Exercise | - Part 2

Can a Exercise Bike Cut 16 Years off Your Age?

September 28, 2009 By Mark

21334212_20379b552e[1] Is cycling or using an exercise bike that good for you? Doing any exercise is better than none at all, some women in their 50’s were part of a group. Who were monitored when they did a certain type of exercise, this took place at the University of California.

The tests from the research found that when they exercised for one hour a week, their blood pressure stabilised and their heart rates were better. And their rate of fat burning skyrocketed to an extra 10 percent. The report found that post menopausal women can have the same benefits from endurance exercising that younger women do.
One of the researchers said;
[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Exercise Tagged With: calories, Exercise

Can You Get Fit Watching Television

September 8, 2009 By Mark

beta.thumbalizr.com Is it possible to get fitter by watching television? It depends what you are actually doing whilst you are watching it.

Now things are set to change launched just recently is a fitness channel, enabling you to become fitter while you watch television. This will get people motivated to keep fit in conjunction with watching television.

Fitness TV is dedicated to health and fitness only and is a first in the UK as far as this type of channel is concerned.

So what can you expect from it? It has a revolving timetable of programmes presented by well-known fitness instructors whom have worked, with famous clients known the world over. It will be like having your own personal trainer in your own living room. You can even have your own routine tailored to your fitness levels.

The channel caters for all people from all walks of life it is also free to air which means you don’t have to pay a subscription to watch it.

Programmes are varied and range from yoga and Pilates to Swiss Ball technique, Combat Cardio and Super Circuits. There are also dance-based exercise sessions, including Bhangra, Cheerleader and 70s Disco and even a High Heels workout for more glamorous viewers.

Fitness TV, available now on Sky 282 as well as being streamed live at www.fitness.tv , hopes to tap into the £15M a year appetite for ‘At home’ DVD exercise work outs and wants to drive down obesity by removing the excuses often given for not taking regular exercise.

Fitness TV founder Luan Underwood, a former personal trainer and mother-of-two, said: “We are positioning the channel as an additional workout option, not as a replacement to gyms, fitness and wellbeing classes.

We would like to capture the imagination of the 80% of UK citizens that have never visited a gym and inspire them to do so whilst also appealing to the more elite athletes with hardcore workouts.

We also aim to reach people unable to visit fitness facilities, perhaps because they have young children, or time pressures that make it difficult to get to the gym for a few weeks.

We have developed content to inspire and empower our viewers including inspirational documentaries about athletes and members of the public, along with lifestyle content, looking at alternative therapies, holistic treatments and nutrition. It’s important that the channel caters for all audiences with an interest in health, fitness and their wellbeing.”

Instructors on the new channel include Pierre Pozzuto, who has worked with Keira Knightley, Christian Slater and keen marathon runner Gordon Ramsay, champion kickboxer Sy Chenh and Elise Lindsay, personal trainer to Coleen Rooney.

Fitness TV is set to launch a virtual workout programme over the coming months allowing fitness fans to log on to the website and create a tailored 360° programme of viewing to achieve specific fitness goals.

Here is the link for fitness tv’s website www.fitness.tv

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Filed Under: Exercise Tagged With: Celebrities, fitness

Can Yoga Help With Food Choices and Weight Loss?

August 24, 2009 By Mark

yoga People who practice yoga regularly become mindful with their choices of food and what they eat, and because of this are far less likely to become obese.

These are the findings of a study, put together at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer research Centre, in the United States .

The reason the study came about was findings that became known almost four years ago. The initial findings were for people whom were overweight; they were far more likely to lose weight. If doing yoga, this would prevent the normal middle age spread that people tend to get as they get older.

These were the benefits for people whom regularly practiced yoga. Although the researchers did not quite know why the yoga was helping the participants, they came to the conclusion it was more to do with the actual doing of yoga, but not the exercise that you get from it.

The researchers concluded that it was more to do with actual body awareness more than anything else was, which was creating the effect. A follow-up study confirmed their suspicions, which published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, in August.

They say that the research that they did found that people, whom practiced yoga for a period of 10 years, did in fact gain less weight. Than those whom did no yoga at all.

