Don't make the mistake of exercising too much. More than about 20 minutes of anything strenuous about 3-4 times a week and you raise cortisol levels which directly results in weight gain. Exercising too much also results in a significant breakdown of muscle tissue, and since muscle is what actually burns calories, you defeat the purpose that way as well.
What about professional athletes and marathon runners? I am actually curious. Is it just that they have trained for it and they eat differently?
They likely increase cortisol levels, but as you surmised, it is partly because they have trained for it (gradually, over time), but largely because those whose bodies aren't devastated by the activity are eating high quality foods, and many of them consume much more protein than what would be healthy for a sedentary person. In addition, you will be unlikely to see most professional athletes eating fast food or premade/packaged foods. The omega-6s (as well as the ungodly amount of untested chemicals [look up 'GRAS' regulations (or lack thereof)]) used are stressful on the body in themselves.
Professional athletes and marathon runners also likely have very acute awareness of just how each type of food they eat interacts with their body and they avoid things that they are sensitive to, intolerant of, or allergic to. [The order of sensitivity for foods is ‘sensitive’ which is milder, but noticeable (e.g. mild eczema or multiple small pimples forming overnight or within up to three to four days after ingesting); ‘intolerant’ which means there are significant noticeable effects from it (e.g. gastrointestinal problems like cramping and pain, or mild itching of particular areas of the skin); and then ‘allergic’ which means usually a significant body reaction (e.g. whole-body itching at the milder end, anaphylaxis at its worst).] That is something that takes most of us [including myself] a long time to learn.
The old "eat less and exercise more" idea is bullshit. If that actually worked, this would be the most fit country on the planet. The key is not how much you eat, but what you eat, and it is not how much you exercise, but how you exercise.
So, do you disagree with Calories In vs Calories Out, or do you mean people not counting calories and then just exercising too much?
Also, how would the country be fit? I don't see anyone eating less and exercising more (if that did work).
Again, just curious.
Yes: calories in vs calories out is nonsensical. Because, as JJ Virgin, one of the nutritionists I respect most (whose info was endorsed by one of the brain scientists I respect most, Dr. Daniel Amen), says, "the body is a chemistry lab, not a bank."
More information on this is from Jonathan Bailor, who I have heard speak a few times via online health summits (the cutting-edge health summit presentations which, by adopting much of what I learned, allowed me to lose almost 45 lb now in just over a year without changing my extremely limited exercising - that nearly 45 lb, when I didn't think I had more than about 25 lb to lose in the first place [and no real hope I could even lose 15 in my condition with my limited ability to exercise]). This book:
The Calorie Myth [title is link] apparently has more details on the fiction of calories in/out than what I've learned from his presentations/lectures.
The 'eating less, exercising more' is because people have adopted that as a way to 'lose weight' for decades and the country is doing nothing but getting worse. There are far more (used) gym memberships now than there were 20-30 years ago. The 'reduced calorie' craze has also taken over and more people are watching calories (and still gaining weight). Artificial sweeteners have actually made the problem worse (both by confusing the brain on what is, and is not, useful information from taste buds, but also by
artificial sweeteners actually feeding the obesity-causing bacteria in the gut at the expense of the 'slenderizing' ones).
It is not how much people eat, but what they eat that is the main problem. I have not, since starting to work on simply 'getting healthier', felt hungry where I could not simply eat more of the healthy foods I've been eating
and yet still lose weight. It has actually been rare that I've felt hungry to begin with, as long as I have a protein-rich 'breakfast' (~2-3pm, within an hour of waking), then something with protein in it about every five hours after that, stopping eating about 3 hours before going to bed. [Men do better health-wise with intermittent fasting (12-15 hours between last meal of one day and first meal of the next) than do women, apparently. Especially the 15-hour fasting seems to disrupt female hormones significantly, where it does not for male ones. But a stretch of at least 10 hours allows the sequence of chemical reactions in the body related to eating/energy formation to complete themselves before having to start over again with new food coming in. If they never fully complete, there's never the full level of energy and functioning that one could have attained from the food they've eaten.]
Another thing I didn't mention is that
healthy saturated fats are highly important for overall body function (all cell membranes, including those of the neurons, are made of tiny fat molecules). This guy's work, which I have as yet to be able to find anything that disagrees with the biology and physiology I studied in grad school, is exceptional in describing how that works (as well as him discussing the importance of removing mycotoxins from what we consume):
The Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey.
But, yes, it is as important what
not to eat as what one
should eat. Pastured grass-fed beef (if one eats beef), wild-caught fish, etc. for animal-based proteins (and, while dairy can cause problems leading to auto-immune diseases as gluten can, if one is able to, grass-fed pastured butter; one should cook with
ghee or coconut oil and never use or consume canola oil). And organic non-GMO plant-based proteins (these are exceptional, and are what I use:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E6FFAEQ and
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E6FFAEQ ).
Of course all of this is for the majority of humans' biology. There are extremes where these do not apply, but generally few of us fit into those extremes. [Though, in thinking about it, that may also be part of why those who do marathons can do so without weight gain: people whose bodies are already 'tuned' biologically to deal with those stressors may preferentially be the ones who choose to participate in those kinds of events.]
Topic: Completely Random Thoughts (Read 1973590 times)
