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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?

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Replies

  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    Macy9336 wrote: »
    So for anyone who would like to read more on "cake culture" and its impact from a public health viewpoint s well as tips to beat it, here is a quick article from a health insurance webpage: https://www.aviva.co.uk/private-health-insurance/health-tips/healthy-eating/article/beat-office-cake-culture/.

    This is the first sentence:
    You’re sitting at work when your colleagues come over with the biscuit tin and you can’t help but tuck in. Before you know it, you’ve eaten five or six chocolate digestives without even noticing – we’ve all been there.

    I don't even understand the language. :neutral:

    Are we taking a nap with a laxative? I don't...






    I actually do understand it, but ya know.

    From the article:
    Why not also make it an opportunity to bring in food of your own to share? Over a quarter (26%) of people plan to eat healthier in the New Year7, which means you’re probably not alone in your quest to forgo the French Fancies. Some homemade granola bars or these energy bites would go down seriously well – without any guilt.

    I'm not arguing that the granola bars are probably more nutrient-dense than the bakery cake. But 'without any guilt' in this context would seem to imply 'comparable in calories to fruits, veggies, rice cakes, and/or meringues', which is... kinda not accurate.

    I just put the energy bites into the recipe builder and came up with 86 calories per. Fair enough. But you know what's got roughly the same amount of calories if you make them a teeny bit smaller than the recipe suggests so you've got 21 instead of 16? These (Came up at 85 calories when I recalculated according to the recipe builder). Okay, the energy bites give you 30 per recipe and a few more nutrients. In terms of calorie 'hit' from eating one of either, they're close.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,217 Member
    mmapags wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    Speziface wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    Cardio is a waste of time (unless you actually enjoy it).

    Or enjoy the stronger heart and more plentiful food.

    I'll stick with my strong heart and plentiful food from weightlifting and HIIT. More bang for the buck.

    Not in my experience. Can't sustain HIIT long enough to burn any meaningful amount of calories, and whatever I burn I eat back twofold or more because it increases my hunger substantially. Now don't get me wrong, no one has to do cardio (or weight lifting, or HIIT for that matter), but you can't call any form of exercise a waste of time because there are clear benefits to being active, health and otherwise.

    Yes, sitting on your *kitten* is a much greater waste of time.
    Since I don't like exercising in general, I'm going to spend the least amount of time possible to get the greatest benefit which means high intensity. I just want to get it over with so I can get back to thing I enjoy.

    And that's totally alright! It's just, this sounds more like preference than opinion.

    Nah, I still am not a fan of cardio(but it's better than nothing). I believe there are much greater benefits from high intensity exercise.
    How do you know you don't burn as much calories doing HIIT? I believe that much shorter, high intensity exercise may not burn as much at the time, but the residual calorie burn from greater muscle stimulation lasts much longer resulting in more CO.

    EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consunption) for HIIT is 14%, for Low Impact Steady State it's 7%. That's the % of residual burn of calories burned during. FWIW. HIIT can't be done for very long so the overall burn is not that big. If you could do 30 minutes of HIIT, your Butner with EPOCH would be about the same as 60 minutes of LISS but who can do 30 minutes of HIIT??

    This would depend on the intensity of the HIIT. And as @GottaBurnEmAll stated not all "HIIT" is equal. To me, HIIT means the intervals are 100% all out.

    That is the HIIT I'm talking about and in exercise physiology circle based on studies, that is the commonly accepted number. This was discussed in detail on the Lyle McDonald article sjomial linked to. It is also the number Dr. Brad Shoenfeld uses. It pretty objective and not really the subject of much speculation as to variance.

    Less that 100% all out would not technically be HIIT but would be considered interval training. The EPOC would fall somewhere between LISS and HIIT depending on intensity. All HIIT is not equal because the Marketing woo machines call everything HIIT today. Things like 1 hours HIIT classes. If you can do it for 1 hour, it ain't HIIT!!

    PS: The link sjomial gave is the 2nd in a series of in depth article about the subject and references a lot of the current research. If that is the link you are kind of dismissive of in one of your posts above, I suggest you didn't read it thoroughly. There are links to both the initial article in the series and the following ones at the bottom of the one posted.

    I did read it, but I'll look at the references too. My main leaning to HIIT over cardio is that it is closer to weightlifting in it's muscle building potential... if I am not mistaken. However, I pretty much just lift and try to stay away from all that gross running stuff...

