How on earth do I ever get so much Energy??? This is so sim

metalpalace

“Tom, how on earth do you ever get so much energy???”

Frequently in group workouts or with just a single buddy I am asked this question. It’s an easy question for me to answer. I don’t see any reason to keep it from the public domain so read and LEARN for your benefit and the benefit of others around you of whom you choose to teach.

The other day I was taking my resting heart rate (RHR) before getting out of bed. My RHR came in at 42 beats per minute! That is insanely FABULOUS for a trained individual. I took it again just to double check and it came in at 45 beats per minute (bpm). The small jump was probably the result of a small amount of adrenaline from my sympathetic nervous system from the first reading. None the less this confirmed my stellar RHR.

Just so you have some perspective consider this. <b>The average RHR for men is 70 bpm and 75 for women.</b> A RHR lower than 60 bpm (bradycardia) for an untrained individual or greater than 100 bpm (tachycardia) for any individual is a problem that requires medical attention or you risk dying of an abnormal heart condition. It’s common for trained athletes to bring their RHR down to below 60 bpm and for Olympic cross country skiers or P90X’ers to go as low as the lower 40’s.

Pay attention closely because this is the reason why I am able to “Bring it” to my workouts and I want YOU to be able to BRING IT to your workouts also.

My low RHR (as a result of consistent training and reasonable nutrition) is directly the cause for my HUGE capacity to bring a big ole ball of ENERGY and intensity to my workouts which ultimately leads to bigger, better and faster results. When you think about it, it is so basic. If your heart is not in great shape you get easily winded, your workouts are less and your results are less and take longer. Do you follow me? This concept can be taught just like that in easy terms that anyone can understand right away. But if you are like me and want to know WHY and HOW well here is a little bit about that.

My heart at a RHR in the lower forties is so efficient at pumping blood to my working muscles and regulating my circulatory system that with each beat, it is pumping so much oxygen rich blood systemically (stroke volume) so that fewer pumps are required from my heart per minute to adequately and continuously supply all of my working cells with nutrient rich blood. Think about that for one second… With fewer pumps needed to adequately feed all my cells there will be less and less wear and tear and fatigue on my heart muscle (myocardium) which means (among many other benefits) I will live a HIGHER quality of living vs. a lower more degenerative quality of living while being able to do so much more for myself and others that I care about without feeling winded. Add to that, I have also greatly reduced risk factors for a heart attack, a stroke, disease or illness in general etc.

A higher quality of life; WHO WOULDN’T WANT THAT? Perhaps a person whose ambitions reflect a desire for the lesser quality of living coupled with exacerbated degenerative physiological side affects of neglecting ones own heart.

One other HUGE health benefit to an efficient heart and a low RHR is the fact that the heart muscle itself has more time to pump nutrient rich blood to itself via the coronary arteries. See the heart muscle needs to be fed just like any other muscle and a surprising number of people do not think about that. The only time the heart is working to feed and take care of itself is in between systemic contractions (during diastole). If you have a higher resting heart rate then your heart is going to be worn down more quickly as you age which inevitably leads to very undesirable feelings of agony simply for lack of nutrients as well as being over worked to fuel every other cell outside of the heart muscle.

The moral here is that the most important muscle in the body to enhance is the heart! If your goal is to be a better weight lifter, well, lifting weights requires an enormous amount of oxygenated blood to fuel those HARD working muscle cells or you will do fewer reps, move lighter loads, and strength gains will be painfully slow or non existent. The healthier your heart and circulation is the greater your propensity is to be a better weight lifter. The same goes for ANY activity from running, to cycling, to yoga, to sports performances, to energy levels, to ANYTHING even cognitive thinking depends on adequate blood flow.

Always work to enhance and strengthen your heart! The workouts AND day to day living is more enjoyable and rewarding.

Learn - Teach - Do!

