Fitness and being Healthy

[Dapaladin]

I agree with Fridmarr. Our bodies don't want the same thing our conscious mind wants. Our bodies want survival and thats it. It wants you to carry body fat around because it's a good source of energy if we can't access food. But we will never have a time where we can't access food so body fat serves no purpose (other than the essential body fat which is what 3-5% in males).

[Fivelives]

That's kinda low. Last I heard, it was closer to around 10-11%. And body fat plays a very important role - it provides energy for muscles, lubrication for muscle fibers, and acts as insulation to help keep our temperature in check.

Our bodies want to store fat for colder months, so when it gets cold we tend to get hungrier and our metabolisms slow down. That's where exercise comes into play - it keeps our metabolism relatively high, so we don't store as much fat as we normally would.

And is it so hard to believe that we can train ourselves to listen to our bodies? Look at the crazy shit people train themselves to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEDPSztxyjs - after watching demonstrations like that, is it really so hard to think that we can learn to listen to what our bodies need as a guide for our lifestyles?

Granted, it's not for everyone. People are essentially lazy and will always take the path of least resistance.

[Fridmarr]

No one said we can't learn but that's not the problem. The problem is that the body isn't sending the messages at a level that we are looking for. When it does send messages, because your body isn't worried about the same things you are, even the most fundamentally basic things can be misleading. As you point out something as basic as "have I eaten enough" requires you to override your body's message.

Certainly picking up on various queues from the body can be helpful but not nearly sufficient by themselves.

[Dapaladin]

It's 10–13% in women and 3–5% in men. Your muscles gets most of it's energy from glucose reserves that your muscles themselves store. After that you body can aerobically burn fat to produce energy for muscles. So while saying it's energy for muscles isn't wrong fat isn't your muscles primary energy source. Perimysium is what lubricates your muscles. I'm not sure what kind of cell it is but it doesn't really matter. You body isn't going to go into your muscles to find these cells and break them down for energy as they are a part of your muscles. They would degenerate at the same time as muscle and not fat. Saying we need fat to keep our temperature in check while it is accurate it is outdated. If we didn't have clothes then yes that would be a very important roll of fat. If anything it being colder out would actually increase metabolism as shivering causes an increase. The only reason your metabolism would slow down is because you are not taking in enough food or not enough food that can be converted to energy.

Is it that we are training ourselves to listen to our bodies or that we are training ourselves to ignore most messages and only listen to a select few. Shaolin monks are capable of taking what would be unbearable amount of pain for the normal person because they learn to block those pain messages.

[Fivelives]

I can't find a reputable source for the 3-5% being the "essential" marker, but most everything my google-fu pulls up seems to state that. I still say that's ridiculously low - even pro athletes run around 8-10%.

Other than that, you're pretty well off the mark on just about everything else you've claimed there, Dapaladin. I had a big writeup on "how fat works", but figured I wouldn't bore everyone else to tears, so if you're interested then just feel free to drop me a PM and I'll explain it to you.

[Dapaladin]

Of course it's low. It's the bare minimum your body needs to survive. And you can't find a reputable source because it's very well known fact...

And now that that is out of the way... This thread is for peoples education and experience about "fitness and health". If there is bad information here I suggest you refute it with some good information. So if i don't know what I'm talking about instead of just saying "no you're wrong" fix what I've said to make it right or just make a brand new statement. So you say i have no idea how fat works. Thats fine since i clearly don't know inform me and all who may be reading this instead of just saying its wrong and leaving us with nothing.

[Fivelives]

Perimysium (and epimysium/endomysium) is adipose tissue mixed with fibers for support (areolar connective tissue), so basically fat and rubber bands, and no, it's generally not broken down for conversion to energy.

Muscles store energy as glycogen, not glucose. It's broken down into glucose as needed for aerobic/anaerobic respiration. Glucose isn't stored anywhere in the body at all, actually - if glucose is present in the body it's either being converted to glycogen for storage, or being immediately used for cellular respiration.

Oh, and glycogen is pretty much what fat is composed of. It's arranged in molecules with 3 glycogen "tails" called a triglyceride.

And even without clothing, fat still insulates our body. It's not only subdermal, but it also surrounds most of our organs, which clothing doesn't have any effect on.

Shivering doesn't increase metabolism. It generates heat through friction, but the activity is so minor that it doesn't even register a change in overall metabolic processes. Metabolism is the sum total of all chemical reactions in the body - both catabolic (breaking things down, e.g. glycolysis) and anabolic (building things up, e.g. protein synthesis). Although I suppose if you were in a situation where you were shivering, you would technically be increasing the metabolism - but only because it was slowed by the cold.

