From gym to weight loss June 16, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Fitness, Sport.3 comments
I suppose it was inevitable that discussions of fitness would turn to discussions of weight loss. Which is a shame considering that, in many cases, the two actually have very little to do with each other.
What people typically mean when they talk of weight loss is fat loss; love handles, bat wings whatever, it’s fat, and it’s unwanted. So their aim is typically to get rid of this stuff. Which sounds easy enough. Unfortunately evolution has dictated otherwise.
Y’see, bodies are designed to be great at holding on to fat. In fact, the body stores fat much more easily than it gets rid of it. Way back when we were busy designing wheels and marvelling at fire, food was pretty scarce. Never knowing when the next meal was going to stroll by gave bodies good cause to get efficient at both storage and use. Which is why not only does it store fat easily, it really hates letting it go again.
So you might think it would make sense to drop your calorie intake, starving your body and dropping weight and dress size in the process. The trouble is our bodies are wise to that little escapade; if they witness a significant drop in calorie intake, they go into what some call a “famine mode”, simply holding on even tighter to the fat reserves they already have. A lot of what actually disappears ends up being muscle, far easier to convert into fuel than fat. Hitting yourself with the latest killer diet more often than not gets you weaker and less healthy whilst maintaining existing fat levels.
If that doesn’t sound bad enough, partaking of such activities actually stores up even more problems for the future. Fat takes fewer calories to maintain than muscle; even in a state of rest muscle is busily chewing through calories. If you reduce your muscle mass, you’re lowering the amount of calories burnt in any given activity, slowing your metabolism, and increasing the likelihood that anything you’re eating will get stored as more fat. What makes this even less fun, is that, when you come off your diet and go back to eating “normally”, guess what? Yup, the problem gets worse, because there’s even less muscle to now burn the original calorie intake, meaning even more fat storage.
Gees, what a gip huh? It almost seems like you’re screwed whatever you do. Well, when it comes to dieting, you probably are.
But there is a solution, and of course we all know what it is. We might like to think otherwise, in fact a whole industry banks on it, but we know the only way of keeping fat down and strength and fitness up is to eat healthy fresh food, whilst exercising regularly. The body, much like the mind, needs a constant workout to keep it in good form.
So that’s it then? As simple as that? If I stay focused and work hard I’m going to be in a size 6 by the Summer holidays?
Erm, not quite. We need another reality check. Firstly, as noted, fat takes a long time to remove from the body, in some cases years, and what makes it worse is the less you have, the longer it takes. Law of diminishing returns dontcha know. Also, and this is what gets most people running, or perhaps gently strolling, for the hills, and why the term “weight loss” needs to be stricken from modern society, putting on muscle will not only make you bigger, it will also make you heavier.
And that’s about the point at which a thousand gym memberships get cancelled.
But before you make that call, listen up. Contrary to modern-day programming, getting bigger and heavier when you start out exercising is actually a good thing. An increase in size is a natural consequence of building up new muscle underneath the layers of fat that haven’t gone yet. But you need this first before that fat will go.
What you also need to see during this difficult period is an increase in weight, and this is where all scales should get thrown out of the window. Put simply, muscle weighs more than fat. Now you may end up weighing less overall once your fat levels have lowered, but until that time comes, there is every chance you will end up weighing more.
The good thing about both of these things is that if you see them happening, you know you’re on the right road. You’re getting healthier and stronger whilst increasing your ability to burn incoming calories, to burn fat reserves, and to get even stronger and fitter in the years to come.
It’s a long hard journey, but you know what? Not only will you be blown away by the real benefits gained, you’ll also be quite happily enjoying that chocolate cake with friends happy in the knowledge that you’ve damn well earned it.
Why do gym? June 11, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Sport.5 comments
What’s the gym for? I mean really for? You may think you know, but don’t be so sure.
Gym is great for building muscle, for improving heart and lung function, for strengthening bones and increasing blood flow. But here’s the kicker: the biggest benefit of the gym, is to get you really really good at doing gym.
