I find that the idea of a common-sense approach to getting fit is strangely absent among much of the population. Magazines offer quick fixes to blast gut fat and make your ass go from jiggly to just plain tight. All of this in only 8, 5, 2 minutes a day while still eating anything that you want. I just have to shake my head at this whole notion.
The human body, although infinitely complex in many aspects, can also be seen as a relatively simple input/output machine. To maintain a steady weight, what gets put in must be removed (in one manner or another). It's like balancing a ledger... what goes in on one side must be balanced on the other side. In all reality, the same goes with diet and exercise. What you put into your body must exit in caloric consumption (and, of course, the bowel movement). Sure, we burn calories just breathing, and things like sleeping will get rid of a few grams of carbs, but ultimately, if you want to see a drop on the scale, your physical output has to outweigh your intake.
The reason I'm blabbing about this is simply out of sheer annoyance. I hate watching commercials and seeing ads that try to sell wonderland treatments and cures for having too much junk in the trunk. Granted, these companies do include fine print and the quickly rambled associated facts about the realities of "these results not typical", which go largely ignored. Have you ever noticed how these "guarantees" always add in, "With a balanced diet and regular exercise" but is usually said so quickly that you barely catch it (or is in print so small that it's barely readable)? Advertisers try to get the audience to ignore these facts because they know that people only hear what they want to. "What? I can get a 6-pack just by taking a handful of ephedrine tablets? Quoi? I can get a Jennifer Aniston quality heiney just by sitting at my desk? WOW! I'll take a year's supply, please!" Ummm... no. If you work out like a banshee, stop eating chili dogs and hit the gym 6 times a week with a trainer, it might happen. But these things do not just manifest themselves in some sort of divine fashion. Sorry, but it's just a whole lot of rubbish.
Also, people are also really apt to believe that things like ephedrine and Red Bull and other energy drinks are a great thing to have at the gym. They don't realize that there's a tonne of stress placed upon the heart when doing intense activities with a truckload of caffeine and taurine and sugar and other associated uppers pumping through your system. Water is good... caffeine is bad. Caffeine dehydrates you, it's highly addictive, and is hard on your body. However, every time I'm at a gym, I see muscleheads lifting weights who barely let go of their energy drink to do another 5 reps. Every trainer or coach I've met with nutrition knowledge says the same thing... get rid of the caffeine and increase the water. Dehydration slows metabolism and prevents the body from processing food at an optimum level. Caffeine is a diuretic. So is alcohol. A large coke for a hangover is quite possibly the worst thing you can drink, even if it does help you feel better. It's also brutal for the gym. Have some of Bobby Boucher's high quality H20.
Finally, the last of my rant... I think some people constantly trick themselves into believing they eat better than they do. Don't get me wrong... I don't have the best eating habits from time to time. I eat fast food more often than I should, and I love a Timmy Ho's coffee with cream and sugar as much (or, quite possibly, even more) than the next guy. But I know it's crap for me. I just try to balance it out, that's all. I've actually heard people honestly trying to believe that "Pizza isn't THAT bad for me! Look, it has tomato sauce! And green peppers! Those are both vegetables and they're good for you." Okay, sure thing. That pound of cheese and pepperoni is really good for burning calories. Riiiiiight. Vegetables are good. Protein is good... if you have too much, the body simply gets rid of it. Carbs and sugar, on the other hand, are kept by the body and, if unused, are turned into fat. I love my carbs, and I think that low-carb and no-carb diets can also be brutally hard on your body, but they need to be moderated. Eating a whole box of KD for lunch? Not a good idea. You might as well go enjoy a Big Mac meal and, while you're at it, Supersize it.
Okay, enough of my preaching and proselytizing. I know I'm not a guru on personal health and fitness, and I'm not a dietician. I just think that people need a bit more common sense when it comes to this obsession with weight and personal health and the pursuit of a sleeker build and bulging biceps. Ask a licensed trainer or dietician about these things... don't rely on fads that come and go. Eat more whole grains, drink more water, and exercise regularly. It's pretty basic. Vegetables, good. Water, good. Doughnuts, energy drinks, and buckets of pizza, bad.
-T
5 comments:
Unfortunately common sense is often wrong. The common sense way of losing weight is to starve yourself. But this never works as people can't be hungry forever.
This calories in and out business is not very correct. You eat more you lose your apetite. You exercise more you get hungrier. The body tells us when to eat and how much. Not the other way around. This does not apply to carbohydrates which can cause a lot problems as people get older.
The best nutrition book I've ever read is "Good calories bad calories". I suggest you read this to get over using common sense which can be very wrong. Common sense is really hearsay and rumor.
Here's a different point of view:
Suppose the fat is stealing calories making some people feal tired and hungry all the time? And what if this has happened because the fat cells are more sensitive to insulin than muscle cells. This is a fascinating view of obesity that explins why low carb diets work as they keep insulin to a minimum.
I guess I simply disagree with the premise that starving yourself is the common sense way to lose weight, first off. I also don't agree with the, "eat more and you lose your appetite" idea. In my personal experience, this isn't true. When I exercise, I generally lose my appetite (at least for a few hours). Of course your body tries to self-regulate and adapt to habitual changes. I completely agree. Also, I agree that the "hungry" and "full" feelings are a way of the body telling us how much to eat and when, but how accurate is this? Psychology has a huge amount to do with eating/snacking habits, and there are a lot of reasons these "full" feelings are ignored quite regularly.
I think, however, that you missed my point. The common sense I was referring to was as follows: "We all know fast food is bad. We all know that eating a quarter pounder with cheese and a supersized fries is bad. Sure, doing it once a year isn't going to hurt much. Doing this twice a week is very bad. Eating vegetables and exercising is good. Ergo, stop eating crap and start eating more vegetation, less fast food (and eat smaller portions in general), drink more water (which will boost metabolism and help process calories) and hit the bloody gym". This is what I meant by common sense approach to getting healthy.