This confirmed everything they thought, they didn’t add any other factors to the research either such as physical activity and what they ate. They concluded that yoga makes you more mindful about food choices, and once you have eaten enough and feel full then you will stop eating. Whereas if you are a non-mindful, eater then you just eat whatever you want and don’t consciously think about it.

This could be because you either have some anxiety related issues or may be depressed. It is very easy to eat more food when you. Could be either stressed or depressed because you are eating with your emotions.

One of the researchers involved in this particular research, who has been interested in Yoga for a number of years now, says that because of the way that you have to, stretch your body into various different positions and keep relaxed at the same time is one of the reasons why it brings about the mindfulness.

It is this actual inner calmness that makes us more focused when it comes to eating, so instead of making choices of foods with our emotions we make choices with rational thinking. In turn we make better choices, here is something to think about? Have you ever noticed that when you may be having a bad day you can tend to turn towards food for comfort?

To finish this off they, did a questionnaire, and some of the factors that were in it are a small summary below so you can see it. This questionnaire, distributed to 300 people in order to find out whether or not as a conclusion, that yoga does affect mindfulness with regard to eating.

Being distracted, doing other things whilst eating food
Overall awareness of food seeing how it looks, tastes smells, and overall texture
External influences, such as advertising, eating in unison when it’s being displayed
Emotional eating, you tend to eat when you’re either stressed or depressed
Being full, you still tend to eat even though you are full

When the results came back 40 percent of the people whom filled the questionnaire in practiced yoga for approximately one hour per week, 46 percent of them walked for 90 minutes a week as exercise, and 50 percent of them or more did some sort of physical activity for 90 minutes which was either vigorous or moderate in nature.

Of the ones that had a higher mindfulness score as they called it were the people that had a lesser BMI and the overall conclusion was that. The people whom did the yoga had a better overall BMI than those who did not.

So yoga it would seem has the thumbs up and it doesn’t look as if you have to practice it a awful lot to become mindful yourself. So this is something that you could incorporate into your weight loss plan in order to double the effectiveness of it.

Source and references http://www.sciencedaily.com

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Is Exercise and The Fact It Makes You Thin a Myth?

August 14, 2009 By Mark

time-magazine-august-17 Something caught my eye the other day, which was a link that somebody gave me, to a story it was on Yahoo shines website. It spoke about a recent article that was written by Time magazine, which briefly says that exercise does not actually make you thin.

Now writing about this can always seem a bit controversial, however I thought it might be of interest to. People because not everybody is always of the same opinion. And here is what it said. It starts by saying that approximately 45 million Americans, belong to either a gym or health club.

To keep themselves fit and healthy. In America , they spend a incredible 19 billion pounds a year on going to health clubs, and gym memberships. That is a staggering amount of money and just goes to show, how big the health/keep fit industry is.

Many people do join these, gyms and never actually go. And a lot of us do say that we exercise regularly. Yet the world over. And predominantly in America , obesity rates continue to soar. And, shows no signs of slowing down.

The author said, once he has done his exercise he tend to get hungry afterwards. So he tends to eat more on the days, when he has done it. And less on those days when he hasn’t.

The normal statement that we hear, which is exercise is essential for losing weight is quite a recent one would you believe. During the 1960s, doctors advised their patients not to do vigorous exercise.

If you fast forward to today, doctors these days even encourage their older patients to get some kind of exercise.

Even if it is only gentle and of course we know that, the benefits of it are too numerous to mention. But to mention a few such as, lower cholesterol levels, far less likely to contract diabetes, and have heart problems later on in life.

Now it seems from what he says, that exercise has become somewhat overrated. Eric Ravussin, whom is a prominent researcher, in exercise at a university in the United States .

Says “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,”

which myself I do find quite hard to believe. However, there again that is my opinion sorely. What he says is that exercise isn’t important as people think. When it comes to losing weight, as stated in so many gyms/health clubs etc.

Eric says, the problem isn’t necessarily the fact that exercise doesn’t help you burn calories, which it does. It is more about the fact that it can make you hungry as well, so a knock-on effect of this is you eat more hence gain weight.

A study was conducted, which monitored people who didn’t exercise to see what happened to them. They were then, split into four groups, one group had 464 women who did no exercise whatsoever, some women in three of the groups had a personal trainer, and worked out as follows, for the following time periods; two minutes, 136 minutes, and 194 minutes.