    The studies that showed muscle building improvements were done with untrained subjects. In someone like you are me doing weight training that has not been demonstrated. In a trained individual, the benefit is primarily increase in VO2 max. HIIT in trained subjects provides cardio benefit.

    If you read the series of articles, he covers all of this.

    Ah..
    So, I understand how HIIT would not improve muscle building in someone who lifts. But wouldn't it build muscle in someone who typically only does cardio (steady state)?

    Possibly, I don't know. It wasn't one of the scenarios addressed.

    It should. Think of HIIT (or any cardio workout) as a VERY long weightlifting set using VERY light weights. For example, if you're riding a bicycle for an hour and keep an average cadence of 80 rpm on the pedals you've just done 4,800 repetitions. That'll build muscle.

    I think anything that creates overload will cause some muscle growth if nutritional conditions are right. But, as I said, in the sources I read, it was not addressed. Sadly, many of the studies on HIIT seem to have been done on college campuses utilizing untrained students and the subjects. In Lyle McDonalds articles, he talks about this and how it confounds much of the results.

    Obviously, if someone is working, say legs, a couple of times in the gym per week, running or bike riding is not likely to cause lots of muscle development. I can't say it wouldn't cause any though as the act of running or riding is slightly different than weight lifting. So, I'm sure there would be some muscular adaptation that would take place. Whether that would result in hypertrophy though may be questionable. More likely neuromuscular recruitment adaptations.

    I'm not going to argue hard for hypertrophy, because I really don't know, but as an n=1, I did lose a couple of clothing sizes over a period of a few years at roughly the same body weight from something most people consider cardio (rowing, mostly boats, some machines), with negligible ancillary strength training. I don't know that NM adaptations can account for size reduction, unless "toning" really is a thing after all (heh).

    This really represents a lot of reps (4000-5000 weekly, often, maybe more), with some small workload progressivity via technical improvements along the way.

    Clearly, a well designed progressive weight training program would produce similar results much faster, with less workout time investment . . . but, for me, less fun. I'm not well-muscled like the lifting women around here, especially not in a well-rounded, balanced way . . . but neither am I stick-like. IMO only, of course. ;)

    A couple of questions for you Ann; were you in a trained and fit state when you started? Could the reduction in clothing sizes have been from BF loss? Muscle gain (hypertrophy) would cause size increases in a lean individual. But in an individual with high to average body fat, not so much and fat loss with weight staying the same would result in size reduction. Eg. the oft referred to recomp.

    I've seen your profile pic. Good muscle development!

    Definitely in an untrained state to start - depleted even (chemotherapy, other life challenges) . Certainly there was fat loss - a fair bit. But if weight stays the same, something of equivalent weight was gained. Not just water, I think. ;) That'd be a lot of water, over quite a time scale. Fat loss alone, with no compensating gain elsewhere, would mean lower body weight.

    Recomp is fat loss with muscle gain, resulting in smaller body size at the same weight, because muscle is more compact than fat pound for pound . . . as I understand it.

    And thank you.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited September 2017
    Bry_Lander wrote: »
    annaskiski wrote: »
    Macy9336 wrote: »
    I'm sad for all the cakes feeling terrible now.

    Just because someone has a desk job doesn't mean they're lazy AF. They just happen to have a job that isn't active. I'd say the bigger problem here is a culture of screens as entertainment in their various forms than the bringing of cakes to work. People who are more active have little issue fitting in calorie dense deliciousness into their day and why shouldn't they if they can.

    Side note: cake doesn't give you cancer because of its toxicity, straw man to compare it to cigarettes.

    Not really a straw man as studies have shown that being overweight is as bad as smoking insofar as risk of premature death. Cake can make you overweight...especially as part of a program of unhealthy snacking whilst doing sedentary activities. Both obesity and smoking increase the risk of cancer. It doesn't matter how the cancer is caused ( toxicity vs. Excess fat) you still die.

    Seriously dude, you have an eating disorder.

    I work in an office, and the there are a large variety of people here. There's a group that bikes for miles before/after during lunch. Another large group converted an unused storage room into a large lifting area. (They brought in those cushiony floor mats, a power cage, several squat racks, etc). Yes, there are some overweight people here as well. I would estimate they make up about 25% of the people here. (Several hundred peeps in this building.) So not the majority by any means.

