Monday, March 31, 2008

Texting For Macronutrients

Here's a cool tip I picked up from a nutritionist on the Today Show. While I wouldn't recommend frequently eating out at mainstream restaurants(nor watching the today show), you can text diet1 with your favorite restaurant menu item and promptly get back a calorie and macro breakdown (protein/fat/carbs).

I texted "Big Mac" to diet1 and was hoping to get something like "don't even think about it mister" but instead got 540calories, 29g of fat, 45g of carbs, and 25g of protein. Pretty clean and simple. Hopefully this little tool can help someone in a pinch to make a better decision. Keep in mind this service is free, though you will be charged your regular texting fees associated with your phone.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Today Was The Day

So here in New England it finally warmed up enough to allow "them" to take the streets. Who am I talking about? Runners, they were out in full swing clogging up the sidewalks huffing and puffing. It's funny that most of these people are running to get fit, but as anybody who hasn't had their head up there ass for the past few years knows, this isn't a great way to get in shape. You can't run to get fit, rather you need to be fit to run.



A study published in 1994 (that's right this information isn't new at all) showed that 15 weeks of interval training burned 13,614 calories, while they were compared with 20 weeks of steady state exercise (typical of your runners mentioned above) that burned 28,661 calories. Well obviously based on that you'd assume that the steady state runners lost more fat right? I mean they expended more energy, they must have.

Defying all logic the interval training group lost 900% more fat than that of the steady state group. I'm not sure science really has figured out exactly why this happens, but who cares. You now know interval training is more effective, yet you continue to run in steady state fashion. What are you afraid of? More fat loss in less time, hmm...sounds good by me.