And the remaining women which were in the fourth group were told to, carry on as normal, none of the women what so ever were told to change what they ate. Whilst doing the study they were asked to fill in a medical questionnaire, in order to track results etc.

The results came back which were quite interesting, all the women in all the groups lost weight, including the ones in the controlled group. The interesting thing is the women who had the personal trainer, which you would of thought would have lost substantially more weight, surprisingly didn’t.

So why is this happening then? one of the researchers, has a theory and calls it compensation. The odd thing here is the women who were exercising vigorously ate more food, before they started their routine, one of the reasons given for this is. They used it like a reward system because they have just done something that is good for them so hence the need to eat.

Church says who is the researcher for the study, says he noticed that his friends would go out jogging, and then go on to say that they weren’t losing any weight. However, as it turns out they were going to Starbucks and buying calorie-laden muffins afterwords.

Another of the theories is that when we were, less domesticated you might say. And cave dwellers we would have been moving around all the time, especially in the summer foraging for food. And this is why we can tend to gain weight, more movement is better throughout the day.

Nowadays we are advised to exercise vigorously for a day up to an hour and that is it. However, if you think about it most of the work we do these days is not very labour-intensive.

During the war, people did far more a labour-intensive jobs than we do these days, they were far healthier and ate less food. When go jogging next please try and avoid the following landmarks, Domino’s pizza, your local chip shop, anywhere that sells muffins, your local kebab house etc.

Source and references

http://www.time.com

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Beetroot Juice May Help With Exercise Stamina

August 10, 2009 By Mark

3190155469_905aab7757[1] Beetroot juice is now being touted as something that you can use, to maximise your workout in able you to do more than you would have been able to do before. It’s being stated that you will be able to do 16 % more than you would normally be able to do.

The researchers think this will be of particular benefit to endurance athletes, who sometimes need that extra bit of endurance to be able to do more long-term. The study which this was based around found that the beetroot juice minimises the amount of oxygen uptake when you are doing your workout.

This may be particularly useful to elderly people, and others who have cardio vascular problems or a respiratory problem. The group of people who did the research had a core group of men aged between 19 and 38.

During the trial period they were given 500 milliliters of beetroot juice, just to see what effect it had to their overall endurance. This was done over a period of six days. They exercised on exercise bike, and over another period of six days were given a placebo of blackcurrant juice and told to do the same things as regards their exercise.

When they had the beetroot juice they were able to exercise for a period of 11.25 minutes, which is over 92 seconds without drinking it. This may not sound a lot but it is still there. Another good side benefit of this was that the group that had the beetroot juice had lower blood pressure also, which is not to be sniffed at.

What the actual mechanism as to why this work so well, is actually unknown at the moment but the researchers seem to think it’s something to do with nitrate in the body which turns into nitric acid in the body, and this expends the effect of the oxygen or the cost of it.

One of the researchers said that this was the first time that it has been proved that nitrates contained within foods can. Actually help with our overall endurance when it comes to it.

They are hoping to conduct more on the way nitrates work in the body which enables people to work out for longer. If you don’t like eating beetroot then this is a great way to get it in your diet, but if you do like beetroot then eat as much as you can it is very good for you overall.

Here are some health benefits of beetroot

Good for your central nervous system, if you are suffering from stress this is partly due to the high amount of vitamin B6 it contains

It’s good for lowering blood pressure

Exhibit’s properties of a laxative, so if you’re suffering from constipation beetroot makes an excellent choice for this particular problem

Particularly good for your liver, if a liver is working correctly it helps to break down fat within your body aand helps the weight loss process

Very good properties as far as lowering cholesterol is concerned

Article reference and sources

http://www.physorg.com/news168787342.html

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How To Tell if You’re a Exercise Addict

August 5, 2009 By Mark

Exercise is one of the key ingredients to keeping fit and healthy as well as eating a healthy diet, all the known benefits of it are healthy heart function, lower cholesterol levels a general overall feeling of well-being and more energy than if you didn’t do any.

But what if it goes the other way and starts to work against you rather than for you. If this is the case, then you may be heading towards an addiction to exercise, there is nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about what you’re doing.

It’s just when it goes the other way, this is where things can and do start to go wrong. If you’re a devout follower of the media you may have seen some pictures of, Madonna and her arms. In case you haven’t seen the picture it shows her with quite thin looking arms and you are able to see her veins quite clearly.

