Science and Your Blubber
April 14th 2007 12:14
The major media in the US have gotten wind of the decline of aerobic exercise here. You may have read my recent post on the supposed death of aerobics. Right on schedule someone has come out with a "revolutionary" book called something like "The No Cardio Diet." This tome furthers the assault on cardio exercise with the assertion that not only is aerobics not worthwhile, but cardio machines are not the way to lose weight either. I would expect this. I also expect that the very "scientists" that claim that cardio is the central most productive type of exercise will start feeling their expertise threatened and call for definitive studies to supposedly determine the truth.
I am not the biggest fan the scientific method has ever had, partly because in my avocation-fitness- I have read all kinds of studies that proved that what I knew didn't work was the most effective way to lose weight,build muscle etc. I have also come to see this "method" as more of ritual dance than an objective pursuit. Some outsider, like Atkins, will come along and make a claim that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Some "experts" will then assail this assertion in the name of scientific certitude, but others will find the controversy a opportunity to gobble some grant cash and begin a series of experiments designed to evaluate the general veracity of the outsider's claims. Often the "non-scientific" kook will be proven right in the research,but the guardians of orthodoxy will not admit it.
Enter the press. They love to bruit about some unorthodox approach to fitness and as part of the template they use to report these things they trot out one of the defenders of the received wisdom who unscathingly attacks the newcomer in the name of science. Meanwhile the researchers are backing away from what they thought was established truth and slowly but surely the kook is proven correct. The supposed experts -human ego being what it is- are at last dragged unwillingly into the new orthodoxy.
My opinion is that the latest kook fringe idea that all the efforts of the overweight should be focused on weight training and real dieting is correct. The cardio machine crowd is probably helping their cardio readouts(I suspect this sacred cow will soon be shown the slaughterhouse, but I'll say the cardio does some good.);I doubt if all that treadmilling is really the best way to lose weight and shape up. Why? All that movement and the result is hunger. If you are reading the calorie expenditure readout on your treadmill and thinking," Oh, I can eat an extra slice of whatever, you are off the reservation. You are not going to lose weight like you think.
Lifting weights and not eating will give most people what they are looking for in body shape and fitness. Why all the treadmilling etc. I think its a psychological thing. Next post I will explain.
| 32 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
