal with stress. There are two main types of stress, good and bad, and unfortunately, most of us have to deal with the bad on a daily basis. Bad stress...
Does My Appendix Weigh 6 Pounds? I doubt it does, since it's such a tiny insignificant part of the human body. This is a continuation of yesterdays post about my come back from appendicitis. I had to stay an extra day in the hospital just because my blood was still a bit contaminated. It took me...
Best Safe Baby Pregnancy Tips If you have recently discovered that you're pregnant, or if you are thinking about beginning a family of your own, then you are probably beginning to wonder what you can do in order to make sure that you have the healthiest possible pregnancy, and the following safe baby pregnancy tips...
Free Colon Cleanse Recipe Aloe vera is very useful as a natural laxative. Fennel and garlic purify the system by getting rid of harmful bacteria. These ingredients need to be included in the diet. Including herbs naturally into the diet will be more effective. Ayurveda provides many useful ways of cleansing the colon...
My Biggest Health-Fitness Vice Earlier this week Fit36 asked me What is Your Biggest Health/Fitness Vice? I've been muddling it through my head the last few days trying to come up with an answer. Here's what I came up with: I'm not in bad health - My body mass index is around 23-24. My...
Survey Indicates Consumers Enter The Holiday Season With Mixed Feelings For many Americans the future looks bright compared to recent years in terms of the economy. After what felt like a never ending series of bad news the economy appears to be on the road to recovery. With this change in direction, many consumers are feeling more confident about the...
Consumers Enter The Holiday Season With Mixed Feelings For many Americans the future looks bright compared to recent years in terms of the economy. After what felt like a never ending series of bad news the economy appears to be on the road to recovery. With this change in direction, many consumers are feeling more confident about the future, however...
Should You Use Selective Ignorance to Help Train Your Dog? /caption]One mistake that many people make with dogs is that they let the novelty of a dog's presence take over their better judgment. While it's fine and healthy to treat dogs with affection, this isn't always the greatest way to train them. Instead, you'll want to learn to be selective...
Creating Self Time Would you continue to invite guests into your home who constantly insult you, disregard your boundaries, and, cast dispersion on your surroundings? Why then, do we choose to allow others to invade our consciousness, leaving a trail of negative messages, disrespecting our very existence and allowing the aftermath to...
Movie Review: My Life in Ruins starring Nia Vardalos, Richard Dreyfuss, and Alexis Georgoulis Wow, another movie that was totally trashed by reviewers is yet another one I really enjoyed watching. I think My Life in Ruins is a smash. It uses stereotypes to make everything appear awful at first and then slowly unravels the truth beneath the façade. You have obnoxious American tourists,...
Okkervil River and New Pornographers in Toronto The Phoenix played host to one of the best double bills I've seen Wednesday night. Okkervil River technically opened for the New Pornographers, but both bands played power-packed sets that left my friends and the entire room more than... pornografied and okkervilled. The venue reminded me of the Paradise in...
Earn Your Street Cred Like 50 Cent Photo by @sahxic < twitter You ain't no gangsta You'se a busta, a customer, a sucker - from You Ain't No Gangsta My two sons were arguing the other day, which isn't unusual for teenage brothers to do. I'm just glad when they don't come to blows over a...
What You Should Know If You Are Considering The HPV Vaccine For Your Daughter For most consumers, following the Center for Disease Controlâs (CDCâs) vaccine recommendations for their children has always been a given. Recent reports linking some severe adverse side effects to routine vaccinations, have many consumers taking a closer look at whether their child needs every vaccine that is recommended. One vaccination...
Free FPS Games Free games are getting better and I'm not talking about flash games, but actually games that could be a paid game. The first free game I played was America's Army in 2002 and it was a pretty good game for a free game. Now many game developers are realising that...
Double A Baseball in Frisco, Texas Guest post by Jonah Lisa of The Toby Show. We recently went to our first minor league baseball game and it was a blast for everyone. We saw the Frisco Rough Riders beat the San Antonio Missions at Dr. Pepper Ballpark in Frisco, Texas (a northern suburb of Dallas). This...
Inglorious Bastards Inglorious Bastards Directed by Enzo Castellari When Tarantino opened the retrospective 'The Italian King of B's' at the 2004 Venice Biennale with Joe Dante, he publicly declared his love for Italian B-cinema of the 60s and 70s, helping to shine a spotlight on many forgotten gems of Italian genre/exploitation cinema...
Nintendo DSi XL Nintendo said Thursday that it would release a new model of its DSi portable game platform with larger screens and built-in software. It will be available on November 21 in Japan, and in the first quarter of 2010 in the U.S. and Europe. Going against the trend of micro-sizing...
Ubuntu 9.10 Email and chat Chat with friends and colleagues through Empathy which integrates Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, Jabber, AOL, QQ and many more. Evolution gives you email, an address book and a calendar and works well with colleagues and friends using MS Outlook. Browse the Internet Ubuntu includes Mozilla Firefox 3.5...
Apple TV 3.0 Software and iTunes 9.0.2 Apple the launch of Apple TV 3.0 software, offering a redesigned user interface and compatibility with Apple's iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras, as well as Genius Mixes and Internet radio. "The new software for Apple TV features a simpler and faster interface that gives you instant access to your favorite...
Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4 Mozilla has just released a minor but still significant update to its popular Firefox webbrowser. Version 3.5.4 is essentially focused on security and stability improvements, closing a as much as 11 critical vulnerabilities among a total of 16. These include problems with third-party media libraries, the core and JavaScript engines,...
DirectX11 Released For Windows Vista For those of you sticking with Vista, Microsoft has finally officially released DirectX 11 for Vista, after having spent the last couple of months in beta. This final release looks to be the same as the last beta released earlier this month. The update is KB971512, which is being released...
WordPress fans: Plugins you can live with! With so many plugins popping up left and right for WordPress nowadays, it is a jungle out there! You like a plugin, download it, install it and activate it only to end up with a mesh of My SQL lingo on your blog front page and every post! You...
Animalada A Heaven of Horror Sergio Bizzioâs Animalada (2001) Synapse films. What is the greatest love story ever told? Is it the one where dad delivered a pizza to the girl next door only to then realize he had been living next door to the love of his life without even...