'I don't want to look like Madonna', wish I had a pound for every time I
heard that one. It must be the most overheard phrase in the personal fitness
training world when you propose that a woman should lift weights.
As I always patiently and calmly try to explain, 'if only it were that easy'.
Madonna  has probably worked out every day for hours nearly all her life.
Hard work, sweat, discipline, single minded purpose, dedication and time. Most women couldn't even come close, so please don't be afraid, it ain't going to happen.... and if by some genetic predisposition it does start to happen, well you can always stop. So fear not, get in the gym and do your stuff, a toned woman to most men is very sexy, even if they tell you they like you with a bit of weight around the midriff, that's not what they say to their mates and I can assure you, it is certainly not what they think. 
So what about the guys, what do they say? Usually it's 'I
don't want to look like Arnie, just toned'. Again, I have good news because you aint gonna look like Arnie either.
 To run for 30 hours up mountains isn't easy, to cycle
around France in a race for 3 weeks, isn't easy and to look like Arnold is
pretty much impossible unless you are prepared to work and train very, very hard for a very long time. So now we've got that out of the way, what can us mere mortals do, well contrary to the comments just made, quite a lot.
As my friend Brigitte said many years ago in her fab French/English
accent, 'It's all in ze training', it most certainly is, plus that other well
known phrase uttered by Arnie:- 'Great abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym' . And there you have it:- Training and Eating.
Do these 2 things well and remarkable things are possible, even for us normal types.
But the real point is - What is your goal? These things may be of no interest
and you just might want to go read a book, which is fair enough.
((May I recommend and excellent summer read - LAST TRAIN TO ST TROPEZ. It is available worldwide on Amazon.
USA Link to Amazon ...
 http://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Tropez-Phil-Jeremy/dp/1481062875/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369325208&sr=1-1&keywords=last+train+to+st+tropez
UK link to Amazon ...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Train-Tropez-Phil-Jeremy/dp/1481062875/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369325421&sr=1-1&keywords=last+train+to+st+tropez
Click and put this link into your browser. Buy it now!))
Sorry about that, couldn't resist it, where were we?  Ah yes, what is your goal?
To many people it is losing weight and to a few more achieving a toned figure
or physique ... and to the great majority getting fit and healthy. These are all
worthy goals and yet here is the conundrum, if these are the desires and
goals of the many then why is obesity of the charts in most countries and
getting worse annually.
Having studied this for a very long time it seems to
me that its just too hard to change, to step up,  to walk past the
biscuits, to say no to a pizza, to visit the gym, to refuse the candy or
ice cream, to reject the glass of wine, to go for a run, to drink water instead
of coke, to start a fitness regime and keep at it.
These days the guy or girl at the party who works out and looks fab is seen
as a bit weird or obsessed. It never seems to occur to the masses that drinking
and eating crap every day is also weird and strangely obsessed ,especially when
we know for a fact that the healthy, fit ones will live longer, have less
sickness, have more vitality, be less of a drain on the health services and
will be here to see their kids and grandkids blossom in their lives. Who's the
weirdo? Then the healthy one gets hit with 'well you have to enjoy life' which is
really perverse as it infers that because they drink or eat mountains of
pasta that somehow this is more fun! Have these people ever been healthy? Have
they any idea what they are missing? probably and sadly not.
As I started this blog in a contentious mood, I figured I'd end on the
same note.
PS - I was just reading a report on Dakota Jones who last year ran the Grand
Canyon South rim to the North rim .... and BACK AGAIN, in just
over 6 hours (called the R2R2R). To some this may seem utter madness, to me it
would be the experience of a lifetime, no matter how long it took. The sheer
beauty and hardship all wrapped up in a melange of life being experienced to the
full.

