Most Efficient Method of Transportation?

In a time where gas prices keep rising, the talk around efficient methods of transportation has become even more important. The most efficient vehicle is not a Prius or the Chevy Volt, it is a common bicycle. Because of the nature of bikes it takes less energy to bike one mile than walk one mile, it is also much faster. If you want to compare the amount of calories burnt while biking to a car, there is a huge difference. One hundred calories can power a biker for three miles, while three hundred calories (remembering that a calorie is a unit of measurement for energy) can power a car only around 300 feet. If you keep discussing with your family and friends about renewable resources then look into biking to places that are close. Biking uses a renewable resource; it uses the energy that we get from food to travel.

                Even if we were not talking about Cycling as an efficient method of transportation, it is still a great workout. It is a non-impact workout (running is an impact workout) so it will be easy on your joints. It gives you a cardio workout, and increases balance, strength, and flexibility. While riding a bike at around 12-14 mph you will burn around 235 calories per every half an hour. Cycling is a great way to get places fast and also stay in shape. Especially if you live in the city you should look into biking to your destinations.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. 

Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. 

Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. 

 ~Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

Raising Your Metabolism

Everyone has heard at some point in their life about their metabolism. Whether it is two skinny teenagers bragging about how they can eat anything they want because they have a high BMR, or adults wishing they had a high metabolism. Our bodies get energy from the food that we eat through our metabolism. Your metabolism is a series of chemical reactions that are needed to break food down into energy to perform many different actions. Metabolism has always been happening in your body since birth, if metabolism stops, the body dies (there would be no energy to supply to the body).

                There is a process that starts even before metabolism in your body. It begins with plants, firstly through photosynthesis a plant takes in sunlight and uses this energy and its chlorophyll to build sugars and carbon dioxide. When people or animals eat the plants they take in the sugars that were created by photosynthesizing sunlight (if an animal or a person is carnivorous they take in the energy that the animal being eaten took in from the plant.)

                After the food is eaten, enzymes in the digestive system break proteins in amino acids, fats into fatty acids, and carbohydrates into simple sugars (glucose). All of these can be used as energy sources by the body when they are needed. They are then absorbed into the blood and transported to the cells that need them. When they enter the cells other enzymes in the cells speed up and regulate the chemical reactions involved in metabolizing these compounds. During these processes the energy from the food can be released from the body, or stored in tissues such as the liver, muscles, and body fat.

                This is a very basic understanding of metabolism; it is a very complicated chemical process. Where calories come into the picture is that a calorie is a unit that measures how much energy a particular food will bring to the body. For example the Dairy Queen Large Chocolate Malt contains around 1300 calories (source http://www.acaloriecounter.com/fast-food-calories.php) if you do not burn the calories that are from the Chocolate Malt the energy will be stored as fat. So what fat is in a nutshell is unused energy that the body has stored.

                Now the number of calories that a person burns in a day is affected by the amount of time that person exercises, the amount of fat and muscle in that person’s body, and also their Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your BMR is a measurement of the rate that your body burns energy in the form of calories while at rest. A person with a low BMR will be more likely to gain weight than a person with an average BMR even if they are eating the same food and exercising for the same amount of time. If you want to raise your BMR exercise is one of the best ways, not only will it directly burns calories but it will also affect your BMR. Body composition plays a role in BMR, people with more muscle and less fat generally have higher BMR’s

                There are also ways of eating, and certain foods that can help your raise your metabolism. Researchers in Germany have found the drinking water helps raise your metabolism. The test subjects BMR’s increased their metabolism by thirty percent. Water is an extremely important tool towards weight loss. By drinking more water it will keep you from mistaking thirst for hunger. Drinking Green Tea can also help raise your metabolism, it has also been reported to contain anti-cancer properties and it can help prevent heart disease. (source http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/10-foods-to-raise-your-metabolism.html)

                There are ways of raising your metabolism, the hard part is sticking to the foods that you need to eat and staying away from the Large Chocolate Malt will help you stay thin and not gain any unnecessary weight from extra energy. 

