Before getting into the topics, a brief note on Cassandra.
Cassandra
Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, the king of Troy. Struck by her beauty, Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy, but when Cassandra refused Apollo’s romantic advances, he placed a curse ensuring that nobody would believe her warnings.
Sometimes, I feel like I also have a “Cassandra curse”, as some people very close to me seem to ignore, or not take seriously the advices and warnings that I put forth in the Blog.
I know that some of them just want to tease me, get me riled up, but to others the discipline (eating, exercising, and mental calm) just does not seem worth the bother.
“I’ve been eating bread all my life and I’m still OK.”
“I’m happy with my medication, and don’t need your advice.”
Anyway, I just had to get this off my chest.
Now, let’s look at the topics.
E-mail from Şebnem, a good friend and a follower of the Blog
I’ll just give you a summary of her e-mail, as her compliments would be like showing off, or patting myself on the back.
“Thanks for your support and motivation in our attempts at making a healthy lifestyle continuous.
I try to go to the gym 2 times a week and balance this with walking outdoors. I’m very disciplined in the gym, have no problem increasing the weights in resistance training, but have a tendency to put-off my outdoor walks.
At times, emotional factors tend to hamper my discipline when it comes to eating.
I was doing interval training on the treadmill, until I injured my knee, and now do a slower walk (5.5 kph) at a slight incline.
After finishing my resistance training, I do a short cardio and then stretch.
Given all of the above, I have not been successful at losing weight. Do you think this is due to my eating binges, even though I try to eat healthily most of the time?”
First of all, I’m very pleased that you are taking exercise so seriously. BUT, one cannot loose weight by exercising alone.
In fact, as I’ve emphasized many times before, I would have to run about 42 km. to burn 1 pound of fat. If it were so easy to burn fat, Homo sapiens would not be here today. Re-read the post on “Squatting” that came out 2 weeks ago.
Also, we don’t know if the body burns (uses for energy) just fat cells, after exhausting glycogen (sored sugar) in about 20 minutes.
Does it not convert muscle tissue into “sugar” (glucogenesis) and burn that? Remember the “use it, or lose it” paradigm we went over in the “Squatting” post.
I’ll go over this in more detail, in the next topic.
So, my dear Şebnem, you have to control what you eat.
I strongly urge you to read:
- “Nutrition and Health”, March 11, 2015, and
- “Intermittent Fasting”, April 4, 2015.
Please come back with as many questions as you can think of.
Walking
We’ve covered walking in detail, in the past, but I’d still like you to re-read:
- “Walking”, April 2, 2015, and
- “You’re Brain After a 20 Minute Walk”, April 9, 2015
The reason I suggest this, is to impress upon you that I’m not against walking; I just want you to realize that YOU CANNOT LOSE WEIGHT BY JUST WALKING.
If you walk for one hour, you’ll burn about 500 calories (Kcal) that is just 7 slices of bread.
Now, let’s get to the “claim” that you burn fat when you walk.
On February 10, 2015, I posted a short note on types of muscle fiber. Although there are 4 types, we can simplify and categorize them as:
- Slow twitch, and
- Fast twitch.
Slow twitch fibers provide endurance, and fast twitch fibers give you strength and power.
It should be obvious that when you walk, you give the slow twitch fibers in your legs a mild workout; you are not using any of the fast twitch fibers.
The question is: does the “use it or lose it” paradigm apply to muscle fibers also?
To be honest, I don’t have a concrete answer. I do, however, have an opinion.
Pictured below, is a marathon runner.
The best comment I read about marathon runners a few years ago was: “They are skinny fat people “.
In contrast, look at the pictures of Usain Bolt, the world famous sprinter, below.
You can see that he has definitely recruited his fast twitch fibers in his training.
As I’ve always stated, we are a species that was made to walk and sprint, and not to jog or run.
Conclusion:
- Concentrate on resistance training, and sprinting (HIIT), and
- Be very careful as to what you put in your mouth.
Medication
I briefly touched upon medication at the beginning of the post.
What really shocked me was a very close friend’s comment that she loved her medication.
Most of you who follow the Blog, know that I am not a great fan of allopathic medicine.
On September 24, 2017 there was an excellent talk show on CNN Türk, hosted by Deniz Bayramoğlu, where a group of medical professionals admitted that they just gave out medication to relieve their patient’s symptoms. The governments “program” to make medicine available to a greater part of the public, forces doctor’s to spend no more than 10 minutes per patient. How can a doctor try to find out the reason for a patient’s illness in 10 minutes??? How can these doctors attempt to practice “functional medicine”?
Anyway, I’d like to reemphasize the fact that ALL MEDICATION HAS SIDE EFFECTS.
Simply put, this means that while the medicine you took relieved the symptoms of your illness (extinguished the smoke, rather than put out the fire), IT IS HARMING OTHER PARTS OF YOUR BODY.
How can somebody love taking a pill that is harming him or her???
I’ve said enough already; just two simple examples.
- What do most people do when they catch a cold and have a stuffy nose? They buy a decongestant nose spray. Well, this will open up your nasal passage by stopping the body’s production of mucus. Mucus is one of the body’s major weapons against a cold. So, what could have been over in 2 days lasts for 1-2 weeks.
- When people take cholesterol-lowering drugs, like Lipitor, the body stops producing COQ10 (Coenzyme Q 10). Well, this enzyme plays a crucial role in cardio vascular health. What kind of an approach is this to make your cardio vascular system healthy? By the way, there are many other side effects that Lipitor has.
That’s it for now; see you all next time.