 
 FATBUSTER 2 AND THE OVERCONSUMPTION OF ENERGY 
Relax, this isn't about
global warming, renewable energy, fracking, wind farms or nuclear power.....at
least I don't think it is.  I read this phrase, 'Overconsumption of
Energy' last week from Professor Ian A. Macdonald head of the UK Centre for
Arthritis and Musculosketal Ageing research, University of Nottingham Medical
School (some title, I know).
 We all know that obesity is on
the increase, the US is no 1 and the UK no 2, closely followed by every nation
in the developed world, even France, the last bastion of supposed balanced
eating has seen a massive rise in obesity. Why?  There is no question that
High Fructrose Corn Syrup and many other nasty ingredients contribute to the
problem, including lack of exercise. Often it all sounds very complicated
as we tend to talk about exercise, nutrition and general health in terms
of numerous diet plans, supplements, medicines and varied exercise
protocols. He was making the point that many foods can be good or bad for the
human body and in varying degrees but his main argument was that obesity or
just general weight gain comes from simple overconsumption of energy. It puts a
different spin on eating too many calories or not doing enough exercise and I
think simplyfies our understanding.
   When we eat we are
absorbing energy, now you might think that having a glass of wine or eating a
bag of chips or a tasy salad is a pleasureable action that stimulates the senses
and it often is but at a very basic level its just fuel for the body. Once it
hits your stomach these various foods are just broken down into units of energy
or waste. If you consume too much energy which is in excess of your basic
metabolic rate plus any additional exercise then you will get fat. You can
count calories and run to Texas and back but if you take in more energy than you
use then you will get fat.
    Generally speaking nutrition
is 65% of the energy equation whilst the other 35% is exercise. If we think
in terms of how much energy did you use today in relation to how much 
expended then you get a much clearer picture of where you are at. A good start
is to work out your Basic Metabolic Rate or BMR, click on the link to find out
yours....
        http://www.muscleandstrength.com/tools/bmr-and-daily-calorie-calculator.html   
Now this is how much calorific energy you use
up even if you stay in bed all day.... so the more you move around and EXERCISE
then the more you will need.  Using the Harris Benedict Formula (see link)
you can work out how much in total including exercise, you burn a day. (Do it
now, it takes about 10 seconds). Mine is approximately 2200 calories a day and
that includes 6 days a week of exercise. An 'average' woman's is about 1500
calories.
   A Big Mac, chips and a coke is about 1100 calories! Two
pieces of toast with butter and honey on is about 350, Two glasses of
wine is 300 calories. Just think about that ...... that's 20%  of a woman's
energy intake per day. If you drink 2 glasses every night with an evening meal
for a week that's the same as 10 Donuts! Would anyone think that eating 10
donuts a week is healthy?
       As you can see from these figures overconsumption of energy is very easy to achieve
... and unfortunately the people who overconsume also tend to eat very bad
calories, bad fats, poor proteins and very poor high GI
carbohydrates aswell. This leads to not just obesity but type-2 diabetes,
atherosclerosis, heart disease and many other illnesses.
     My last blog 'Fatbuster' was my most widely read to
date so clearly this is an issue that we are all concerned about ... and rightly
so. But then why isn't everybody aware of the healthy, quick and efficient
ways to lose weight or even to maintain their existing weight. There
are mountains of books, diets, tv programmes, dvd's and of course the internet,
surely it shouldn't be that complicated and the truth is, it isn't. If you
eat rice, potatoes, pasta, cakes, pies and pastries and consume
alchohol regularly what do you think is going to happen? It doesn't
matter how many times you go to the gym, play a sport, swim, run, cycle, dance
or zumba if you eat crap you will get AND remain fat.

                                       You can't exercise away a bad diet.

Remember I've run up mountains for 10 hours at a time and lost no weight at all, in fact I
put it on. I won't even start to talk about Cortisol and Insulin
spikes as that's for another day but please note this -   Not all calories are created equal -  If you take your
energy (calories) from protein, vegetables and healthy fats as opposed to bad
carbohydrates eg pasta, cakes etc then you can consume more because the
body will utilise this type of energy more efficiently. Remember starve the fat,
feed the muscles. and ask yourself these
questions;-
     1)What and how much are you eating ?

     2) What type and how much are you exercising?

     3) What's your Basic Metabolic Rate?


And finally .... stop your overconsumption of energy .... its bad for your
health ... and bad for the planet........... and now I'm off now to save the Whale :)

 
THIS WAS MY FIRST BLOG FROM 2 YEARS AGO. IF YOU WISH TO READ MORE CLICK ON THE LINK ......     http://trailjunki-phil.blogspot.fr
 

ENDURANCE
TRAIL RUNNING

I suppose anyone looking at this first
image of my first Blog and the seeing the title Trail Junkie would be excused
for being somewhat confused; Firstly by the title and secondly by the picture of
a selection of very large rocks....I shall endeavour to explain.

    At 56 years of age to take up a sport such as this might be
considered a little reckless, no I don't mean rock climbing, although it
sometimes feels like it. For many years now I have run for one hour, three times
per week, no more no less. It kept me fit and though I regarded it as nothing
unusual only a few of my peers did anything even remotely similar namely
Samantha, Julian and James (sounds like a 70's rock band). In fact these 3
people are the only people I have ever run with but as they all live
in different countries I run alone for 99% of the time. Luckily I quite like my
own company ( somebody has too) so there you go.

       I run quite slowly, don't like hills, have
never had a runner's 'high' and a for every 3 out of 10 runs find it really hard
to motivate myself, so why is this Blog called Trail Junkie and the title
Endurance  Running. To be an endurance runner you have to run more than a
marathon in one go (for example 50 kilometres or 31 miles) and with trail
running this includes hills, deserts, snow, mud, rocks, rivers and
mountains. It is therefore considerably harder and more demanding than just a
road but to me it is far more rewarding. So what has changed me from a
regular jogger into a nutcase! It started with a poster on a wall in the village
of Theoule where I live in the South of France.