Cardiovascular exercise intensity can be tracked by using your "target heart range." To determine your personal target heart rate, subtract your age from 220. This is your estimated maximum heart rate level. Your heart probably won't actually explode or anything if you go over that number, I've done it a few times, but you'll probably feel sick, dizzy, and weak.
Your maximum heart rate represents 100% effort. Very few people, even highly trained athletes, can maintain that level for very long. The level where you'll want to exercise depends on your goals. As I mentioned in a previous post, this summer I worked myself pretty hard, a lot of high intensity cycling, hard and fast. I noticed that the exercise was getting a lot easier, my resting heart rate slower, and overall I felt better, but I was rather disappointed with the slowness of my fat loss results. That's because I was exercising over my anaerobic threshold.
Your anaerobic threshold is the point where your body stops burning fat for fuel and switches over to the faster burning carbohydrates. For most people this happens at about 75% of their maximum heart rate. So if your goal is fat loss, you'll want low to moderate-intensity exercise = 60% to 75% of your estimated maximum heart rate level. For me, at 39, my maximum heart rate is about 181. So for the best aerobic fat burning workout, I want to keep my heart rate between 109 and 136. So now on a long haul ride, I'll hit a groove right around 125 beats per minute. I'll still throw in some peak efforts to work my heart, though.
High-intensity exercise = 80% to 90% of your estimated maximum heart rate level, will help strengthen your heart and lungs. For me, this is the 145-163 range. At this level our bodies burn more carbohydrates than fat during the exercise, but burn more fat the rest of the day than if we don't exercise at all. However, if you're burning carbs, you have to make sure that you keep your body supplied with them or it will go into a semi-starvation state, and slow down your metabolism.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Sweet Tooth
Wow. So the adventures in vegan cookies were a bad idea. All that sugar precipitated a major dental emergency.
I cracked my right lower back molar on a lemon poppyseed Clif bar at the finish festival for Reach the Beach a few years ago. I had some work done on it, but my managed care dental program put me through the run-around for ages. It was finally too far gone for a root canal to make sense, so it had to come out. I was waiting for a good time, but I don't think there's ever really a good time for dental extractions. Waiting for the holiday season made it a lot more complicated.
I started having pain from the tooth on Christmas weekend. I took some NSAIDs and ignored it, I was out of town and then working. Sunday, December 30, the pain meds stopped working. By the time the dentist could see me on Wednesday, I had an abscess and my jaw was all swollen. It made my throat hurt, even to swallow water. They put me on antibiotics and sent me to a specialist the next day to get it pulled.
Putting off dental work is crazy, it only makes a bad situation worse.
Overall, I would not recommend this as a diet technique, but now that I'm recovered I have to say it was a remarkably effective way to take off those extra pounds I put on over the holidays. I dropped 16 pounds in about a week, taking me to a new low of 61 pounds dropped. There was some metabolic backlash, but I seem to have stabilized and kept off about 6 of that.
However, I've really slacked on the exercise front, it's time to get back in the saddle. We moved the bike into its own room, so I can't hear the TV, which makes the indoor bike boring. Tooth pain is intensified by exercise, so I didn't bike for well over a week. I've often noticed that after a break in exercise, it's harder to get motivated to do it. I had a little affair with Krispy Kremes and pizza on Thursday, which pushed me back up to my dreaded "high" weight of "only" 50 pounds under my starting weight. I'm not beating myself up too much (unless I don't get right back to losing now that I've hit that point!) but I know it's time to get back to burning off the fat!
I cracked my right lower back molar on a lemon poppyseed Clif bar at the finish festival for Reach the Beach a few years ago. I had some work done on it, but my managed care dental program put me through the run-around for ages. It was finally too far gone for a root canal to make sense, so it had to come out. I was waiting for a good time, but I don't think there's ever really a good time for dental extractions. Waiting for the holiday season made it a lot more complicated.
I started having pain from the tooth on Christmas weekend. I took some NSAIDs and ignored it, I was out of town and then working. Sunday, December 30, the pain meds stopped working. By the time the dentist could see me on Wednesday, I had an abscess and my jaw was all swollen. It made my throat hurt, even to swallow water. They put me on antibiotics and sent me to a specialist the next day to get it pulled.
Putting off dental work is crazy, it only makes a bad situation worse.
Overall, I would not recommend this as a diet technique, but now that I'm recovered I have to say it was a remarkably effective way to take off those extra pounds I put on over the holidays. I dropped 16 pounds in about a week, taking me to a new low of 61 pounds dropped. There was some metabolic backlash, but I seem to have stabilized and kept off about 6 of that.
However, I've really slacked on the exercise front, it's time to get back in the saddle. We moved the bike into its own room, so I can't hear the TV, which makes the indoor bike boring. Tooth pain is intensified by exercise, so I didn't bike for well over a week. I've often noticed that after a break in exercise, it's harder to get motivated to do it. I had a little affair with Krispy Kremes and pizza on Thursday, which pushed me back up to my dreaded "high" weight of "only" 50 pounds under my starting weight. I'm not beating myself up too much (unless I don't get right back to losing now that I've hit that point!) but I know it's time to get back to burning off the fat!
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