The reasons given for this happening are that she does a two hour grueling workout six days per week. Quite some years ago Madonna looked very toned. Where now she has gone the other way and some people say to extremities, her body fat now is far lower, than it was before so this is the reason that she looks the way that she does now.

The problem with anybody who is in the media eye is that we can tend to look at them as role models, no matter how they look. This has been the case with people who have anorexia they have a saying that is called “thinspiration” which means they look up to people who are thin and famous but that is a entirely different subject matter to what we are discussing here.

One particular woman who was featured recently in a article in the Sunday Express Newspaper, spoke about her particular addiction to exercise and what it means to her.

Rachel Evans who is aged 39, and weighs eight stone is now quite concerned about seeing the particular photos of Madonna, because if she keeps up her exercise routine which she does by going to the gym. She also may end up looking like that as well with veins popping out all over her arms.

Rachel says that she’s a great fan of Madonna’s, but was quite surprised when she saw those particular photos of her arms and how she looked. It struck quite a raw nerve with her.

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Rachel confesses that she does have an addiction problem with her exercise, which is a hour-long, not quite in the same league as Madonna. But depending on how hard you push yourself it’s quite, possible that you could do some injury or overdo your exercise routine and cause yourself unnecessary suffering. Which isn’t the overall objective.

She wishes that she had never got addicted to exercise in the first place, it does start to become an obsession and once you are in the mindset of building the body beautiful, it can be quite hard to veer away from it. Rachel says that it became very empowering to her being in control of her own body and how it looks.

She says that her body keeps telling her now to build muscle, this is what happens when something that you do becomes an obsession. There will be one particular part of it that drives you and it becomes a big focus. Although it can have its drawbacks, Rachel now has a body fat percentage of 10 percent one particular result of the she says is now that after having a workout you can see her veins protruding in her hands, she noticed that one day after she had been doing some decorating at home and could see them in her arms also, and will wear a pair of gloves in order to hide her veins.

The actual story of how she became addicted, was when she had whiplash, and was advised by her doctor to do some muscle building exercises, she followed a plan by someone called Bill Phillips, which is called Body For Life this is a book for people who want to get into good shape. She loved the fact that of how her body started to look once she was building muscle.

Now in order to keep how she wants to look, she keeps having to push herself all the time in her exercise routines, she goes on to say that there is no room for a man in her life unless that person was willing to put up with her obsession, she gets her own “self worthiness” from it she says.

“Going for a run like normal people do” would be better Rachel says but that forgoes any of the after affects she tends to get from going to the gym, and absolutely loves the feeling she gets from it after her workout.

An addiction therapist said one of the problems with exercise addiction is as with any other addiction, you have to keep doing more and more to get the same feeling or effect from the workout. This can apply to any addiction really from eating food, drugs etc.

The Warning Signs

If you do think that you may have a addiction to exercise here are some things that you need to be aware of just in case you think you may be addicted. The above information is based solely on one particular person and how it affected them, but yourself may not recognize the particular signs so here is what to look out for.

Runners can be high on the list of people who become addicted to exercise, so if you do running be aware that you could be one of those people who are addicted to it

You may start to distance yourself from relatives and friends and may cancel social engagements in favour of doing a workout instead

The only things that may stop you from doing a workout are being ill, having some kind of injury or merely being tired, you may spend a good percentage of your spare time working out even they you don’t necessarily need to it’s just something that you feel that you need to do

If you are unable to do your workout, feelings of anxiety, frustration and depression won’t be far behind

There is only one train of thought as regards what you want to do more is better and less is not enough, and anything that stops you from doing it is a very bad thing and you resent it like crazy

Your boundaries may seem a little bit less clear between what is healthy and isn’t you may even tend to work through pain, in order to get what you want we tend to idolise people who may have better bodies than ours and see them as more athletic, so we tend to build up this image of how we want to be and focus our energies into becoming that person because we ourselves don’t feel as though we are there yet

When you are an addict poor performance not see may not seem very acceptable to yourself so you keep pushing yourself more and more, whereas somebody who is in control of their routine will take rest periods regularly so there body can recover sufficiently

