Myth busting exercise

If you are anything like me - a bit of a novice in this exercise business - then perhaps you are also confused. The confusion stems from the amount of 'helpful' articles written about the best times, activities and speeds of exercise to get you well on your to getting your ideal body or getting over the plateau. And far too often I've trusted those articles that have told me that my exercise programme isn't working because it's not before breakfast or it's not in the optimum fat burning intensity. I've trusted the experts because the more I've learnt about exercise and specifically fat loss, the more confused I've gotten. Forget the 'just do it', because there is a right time and a right place and I obviously don't know what they are otherwise I wouldn't have plateaued. Right? Wrong and Choice is here to de-myth all the things I have believed about exercise and not in a fitness magazine type way. Most of their articles are by subscription, but this little gem isn't so you can read the whole article here. So, lets get to myth busting - here are my favourites.

1. My favourite fact: Chocolate = 1250kJ. One hour walk = 1250kJ. Chocolate here I come. And that's how we all gain weight. Why? (Please someone tell me I wasn't the only one who didn't know this!) Because sitting writing blog post for one hour = 625kJ. So walking only constitutes an additional expenditure of 625kJ over the amount I normally expend.

2. My least favourite fact: The reason I walk is because I'm in the optimum fat burning zone. Yup, that's the reason. It's got nothing to do with being lazy. And it's true that low intensity exercise burns more fat as a percentage of energy burned, except that the total amount of energy is really more important. So increasing intensity and leaving the zone will not only get me fitter, but also use more overall energy.

3. Not justify my hunger fact: If I exercise in the morning my metabolism is increased all day long. Which explains why I'm always hungry after morning exercise. False! While after burn does happen (known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) it is generally overestimated. For a meaningful after burn you would have to work long and hard, so my increased hunger is probably unjustified as is exercising in the morning for the sake of the after burn if it doesn't fit well into my routine.

4. The myth that changed my routine: Exercising on an empty stomach burns more fat. You hear something enough times and you believe it. So during my plateau I figured that if I exercised before dinner instead of after breakfast I would be home and hosed. Again, it's true that after fasting you burn more fat, but the total amount of energy expended is more important that whether it's fat or carbohydrate. Which is wonderful, because now I don't have to feel guilty for not wanting to get up at 5am!

5. It's a shame it's almost winter fact: I've always heard that swimming is not helpful for fat loss, not that I ever understood why and spent countless laps trying to work it out. Anyway, it's false as long as you don't eat more because you just spent lots of time in cold water and you work hard enough.

How about you? Did you know all of these already? Got any more of your own?

Surprising myself

Thank you for all the fabulous suggestions from the last post. Here is how they have played out.

Things that make you go Huh?
It’s normally your partner or a close friend that surprises you. Sometimes they say things or do things that you just wouldn’t expect and you think to yourself ‘wow! I thought I knew them’. Rarely do you expect that from yourself, but it turns out that this week has been full of it!

• On Monday, I figured I’d give the jogging thing another chance. So I started and at first it was hard but then I just kept going. For 15 minutes until the destination I had set myself. For someone who hates jogging and doesn’t consider herself very fit, I was shocked. When I got home, I felt this incredible sense of empowerment and calm. It was so bizarre.
• On Tuesday, I went to a Body Balance class at the local gym. Walking away after the class I was disappointed that it wasn’t a whole body workout because everywhere north of my belly button didn’t get worked. So before dinner I grabbed some weights and finished off what the class had started.
• And this morning, I awoke at 5:30am (an hour earlier than usual) bouncing off the walls so excited about going interval training. When I came home, bathed in sweat I proceeded to grab some dumbbells, my yoga mat and started strength training. I thought ‘who is this person?’

On interval training
I was usually totally put off by the idea because the instructions were always so convoluted. They either changed from day to day or week to week and I have no idea how you are supposed to walk effectively with the instructions in one hand, stop watch in the other, whilst monitoring you heart rate. So I never bothered. I was intrigued when I read about using the outdoors to create an interval course and I figured that would suit me perfectly. So I embraced stairs, park benches, the timber rails along the sides of bike paths, dirt patches, surface changes, hills and any other thing that got my attention. And I had a wonderful time! It got me out of my head (apart from the occasional ‘who is this person’ thoughts) and focused on how I could push my body. I made up little ‘rules’ like every time I saw a dirt patch on the oval I would skip really fast or when I left the bike path I had to jog or I would jump over all the timber rails in one section or run along them in another. Each time I caught my breath after these bursts I would find a new activity to amuse myself and get my heart rate up. I presume that that is the idea of the usual instructions, but this was so much more natural and in tune with my environment which dovetails neatly with my cardinal rule of listening to my body and responding.

The other thing that worried me was not working hard enough both during cardio and weights. I am usually the first to go ‘too hard, I’m outta here’ but the class on Tuesday showed me how great it felt to push your limits. So what I found worked for me was:

• set goals based on landmarks like ‘I’ll jog the length of these rails’ or skip fast until I get tangled up 5 times.
• when doing yoga standing poses (or something where there isn’t a particular number of repetitions) play music that has regular changes in it like long rifts of music with no lyrics so the goal might be to hold the pose until the singing starts again.