Cheap Ways to Stay Fit

    In our society almost everyone tries to stay as cheap as possible when looking for a product. We look around for the cheaper gas station, we cruise the aisles in a supermarket looking for the cheaper (but still high quality) item. Everything has a price tag, treadmills can cost well over a thousand dollars; but there is a way to stay in shape and only spend a few hundred dollars compared to thousands spent on gym memberships, treadmills and elliptical trainers.

    First, one of the most effective cardio machines in the world can cost you less than three hundred dollars. Stationary or spinning bikes are a great tool for staying in shape. They do not take as much space as a treadmill or an elliptical, and they are very effective. For every half an hour spent on a spin bike going 10 mph you will burn 175 calories. Now if you are spinning while watching your favorite movie that has a runtime of an hour and a half you will have burnt 525 calories. Spinning is a very effective way to stay in shape, if you have ever watched The Biggest Loser it is one of the staple workouts in their gym.



    Another cheap way of staying in shape is jumping rope. A typical fitness oriented jump rope can cost as little as $10-$20. Jumping Rope burns on average around 11 calories per minute. For every twenty minutes of jumping rope you will have burnt around 220 calories (which is almost the same amount of calories burnt for running on a treadmill for a half an hour). Jumping rope is a tough impact workout, you should jump rope on a softer surface (concrete is not recommended), and you should build your time up to your own goal time. Jumping rope is a workout that is favored by tennis players and boxers, the workout can be modified to include harder more technical jumps as soon as you master the single jump.

The Secret of a Six Pack

    I'm sure that probably 75% of the population in the United States has typed in the words "Six pack abs" into the Google search engine. What everyone is looking for is a great quick and easy solution to get the six-pack of their dreams. Their search leads them through a myriad of websites claiming to have found the secret for success. Instant abs in three weeks!!! What these websites fail to acknowledge though is that it will not take just three weeks to get the abs that you desire.

    Getting and maintaining a six pack is not easy. It requires a careful diet, daily exercise and isolation exercises, and a very low percentage of body fat. An estimate of the amount of body fat required to see abs is about 15 to 18% for women and 7 to 10% for men according to Miriam Nelson, strength training researcher at Tufts University. This is why six packs are more common among younger people (high school and college aged) because they have a higher metabolism so they can be less careful of what they eat when compared to someone who is in their forties.

    Getting a six pack for doing sit-up and crunches is also another fitness myth that has been proven ineffective. Crunches are not a way to carve out your abs, crunches help build your abs muscles but they do not help burn any body fat. Burning calories is much more important than doing crunches. Even if you spend hours and hours in the gym or at home working your abs by doing crunches or any other type of exercise the work put in will be obscured by your body fat. So to everyone trying to get a toned physique remember that burning calories and fat is just as or even more important than building strength.

The Benefits of Body Weight Exercises

    There are multiple benefits to body-weight exercises. First off you do not need a gym and expensive fitness equipment to partake in strength training. With bodyweight exercises there are a great variety of exercises that can work multiple muscles at once. Since multiple muscles are being worked you are building more muscle with less exercises which means less time spent working out. Typically when you are lifting weight you are isolating muscles, for example the one of the most popular exercises using dumbbells is the dumbbell curl an exercise focusing on the biceps. This exercise is inferior to pull-ups or inverted/horizontal pull-ups which work the biceps, forearms, and several muscles in your back. Using isolation exercises are common in the gym among many lifters (one reason why you might not see results after weeks of lifting).