Finally, my understanding of low-carb/no-carb diets is pretty basic. Cutting down on carb intake, particularly in North American diets that revolve around huge portions and bread products would be obviously beneficial... there would be fewer grams of sugar to burn and the body just dumps the excess protein that it doesn't use. The body focuses on processing fat stores rather than the carbs/sugar normally taken in. And this can definitely be helpful. Still, it can be really hard on your body (I can't tell you the number of people who suffer from headaches because of a lack of carbs... at the end of the day, the brain desperately needs simple sugars to process, as do the rest of the body's cells).
Still, the focus of the entry was on the common sense of, "We know what is bad for us, so try to fix the habits. Exercise will get some results, not wishing a six-pack into existence."
Thanks for your well written response. I wish my original comment was better worded.
I'm not talking about just a workout and getting hungry. Instead how about treking through the frozen tundra for a few days. Then you'll be eating 5000 cals a day, not losing tons of weight either.
There are plenty of fat vegans with lots of health problems. You need to come up with something better than this for a person that can't get the weight off. There are people who can't lose even if they eat less calories than they should. You may be lucky without weight problems, but you may also not see what the real problem is with obesity either.
The fact is it takes insulin to get fatter or to keep it on. This is only caused by eating carbohydrates. Look it up please. Without insulin a person will starve and lose weight which is what type 1 diabetics do without insulin injections. Before insulin they were forced to stay on an ultra low carb diet.
The upshot to this is you would not gain any weight if you just ate all the non-carb foods you wanted to. Even all the grease and fat. In this case without all the insulin stimulating the fat cells to steal your calories, you'll naturally lose weight and not over eat.
The headaches from lack of carbs is often called induction flu. The body takes a few days to switch over to a non-sugar metabolism. After that the muscles and most of the brain is living off of ketones derived from fat.
I believe a six pack comes from losing the weight that is covering up the six pack.
I used to be complacent about nutrition, going along with what the authorities said, until I was forced to realize something was wrong when I kept gaining weight while eating a very healthy vegan diet. I had to find out what was going wrong.
It sounds like you are not having these troubles so you have not had to go further in your understanding of nutrition.
Eric,
I'll probably refrain from submitting another response to this thread, because you're misunderstanding the point to the whole post (and my previous response). Your whole response hinges on the supposition that I'm contradicting your knowledge of ketogenic/no-carb/low-carb diets. It also hinges on your supposition that I'm writing about specific and more limited cases where some people cannot simply eat a more balanced diet, decrease portion sizes, and increase exercise to lose weight. I'm not talking about these situations. You're writing from a very personal place, but you're the exception rather than the rule. I fully believe you when you said you ate well but kept getting bigger... that still has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. When you say, "You need to come up with something better than this for a person that can't get the weight off", my response is, well, sorry you feel that way but my response did not engage with anyone with such a specific challenge. Again, it was aimed at people with poor eating habits and those who don't exercise or do anything active beyond watching football and eating chili dogs.
I made one comment in my response about low/no-carb diets, in that they can be hard on your body. Again, this is based on experiences of friends/acquaintances and knowing people in kinesiology/nutrition circles that tell me these diets can be hard on people. Never once did I say that they're the devil or they don't work or it isn't the source for a diet revolution. Your whole response focuses on this low/no-carb diet thing, which I barely said anything about and was not really discussing throughout the post or my response. 99.9% of my blab session was on cutting down on junk food, increasing vegetation/water, and getting some exercise. Is any of this bad advice? If it is, I'd say that the whole field of nutrution and medicine is in some serious trouble, because ANY doctor/physician/dietician I've encountered would suggest these things for the MAJORITY of people who have gained weight over their years (again, THIS is what I was referring to).
It was never my intention to come up with a universal plan to save the world from obesity. Again, I've been speaking in generalities and I'm not talking about the morbidly obese or those with various diabetes or related problems. Or those with specific issues relating to insulin and the processing of carbohydrates. I'm talking to and about people who simply don't eat well, who don't exercise, and hope and pray (in vain) for some miracle cure to come along and fix it. People who say, "I work out 4 times a week" but actually just show up to the gym, walk on a treadmill for 10 minutes and talk the rest of the time, and go and get a double cheeseburger somewhere afterwards to celebrate their "workout". Again, if you can deny that many or most people who are overweight are actually those who exercise and eat a balanced diet with reasonable portions and don't eat fast food, then we're simply coming from completely separate worldviews.
I appreciate your knowledge of nutrition, but you're missing the intent of the post (like I tried to point out in my response). In one last effort to drive home my point, I'm talking about people with poor eating habits and no motivation to exercise who trick themselves into believing that KFC three times a week isn't THAT bad. The six pack comment was flippant, and obviously sarcastic, which is what I intended.
Your response is to the exception/minority, and not to anything I wrote. I'm talking about the generally unhealthy population and not to people who have genetic or biological dispositions to obesity/diabetes/etc. From any nutritional information I've received from doctors and trainers at coaching clinics and people involved in both kinesiology and medicine, I'm talking about the general population, and I'm simply not convinced that the majority is suffering from what you're response focuses on.
That being said, this blog post was never meant to indulge in a pissing match... it was a rant about how many people trick themselves into believing that they eat better than they do, and that fitness/pop culture magazines make promises they can't live up to. Case closed. I'm glad you feel strongly about low-carb diets and their benefits, and there are a lot of people who agree with you relating to ketonic dieting and the processing of ketones in both the brain and the body. However, it has little or nothing to do with what I'm talking about here.
Post a Comment