Proteins are fickle beasties, and tend to denature rather easily. All of the proteins in our body will denature at a high enough temperature, or the reactions will be slowed enough by low temperature that they would essentially cease to function. Your metabolism can slow for any number of reasons; serum salinity (not salty enough/too salty, affects water retention and action potentials and can interfere with some reactions), pH (too much/too little acidity can affect the rate of reactions and denature proteins), dehydration, etc... food intake has surprisingly little effect on reactions, except if you're to the point of complete starvation where our body simply doesn't have enough amino acids to even begin to produce the proteins required for reactions to occur, or is so low in glucose that you can't generate ATP.

[Fridmarr]

Metabolism is not really affected by weather, at least not directly. Other habits may be affected by weather and those can in turn affect one's metabolic rate. Generally speaking, because people tend to gain weight in the winter metabolic rate actually goes up not down. The weight gain is usually from an increase in appetite and a decrease in physical activity, both of which can be weather related.

That said, I think this is reaching a point where it's not beneficial to the thread. Fat is an important nutrient in one's diet. Additionally, some amount of it is important to be stored in the body for various purposes. I'm betting most of us (and in particular those reading this thread) have stored more than is necessary. The precise amount that qualifies as the minimum is not particularly useful in the context of this thread, so lets wrap this tangent up.

[Fivelives]

That said, I think this is reaching a point where it's not beneficial to the thread.

^^ That.

[ryan4nayr]

I realize I'm going off on a tangent from the recent tone of this thread, but I would like to hear your thoughts on a fitness-related question I have.

Of late I have been involved in a fitness regimen that involves a good balance of

• cardio (1 h on the elliptical machine tue., thu., sat., outdoor bicycling 2+ h on sat. & maybe sun. weather permitting) with 15 min. warmup/stretching before+after;
• martial arts training with a master every wed. night for 90 mins. On my wed. classes I notice I'm the only student there who's not out of breath, so I'm discovering my stamina is sufficient

I do notice everybody in class is pretty buff, in terms of musculature, so I wonder if throwing in some weight training would benefit me at all. I have gradually been developing some upper body muscle bulk due to the hard-hitting nature of the art, so I don't feel too bad about not keeping up on that aspect of my routine. My daily activities in a healthcare profession require a very, very minor amount of lifting, but my job requires more of mental acuity & hand-eye coordination than physical strength.

I'm fairly comfortable with my weight, sure I could lose 10-15 lbs. but at times it's nice having the fat stores when I cannot eat meals during long procedures. I don't consider weight loss at all in my planning, but I am thinking of my martial arts and patient lifting prn

So, TLDR... weight training, aye or nay?

[Aubade]

From a purely personal standpoint, I don't think Weight Training would benefit you that much.

[Fivelives]

Weight training is always beneficial. In most cases, it's even better for cardiovascular health than "cardio" exercises. Especially exercises that activate core or very large muscle groups - think lower body and abdomen, and to a lesser extent, pecs and lats as well. Whenever I'm designing a program for someone, I always tell them to taper off cardio after a while (generally when they can run non-stop for 3 miles, seems to be a good cutoff point) and switch to straight weight training.

Cardio teaches you how to breathe effectively to meet your body's need for oxygen, and in itself is a pretty decent full body workout. The problem is that it plateaus early and loses its effectiveness fairly early on, because distance isn't as effective as resistance at keeping things challenging.

But use your own yardstick. If your exercise routine is sufficient for you to do everything you do regularly, then it's working as intended. If you find yourself getting tired/running out of energy or something, then you need to increase your activity.

[Arnock]

So I joined a local LA fitness and have begun the stronglifts program, today was my second day. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the starting squats and deadlifts were, but was also somewhat embarrassed at how much I struggled with the overhead press.

I was also surprised at how openly people would discuss their steroid use in the locker room >.<

[Melathys]

I have a tendency to get bored with these things, even ones that are supposed to change it up. So I'm going to really change it up. 3 weeks, each week will be week 1 of each program, or the first phase. Following the p90x schedule where week 4 is recovery, for the 4th week I'll just do random yoga and stretches that each program has.

This week I'll do rip:60. This workout is a bit different in that you do the same dvd all week, but every single week is different for the entire program. It has the longest warmup/cooldown I've yet seen for these things, clocking in at 20 mins, and 10 mins cooldown, making a total 50 min workout. I do like how this workout goes from weights to cardio for each round.

[Fridmarr]

So I joined a local LA fitness and have begun the stronglifts program, today was my second day. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the starting squats and deadlifts were, but was also somewhat embarrassed at how much I struggled with the overhead press.

After about an 8 year hiatus from weightlifting I started back up a few months ago, and even got my wife in on it. I chose to do stronglifts for the simplicity and the fact that I could easily acquire the equipment I needed to do it in the garage.

I had to skip ahead a little on some exercises particularly bench, but I lifted weights pretty regularly from high school through my mid 20s. I wouldn't recommend that for someone new to those exercises. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with how things have worked out. We've both managed to get a bit stronger while losing weight (I'm not interested in altering my diet for strength gains anymore) and have dealt with some plateaus. I still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be, but it's been a solid start.