    If we look at another very popular lifting exercise we can also see its differences with a bodyweight counterpart. The push-up is one of the first abandoned exercises to the bench press which is arguably the most popular lift that can be seen in a gym. When you are performing a push-up you are lifting 60-65% of your bodyweight. So if you weigh 150 pounds you are lifting 90-97 pounds. Push-ups are also safer then bench-pressing because it does not stress your shoulder joints by putting excess weight on them. There are also multiple variations to push-ups for example to make the exercise more of a challenge elevate your feet on a bench. For some examples of more push-up variations check out this link http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/pushup-variations/index.php. If you want to increase resistance on your push-ups just wrap a resistance band around your body so if tightens when you push upwards.

    Since as I discussed earlier bodyweight exercises are a multi-joint exercise they are better for fat loss than isolation weight lifting. Because more muscles are being worked per exercise you will end up burning more calories. Again this is another example of the efficiency of bodyweight exercises; you will end up burning more calories for less time.

    Bodyweight exercises are good for both men and women. Men will still gain muscle while at the same time not get overly large if they do not that type of build. Bodyweight exercises will give you an athletic toned look. Perfect for women also who are frequently worried about gaining too much muscle during strength training.

    However if you are looking to gain some serious muscle while it might be hard on your joint you need to look into weight training where it is easier to increase the resistance.

Jump Up and Down

    One of the fitness industry's most effective tools has been around for years and is a favorite of boxers. Here's a hint of what it is, it's made out of a rope and it has two handles attached to it. If you guessed a jump-rope give yourself a pat on the back.
    Using a jump-rope is one of the most effective cardiovascular workouts burning up to 1000 calories per hour. It tones muscle in the entire body and it is extremely easy to use. All you need is a jump-rope (costs between 10-20 dollars) and a pair of sneakers with good cushioning in them. I recommend using tennis sneakers because they are designed for a similar type of movement. Using a jump-rope is great because you will not need to leave your house for an extended period of time and you can jump in front of a television or while listening to music if you get bored.
    Jumping rope is a different type of movement then you might be used to so I would recommend to start jumping for smaller periods of time and then slowly work your way up to 30 min -- 1 hr.
    Make sure while you are using a jump rope that you only jump one time per swing. When you get proficient enough at this start learning more difficult jumps like jumping on one leg, jumping from side to side.
    While you are jumping try to jump on a softer surface that is preferably not concrete, it will put more stress on your knees.

America's Challenge

    Obesity plays a huge role in America's desire for a fit and healthy population. According to the CDC (center for disease control) almost 30% of the population in the United States are obese. that means around 70 million people of our population are obese. (Obesity is defined by a body mass index of over 30). With the innovations in our technology movement isn't required as much in our society as compared to a couple hundred years earlier.
    There are a couple very dangerous consequences from obesity. Obesity helps develop high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and the list goes on and on. The sad thing about all of this, is that even with all the talk about a healthier nation, even with shows like the biggest loser, our population is still extremely overweight and sick from it. 
    Living a healthier life is not as hard as people make it out to be. It is all about making subtle changed to your daily routine. For example, instead of rushing to Dunkin Doughnuts in the morning and grabbing a few breakfast sandwiches or doughnuts, wake up a half an our earlier and eat some Fiber One cereal (or something like it). Instead of taking the elevator up to your floor take the stairs everyday. Try to stay moving throughout the work day, stand and walk around while you are on the phone.
    On of the easiest ways to lose weight or maintain your weight is to partake in the 10,000 steps per day challenge. Go out and buy a pedometer, or if you have a smartphone download a pedometer app. Then log you steps for one day and look at the results. Try and work on increasing that number by 500 every few days or week. There are a few easy ways to increase your step number.

1. Walk your dog
2. take a walk with family members or a friend
3. use the stairs
4. walk to close places rather than driving

    The other part of losing weight is nutrition. Try to eliminate excess fats, salt and sugar from your diet. eat smaller meals more regularly (5 to 6 SMALL meals per day). Dieting is a test of self control and determination, if you have one weak moment and then reward yourself with a greasy cheeseburger that will lead to a craving for another burger.
    America's disease has already been diagnosed and the treatments have already been laid out on the table. All it takes now is some determination and self control.