    Sharing food to express friendship has been the cultural norm for humans for thousands of years.
    Perhaps you have a problem with cake. You need to learn to deal with it, or you will not be successful. Understand, not everyone needs to lose weight, has diabetes, or other health issues. Cake is not a deadly food.

    My office work culture mirrors (or is perhaps worse) than the country as a whole, with perhaps over 70% overweight. How you guys ended up with a workforce of only 25% overweight is amazing, someone should do a case study on your culture!

    Overweight stats differ quite a bit based on location and income and education. My workplace is way less than 70% overweight and the percentage of professionals at the office who are overweight is quite low. I used to be one of the very few, so noticed. So unlikely it really deserves a study.

    We don't have a "cake culture" (my college used to always send out worried letters about "keg culture" and I can't help but think of that), but we do have food in the kitchen at various times (my assistant has a family bakery business and will bring in recipes she is trying out, and some vendors will give food as gifts), and I usually ignore it, since part of my current strategy is not snacking.

  • I hate vegetables, I hate everything about vegetables, I wish I can avoid them for the rest of my life but that can't happen. Just thinking about vegetables makes me upset. All these people keep on telling me that they taste good and all but I have failed to agree and I just really don't like vegetables. Not all of them, but most of them.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    Macy9336 wrote: »
    So for anyone who would like to read more on "cake culture" and its impact from a public health viewpoint s well as tips to beat it, here is a quick article from a health insurance webpage: https://www.aviva.co.uk/private-health-insurance/health-tips/healthy-eating/article/beat-office-cake-culture/.

    This is the first sentence:
    You’re sitting at work when your colleagues come over with the biscuit tin and you can’t help but tuck in. Before you know it, you’ve eaten five or six chocolate digestives without even noticing – we’ve all been there.

    I don't even understand the language. :neutral:

    Are we taking a nap with a laxative? I don't...






    I actually do understand it, but ya know.

    From the article:
    Why not also make it an opportunity to bring in food of your own to share? Over a quarter (26%) of people plan to eat healthier in the New Year7, which means you’re probably not alone in your quest to forgo the French Fancies. Some homemade granola bars or these energy bites would go down seriously well – without any guilt.

    I'm not arguing that the granola bars are probably more nutrient-dense than the bakery cake. But 'without any guilt' in this context would seem to imply 'comparable in calories to fruits, veggies, rice cakes, and/or meringues', which is... kinda not accurate.

    I just put the energy bites into the recipe builder and came up with 86 calories per. Fair enough. But you know what's got roughly the same amount of calories if you make them a teeny bit smaller than the recipe suggests so you've got 21 instead of 16? These (Came up at 85 calories when I recalculated according to the recipe builder). Okay, the energy bites give you 30 per recipe and a few more nutrients. In terms of calorie 'hit' from eating one of either, they're close.

    Thanks for quoting that. Funny how the alternative is more calorie dense than many cakes. This is a problem I see often... Just because something has a better nutrient density doesn't mean overeating it won't make you fat, and looking at that recipe it doesn't take much to overeat those. Those tiny little balls of deliciousness are probably close to 100 calories each, worse than cookies.
  • work_on_it
    work_on_it Posts: 251 Member
    work_on_it wrote: »
    But only if it's good cake.

    That's my prob with cake culture... it's so rarely the good cake.

    This is why in a few of my jobs I was the bringer of cake. I make good cake.

    But as vested as I am in the cake culture I actually don't eat much of it because of the whole most cake is bad cake thing. I'm not wasting calories on substandard fare and I'm not about to bake a whole cake just for me (no office to foist it on now).

    My brownies were especially legendary in their day *reminisces wistfully*

    I want to try your cake

    and brownies

    please :sunglasses:
  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,934 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    Speziface wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    bweath2 wrote: »
    Cardio is a waste of time (unless you actually enjoy it).

    Or enjoy the stronger heart and more plentiful food.

    I'll stick with my strong heart and plentiful food from weightlifting and HIIT. More bang for the buck.

    Not in my experience. Can't sustain HIIT long enough to burn any meaningful amount of calories, and whatever I burn I eat back twofold or more because it increases my hunger substantially. Now don't get me wrong, no one has to do cardio (or weight lifting, or HIIT for that matter), but you can't call any form of exercise a waste of time because there are clear benefits to being active, health and otherwise.

    Yes, sitting on your *kitten* is a much greater waste of time.
    Since I don't like exercising in general, I'm going to spend the least amount of time possible to get the greatest benefit which means high intensity. I just want to get it over with so I can get back to thing I enjoy.

