Gorging on sweets before exercise

[Bronzeage]

The secret of Planet Fitness is they discovered the magic number, which is $9.99. This will buy a month at Planet Fitness. It's magic because is it low enough that plenty of people will sign up and continue to pay it, even if they know in their heart, they will never go back again.

NPR recently had a piece on health clubs and how they don't have anywhere near enough equipment for everyone that is a member, and have to depend on people not showing up, otherwise they are screwed.

It's the business model the phone company has been using since day one. The only time I saw the "everybody pays, but nobody uses it" model go wrong was when AOL went to the monthly fee system.

I think it's great. I pay $10 a month and my showers use at least that much hot water.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Eating just before exercise is probably bad, for two main reasons: one is that exercising on a full stomach can be uncomfortable depending on the activity. Second, digesting food, especially fat, mobilises some energy, which is therefore not available for exercising, which makes it definitely harder.

The theory has long been that you should eat, preferentially carbohydrates, and then wait 3 to 4 hours before you exercise. This will give you the highest store of glycogen available, both for your muscles and your brain.

Eating sugar is probably always bad since it may fool your body into being careless about its store of glycogen which can lead to hypoglycaemia, initially crises, then on a regular basis, and doing anything at all during HG is really very hard. Eating too much sugar is also a factor in diabetes although exercising may succeed in reversing a Type 2.

I also recently discovered that there's a theory that you can train your body to use more fat rather than carbohydrates to fuel your muscles during exercise. This involves exercising well after your last meal. That's what I always did (last meal in the evening, exercise in the morning after). My jogging progressed from 10K to 35k in 20 years. 35K is not impressive at all but I started late in life so I take it that my experience is rather conclusive in the long run for using fat. This is presumably also good for losing weight faster. Outside of that, you normally start using fat after at least 2 hours of jogging, not exactly impressive as a motivation. However, if you can do one three-hour jogging every week, you should lose excess body fat quite fast.

Most competitive joggers take glucose supplements during long-distance running, beginning with the marathon. I never tried it but I'll do a test in 2015. I'm sceptical though. I prefer to think that if you never take supplements during the effort your body somehow get used to it.

Try to exercise in parks and woods rather than in fitness clubs or in streets. It's much more conducive to feeling good about exercising and should deliver better results in the long run.
EB

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Good question. Is it better to eat before or after exercise?

I would eat only a small meal before exercise. Otherwise I don't feel great, either after eating a lot or having no food at all.

 

[gmbteach]

Eating just before exercise is probably bad, for two main reasons: one is that exercising on a full stomach can be uncomfortable depending on the activity. Second, digesting food, especially fat, mobilises some energy, which is therefore not available for exercising, which makes it definitely harder.

The theory has long been that you should eat, preferentially carbohydrates, and then wait 3 to 4 hours before you exercise. This will give you the highest store of glycogen available, both for your muscles and your brain.

Eating sugar is probably always bad since it may fool your body into being careless about its store of glycogen which can lead to hypoglycaemia, initially crises, then on a regular basis, and doing anything at all during HG is really very hard. Eating too much sugar is also a factor in diabetes although exercising may succeed in reversing a Type 2.

I also recently discovered that there's a theory that you can train your body to use more fat rather than carbohydrates to fuel your muscles during exercise. This involves exercising well after your last meal. That's what I always did (last meal in the evening, exercise in the morning after). My jogging progressed from 10K to 35k in 20 years. 35K is not impressive at all but I started late in life so I take it that my experience is rather conclusive in the long run for using fat. This is presumably also good for losing weight faster. Outside of that, you normally start using fat after at least 2 hours of jogging, not exactly impressive as a motivation. However, if you can do one three-hour jogging every week, you should lose excess body fat quite fast.

Most competitive joggers take glucose supplements during long-distance running, beginning with the marathon. I never tried it but I'll do a test in 2015. I'm sceptical though. I prefer to think that if you never take supplements during the effort your body somehow get used to it.

Try to exercise in parks and woods rather than in fitness clubs or in streets. It's much more conducive to feeling good about exercising and should deliver better results in the long run.
EB

We actually had a vegetable quiche thing for our lunch today - then took the dogs on a walk. It didn't really hinder us at all.

 

[EricK]

Over the last year or so I have lost quite a bit of weight, and got a lot fitter. The exercise I have been doing has been mainly resistance work with some aerobic (jog about a mile to the gym as warm up, an hour of resistance work, 10-15 minutes of high intensity interval training on exercise bike, then walk a mile home as cool down). I find it goes much better if I do it first thing in the morning before eating anything.

 

[Speakpigeon]

We actually had a vegetable quiche thing for our lunch today - then took the dogs on a walk. It didn't really hinder us at all.

I take it you didn't ask the dogs for a different perspective on things. Did they get to sample the quiche?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Eating just before exercise is probably bad, for two main reasons: one is that exercising on a full stomach can be uncomfortable depending on the activity. Second, digesting food, especially fat, mobilises some energy, which is therefore not available for exercising, which makes it definitely harder.

The theory has long been that you should eat, preferentially carbohydrates, and then wait 3 to 4 hours before you exercise. This will give you the highest store of glycogen available, both for your muscles and your brain.

Eating sugar is probably always bad since it may fool your body into being careless about its store of glycogen which can lead to hypoglycaemia, initially crises, then on a regular basis, and doing anything at all during HG is really very hard. Eating too much sugar is also a factor in diabetes although exercising may succeed in reversing a Type 2.