The people who are most vulnerable to this type of particular addiction are those people who look for something called runners high, this is normally experienced by people who push themselves in their workout routine whether it be resistance training or any other type of high intensity training

As with all types of addictive behaviours there will be some kind of underlying reason why this is happening psychologists, seem to think that it can be due to the fact of someone having a low self-esteem, which would make sense in today’s modern world there is more pressure to have a fit body than there ever has been

· Denial can play a big part in the addicts mindset so even though you think you may be just working out quite normally, to other people it might not seem to be the case

In order to stop yourself from going down this particular route write down your schedule so you know exactly how much you are or aren’t doing, if you have no record then what you are doing may seem quite normal but you could be overdoing it with out even realising

If you have some spare time within your day don’t necessarily think that you should be exercising, do something else instead to break the habit pattern, just in case you are actually doing this

The main key factor is balance if you have a history of anxiety, stress related problems or depression then you may be one of those people that becomes an obsessive exerciser, in order to make yourself feel better, if that is the case please do visit your Doctor to be assessed properly otherwise you might do yourself more harm than good.

On a closing note exercise should be something that we do for improving our health and it should be fun also.

Not something that becomes a compulsion to fix some other underlying problem, all you need to do is exercise say 3-4 times a week for a hour a day or less and get out of breath while you are doing it. And do it for you not because some media icon is giving the message of how they look.

Be more at home with yourself and happy with the way you look and don’t worry to much about having bulging biceps

Sources and references

Sunday Express Newspaper

Volume 18, Number 6, Running & FitNews
The American Running Association

http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Know_the_signs_of_unhealthy_exercise_addiction.htm

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Filed Under: Exercise Tagged With: addiction, Exercise

Does Over Exercising Make You Eat More

July 21, 2009 By Mark

143619625_afa1d9397d[1] We all have our own way of doing exercise, but when you haven’t done any for a long time and possibly gained weight. Because you are trying to lose excess pounds you can tend to get into a mentality. Of going at your exercise routine like a bull in a china shop.

And with so much information about exercise and which is best for yourself yourself, it can become quite confusing as to what to do and how much to do of it. Is this probably why sometimes we tend to think doing more is better rather than a little bit less.

A study which was done in Ottawa , followed the progress of some women who over exercised they were found to consume approximately 90 percent of the calories that they tend to burn.

Compared to those people who don’t over exercise, there figure came out at 30 percent which is quite a significant difference. If for example you tend to want to work out for 90 minutes then make sure that you only do cardio for 60 of those minutes.

It may be best to split your routines into two say do 45 minutes of cardio five days a week, and 30 minutes of what is called the core or resistance training. This will be more efficient than doing one session of 90 minutes of exercise.

In order to maximize what you’re doing focus more on doing resistance training, this is far more effective in burning calories up than conventional aerobic exercise. There is nothing wrong with aerobic exercise in order to improve overall fitness and health, the latter is just better. For people trying to maximize their weight loss efforts.

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Is It Ever to Late to Start Exercising

July 7, 2009 By Mark

351372542_ee23ee631c[1] When you are young you tend to be a lot more active, as opposed to when you get older. Quite why this is I dare say that nobody really knows. As time goes by we can get into habits of eating more food, and becoming very sedentary as adults.

And as a result of this become overweight. So is it really too late to start exercising no matter what age you are. It would seem that the majority of evidence points to no it isn’t. We just tend to think it isn’t something that we necessarily need to do in order to stay healthy.

Here are some statistics about which age groups do the most exercise and get their daily requirements than those who don’t. In the year 2007 72 percent of boys and 63 percent of girls, did the 60 minutes a day exercise guideline.

The girls and boys were aged between two and fifteen, as we go further up the age scale things start to look very different. Adults who were aged between 16 and 64 didn’t fare so well.

The percentages were, 40 percent for men and for women 20 percent, whom were meeting the five sessions a week 30 minutes a day requirement. But when you go up the scale further into the 65 and over then things start to go into a sharp decline. Seventeen percent of men and 13 percent of women in that age group met their daily exercise requirement.

People in their 70’s of which of these only 44 percent have some kind of exercise once a year say for example a 20 minute walk. And that is all they will do. So these results quite clearly show that, the older we get the less we tend to do as far as exercise is concerned.

