So here's what's left of my post...
Well... Not that I'm a shining example on the matter, but I would like today to discuss dietary radicalisim.
Specifically this is a bit of a remark of shock and amazement at this post on the blog blogkini, blogheels. I did a bit of research into the matter of tran fats. Seems that the regular process of cooking with "healthy" fats can actually harm them and make them into the "trans" fats (Which are nothing more than regular polyunsaturated fats altered by changing the general entropy level in the molecule, i.e. heating it up, and as such, it will bind in your metabolic processes, but can't do it's job right. If you hydrogenate it COMPLETELY then it doesn't matter because you render the molecule inert, but partial hydrogenation leaves some of these corrupt molecules.) The reason that the matter even comes up is because you can use a cheep oil (Like vegitable oil), heat it up and hydrogenate it, then use it as an inexpensive substitute for butter or lard in cooking.
But this is just one example of dietary radicalisim. As it turns out, the biggest problem with the obesity of americans doesn't come from their diets, instead, the fact that life has become much easier than it was before, and thus requires us to do less manual labor, is almost entrirely to blame. Yes diet needs to be controlled and not intentionally thrown to the winds, and fitness radicalisim is equally messed up, but we do need to get out more.
The only question I have is, why? It's extreamly clear to me, (And the scientific community) that diet and exercise are correlated. If you have high chloresterol, you're supposed to adjust your diet AND your exercise. Why is it that everyone does one or the other? Keep in mind, if you have a #1 from McDonalds large size with a Coke (My personal favorite) it's worth 600 (Big Mac)+ 520 (Large Fries) + 310 (Large Coke) or about 1430 calories. Now, what does this mean to you? Well, in my case, if I where to go out walking at 3 mph (Or about 20 minutes per mile, good for a swift, but not stressed pace) I would burn about .027 Calories per pound per minute, or about 8 a minute. This means I have to walk at that pace for 3 hours to burn off a #1. We could up the pace to my hastened walk (Gym walk/late for the bus walk) which doubles the burn rate, and I only have to walk for an hour and a half. Or, if I wanted to be able to burn off the meal in only 30 minutes of a light walk, I could eat only 240 calories (Which is less than the soda by itself.) But what if we where to balance the process out? What if instead we took a smaller portion AND increased the exercise? We could acomplish the goal with less work than all exercise and less starving than dieting.
(It's important to note that your body burns off more than half of the average person's diet in just doing body things. Digesting food, fighting off disease, rebuilding damaged and ageing tissue, all of those kinds of things use energy from your food, and a lot of it. But it leaves you to wonder, why do fat people not get fatter? Well, since this extra energy is proportionate to the amount of tissue, and the type, as the fat person gets fatter, the 'idle' consumption rate increases and eventually matches their chaloric intake + their exercize, and what exercize they DO do is more significant...)
In my reasearch on the matter, I still found some real gems from the scientific community, like: We discovered exercise to lead to more calorie consumption than just the exercise would have caused. DUH! If you change the average level of activity you engage in, your body adapts to be ready for it more quickly. This means that it's going to pick a higer 'idle' rate, and thus burn more calories, and on top of that, the 'idle' consumtion rate of muscle tissue is giger than everything else, so if you build muscle mass, you increase your 'idle' consumption.
But now I'm rambling... So I think I'll shut up...
End disjointed post.
3800 Cals a day for me to meet idle, Cool!
Mood: Conflicted