I had so much fun pushing myself that I can’t wait to do it again. And when I reflect on my sore muscles I keep asking myself ‘who is this person’?

Conclusion
All of this has made me wonder about the person I actually am. If this peculiar being inside of me who is loving pushing herself physically really is me, then where has she been hiding for the last 15 years? Can we really hold ourselves back this much based on our beliefs of ourselves? Before I started walking regularly, I was sure of two things about myself; I don’t like pushing my body hard physically; I need to exercise because it’s healthy and has weight loss benefits but I may never love it. Two ideas that I have held for a long time, shattered in just one week.

I am really interested to see how my love of exercise develops especially over the coming days. We are spending a long weekend at the beach and I’ve always said I would be fit and healthy if I lived by the sea. But when on holidays I usually have to drag a very grumble bum out the door to do anything physical except for soaking in the ocean or pool. Is this the end of lazy me? We shall see. In the meantime on a very philosophical note, I’m curious to know are humans really the empty vessels that can be anything we want to be? Are our dreams are reflection on what is within us even if it seems distant from reality?

Is it a cop-out to not jog?

I bumped into my neighbour the other day at the shops and she asked if it was me she had seen out walking. She mentioned how she has just started her own walking routine and that although her body feels awful afterwards she can feel improvements. My neighbour is about 10 years older than me, but fit and trim looking and I always thought she was a gym junkie, so I was floored when she said that walking is tough. From the first day I have walked, I haven’t felt any real difference in my fitness despite subtle changes in energy levels, alertness and a vague general feeling of ‘well being’.

With all the recent talk of plateau’s I think my body has jumped on that bandwagon and I’m there staring at the very flat, seemingly endless plain with a dead straight road and barren fields that look so drought stricken they could suck the blood out of your veins if you got too close. Actually I lie, this plateau is a tropical rainforest and there are lots of beautifully coloured birds and butterflies and I am really quite content here. That’s probably the problem with this plateau because it’s not the dread barren place as in the first description but the second one and so my motivation to leave is low. Except of course I still have that image of those pants and the fact that I don’t fit them.

So this all got me to wondering about fitness and how much is enough. After a month of daily walks, I think it is time to increase the activity level a bit but I hate jogging which is the logical step up from walking. My whole premise to get myself to start exercising regularly what to do something I enjoy. This I have done with great success. But is it a copout to whine about not wanting to work harder? Do I just bite the bullet and workout wether I enjoy it or not because it’s good for my body and will help with weight loss? And how much is enough? Should we always push our bodies to work harder and get fitter? Is it enough if you have the fitness and strength to get through the day and the activities you enjoy doing?

Yes, I have doubts. I am beginning to clarify my thoughts on this which I will write more about (once they start sticking together a bit better rather than just floating around in my brain) but in the meantime I am curious to hear what your thoughts are and how you act on these.

The city of no excuses

Imagine a gym, where from all around you can hear bird song instead of the pumping beats of questionable singers in questionable music video clips. Imagine a gym, where the cool breeze carries with it the sweet scent of flowers instead of the sweat of the guy next to you filtered over and over in dirty air conditioning ducts. Imagine a gym, where you can go any time of day and you don’t have to wait for the machines. Imagine a gym where you don’t listen to the grunts of the person next to you, because your cardio is the long walk between the machines. Just imagine a gym where the ceiling is tree branches, the floor is grass and the view is flowering shrubs and dogs playing in the creek. Just imagine a gym in a city where there are no excuses. This is my city.

Presumably in order to combat obesity in this city, the Council is constantly providing fun ways to get people active. We are already blessed with a sub-tropical climate so the outdoors beckon at any time of year. On top of that the Council provides us with bike paths that run for over 500km, free activities in local parks where we can learn anything from rock climbing to tai chi, grass ovals with 400m running tracks and now a gym that is the stuff that infomercials are made of.

Bright, colourful gadgets in the park where every piece of gym equipment is the type you see on tv. Well, used to see on tv anyway, from that disk that you spin on to work your core to that funny bike looking thing that you pull towards you and even the cross trainers where you feel like each body part is flailing in a different direction. All the moving parts are simple, even the strength machines where normally you adjust the weights work by lifting your own body weight. They even have a rowing machine, although it’s a bit clunky.

So does this sound like the city of no excuses? I think so and I am really loving being able to mix it up and do what I feel like wether it’s fulfilling my infomercial dreams (I always had a secret desire to try one of those disk spinning things, although I suspect it doesn’t actually do anything) or decide that even going to a ‘happy place’ doesn’t work when jogging around the oval. And scaring people by whizzing past on the bike ways is also a lot of fun.
I wonder if other cities in the world are working as hard as the Council of the city of no excuses to get residents active? Is it something the residents can ask for themselves? Does it help to get people active if they are provided with facilities?