Originally Posted by SimonEd

There are many advantages to any exercise that increases your heart rate. I have been out of the personal training game for a while, but IIRC here are some of the goodies to look forward to feeling the benefit of.

1: Increased ejection fraction. Each time your heart beats there is an amount of blood squirted out, this is called the ejection fraction, the more you work the heart the more it squirts each time so the more blood gets around per beat.

2: Lower residual volume. When you breathe in and out there is alway some air left in there, no matter how hard you try to expel it. The more you train, the more you get in and out each time. This is mostly a result of the muscles used to breath becoming stronger. So for each breath you take in you are getting more air and you can get rid of the old stuff and take in more O2 than an untrained individual. If you need to feed buring muscles O2 and get rid of exhaust fumes, the faster you can deliver new air and take out the fumes the easier its going to be.

3: lower resistance in Blood pathways. Bascially your body is full of little tubes that carry blood. If you are a lazy slob these are closed up as your body hates to pay for up-keep on something that isnt being used. The weird thing about the opening of these is that it usually happens all at once, its not gradual. This is why you will start off training and struggle and feel like you are only making a little progress and then WHAM! you feel like you can just keep going and going. All of a sudden oxygenated blood and waste products are being delivered and taken away faster than before making cellular respiration a lot easier and preventing a serious oxygen debt.

4: Lower systolic pressure. When your hear squirts out some blood it goes into the arteries and then the other blood ways, the faster it can drain out of the arteries, the less pressure on the left ventrical of the heart. Severely obese people or uber sedentary people have heart problems because the blood keeps backing up until it puts pressure on the heart valves. If you have lots of open blood ways it drains away so fast that your heart really has a nice time, instead of feeling like a part baloon on the end of a faucet.

5: Blood. Active individuals have more blood than sedentary individuals, so you have more of the the delivery system that delivers O2 and takes away the waste products.

This is going to sound a little caustic, its not meant to be, but its a way of illustrating a point.



We have well documented proof (POW's and Concentration camps) that show it has nothing to do with genetics. If you want to drop the weight you are going to have to eat the foods that allow for muscle growth (a higher % of lean body mass will burn more calories 24/7) without taking in fuels that dont contrbute to your goals.

Think lots of water (if you are not peeing every 90 mins you are not getting enough water)
Lean meats or fish
Complex carbs (Oatmeal is superb and there are lots of ways to eat it, even like cookies so it feels like a treat, but its actually good for you.
Fruit to feed your brain with glucose
Check wether you are insulin resistant, just get some Chromium polynicotinate and AKG supplements and see if cravings for fats and sweets lessen.
Lots of Vit C for connective tissue repair (you can take as much as 5g of Vit C a day)
For a snack have a Myoplex protein drink from EAS, 42g of protein in each one and they are quite sweet, so if you have a sweet tooth, this will kill the urge.