PreSpring Break Gym Flooding

It's been a while since my last post. For those of you who don't know I am in my off year before applying to medical school. I am volunteering and working in an infectious diseases lab in the school of medicine.

Now that that has been established, I will return to the topic at hand fitness:

In mid January and early February, an estimated 75% of the total population in Pottruck gym are accounted for by desperate students trying to improve their physique for Spring Break. The majority of these people are influenced by a host of environmental and social factors such as desire of the male population to use their putatively improved physique to impress rival males in a show of dominance as well as to attract members of the opposite sex. Females also show strong desires to tone their bodies before revealing them on warm beaches in lower latitudes. However, these Spring Break Junkies (SBJ's) increase the risk to injury and the efficacy of the workouts of the year-round gym goers (YRGG's). The most prevalent mechanism for the increased risk of injury results from a bottle neck effect; the increased load upon gym equipment saturates equipment to beyond capacity and forces YRGG's to work out at intensity rates that surpass their safety thresholds.

Arnold would tell these SBJ's to : GTFO of my gym. /end rage

However ineffective the training methods of these vain individuals, one cannot help but admire the tenacity of their efforts. A four year study (by me) reveals that the average waiting time for a cardio machine at peak hours (4 to 7 pm) drastically drops from the second week of January, a long 30 minutes, (typically the first week of classes) to the second week of February, a measly 10 minutes. By the end of Febrary, there is no longer a wait time for the cardio machines.

A retroactive study (by me) of book purchases also reveals that the sales of FAD diet books with general names such as the BADkins Diet and the Fail Beach Diet tend to skyrocket by %'s over 9000. Now the Atkins Diet stresses a low carb approach to consumption and nutritional intake. Although the reported incidence of rapid weightloss by the Atkins diet is indeed impressive, Dr. Atkins fails to show an extended study over time that measures the body compositions of his patients and test subjects. Studies by the New England Journal of Medicine have shown that generally within a year, most participants of Atkins recover around 80-100% of their lost weight. These studies seemingly give the opposite school of nutrition, the low-fat camp, reason to rejoice; however, the low-fat method of dieting also fails to yield long term results. Ironically, these two groups resent each other for hypocritical reasons. They both leave out an essential component of nutrition, either fat or carbs.

As long as caloric intake is in equilibrium with the human body's metabolic needs, there is no reason that eating carbs or fats-provided sufficient protein consumption is observed - should lead to massive weight gain. The Asian nationalities consume large amounts of rice and grain products, which are composed of mostly carbohydrates and they tend to occupy niches in the lower part of the world's body fat % distribution. Studies have shown that consumption of nuts, salmon, and other high fat foods (but also high protein) in a restricted calorie diet lead to accelerated weight loss. It is common knowledge among nutritional experts that dietary fat does not become absorbed into body fat.

The biggest problem of SBJ's lies in their misguided assumptions and premeditated opinions on how to achieve their physical goals. Many SBJ's tend to eat vegetarian salads and other seemingly healthy foods. The problem with foods with MOST vegetarian salads (not all) are that they are of little nutritional value outside of the fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They provide almost no calories for the body to use for metabolism and only stem hunger by taking up empty space in the stomach. Eventually, the body senses starvation and automatically chooses to conserve nutrition by reducing its metabolism level and burning fat and protein stores. As a result, the body will lose both muscle and fat mass over time. The overarching consequence is that the body's metabolism will fall until the body's caloric expenditure once again reaches an equilibrium with the body's now REDUCED level of caloric intake. Thus, a reduced calorie diet only leads to a temporary solution to weightloss and fat loss, not to mention a skinny fat physique is not only sickly and disgusting to look at, but also fails to impress anyone at the beach. No one can maintain this reduced level of caloric intake for long periods of time and eventually a dieter becomes forced to increase his or her caloric intake. Now, with a reduced metabolism and an increased caloric intake, the dieter soon finds his body weight and body fat sky rocketing.

However, nutritional mistakes are not the only mistakes that SBJ's tend to make. Time after time, SBJ's are observed to engage single sessions of cardiovascular activity that surpass an hour in length. This decision to do long periods of cardio cannot be more erroneous in judgment and etiology. I will not list further studies, but will rather discuss the mechanistic implications of extended cardio. It is common accepted that after about 30 minutes of cardio, the body starts using other sources of energy outside of its highly liquid carbohydrate assets such as fat stores (this includes less liquid glycogen stores, fat stores and protein stores). After about an hour of constant cardio, even protein stores are being used for energy. Cardio at long periods of time especially without pre and post workout nutrition can lead to minor but detrimental losses in muscle tissue over time. Muscle tissue requires the most metabolic activity out of all tissues so bodies with higher compositions in muscle also have higher rates of metabolism. Thus, extended cardio sessions may result in some fat burning and weightloss, but when used incorrectly (lack of pre/post workout nutrition) result in decreased metabolism over time.

When these two major problems are combined (which sadly is more true than not in most SBJ's), we have a one to two month window of rapid weight loss followed by a latent period 1 MO estimate) of weight stabilization and a rebound period of a few months where all weight and fat is regained back to the original stage.

I know numerous exercisers who actually exercise outside the spring break window. However, they too experience cyclical weight changes, except at a higher frequency. For you people who complain about cyclical weight changes without much noticeable improvement of physique over long periods of time, I will present to you a solution in my next entry.

Since I've presented NO practical information and instead just stated what the general population does incorrectly, I will leave with one practical tip. People who think they are trying to tone their muscles by doing 15+ reps of an exercise, you cannot be more wrong. Muscle tone is measured by force under tension : size ratio. For a lean compact muscle you stimulate your muscles by lifting LOW REPS (3-6 reps) at high intensity (as high weight as you can). 15+ reps of lifting generally leads to lactic acid buildup and microtearing of the muscles, resulting in HYPERTROPHY (hypertrophy is increase in muscle size).