Tom

Bella151

Thanks for the post, very inspirational and informative. I did not know what the normal RHR was. Mine is at 54 bpm right now, so I guess all that running and verious other activities I do on a regular are paying off!

barbarella

Great info, thanks! :flowerforyou:

BTW: Why isn't your diary public?
Would like to see how you get that HoT Bod of yours! :bigsmile:

belldandy1

That is great! Unfortunately I don't think my RHR is particularly good right now. What were your workouts like when you started and what are they like now?

Ripgirl

Bella - I notice that you are also now under the 'Last 10 Pounds' marker.

Have you noticed results slowing right down? Have you changed anything in your diet/calories/exercise to keep the progress up now that you have so much less to lose?

I have -10lbs to go as well and despite turning my exercise routine on it's head, increasing the intensity and changing it up as well as decreasing my daily calorie deficit I am noticing no changes, in inches or lbs.

Any tips?

margaretthedevil

How do you lower your RHR? Like what would be the best types of exercises to do? I really like do to a combination of strength (with weights and body weight) and cardio training) as it gets my heart pumping like crazy. I've also found that I can now jog further without getting as winded even though I haven't practiced running at all and hate it. My heart must be getting stronger right?

I also heard swimming is a great full body workout. Going to start swimming again when school starts as the school pool is FREE!

Bella151

Bella - I notice that you are also now under the 'Last 10 Pounds' marker.

Have you noticed results slowing right down? Have you changed anything in your diet/calories/exercise to keep the progress up now that you have so much less to lose?

I have -10lbs to go as well and despite turning my exercise routine on it's head, increasing the intensity and changing it up as well as decreasing my daily calorie deficit I am noticing no changes, in inches or lbs.

Any tips?

I am having a hell of a time losing the last little bit too! I have started lowering my carbs to see if that will help. I have also started to incorporate interval training, to really blast the calories. I am going home on leave for two weeks tomorrow, but when I get back, I am going to start P90X Classic. I started it before, but always fell off the band wagon, this time I am sticking with it! How much water are you drinking everyday?

Bella151

Bella - I notice that you are also now under the 'Last 10 Pounds' marker.

Have you noticed results slowing right down? Have you changed anything in your diet/calories/exercise to keep the progress up now that you have so much less to lose?

I have -10lbs to go as well and despite turning my exercise routine on it's head, increasing the intensity and changing it up as well as decreasing my daily calorie deficit I am noticing no changes, in inches or lbs.

Any tips?

I am having a hell of a time losing the last little bit too! I have started lowering my carbs to see if that will help. I have also started to incorporate interval training, to really blast the calories. I am going home on leave for two weeks tomorrow, but when I get back, I am going to start P90X Classic. I started it before, but always fell off the band wagon, this time I am sticking with it! How much water are you drinking everyday?

I just put in my current stats, and changed my goal weight, so now I have 12 more pounds to go!

metalpalace

I'm so glad you all got something positive out of my information Let me answer your questions sequentially here...

Bella151 - Your RHR as a trained individual is awesome! You are well below average and in this instance it's a good thing.

barbarella - I kept a diary a long time ago when I was getting into the swing of things. Keeping a journal or a diary is GREAT for learning about your own body. This is an area where duplication will only produce different results depending on the individual, the work load, genetics etc. Keep a journal of everything you eat and keep tweaking it till you get the affect you are going for. If you were to follow what I did you would probably gain weight. Constantly adjusting my nutrition till I got it just right is exactly what I did to get to the place I wanted to be at.

belldandy1 - I started out as a "healthy" 30 year old adult. Healthy meaning I didn't suffer any risk factors for a stroke or heart attack. So, I started out pretty vigorously with P90X by team beachbody. I was very strict about following the nutrition and exercise in p90x because I didnt want to rob myself of anything less than the best 90 day results possible and I certainly got what I disciplined myself for. Since then I have just been doing a fusion of all kinds of various beachbody programs, mixing and matching, just having fun with it. I'm currently mixing up p90x, chaLEAN, insanity, one on one, power half hour and slim series.

margaretthedevil - ANYTHING that makes your heart and lungs work harder than they are use to will force your heart and lungs to adapt; lowering your RHR. I do all different modalities of exercise I try not to be prejudice here The best modalities to improve functional capacity of the myocardium are sustained moderate aerobic activity AND high intensity anaerobic interval training on alternating days perhaps.