I also recently discovered that there's a theory that you can train your body to use more fat rather than carbohydrates to fuel your muscles during exercise. This involves exercising well after your last meal. That's what I always did (last meal in the evening, exercise in the morning after). My jogging progressed from 10K to 35k in 20 years. 35K is not impressive at all but I started late in life so I take it that my experience is rather conclusive in the long run for using fat. This is presumably also good for losing weight faster. Outside of that, you normally start using fat after at least 2 hours of jogging, not exactly impressive as a motivation. However, if you can do one three-hour jogging every week, you should lose excess body fat quite fast.

Most competitive joggers take glucose supplements during long-distance running, beginning with the marathon. I never tried it but I'll do a test in 2015. I'm sceptical though. I prefer to think that if you never take supplements during the effort your body somehow get used to it.

Try to exercise in parks and woods rather than in fitness clubs or in streets. It's much more conducive to feeling good about exercising and should deliver better results in the long run.
EB

Also, the glucose you take during a marathon isn't stored in muscles and apparently it is meant essentially to prevent hypoglycaemia rather than ensure energy supply to the muscles or solve muscle pain and stiffness in endurance running. Those seem to come from the anaerobic reactions in muscles with a progressive build-up of lactate acid which isn't affected by taking glucose. My view is that removing sugar from your diet removes the need for glucose against hypoglycaemia during exercise because you body get used to doing without glucose supplement. So no sweets, no cakes, no jam or honey, no sugar in your coffee etc. Unless you happen to have some gene that solves the problem.

Pain and stiffness in muscles given a certain distance and effort is best reduced by training for those particular distance and effort.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Over the last year or so I have lost quite a bit of weight, and got a lot fitter. The exercise I have been doing has been mainly resistance work with some aerobic (jog about a mile to the gym as warm up, an hour of resistance work, 10-15 minutes of high intensity interval training on exercise bike, then walk a mile home as cool down). I find it goes much better if I do it first thing in the morning before eating anything.

Yes.

However, the best ratio between effort and weight loss seems to be walking as it is mainly fat which is used for fueling your muscles in this case. But then you need to walk the distance. I guess an hour a day should give good results for a normal diet and that's immediately available to most people.

More strenuous effort should come if you're comfortable with it and only progressively and only if you really want to improve stamina, strength, resistance, and joie de vivre.
EB

 

[gmbteach]

We actually had a vegetable quiche thing for our lunch today - then took the dogs on a walk. It didn't really hinder us at all.

I take it you didn't ask the dogs for a different perspective on things. Did they get to sample the quiche?
EB

No - the dogs didn't sample the quiche. We are trying to convince the dogs that they don't like quiche, cheese, meat etc. Not sure how we will go with that though.

 

[Underseer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_loading

 

[EricB]

Good question. Is it better to eat before or after exercise?

It depends entirely on your goals.

 

[gmbteach]

Good question. Is it better to eat before or after exercise?

It depends entirely on your goals.

Well, we enjoyed a pie and tart AFTER an hour long paddle on the creek and they were most welcome.

 

[scombrid]

NPR recently had a piece on health clubs and how they don't have anywhere near enough equipment for everyone that is a member, and have to depend on people not showing up, otherwise they are screwed.

Planet Fitness perfected the model by deliberately discouraging gym rats from signing up. They even use their prejudice against "lunks" as a selling point to the pizza clubbers. Win win, keep the people that would be there every day from signing up and get those that will hardly ever show up to sign.

That said, the gym douches, classic lunks, posing and preening did drive me to build a home gym. I was a member of a perfect gym back my old town. Basic equipment, pristine clean, every plate and dumbell always racked properly, and you could kill yourself or train easy with a mix of people body builders to old farts walking on the treadmill and watching FOX news to me doing brutal muscle endurance workouts to supplement competitive canoeing. Loved that place. Move down here and the gyms are full of roid tards and posers that act like they own the place. I was tempted to join Planet Fitness but was worried that I'd get lunk alarmed when I train endurance circuits to failure.

 

[Frikki]

As with all things it depends.

Are you running or doing powerlifting? I never run on an empty stomach but I do my lifts before breakfast. The good thing is that you can put anything you want in your body after power lifting. Note that power or olympic lifting is very different from what you see people doing at you regular gym.

 

[scombrid]

I used to bodybuild. Now I do endurance sports. Feeding strategies were way different. However, my experience is that supplementation can enhance both but that over-supplementation is very common and supplementation is probably not needed at all for the casual athlete that has a balanced diet.

For aerobic activity that is not exceedingly long you can definitely train on an empty stomach. When I was training for 1000m k1 canoeing races we'd go out and wake up our aerobic metabolism by training at daybreak before breakfast, 45-60' steady state paddling. Then we'd eat breakfast and catch a small nap before going out and killing ourselves in the second morning session. We were training 150-200km per week so I was probably eating 6000 kcal per day or more but I generally did not supplement carbs during workouts unless the session exceeded 90 minutes or I had two hard workouts in the same day and did not want the morning session to deplete me.


I now find that for steady work up to 120 minutes I don't need carb supplements if I keep the HR below 70% of max. If I'm racing for 120' then I'll take carbs in the boat and supplement every half hour. But that is because when racing I'll be spending a lot of time near threshold and will be burning a lot of glycogen with the fat.

I do find that actively training the fat metabolism with high volumes of easy steady state training in the off season is beneficial for intense efforts later in the year, sets that baseline cruising speed higher.