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Our bones are made up of minerals, the most important of them being calcium.
contribution of lean body weight to total body weight decreases and therefore we feel less strong,
fat is an inert tissue, it doesn’t demand calories from your body to maintain itself, it is easier for your body to keep it vs. keeping muscle.
if the catabolic component of metabolism is higher than the anabolic component then there is an increase in the body fat stores.
Sitting is the new smoking.
What you do for 23 hours of your day will always have a greater bearing than what you do for 1 hour in the day.
It takes as little as 150 minutes of exercise per week to improve blood glucose tolerance, reduce body fat and the risk to all possible lifestyle diseases that come with obesity.
Every exercise is limited in its design and cannot look after the different components of fitness — endurance, strength, flexibility and cardio-respiratory — equally well.
the benefits of an anaerobic program are not well known outside the exercise science and physiology world, and this leads to it not just being ‘not recommended’, but also actively discouraged by health professionals with a ‘marne ka hai kya’ or ‘back tod ne ka hai?’
The upper two chambers are called auricles and the lower chambers are called ventricles;
As a response to the endurance or aerobic or cardio programs, the left ventricle will go through an increase in size and become bigger than what it was. But, and this is crucial, it’s with non-endurance or anaerobic training (gymming, sprinting, etc.) that the left ventricle will also develop a thicker wall, with a larger and more efficient capillary network, leading to an increase in strength as well.
For improvements in heart health, both training adaptations, that of a larger ventricular cavity and strength of the wall, are essential. Only then will there be a real decrease in blood lipid profile, BP, blood sugar, etc.
The enlarged heart in people who work out regularly is also called as the ‘athlete’s heart’ and is characterized by low or normal BP levels and low body fat levels.
The intensity of your activity will decide which energy system will dominate, but at any given time all three will be in use.
The aerobic system, well, follows the aerobic pathway, and by that it means that muscles get to use oxygen. This pathway was developed to carry out tasks that go on for a long time,
The ATP-CP and glycogen-lactic acid system follow the anaerobic pathway, which means that they function in the absence of oxygen. Absence of oxygen doesn’t mean there is no oxygen available, it only means that the task was completed so fast, oxygen couldn’t reach the working muscle group. Working without oxygen means that the muscles will be able to work for a very short duration of time because there is only so much you can sustain in the absence of oxygen. Since they last for a very short period of time, obviously they can carry out really high-intensity tasks.
train smart and not hard, know which energy system to manipulate andhow to bring about maximum fat loss, or shall I say ‘results’.
muscle is THE only metabolic active tissue in your body. The one entity that revs up your metabolism, burns your fat, makes you look young, attractive, hot and keeps you fertile is muscle. And this muscle comes in two different types (yeah! welcome to exercise physiology class); they’re called the oxidative and the non-oxidative muscle fibres or the red and the white fibres or the slow and fast twitch fibres, or if you want to sound very technical then Type 1 and Type 2 fibres.
Type 1 / Slow twitch / Red — Low intensity / Long duration aerobic — Carb / Fat / Protein as fuel
Type 2 / Fast twitch / White — High intensity / Short duration — Glycogen / ATP as fuel
. In the absence of oxygen (anaerobic metabolism), 1 glucose molecule at a time from glycogen is broken down into an intermediate product called pyruvic and then to lactic acid, and the energy produced during this reaction generates ATP (2 molecules of ATP for every glucose
Our body typically stores fat as triglycerides in both the fat cells (or the adipose tissue) and in the skeletal muscle cell.
Aerobically, when fat is broken down it produces more energy (147 ATP) as compared to carbs (36 ATP per glucose molecule). Anaerobically, fat cannot be used as a fuel but when performing anaerobic activity with intervening rest periods, the FFA from blood play a minor role as energy source.
Technically, the body can use protein as a source of fuel too (aerobically). However, it is used as a fuel only in extreme conditions and mostly used for its main purpose — that of building and repairing body tissue.
So what you need to remember is that, for anaerobic pathway, pre-stored ATP and glycogen are the only sources of fuel. For the aerobic pathway, all three — carbs, fats and proteins — can be used as fuel. Although aerobically fat appears to be the most important source of fuel, the fact that carbs are more efficient (need fewer oxygen molecules for oxidation) makes them more important as the starting fuel, with fat taking over later. That’s exactly why it is always said that fat is burned on the carbohydrate flame ☺.
Calculating energy expenditure cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula; there are many factors that influence your energy expenditure — more relevant to our topic, energy expenditure during exercise. Some of these are age, sex, body composition, pre-workout meal, meal history through the week, basically it’s all quite overwhelming and the research is still in progress.
Exercise Energy Expenditure (EEE) is a combination of calories burned during exercise and calories burned after or due to exercise. And b) Calories burned are directly proportional to oxygen consumed (this is how calories burned is measured in labs).