Two HUGE factors at play here for my low RHR is that my fat consumption is largely unsaturated fats. I would say my percentage of fat intake is between 30 and 40 percent and its 90 percent unsaturated. The other huge factor other than exercise is my learned ability to alleviate and manage stress. This is one aspect of optimum fitness largely overlooked but it really does matter.

metalpalace

Bella - I notice that you are also now under the 'Last 10 Pounds' marker.

Have you noticed results slowing right down? Have you changed anything in your diet/calories/exercise to keep the progress up now that you have so much less to lose?

I have -10lbs to go as well and despite turning my exercise routine on it's head, increasing the intensity and changing it up as well as decreasing my daily calorie deficit I am noticing no changes, in inches or lbs.

Any tips?

I am having a hell of a time losing the last little bit too! I have started lowering my carbs to see if that will help. I have also started to incorporate interval training, to really blast the calories. I am going home on leave for two weeks tomorrow, but when I get back, I am going to start P90X Classic. I started it before, but always fell off the band wagon, this time I am sticking with it! How much water are you drinking everyday?

I just put in my current stats, and changed my goal weight, so now I have 12 more pounds to go!

Ohhh very nice! Do you recalculate your daily caloric needs as you drop weight?

twilight1542

Ur post inspired me to check my RHR. So last night I put on my HRM & climbed into bed. Checked in a few mins & it was 68. Wow! Checked again a couple more times & it hovered between 70-71. Woo Hoo! I guess that's pretty good for someone with 75+lbs to lose if the average female RHR is 75. I guess I'm not as out of shape as I thought )

metalpalace

Ur post inspired me to check my RHR. So last night I put on my HRM & climbed into bed. Checked in a few mins & it was 68. Wow! Checked again a couple more times & it hovered between 70-71. Woo Hoo! I guess that's pretty good for someone with 75+lbs to lose if the average female RHR is 75. I guess I'm not as out of shape as I thought )

I LOVE hearing that Keep working to increase your aerobic capacity in terms of intensity, swap out whatever saturated fat based foods you might be eating with unsaturated based foods and check your RHR again in a month. I bet it drops even lower.

twilight1542

Ur post inspired me to check my RHR. So last night I put on my HRM & climbed into bed. Checked in a few mins & it was 68. Wow! Checked again a couple more times & it hovered between 70-71. Woo Hoo! I guess that's pretty good for someone with 75+lbs to lose if the average female RHR is 75. I guess I'm not as out of shape as I thought )

I LOVE hearing that Keep working to increase your aerobic capacity in terms of intensity, swap out whatever saturated fat based foods you might be eating with unsaturated based foods and check your RHR again in a month. I bet it drops even lower.

Maybe this is a dumb question.....So on MFP it shows total fat, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and trans fat. So my question is this. Saturated is bad, poly & monounsaturated is good. Where does trans fat fit in?? Also, when I did the reports on MFP to see these items, what I could figure out is what doesn't MFP show. For example, one day my total fat was 35. Saturated fat was 13, poly was 5, mono was 3, and trans was 0. But 13+5+3=21. So what what the other 14 grams??

metalpalace

Those arent dumb questions. Especially the question about trans fat. First, poly and mono unsaturated fats are unsaturated fat and should be the focus of your diet for consuming fats.