Let’s take an example; rock climbing. Rock climbing can get pretty extreme. People can crawl along walls that are more like ceilings and not break a sweat. The all-over muscle and cardio requirements even to stay thirty seconds on such a surface are insane. So gym sounds ideal, pack on the weights, hit the running machine, roll some dumbells! Well, no. Because of one word: specificity.
Specificity in sport dictates that in order to directly improve your chosen activity you need to replicate exactly what you do in that activity. Any variation, even minor, can eliminate many if not all gains sought. And this is the reason you’ll very rarely see serious climbers down the gym; because larger improvements can be gained by simply doing more climbing, and this doesn’t change irrespective of how many 200kg seated pull-downs they do.
The same goes for running. The cycling machine works your heart and lungs just fine, but the work done on the rest of your body is having little impact on your pavement-pounding capabilities. Even running on a treadmill fails to emulate the ground impact, the different angles your legs and feet have to cope with and therefore the muscles needed to do said coping, and that’s not including the environmental conditions your body needs conditioning on, wind, temperatures, air pressures. You want maximum effectiveness for your chosen activity? Do your chosen activity.
So if all that is the case, who is gym really for? Well for a start gym is excellent for people that don’t have any other activity to focus on. I’ve known a lot of people lacking in sporting skills or facilities, who have gained enormous benefit from visiting the gym, in strength, weight loss and overall fitness levels. It’s also great for rehabilitation, where many of the machines can isolate individual muscle groups for a rapid return to form following injury. It can also be great for supplementary exercising, for instance using cable-rows to emulate a forehand tennis shot, but that tends to be a very specific requirement for very specific reasons by very specific individuals. For most of the rest of us, we’d be better off spending an extra five minutes on the tennis court than five minutes on the cable machine!
V3 – more of the same iPhone (greatness)? June 10, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Technology.add a comment
I’d forgotten how jaded one can get following technology.
Not that Apple didn’t do an excellent job with the third generation of its game-changing mobile computer. I mean, the gear list is certainly nothing to be sniffed at; a 3 mega pixel video camera, more capacity, longer battery life, compass, bell and complimentary whistle. But someone’s going to have to colour me just a fraction disappointed.
Maybe it’s because this last two years of mobile tech has been such a rollercoaster. 2007 was such a tough year for Motorola, SonyEricsson and their ilk, who had little option but to take one long hard look in the mirror and see what a disfigured, disjointed mess they’d all become. So much so that most rapidly jumped on the all-singing all-dancing metaphor, releasing iPhone me-too’s as if the mere saying were worth some money. In most cases it certainly wasn’t. And whilst they all try to figure out how to even stay in the game, they continue to peddle the same old junk seen nearly a decade ago at the millenium parties, just with flashier stripes.
So, after such a rollercoaster, what could Apple have done to change the game again with their latest release? Well that’s the thing; they simply didn’t need to. The iPhone, much like the seminal iPod, was the game changer. Anything more will always be simply icing on the cake, with this third generation layering it on good and thick. The operating system upgrade? Cherries on top and a nicely piped, suitably upbeat message, probably penned by Steve Jobs himself.
The difficulty for me, and perhaps the biggest root of my disappointment, stems from the rumours for this next generation, rolling around the net since the day the second generation was unveiled last year. Pretty much every month since that point, us tech followers have been living with v3’s hopes and fears, eating and breathing the whole gamut from 8 megapixel cameras, through to hardware qwerty keyboards and anything, no everything, in between. The realist sat on our right shoulder would bring us back from the brink often enough, but that left-shoulder guy, wow what a party he throws.
So it would seem the realist won this time around, and I don’t think I’m the only one slightly affected by his mollifying tones. Sure, the rabid Apple followers are keeping a brave face, sitting content and happy that they’ve been thrown a slice of Jobsian pie, but they like me, could never say they were blown away.
Does it matter? Of course not. I, like many many others will still buy one because there simply is nothing better. Palm’s Pre may have been getting a whole bunch of headlines recently, but for all its cheese-cutting ability, the package just isn’t as complete as Apple’s offering and people know it. You could still buy a Pre, or a Blackberry, maybe even an oldPhone with keypad texting and a rubber-nipple joybutton if you’re really in the mood to make a protest vote, but you’ll still be looking at the iPhone with envious eyes, wanting to have some time alone together.