During aerobic activity – Oxygen consumption increases and therefore calories are burned. Oxygen uptake is also proportional to the heat expenditure during exercise. This is also why you sweat (expend heat) much more during aerobic type of activities like a long run or a dance class. And during anaerobic activity – Oxygen consumption is less and therefore less
For aerobic activity – Hardly any extra oxygen is consumed above what is needed at rest. And for anaerobic activity – Post exercise, a lot more oxygen is needed to restore the body to its resting state (breathing, circulation, digestion, hormones, etc.), and to adapt to the exercise by recovering and repairing from the microscopic tissue damage (anabolism). This is called oxygen debt (or oxygen debit these days) — also known as EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) — or a more popular term, after-burn.
This is linked to the amount of lactic acid that gets produced during exercise and is dependent on intensity, duration and type of exercise. EPOC does the job of removing lactic acid accumulation from the muscles, restoring glycogen stores, bringing body temperature back to resting state, etc. This is the slow segment of the oxygen debt and can take up to 24 to 48 hours based on the intensity of workout. In other words, due to performing anaerobic activity, your body will burn more calories (or even simpler, burn more fat) for as
Obviously, then, it’s not just about ‘sweating it out’ or ‘burning 500 calories’; you have to factor in the after-burn too, which is based on multiple variables. But what we do know is that after-burn for anaerobic activities is exponentially higher than what it is for aerobic exercise.
You will at all times need to train both the aerobic and the anaerobic pathways, and know that both influence the efficiency of each other, and therefore the fat-burning effects of one another (you will learn how in the next few chapters). In short, just like wholesome meals, you need wholesome workouts too.
Creating conditions where you sweat in excess basically reduces your ability to exercise or burn calories at its optimum. So working out without an AC or with all the windows closed and fan switched off, wearing a hood over your head while running, wearing dark, tight clothes, choosing yoga classes (or any workout) based on which allows you to sweat more, are all practices that need to be abandoned right away because these are counterproductive to not just the body’s fat-burning abilities but also to all the
When you are able to lift anything for 15 reps and more it is in the aerobic zone
What energy system have you employed? Aerobic! What fuel have you used? Glycogen, fat and protein, and in that order.
It is no surprise then that people who punish their ‘stubborn fat’ areas see least reduction in those body parts. That’s because of the poor intensity of exercise, no utilization of anaerobic pathway, no after-burn and no essential fat in the diet. Invariably those who believe that spot reduction is possible are the ones who also avoid ghee and coconut in their diet. More and more ‘research’ is proving what your grandmom always knew — coconut leads to a slimmer waist and ghee will ensure mobilization of fats from ‘stubborn’ areas, basically give you a nice proportionate figure.
you are better off keeping your brain alert, active and involved in skills and activities it wants to learn, improve on and master. The reason being, the human brain is the most metabolically active tissue in the human body per unit square area. So really, even if it’s difficult, make time to learn, pursue and practise your hobby / chase your dream. As you invest time in learning the new activity or getting better at an old skill, the brain responds by increasing the number of neurons and mitochondria, so it can actually help you burn more calories too. Use your brain
On a low-carb diet, when you keep walking for hours as a means of losing weight, you risk much more than wasting time. The brain experiences fatigue because of the lack of glucose availability, leading to headaches (short-term) and loss of memory, faster ageing (long-term), and reduces your body’s ability to produce ATP needed for exercise.
The whole point of exercise is to promote build-up of muscle and bone tissue and loss of fat mass.
Health and fitness have no bearing on body weight
body weight has no bearing on an individual’s health, fitness and wellbeing.
There is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between body composition and body weight.
As we reach the age of 30, we actually see a drop in our neurons and the nerve tissue in the brain, and the size of our hippocampus, the centre of learning and memory in the brain, decreases. But that’s exactly where exercise comes to the rescue.
The stress that regular exercises places on our cells leads to an increase in the BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor) gene which leads to a surge in BDNF proteins and promotes neurogenesis — the birth of new neurons. Along with that, it keeps our existing neurons alive and kicking and improves the efficiency of our learning and memory. So you will be quicker at picking up new activities and learning
The feel-good and pain-blocking effects that exercise gives can be compared to that of marijuana, but because exercise gratification is delayed (you feel good only post 30 minutes or so), it doesn’t get as addictive. In our culture of instant gratification, we seem to be losing out on the patience to ‘endure’ exercise for 30 minutes before the euphoria sets in, but then some things in life are worth waiting for. World over exercise is now gaining significance as a brain activity and not just a physical activity.
most studies have used aerobic exercise to study the brain’s response, but the anaerobic pathway leads to the same feel-good effects and euphoria too.
that’s exactly where the Borg scale comes in use. Developed by Gunnar Borg, this scale allows you to gauge the pathway or the bioenergetics system employed without using expensive equipment, like heart rate monitors, etc.
Now for the diabetic capital of the world (I am talking to you) we must know that the biggest precursor of insulin resistance (high blood sugar) is loss of muscle strength.
nothing arrests ageing like strength training does.