Trans fats are entirely a man made invention aimed at reducing spoilage. Trans fats come from mono unsaturated fats through a chemical tramsformation process called hydrogenation; transforming perfectly healthy mono unsaturated fats into hydrogenated fats ( or trans fats or trans formed fats, same thing). Trans fat is primarily a poison to the body. There isnt a single positive or even neutral physiological affect on the body. It's all harmful. Among other things it raises bad cholesterol, lowers good cholesterol, raises cholesterol serum, doesn't metabolize (more easily stored as fat), and raises blood fat levels. In a nut shell it kills you slowly. 2 grams of trans fats or more in a day is considered a health hazard by the F.D.A. but they still allow it in our foods. Make sure anything you buy not only says 0 trans fats on the nutrition lables but also does not list hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list. Manufacturers are legally allowed to list 0 trans fats on nutrition labels if the amount of trans fats is less than .5 grams per serving. Basically they are legally allowed to round down to the nearest whole number on nutrition labels so the only way you know if trans fats are in that particular food at all is to look for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list.

I wrote a really nice report on the subject matter of fats and their affect on the body that helped out a lot of people: http://passionforfitness.info/tools/cholesterol/index.html

I wrote a blog on the legal loop hole in nutritional labels, using KFC as an example. This one opened a lot of peoples eyes who had no idea. http://tombirkenmeyer.blogspot.com/2009/05/kfc-is-liar-and-they-need-to-be-called.html

mskellyw

Maybe this is a dumb question.....So on MFP it shows total fat, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and trans fat. So my question is this. Saturated is bad, poly & monounsaturated is good. Where does trans fat fit in?? Also, when I did the reports on MFP to see these items, what I could figure out is what doesn't MFP show. For example, one day my total fat was 35. Saturated fat was 13, poly was 5, mono was 3, and trans was 0. But 13+5+3=21. So what what the other 14 grams??

MFP only calculates the information that people have added in for individual foods. For example, if you add a food that has 5 grams of fat, but don't specify if it's saturated, monounsaturated, etc, it will only show up as fat, not in one of those categories. Also, most food labels only specify saturated and trans fat content, so the type of unsaturated fat is typically not entered into the database.

I hope that makes sense!

BrendaLee

Sitting here right now, my heart rate is the high 80's. I also have high blood pressure. It scares me...but, I guess it's been a good scare, because it's what keeps me exercising regularly. My blood pressure is almost down to a normal level after 2 months of regular exercise...I'm wondering when my heart rate is going to come down to a healthy level.

metalpalace

Have you talked to your doctor about your heart health?

twilight1542

Those arent dumb questions. Especially the question about trans fat. First, poly and mono unsaturated fats are unsaturated fat and should be the focus of your diet for consuming fats.

Trans fats are entirely a man made invention aimed at reducing spoilage. Trans fats come from mono unsaturated fats through a chemical tramsformation process called hydrogenation; transforming perfectly healthy mono unsaturated fats into hydrogenated fats ( or trans fats or trans formed fats, same thing). Trans fat is primarily a poison to the body. There isnt a single positive or even neutral physiological affect on the body. It's all harmful. Among other things it raises bad cholesterol, lowers good cholesterol, raises cholesterol serum, doesn't metabolize (more easily stored as fat), and raises blood fat levels. In a nut shell it kills you slowly. 2 grams of trans fats or more in a day is considered a health hazard by the F.D.A. but they still allow it in our foods. Make sure anything you buy not only says 0 trans fats on the nutrition lables but also does not list hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list. Manufacturers are legally allowed to list 0 trans fats on nutrition labels if the amount of trans fats is less than .5 grams per serving. Basically they are legally allowed to round down to the nearest whole number on nutrition labels so the only way you know if trans fats are in that particular food at all is to look for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list.

I wrote a really nice report on the subject matter of fats and their affect on the body that helped out a lot of people: http://passionforfitness.info/tools/cholesterol/index.html

I wrote a blog on the legal loop hole in nutritional labels, using KFC as an example. This one opened a lot of peoples eyes who had no idea. http://tombirkenmeyer.blogspot.com/2009/05/kfc-is-liar-and-they-need-to-be-called.html

Thanks for the info! Now I have one more thing to think about when shopping. So do you actually consume no saturated fat???? From what I've been able to gather it seems like there is saturated fat even in things that are supposed to be good for you, like meat and dairy products. So how is it possible to eat a balanced diet while not consuming saturated fats?

ivykivy

Sitting here right now, my heart rate is the high 80's. I also have high blood pressure. It scares me...but, I guess it's been a good scare, because it's what keeps me exercising regularly. My blood pressure is almost down to a normal level after 2 months of regular exercise...I'm wondering when my heart rate is going to come down to a healthy level.