So, all in all, a good solid release Apple. Now, what’s v4 going to look like?
Plane shock June 6, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Current-affairs, Observation.1 comment so far
I’m sorry, but am I the only person on the planet that finds this completely and utterly insane? A plane en-route to Paris crashes into the Atlantic, and five days later officials still have no idea where it went down or why?
Not knowing where is in itself inexcusable; in an age where we can track individual miscreants with an ankle bracelet to a distance of ten metres, you’re telling me we can’t track a plane that’s sixty metres long?
Regarding the why, we all know about the black-box flight recorder, how vital it is, how key to the effective evaluation and resolution of problems relating to current and future flight safety. So would it not be fair to assume that, in the event of an accident over deep water as was the case here, the black box recorder would have some kind of device that would take it to the surface and perhaps (and I know I’m pushing the boat out here on recent evidence) even flash or, god forbid, beep? I mean, is that too much to ask? The most vital piece of equipment following an accident, so important that they are double wrapped, titanium, fire, shock and nuclear blast proof, and there’s a chance it will never be found?! Seriously, seriously am I completely missing something here?
Well, I must be. We’ve been flying planes for decades now. We have numerous pieces of safety equipment, we have engine redundancies, detailed digital communications technologies, we even have histories of successful landings on motorways, fields, even the Hudson river. I simply refuse to believe we don’t have any idea where this plane crashed, why it did so, and at what time.
I’m distraught for the families. Now I’m absolutely livid at the shocking aftermath.
A Kindle on borrowed time June 4, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Books, Current-affairs, Observation, Technology.2 comments
This lovely piece of tech design is exactly why I think Amazon’s Kindle is most definitely living on borrowed time, and the world of the single-minded e-book will rapidly go much the same way as the world of the single-minded telephone.
It’s a world of convergence people; if you’re not in it, you are most definitely out.
The Plague June 1, 2009
Posted by Snoopy in Books.1 comment so far
Looking back, I suppose it was unlikely I was going to be confronted by sweetness and light whilst making my way through the pages of Albert Camus’ classic “The Plague”. What did come as somewhat of a surprise though was just how devoid of colour this seminal work appeared to be. It was, as it would seem, rather appropriate to colour its sleeve in its many hues of grey.
Now don’t get me wrong; grey certainly does not imply boring, at least not in this case If you’ve ever seen the play Art, you’ll doubtless appreciate that a creation made up of blends of a single colour can be the cause of many an emphatic emotion. Looking at Albert Camus’ book from this perspective, you can start to see why it gets the reviews that it does.
It is not a novel in what I would deem a traditional sense; plot, sub-plot, intrigue, action, start, middle, end, a rich tapestry of emotion, action and colour to keep the pages turning. Anyone looking for such base ingredients is likely to be eternally disappointed and should, one would argue, be shopping in a different isle. No, what The Plague gives the reader is exceptional subtlety and hue, characters, actions, scenery, all hewn from the same ashen rock, acting and interacting without passion or force. Days pass into weeks that continue to expand until the titular plague has passed beyond the afflicted town, leaving neither devastation nor celebration, merely grey continuity.
What makes it so right though, so correct, is the whole being clearly moulded from a single piece, a masterpiece of smooth curves and velvety edges, with never a piece out of place. Unpainted, unadorned by frivolous fancy, and completely unconcerned by their absence. A creation to absorb, reflect on, and appreciate for all its lack of more bawdy pleasures.
Would I recommend it to anyone? As with many pieces of art probably not. After all, could I encourage a friend to visit a Monet gallery? Perhaps the latest installation at the Saatchi? Well, possibly, but whether or not they would appreciate it the same way I did is always likely to be in doubt.
No, the best way to come by such a masterwork is through natural order; if you read, in all likelihood you’ll have read it or will come across it on your journey. If you don’t, then there are much richer sources of mental stimulation to be found elsewhere. On the other hand, if you are an appreciator of art with an open mind and an eye for a masterpiece, there aren’t many books or authors out there that command such universal appreciation. Perhaps a hazy Sunday afternoon on the porch could be the time and place to appreciate just how colourful a single colour can be.