    And that's totally alright! It's just, this sounds more like preference than opinion.

    Nah, I still am not a fan of cardio(but it's better than nothing). I believe there are much greater benefits from high intensity exercise.
    How do you know you don't burn as much calories doing HIIT? I believe that much shorter, high intensity exercise may not burn as much at the time, but the residual calorie burn from greater muscle stimulation lasts much longer resulting in more CO.

    EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consunption) for HIIT is 14%, for Low Impact Steady State it's 7%. That's the % of residual burn of calories burned during. FWIW. HIIT can't be done for very long so the overall burn is not that big. If you could do 30 minutes of HIIT, your Butner with EPOCH would be about the same as 60 minutes of LISS but who can do 30 minutes of HIIT??

    This would depend on the intensity of the HIIT. And as @GottaBurnEmAll stated not all "HIIT" is equal. To me, HIIT means the intervals are 100% all out.

    That is the HIIT I'm talking about and in exercise physiology circle based on studies, that is the commonly accepted number. This was discussed in detail on the Lyle McDonald article sjomial linked to. It is also the number Dr. Brad Shoenfeld uses. It pretty objective and not really the subject of much speculation as to variance.

    Less that 100% all out would not technically be HIIT but would be considered interval training. The EPOC would fall somewhere between LISS and HIIT depending on intensity. All HIIT is not equal because the Marketing woo machines call everything HIIT today. Things like 1 hours HIIT classes. If you can do it for 1 hour, it ain't HIIT!!

    PS: The link sjomial gave is the 2nd in a series of in depth article about the subject and references a lot of the current research. If that is the link you are kind of dismissive of in one of your posts above, I suggest you didn't read it thoroughly. There are links to both the initial article in the series and the following ones at the bottom of the one posted.

    I did read it, but I'll look at the references too. My main leaning to HIIT over cardio is that it is closer to weightlifting in it's muscle building potential... if I am not mistaken. However, I pretty much just lift and try to stay away from all that gross running stuff...

    The studies that showed muscle building improvements were done with untrained subjects. In someone like you are me doing weight training that has not been demonstrated. In a trained individual, the benefit is primarily increase in VO2 max. HIIT in trained subjects provides cardio benefit.

    If you read the series of articles, he covers all of this.

    Ah..
    So, I understand how HIIT would not improve muscle building in someone who lifts. But wouldn't it build muscle in someone who typically only does cardio (steady state)?

    Possibly, I don't know. It wasn't one of the scenarios addressed.

    It should. Think of HIIT (or any cardio workout) as a VERY long weightlifting set using VERY light weights. For example, if you're riding a bicycle for an hour and keep an average cadence of 80 rpm on the pedals you've just done 4,800 repetitions. That'll build muscle.

    I think anything that creates overload will cause some muscle growth if nutritional conditions are right. But, as I said, in the sources I read, it was not addressed. Sadly, many of the studies on HIIT seem to have been done on college campuses utilizing untrained students and the subjects. In Lyle McDonalds articles, he talks about this and how it confounds much of the results.

    Obviously, if someone is working, say legs, a couple of times in the gym per week, running or bike riding is not likely to cause lots of muscle development. I can't say it wouldn't cause any though as the act of running or riding is slightly different than weight lifting. So, I'm sure there would be some muscular adaptation that would take place. Whether that would result in hypertrophy though may be questionable. More likely neuromuscular recruitment adaptations.

    I'm not going to argue hard for hypertrophy, because I really don't know, but as an n=1, I did lose a couple of clothing sizes over a period of a few years at roughly the same body weight from something most people consider cardio (rowing, mostly boats, some machines), with negligible ancillary strength training. I don't know that NM adaptations can account for size reduction, unless "toning" really is a thing after all (heh).

    This really represents a lot of reps (4000-5000 weekly, often, maybe more), with some small workload progressivity via technical improvements along the way.

    Clearly, a well designed progressive weight training program would produce similar results much faster, with less workout time investment . . . but, for me, less fun. I'm not well-muscled like the lifting women around here, especially not in a well-rounded, balanced way . . . but neither am I stick-like. IMO only, of course. ;)

    A couple of questions for you Ann; were you in a trained and fit state when you started? Could the reduction in clothing sizes have been from BF loss? Muscle gain (hypertrophy) would cause size increases in a lean individual. But in an individual with high to average body fat, not so much and fat loss with weight staying the same would result in size reduction. Eg. the oft referred to recomp.