So from what the above research tells us, as people get older they do less and less. So why is that ? well according to a report that was compiled which was centered around people in the over 65 years of age bracket.

The findings where a genuine lack of interest, and there wasn’t really any benefits in extending life by doing exercise on a regular basis.We tend to get into a mindset of I am too old to do this now, or “I haven’t exercised for such a long time” “I won’t be able to do it and it will be too hard”.

So the question we propose to ourselves now is, is it really ever too late to start exercising and become fit and healthy, despite the fact of how old you are. Well the evidence all points to the fact that no it isn’t. If you have had for quite some time a sedentary lifestyle, there can be huge gains if you start exercising their can be huge gains if you start exercising.

The benefits are too numerous to mention but here are a few, better bone density, more efficient cardiovascular function, better strength and endurance. One particular case to support this was a 90-year-old woman was studied, who did 12 weeks of some strength training, and as a result of this it took. Twenty years approximately off her muscle age notably her thighs. Which gave her better mobility especially when walking.

Also exercise is a good way of keeping your mental health in check as well, it relieves stress, anxiety, depression and boosts self-esteem. People can tend to have fear about exercise, in one particular case study in Scotland some people were monitored and the reasons they gave for not doing it were, shortness of breath, aching joints and a lack of energy.

These are all signs, that your body is starting to get used to what you are giving it to do, your muscles are a like elastic and if you don’t use them enough they stay in a certain position, this is what causes the aching but simply lack of use.

A lot of people don’t exercise, because of lack of self-confidence and say that they would rather do it with somebody else, rather than on their own other people cite reasons of will I be safe to go for a walk, in the park will something happened to me whilst I am there.

One of the biggest barriers really which causes this, is coming out of our comfort zone but don’t be put off of getting out of it it will be the best decision you ever making your life, there is nothing like the feeling that you get when you have done some exercise.

It is the most naturally high feeling that you will get from doing a particular activity, it really is true the old saying that is use it or lose it. Most of us tend to do aerobic exercise such things as cycling, swimming walking, these are fine but if you combine these with some strength training you will reap even more benefits. So it really isn’t too late exercise.

Quite some time ago now some interesting research came to light, where cells were put in a test-tube one set of cells was just left, and consequently stopped multiplying. Where as another set were shaken vigorously every so often and these stayed alive so there is some food for thought.

How often do you exercise ?

Do you feel that you are to old exercise ?

Is it better when you have someone to exercise with ?

Have you started exercising recently and can you tell the difference ?

It would be interesting to get some feedback on these questions just to see what peoples opinions are.

If you are having problems motivating yourself to do some exercise here are some tips:

Don’t let fear be a barrier, to doing it set yourself a day to start and make sure it becomes part of your lifestyle. Walk to the shops instead of going in a car

Keep a log of what you are doing this will give you a, chart of how much you are doing and when you are doing it, when you look back it will inspire you to do more. Also in your log write down how the exercise make you feel when you came back and always keep that thought in mind, this will in plant the seeds that what you are doing is good for you
Try not to get in to the mentality of thinking this way, I suppose I’d better go and do my work out, or I might do it today, these will tell your subconscious mind that really deep down you don’t want to do it

See a mental image of you, fitter and stronger and healthier and happier and this will take your mind towards that, if you see yourself as unfit and unhealthy then you are far more likely to end up that way

Make your exercise enjoyable a lot of people these days use wii fit, to get their exercise, when exercise becomes something that you have to do, it seems more like a chore than something that will be of benefit to you, it won’t seem like exercise if you are enjoying it if you have an iPod but lots of your favourite music on it and the time will just fly by.

Source http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Does The Exercise After Burn Effect Work

June 12, 2009 By Mark

730198669_bf726bda64[1] Sometimes with the thing’s we read, we can develop beliefs that once you see them everywhere that eventually.

We can tend to believe them even though we don’t know whether what is being said is correct or incorrect.

What has been said however is that once you are exercising, you tend to burn fat but not only that, you tend to burn it after you have finished exercising.

This is what is known as the after burn effect. This so-called effect is supposed to be a key ingredient to weight loss or so we are told.

It now seems however that this is not the case, it’s just a mere myth, this information came from a article titled Exercise Improves Fat Metabolism in Muscle but Does Not Increase 24-h Fat Oxidation from the (Exercises and Sport Sciences Review April 2009).

