Monday Rant: The Idol is No More!
April 23rd 2007 05:52
My reading over the past few weeks has been, or I should say would have been, shocking, if I had not suspicious for a long time that what the masses are "fed" about fitness is not only not going to make them fit, but may age them prematurely. The fact is that the ideal fitness god or goddess of the 80s and 90s is now a crumbling idol before our eyes.
In the 80s the experts told us that we should eat high carbohydrates and avoid fat. I personally knew 10s of women who were trying to cut every bit of fat out their diets while eating pasta, potatoes, and bread! One of the proponents of this was a man who studied long distance runners and competitive road cyclists and drew conclusions from their eating habits that high carbs was the healthy way to eat for desk jockies. The expert crowd was soon on board and added their own admonitions about not eating protein because, they claimed, it would harm the kidneys. Oh my gosh, were they wrong.
Now, we find out that a Chinese company sold contaminated melimine(or something) to pet food manufacturers and that melamine is some kind of wheat byproduct and its cheap as a filler for dog food. Ah, sounds to me like the pet food people are aware that carbohydrates will fill up your dog and they sell them at low prices. The fact is that this stuff isn't optimal food for your dog, but he is your captive and what can he do? Well, he can see that his master is eating the same kind of carbo crap as he is and will die of a whole assortment of things caused by that high grain and carbohydrate diet.
Aerobics was the way to get in shape and have fun 20 years ago. Weight training was not aerobic and could not yield the magic of fat loss. One had to get a target heart rate (or whatever) or at least maintain a heart rate in the fat burning zone(which is apparently and conveniently considerably submaximal) and the pounds would come off. That is if you extend your workout for 20 minutes or so.(But everbody who really wanted to get into shape did more.) The stair stepper and the treadmill were the kings. My gym in those days had sign-up sheets for all these wonder machines of fitness. They couldn't be gotten enough of.
Now I am reading that extensive aerobics can shrink the heart and lungs and program the body to retain fat. I've passed on this new info in several posts. Now the interval is the king. The all-out cardio blast makes pretense to the throne. That means that the body will release fat and build lung-heart power when it is pushed to its limits for short times and then allowed to recover.
Gee, the above intervals sound to me like what anyone doing a set of weights to failure is doing- especially sets of large muscle groups without which there can be no weight training. Wait though, bodybuilders never did any more aerobic work than they had to do and they ate protein like crazy and they had low bodyfat. Drugs, you say. Natural bodybuilders would disagree.
It must be sobering to be a now 50ish carb-eating low fat fanatic from 1988 and discover not only that you not only worshiped a phoney god,but it is turning out to be malevolent as well. You wore out your joints on the treadmill or street and poisoned yourself when got home and ate your low fat spaghetti.
Here's my take. Ken Roberts, a self-made millionaire futures trader, said it all. Those who are supposed to know don't! If you want to undertake a journey to fitness it will have to begin in your intellect, not your body. You will have to be willing to dig out information to help you know what to do and what to eat. You will also have to be open enough to try new things. You will have to be analytic enough to determine what you are doing is working for you. This is not something the masses with their thirst for the simple and easy will ever do. Your servant, as always.
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