    I've seen your profile pic. Good muscle development!

    Definitely in an untrained state to start - depleted even (chemotherapy, other life challenges) . Certainly there was fat loss - a fair bit. But if weight stays the same, something of equivalent weight was gained. Not just water, I think. ;) That'd be a lot of water, over quite a time scale. Fat loss alone, with no compensating gain elsewhere, would mean lower body weight.

    Recomp is fat loss with muscle gain, resulting in smaller body size at the same weight, because muscle is more compact than fat pound for pound . . . as I understand it.

    And thank you.

    Essentially, yes. And that is what I believe happened to you. Especially given that you started in an untrained state.

    In the HIIT studies, that is what happened with untrained subjects. The gained muscle mass. So, the wrong conclusion was jumped to that HIIT universally causes muscle mass growth. McDonald's contention is that in untrained individuals, yes. In trained individuals, "no _____ way" is the how he expressed it.
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    work_on_it wrote: »
    work_on_it wrote: »
    But only if it's good cake.

    That's my prob with cake culture... it's so rarely the good cake.

    This is why in a few of my jobs I was the bringer of cake. I make good cake.

    But as vested as I am in the cake culture I actually don't eat much of it because of the whole most cake is bad cake thing. I'm not wasting calories on substandard fare and I'm not about to bake a whole cake just for me (no office to foist it on now).

    My brownies were especially legendary in their day *reminisces wistfully*

    I want to try your cake

    and brownies

    please :sunglasses:

    Sorry. The kitchen is closed.
  • ryenday
    ryenday Posts: 1,540 Member
    Funny, I always thought
    The cake is a lie.
  • annaskiski
    annaskiski Posts: 1,212 Member
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Note that there are no similar complaints regarding pie cultures.

    Pie > Cake

    I love pie. Cake, I can live without...
  • work_on_it
    work_on_it Posts: 251 Member
    work_on_it wrote: »
    work_on_it wrote: »
    But only if it's good cake.

    That's my prob with cake culture... it's so rarely the good cake.

    This is why in a few of my jobs I was the bringer of cake. I make good cake.

    But as vested as I am in the cake culture I actually don't eat much of it because of the whole most cake is bad cake thing. I'm not wasting calories on substandard fare and I'm not about to bake a whole cake just for me (no office to foist it on now).

    My brownies were especially legendary in their day *reminisces wistfully*

    I want to try your cake

    and brownies

    please :sunglasses:

    Sorry. The kitchen is closed.

    No other cake will ever measure up now :smile:
  • annaskiski
    annaskiski Posts: 1,212 Member
    pie>cheesecake> cake
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,575 Member
    annaskiski wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Note that there are no similar complaints regarding pie cultures.

    Pie > Cake

    I love pie. Cake, I can live without...

    Me too! Pies and cobblers are way better than cake.
  • jdlobb
    jdlobb Posts: 1,232 Member
    annaskiski wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Note that there are no similar complaints regarding pie cultures.

    Pie > Cake

    I love pie. Cake, I can live without...

    Me too! Pies and cobblers are way better than cake.

    well this is just nonsense
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    annaskiski wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Note that there are no similar complaints regarding pie cultures.

    Pie > Cake

    I love pie. Cake, I can live without...

    Me too! Pies and cobblers are way better than cake.

    Cobbler/crumble. Must be with custard. I am partial to a pie but we aren't much of a sweet pie culture here in the UK so finding good pie is tricky. Savoury pie, now that we excel in.
  • jdlobb
    jdlobb Posts: 1,232 Member
    Pie people are weird. cake all the way.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    Pie is what I eat when there is no cake.
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 6,002 Member
    Poundcake all the way...
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    Pie, real pie with a real crust, beats all. Since I can't eat a real crust any more, the new winner in my books is cheesecake.

    Gluten free cheesecakes can be just as good as their gluten containing counterparts. Gluten free cakes and pies? Notsomuch.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited September 2017
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    Note that there are no similar complaints regarding pie cultures.

    Pie > Cake

    This is true.

    I don't care about cake. Pie and cobbler for the win!
  • jdlobb
    jdlobb Posts: 1,232 Member
    I think you pie people are just contrarians. Cake is so far superior to all forms of pie that it really shouldn't be open for debate.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    what about piecaken? best of both worlds? ;)
This discussion has been closed.