Sports/Activities

There is a well-known American phrase: “I have both good news and bad news; which do you want to hear first?” I’ll start with the bad news and it won’t be just one.

1- Getting on the treadmill or walking (jogging) outside for 45 minute 1 hour, WON’T HELP YOU LOOSE WEIGHT. Let me put it this way: Adipose tissue or body fat contains more than pure fat and a gram of it is 7.7 calories instead of 9 calories per gram for pure fat. Accordingly, to burn 454 grams (one pound) of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. To do this, I would have to run 7-8 tours in the Belgrade Forest. In other words, more than 45 kilometers.

Check out the link below, to calculate total number of calories burned, etc.

www.runnersworld.com/tools/calories-burned-calculator

 

Surprised, huh? If loosing weight were so easy, the human race would        have become extinct a long ago. Body fat is the “vital reserve” that keeps us alive in times of famine or, putting it more mildly, in times of food shortage.

To be honest, you can’t lose weight without controlling what you eat.

 

2- There are mainly two kinds of exercise, aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (without oxygen). You’re probably thinking what is this guy saying, how can we live, let alone exercise, without oxygen. There are the two metabolic processes involved in the mitochondria producing ATP (fuel), and does not mean we hold our breath.

Jogging is an aerobic type of exercise and during your run of 45 minutes or 1 hour, your bodily is exposed to oxidative damage which causes the formation of plenty of free radicals. We mentioned that this oxidative damage shortens your life. Another name given to jogging is “chronic aerobics” and it’s adverse effects are not only limited to the formation of free radicals, but the stress it places on your joints is worth thinking about.

3- What shall we do then? Very easy, the basic formula for finding your maximum heart rate (pulse) is for men to subtract their age from 220 and for women to subtract their age from 226 and to multiply this number by 0.85. If your average heart rate does not exceed this number while walking or exercising then its not classified as AEROBIC EXERCISE, which means your body doesn’t produce free radicals during exercise. For example, I am 75 years old. My Maximum Heart Rate is: 220-75=145 x 0,85 = 123. In other words, as long as my heart rate does not exceed 123, I can walk and exercise as much as I like, in the knowledge that my body won’t produce free radicals.

 

4- I would also like to make a point on treadmills. Unless the weather doesn’t make it impossible to walk outside, don’t get on the treadmill. Besides being boring as hell, exercising on a treadmill causes an imbalance in your leg muscles. When you step forward in nature your leg is actually pulling the earth backward. On the treadmill there is nothing to pull back as it is moving backward under your feet. As a result the muscles in the front of your legs, the quadriceps, are working, but not so with the muscles in the back of your legs, the hamstrings. This imbalance could result in injuries in the future.
5- A last note on treadmills. New generation treadmills show how many calories you’ve burned during your workout. The figure you see is, however, upwardly biased.

 

How so you ask: well, even if you don’t get out of bed all day, the body expends calories for functions like breathing, the heart pumping, etc. This is called the Basal Metabolic Rate. For example, my BMR (basal metabolic rate) is approximately 1500 k/cal. In other words, if I stay in bed all day long, I will burn off 1500 calories. Treadmills calculate your BMR from your weight and add this number in the calories you burned while exercising, thus giving it an upward bias.

 

 

You can calculate your BMR using the calculator in the following link:

 

www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator