BONK Training??

fatbee

“liversedge wrote:
My guess is there are a lot of folks on here who have got down to a healthy range in BMI/body fat terms but need a more focused approach based upon evidence and science to get lower to ride faster.”


And Alex replied:
“When in that state - the best approach for performance improvement by far is to train to become more (aerobically) powerful.”

In case anyone thinks that I disagree with everything Alex says, for the sake of it. Can I just say that
(a) I (for the little it’s worth) endorse that 100%
(b) that I suggest Alex’s palmares show you won’t find any better person to help you do this than him – he has the science (qualifications) and the evidence (i.e. experience) to do this.
(c) if your BMI/fat is already in the “healthy range”, then forget about it: If you train to be the best you can be for your chosen event (race, audax, holiday, whatever) then your body will decide the optimal weight for you, as a result of you optimising aerobic capacity and power. And I hope Alex might agree.

‘ course, you wouldn’t expect me to agree with his last bit would you?

“In fact it's the best approach in just about every case anyway.”

Still, can’t have everything can you?

More later when I have time . . .

fatbee

bahzob

Re your first post on page 6 : Thank you, it’s such a good summary of what I’m saying, that I won’t bother with the tiny little bit I might’ve put differently myself. And your own story of cycle training is mighty impressive, very well done. It worked (with some hard work I should think,) for you, and I wouldn’t for one moment seek to discourage anybody who hasn’t already tried it, from following your example or taking your advice – what worked for you could well work for them. But as I say, I am primarily seeking to offer some explanation and hope to anyone who has already tried this, but for whom it hasn’t worked. I don’t accept (and I would say this wouldn’t I?) that your experience dismisses my claims ; there are those for whom this approach works quickly, reliably and relatively easily, broadly a second group (of which I’d hazard a guess you’re one) for whom it requires effort, dedication and concentration, and then thirdly quite a lot of the rest of us for whom, even if things seems to work initially, it is very unlikely to succeed in the long run (by which I mean both get right down to a healthy weight AND keep there.) Lastly, I concur that many dieters either wilfully or inadvertently fail to factor-in a comprehensive and accurate analysis of everything they’ve really consumed, and that keeping an honest and accurate food diary can pay major dividends.

Now re your second post, and addressing your self-quote from the first : “claims that the "cals in/cals burned theory does not work” I make no such claim. It absolutely does work. As I say (yet again!) it works completely and easily for some people, completely (or very nearly) but with some difficulty for others, and is pretty much doomed to failure for everyone else, no matter how hard they try. Which camp you’re in is largely a matter of genetic inheritance (and this trio form a broad continuum obviously, they’re not three exclusive groupings.) But if you understand the role of carbohydrate and insulin, these differences can be controlled to the point that they will become all but irrelevant, and we’re all pretty much equal again in the sight of the great god of fat, just as our ancestors were before the development of white flour, refined sugar and bloody Gatorade (etc.)

I agree about the ease with which dieters can miscalculate the calories in-out equation, especially with low-intensity exercise. However you would say (I’m guessing) that this is substantially because of the inadequacy of the exercise taken and the ease with which it is rendered null and void by eating only small amounts “too much”. I however, am saying that it’s not down to that, rather it’s because no useful and/or predictable linear relationship actually exists between “energy-in” and “energy-out”.

EXERCISE DOES NOT BURN FAT. There I’ve said it. Not directly anyway, it is a facilitator (and one that I’d recommend it to anyone) but only a secondary cause of the loss of excess body fat. If you want evidence of this, try researching the “PSMF” diet. The “protein-sparing modified fast” is a very-low calorie, very low-carb, low-fat diet, used by some more enlightened surgical facilities in the USA, to crash-diet obese patients who are awaiting surgery, in cases where their current BMI makes a general anaesthetic too dangerous. (It’s also used by some fat bodybuilders, but I’m not going there just now if you’ll forgive me.) It consists of a basal amount of protein (enough to stop the body catabolising its own muscle tissue and internal organs,) a shed-load of supplements (to replace those micronutrients missing due to the absence of much real food,) and some fibre. It is (or certainly should be) practised only under strict medical supervision, with regular blood tests and other close medical monitoring, so it’s definitely a “don’t try this at home” jobbie. The upshot is that the patient loses weight dramatically. Far, far more than the calorie equation would predict, and yet takes absolutely no exercise (mostly on account of being lying in a hospital bed pretty much 24/7!) When researchers developing this approach as a clinical surgical tool, gave a group of similarly sedentary, obese experimental volunteer subjects, the same calories almost all as carbs, not only did they not lose anywhere near as much weight (despite having an identical activity level and “energy balance”,) much of what weight they did lose was not fat, but lean tissue, and many actually gained fat (!) although still to some extent, “losing weight” overall.

So. I am absolutely not saying that cals-in v. Cals-out does not work. It does, although somewhat imperfectly. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t follow from the fact that it is a partially efficacious treatment of a condition, that the underlying cause of that condition is the lack of that treatment. You might find that you can usefully treat a cold with Vitamin C and plenty of rest. That doesn’t mean that the common cold can necessarily be prevented by more sleep and plenty of fruit and veg. They might help you avoid one in the future, but the common cold is not CAUSED by vitamin deficiency and chronic fatigue.

And I would argue that because obesity can often be tackled and in some cases prevented from reoccurring, by a negative “energy balance”, it doesn’t follow that its cause is a positive energy balance. It isn’t. The cause of most overweight and obesity is an endocrine imbalance, occasionally brought about by metabolic disorder or other disease, but overwhelmingly caused by consuming un-natural amounts of un-natural food and drink, i.e. high-carbohydrate foodstuffs and in particular, highly-refined carbohydrates.

So all I’m saying is if the conventional wisdom has failed you (and you’ve really, honestly, accurately tried,) then here’s your answer. Staring you in the face. And it’s quite easy once you believe (sorry, sounding religious again!)

Regarding “in the main cals in - cals burned is a general rule of thumb that works for majority “ Do you have any evidence for this please? There are soon going to be one and a half billion overweight or obese people on this planet. Do you honestly believe that vast majority of them are just tragically unaware of, or have simply never tried “in the main cals in - cals burned” “general rule of thumb”? I’d suggest that the majority of them have at some time, and that they wouldn’t still be fat if the “general rule of thumb” really worked properly and predictably.

All those fat people down your local gym – do you think they ALL only joined last week? No some of them have been members there for years. The millions upon millions of us who join gyms, buy exercise gizmos, hire personal trainers, buy diet and exercise books, and subscribe to diet and fitness magazines, or read the same advice in their daily newspapers, chosen lifestyle, fitness, and womens/mens magazines or on related websites, day after day, week after week, year after year. We’re almost all getting the same “general rule of thumb” advice from almost all those experts. So why do we go on (and on, and on, and on,) buying and reading the same stuff over and over again, given that almost none of us can be fat any more, because we’ve followed “the general rule of thumb that works for majority”?

Are we all just thick, or masochists or something?

Or might there be just the teeniest, weeniest, little micro-possibility, that the underlying theory isn’t 100% reliable?

I wonder.

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bahzob

I've got an open mind on the subject, and as mentioned will be checking out a number of ideas in own time when time permits and fits in with training schedule. Started the "early morning fat burn" aka bonk training that kicked this thread off today in fact...

However all will start from baseline of knowing cals burned/cals consumed as, in my experience, long term this provides the best base line for understanding weight change.

Re your question about the number of overweight people my answer to your question

Do you honestly believe that vast majority of them are just tragically unaware of, or have simply never tried “in the main cals in - cals burned” “general rule of thumb”? "

is yes.

Despite all information you cite I bet 99% of people could not look at a plate of food and say how much activity it represents. (An interesting experiment would be to supplement the calorie information on food with an activity equivalent. Knowing a Big Mac has 576kcals is one thing. Knowing you need to walk 2.5 hours to burn it off is something else which might give those buying one some food for thought (especially if buying at McDrive..)

Re stuff. Having been fat I think I know why most people buy stuff. Its partly because both dieting and exercising just to lose weight are unrewarding so anything that makes them easier is attractive. But more fundamentally its to assuage the guilt of knowing you should really eat less and exercise more but you just cant bring yourself do to it. Buying an exercise bike at least lets you tell yourself and others that you tried..

liversedge

I'm going in the other direction bahzbob. I'm taking a sports drinbk on all my rides to keep me topped up. Even 1hr rides get a bottle for company. Where in the past I generally took nothing on sub 2.5hr rides.

I'm looking to see if keeping glycogen stores topped up helps. I'll let you know in a month. To make it controlled I'm planning onkeeping my intake and volume as close to the past as possble but since I'm entering two build phases that could be tricky.

Anyway lets see.

Alex_Simmons/RST

Over consumption and under exercise is endemic in the western world and is why we (as a people generally) are fat.

If you are unhappy about being that way, then don't eat crap, don't over indulge and get lots of exercise. Otherwise, get used to being overweight.

If one thinks a majority people understand the energy balance equation, then one is sadly mistaken. Otherwise why would, for instance, the Australian Government spend millions on prime time advertisements and campaigns such as this?
http://www.measureup.gov.au/internet/ab ... ntent/Home

NJK

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Over consumption and under exercise is endemic in the western world and is why we (as a people generally) are fat.

If you are unhappy about being that way, then don't eat crap, don't over indulge and get lots of exercise. Otherwise, get used to being overweight.

If one thinks a majority people understand the energy balance equation, then one is sadly mistaken. Otherwise why would, for instance, the Australian Government spend millions on prime time advertisements and campaigns such as this?
http://www.measureup.gov.au/internet/ab ... ntent/Home

Pretty unbelievable that fatbee with his apparent knowledge thinks that people actually understand the energy balance equation.

I speak to people all the while who seem to think that a 30min run 3 times a week will solve all their weight problems, when for the rest of the day they are sitting in the car or office. When you ask briefly what they eat and drink you wonder why they actually put weight on while exercising :roll:

Food diaries are the answer, they actually get the person to think about the food and there value.

bahzob

Nice link Alex. Did the activity test in there and think it makes my point.

Even options that are "active" are pretty feeble in terms of calories actually burned. Havent done the sums but guess even the most vigorous choices would barely add 500 cals per day (and would need to be done every day).

In some ways think campaigns like this can be counter productive. We humans like rewards for our efforts and risk that those scoring high on this quiz could kid themselves they can have an extra biscuit or two and end up worse than doing nothing.

My threehapen worth would be useful to separate:

"Activity": Stuff like in the quiz here, so walking, climbing stairs, making effort not to sit around all day. --> This is absolute minimum everyone should do. However if this is all you do you risk still putting on weight if you eat a normal western diet and it wont make you much, if any, fitter.

"Exercise": Focused in terms of time but not actual activity of at least 1 hour(ideally done several times per week) with goal of making you fitter. Should feel a bit tough e.g. you notice yourself breathing hard. Do this several times per week and you should notice improvements in terms of fitness. If you monitor food intake as well then you should be able to establish what food you need to eat in order to keep weight stable (or lose if that's a goal).

"Training": Very focused in terms of time and actual activity. Will have a stretching goal in mind and will require degree of commitment (at least 5 hours per week, ideally more). At times will feel quite>very tough. If you persevere you will get fitter and will notice change in weight/body composition if you keep food intake constant.

bahzob

This thread has gone way off topic so here is another observation:

Our ancestors are sometimes mentioned in terms of their diet but just as important is their activity.

Humans are unique in many ways. One of them is our lack of body hair and abundance of sweat glands. This is an adaptive evolution from back when we were hunter gatherers.

This allowed us to chase down and kill animals much faster than ourselves but which didnt have long term stamina. The method was simply to select an animal and keep chasing it until it dropped of heat exhaustion. Bit more here:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us
(and on one of the BBC nature programs, I forget which, they showed how some people still hunt this way. It was amazing, the hunt took over a day and a night)

The amount of energy that needed to be expended to get food in this manner was of course huge (one kill probably equalled a lifetime of McDrives).

The fact that we are still hairless, despite most long since moving to other climates, is a reminder that much of our physiology evolved to hunt/eat in this way. So its not too much of a surprise that when we replace chasing a deer for 24 hours with climbing a flight of steps a couple of times a day while at the same time increasing our food intake our body gets a bit confused.

liversedge

bahzob wrote:

Nice link Alex. Did the activity test in there and think it makes my point.

Even options that are "active" are pretty feeble in terms of calories actually burned. Havent done the sums but guess even the most vigorous choices would barely add 500 cals per day (and would need to be done every day).

In some ways think campaigns like this can be counter productive. We humans like rewards for our efforts and risk that those scoring high on this quiz could kid themselves they can have an extra biscuit or two and end up worse than doing nothing.

My threehapen worth would be useful to separate:

"Activity": Stuff like in the quiz here, so walking, climbing stairs, making effort not to sit around all day. --> This is absolute minimum everyone should do. However if this is all you do you risk still putting on weight if you eat a normal western diet and it wont make you much, if any, fitter.

"Exercise": Focused in terms of time but not actual activity of at least 1 hour(ideally done several times per week) with goal of making you fitter. Should feel a bit tough e.g. you notice yourself breathing hard. Do this several times per week and you should notice improvements in terms of fitness. If you monitor food intake as well then you should be able to establish what food you need to eat in order to keep weight stable (or lose if that's a goal).

"Training": Very focused in terms of time and actual activity. Will have a stretching goal in mind and will require degree of commitment (at least 5 hours per week, ideally more). At times will feel quite>very tough. If you persevere you will get fitter and will notice change in weight/body composition if you keep food intake constant.

I'd keep it simpler.

Spend an hour a day sweating. Anything else is just posing.

fatbee

Some very random, off-the-cuff responses follow, not in the post-order of those being responded to. So apologies to anyone I might seem to’ve ignored (like they care!)

NJK
“Pretty unbelievable that fatbee with his apparent knowledge thinks that people actually understand the energy balance equation. “
- But surely they do (most of them) understand it? Because government, and doctors, and media quacks, and people like Alex, tell us/them it’s that simple. It’s just X plus or minus Y equals Z. Nothing more to it. Now whether they put it accurately into practice is another matter I agree.

“When you ask briefly what they eat and drink you wonder why they actually put weight on while exercising. Food diaries are the answer, they actually get the person to think about the food and there value. “
- I agree, and this sort of miscalculation is a big part of why many people fail to lose weight, I accept that.

“I speak to people all the while who seem to think that a 30min run 3 times a week will solve all their weight problems, when for the rest of the day they are sitting in the car or office. “
- Well yes, but the poor sods are told this is so by their wretched government (and I’m absolutely no supporter of the other lot either BTW.) The same government who says that 80ml out of a carton of UHT “pure fruit juice”, made from concentrate, counts as one of their “five a day”. Such that, according to HMG, less than three cartons’ worth of it will provide enough “fresh fruit and veg” for a week. It’s water with sugar in it for G’s sake! :x

And the further irony of it is that 3 x 30 mins of exercise CAN actually be enough to lose fat and maintain a healthy weight. If you can let go of the notion that a direct linear relationship exists between exercise and fat-loss, which is independent of what type of food is eaten, then it becomes clear that the best exercise for fat loss is not long, steady-state, aerobic workouts (and especially not those conducted in the mythical “fat burning zone”) as is widely claimed. But is in fact, high-load, low-rep resistance work (e.g. weightlifting,) closely followed by high-intensity interval training (or “HIIT”) but only if performed with appropriate diet. Classic “aerobic exercise comes a distant third. (And I mean that that’s the order of effectiveness, not that you should do one then the other!) This does pre-suppose that the subject isn’t dangerously unfit at the outset, and it’s obviously of limited use and interest to somebody on here who’s training for a 100 mile RR or 600k Audax or suchlike.

But the cruel truth is that for ordinary citizens, this amount of controlled exercise, if of the right type, and if in conjunction with a carb-aware eating regime, will not only burn more fat and waste less muscle than the conventional “fat-burning” exercise during the workout, it can continue to burn stored body fat for anything up to 36 hours after the workout finishes, provided these beneficial effects aren’t immediately knocked on the head by heavy carbohydrate intake, especially that wonderful source of “some-water-with-some-sugar-in-it” known as a sports drink.

bahzob

Fatbee: You may have found something you can agree with Alex about...

Another "hot" topic that appears on this training forum is the value or otherwise of long distance slow pace workouts often called "fat burning". While there is no consensus (it would be boring otherwise..) I and others (think including Alex but sure he will say) think this is pretty much a waste of time both in terms of time spent/benefit gained both for training and weight loss.

Another "hot" topic that you touch on is value or otherwise of recovery drinks post exercise. I am more with you here. For normal situations these aren't really needed. There is an exception, which is where you know you will be following one hard effort with another hard effort same day or doing back to back full days like a stage race. Otherwise balanced diet is all thats needed to recover.

However regarding the general population understanding and, more importantly following, the cals-in/cals-out method of weight loss you are just plain wrong. I'd be happy to take on a bet that, even with all the information about, 99% of people could not tell you how much activity was needed to burn off the energy in a meal. Further I would also bet that most would underestimate. IMO the information provided by the government is misleading here as it gives the impression that the occasional walk around the car park at lunch is enough. It isnt.

I'm no old fogy (well not much of one), only 50. But in the course of my lifetime there have been 2 step changes that are the root cause for the issue of overweight/obesity:
- The relative cheapness of food, especially high cal laden with fat/sugar
- The lack of activity needed in the course of the average day.

Both these run directly opposite to the way our body evolved. This assumed high levels of activity, needed just to keep alive and scarce food (so we find high cal fat/sugar food very rewarding).

This is why, though agreeing there may be some interest in the detail of what you are saying, the broad message that there is no linkage between activity and weight/fat loss is both wrong and dangerous.

Its wrong because the human body is not just a random collection of molecules. Its a product of a long evolution, in this case with resulting in a mechanism that balanced high activity life with irregular food supply. Had activity been less or food supply more plentiful we would be different. Problem is that evolution is a slow process and environmental change like noted above too quick for it to keep pace with. (Interesting to speculate how we may evolve, WALL-E had an example). Whatever there is a fundamental link between activity, calorie balance and weight. This is true for all humans. What varies are the details of this link (because for good evolutionary reasons it pays to have variability with some needing little food to put on fat for a given activity level others needing a lot. Indeed until recently there was probably an advantage on not needing much food, completely the reverse to today's modern situation)

Its dangerous because activity/exercise is hard and unrewarding if not for a specific purpose. That's precisely why activity levels have decreased as disposable income has increased. People are willing to pay to do less activity. There is nothing most people would like to hear than that "Exercise does not burn fat". Regardless of the fine nuances of your arguments most wont bother themselves with all that. They will just read the strapline and stop there.

bahzob

Just a follow up thought regarding evolution and Fatbee views. There is another factor that has also changed over time and that is the makeup of our foods. There has been a shift towards a diet with a higher balance of carbs, in particular refined sugars. These occur only rarely in nature. (Refined sugar is 97% carb. By comparison honey is 80% (and takes a lot of energy to get hold of, ask Pooh) and fruit 7-25%). *

The physiology that evolved to process a diet higher in protein/fat/natural carbs could well be confused when the balance shifts include more carbs, especially if highly concentrated.

Hence my feeling there may be something worth at least following up in Fatbees views. But in combination with theory that activity is linked to weight/rfat rather than as an alternative.

* At risk of being fogy. When young I used to read Dandy/Beano. Heroes of these magazines often "scrumped" apples because seen as treats (15% carb btw). Hard to imagine today. Not sure what today's equivalent is, will check out next time at newsagents...