Are you exercising beyond your capacity? I know when I really push it harder than I should my heart rate will be around 72 even a day or two after. Normally just sitting it is around 66. Just keep exercising regularly and it will come down. The lady at curves was amazed at my heart rate like she was thing You are much too fat to have such a great heart rate. :flowerforyou:

metalpalace

Those arent dumb questions. Especially the question about trans fat. First, poly and mono unsaturated fats are unsaturated fat and should be the focus of your diet for consuming fats.

Trans fats are entirely a man made invention aimed at reducing spoilage. Trans fats come from mono unsaturated fats through a chemical tramsformation process called hydrogenation; transforming perfectly healthy mono unsaturated fats into hydrogenated fats ( or trans fats or trans formed fats, same thing). Trans fat is primarily a poison to the body. There isnt a single positive or even neutral physiological affect on the body. It's all harmful. Among other things it raises bad cholesterol, lowers good cholesterol, raises cholesterol serum, doesn't metabolize (more easily stored as fat), and raises blood fat levels. In a nut shell it kills you slowly. 2 grams of trans fats or more in a day is considered a health hazard by the F.D.A. but they still allow it in our foods. Make sure anything you buy not only says 0 trans fats on the nutrition lables but also does not list hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list. Manufacturers are legally allowed to list 0 trans fats on nutrition labels if the amount of trans fats is less than .5 grams per serving. Basically they are legally allowed to round down to the nearest whole number on nutrition labels so the only way you know if trans fats are in that particular food at all is to look for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils on the ingredients list.

I wrote a really nice report on the subject matter of fats and their affect on the body that helped out a lot of people: http://passionforfitness.info/tools/cholesterol/index.html

I wrote a blog on the legal loop hole in nutritional labels, using KFC as an example. This one opened a lot of peoples eyes who had no idea. http://tombirkenmeyer.blogspot.com/2009/05/kfc-is-liar-and-they-need-to-be-called.html

Thanks for the info! Now I have one more thing to think about when shopping. So do you actually consume no saturated fat???? From what I've been able to gather it seems like there is saturated fat even in things that are supposed to be good for you, like meat and dairy products. So how is it possible to eat a balanced diet while not consuming saturated fats?

I do eat saturated fat sources moderately such as lean beef, pork and whole eggs. The bulk of my fats are unsaturated. I eat a lot of nuts, beans, olive oil extra virgin, fish and chicken. For me personally this is fine. For someone over weight with high cholesterol this is not an ok diet. Such a person would want to focus on minimizing red meats. Instead of whole eggs go for egg whites. Instead of 2 percent milk or whole milk go for fat free skim milk. You will still get all the nutrients that milk has to offer but without all the fat. Milk is loaded with nutrients so don't skip out on dairy just go with the reduced fat or fat free kinds.

BrendaLee

Sitting here right now, my heart rate is the high 80's. I also have high blood pressure. It scares me...but, I guess it's been a good scare, because it's what keeps me exercising regularly. My blood pressure is almost down to a normal level after 2 months of regular exercise...I'm wondering when my heart rate is going to come down to a healthy level.

Are you exercising beyond your capacity? I know when I really push it harder than I should my heart rate will be around 72 even a day or two after. Normally just sitting it is around 66. Just keep exercising regularly and it will come down. The lady at curves was amazed at my heart rate like she was thing You are much too fat to have such a great heart rate. :flowerforyou:

Having fibro, any workout is pushing me beyond my capacity. lol I do push myself hard when I workout though.