Edward Melanson who is a exercise physiologist said that to his surprise found that exercise has little or any effect at all as regards the 24 hour after burn effect, he used a interesting way to put this theory to the test, just to see what would happen. In the study, sixty five candidates were chosen and they all had different exercise lifestyles which were grouped into four types they were, well trained, obese, sedentary, and lean.

During the study they cycled at different exercise intensities, until they reached a point where they burned 400 calories, after this they were monitored for 24 hours just to see what the effects were. They were monitored very closely and were allowed to eat food, when the results came in none of them reported that, any kind of enhanced fat burning had occurred.

Both during and after their workout, this study has caused quite a bit of stir amongst fitness experts whom suggests that exercise, can boost your metabolism for longer than previously was suggested.

This study doesn’t suggest that say that you shouldn’t exercise regularly, but to bear in mind. That a moving body will burn more fat compared to a sedentary one, and not to get too concerned about whether or not you are burning fat after your workout.

There has been lot of confusing messages sent out by certain writings, saying that certain types of intensity of exercise will burn more fat, but the researchers say this is without merit.

As for the so called after burn the amount of calories burned they say, isn’t that impressive. Pascal Imbreault who is a associate professor at Ottawa University ‘s School of human kinetics, says that any kind of exercise after burn will usually finish after a period of 15 and 35 minutes.

And even though the amount of calories burned which, can depend upon the intensity of the exercise and the overall bodyweight of the person. The actual burning of calories while resting is very minimal he says. He is quoted as saying “Exercise is not that powerful,”

Another one of the over quoted sayings is that increasing your muscle tissue, will enable your body to burn more calories while at rest. The overall idea that muscle is more metabolically active, than fat isn’t realistically what happens.

Imbreault says that muscle requires more calories, than muscle that isn’t being used. He also goes on to say that when at rest both muscle and fat, both need the same amount of calories, in order to sustain themselves.

Does this mean then that all those hours training a certain way in the gym was for nothing after all, having the muscle is a benefit. Even though if you probably thought it was doing more than it actually was, keeping muscular is far less likely to stop you from having a injury, will improve your overall athletic performance.

And another after thought is when the summer comes you will look good in a T-shirt with all those bulging biceps and a toned body, and it will probably turn quite a few females heads. That reminds me where did I put those weights summer is fast approaching and I must buy some more T-shirts

So to sum up this, the equation really still says the same use exercise to burn off the excess calories that you don’t need and make good food choices.

Source http://www.montrealgazette.com

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Filed Under: Exercise Tagged With: Exercise, metabolism

How Much Exercise To Prevent Diabetes

May 31, 2009 By Mark

1847770898_20fae291c2[1] None of us really if we think about it, want to end up getting diabetes but the problem with the lifestyles that we tend to live these days. It’s becoming very commonplace there are probably two reasons for this the amount of exercise we do or don’t do. And the amount of sugar that is in our foods.

For some people who struggle with doing exercise three times a week, for 30 minutes a day or at push 20 minutes a day.Then what you are about to read will come as a bit of a relief.

Researchers have found that you can get by with under 10 minutes of exercise and that is each week, according to what the study found. Current conventional thinking suggests that we exercise for 30 minutes three times a week or five at a push.

This has been proven that exercising for 30 minutes three times a week, will help with heart health, cholesterol levels and insulin resistance. What with the hectic pace of modern life a lot of people aren’t able to commit to this schedule of exercise every week.

During the study the researchers conducting it, had 16 men who were aged in their early 20s, they were instructed to exercise in six sessions, these were broken down into four and six high-intensity sprints. They also drank a solution of glucose to see what effect it had on their blood sugar levels.

This was primarily to see how high they stayed, with elevated blood sugar levels, they found that after two weeks the blood sugar levels of the participants were decreased by a factor of 12 percent, and duration wise went up by a further 37 percent. The thing to remember with this is it was high intensity exercise. Previous studies beforehand have shown that moderate exercise doesn’t normally affect blood sugar levels and or decrease them. The researchers say that people need to incorporate at least four to six intense exercise sessions for 30 seconds and this will help keep blood sugar levels in check.

Source http://www.naturalnews.com

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Filed Under: Exercise