<p>I spent a week in Jordan and did tons of walking, and tons of eating. Scale says eating won. Grrr.</p>
<p>The twenty minute mark is when it starts getting a lot better for me in doing cardio if I’m not feeling great to start with. Even when I have a cold or otherwise don’t feel great. With tennis, it takes longer. Feeling good in tennis is called “being in the zone”. It’s not just feeling good hitting but it’s getting to the ball and hitting very clean shots too. That means that you’re watching the ball, your footwork is good, your preparation is good and you’re stroking well through the ball.</p>
<p>I don’t know that I’d call it a high - but it’s basically where your body is feeling very good and you feel like you can go on for a long time.</p>
<p>Have run in HS/College and now the last 1 1/2 years and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a runners high! Only pain and relief that the race is over. For me the first 5 minutes are the most painful. Never used to be that way. Even having run 20-30 miles weekly over the past 1 1/2 years I can’t shake the initial breathlessness I feel the first 5 minutes.</p>
<p>dstark- when I was real thin and running about a 6 to 6:30 per mile pace I used to try to catch other runners I saw out on the road. One day I saw some stocky guy so I tried to run him down, The more I pushed the further away he got. At the end of my run I was telling my brother. He just laughed, He knew the guy from races and he was a very good runner who was heavy but he could move.</p>
<p>ohiopublic- I feel terrible my first 5 minutes, too-and it really didn’t used to be like that. I attribute it to aging.</p>
<p>You should see me on the first ten minutes of a hike. Sheesh. It’s like I’ve never exercised before. Particularly when a trail is like the one on Friday that takes off up a pretty steep bit right out of the parking lot. I went five minutes and then just stopped and stood there for a little bit. I really should warm up, but how the heck do you “warm up” in a parking lot in the woods when its freezing out? 
I’m sure as heck not going to get down on the ground and do stretches.</p>
<p>Some of those heavy guys have really strong leg muscles developed from carrying that extra weight.</p>
<p>BC- that is me now</p>
<p>Tom1944, those guys that can out run us tell us the possibilities.
When I see other people work out, I think, “I can get there. I can do that someday”.</p>
<p>Sometimes. :)</p>
<p>When I see somebody move quickly, I want to see what they are doing because at one
time, I was in the 99th percentile in speed and quickness. (This is a college board. It is important to talk in percentiles on this board).</p>
<p>When I see somebody as strong as an ox…I kind of let that go… Lol.</p>
<p>So it seems a lot of posters have trouble feeling good when they start their activities.
This thread is great because we can see what other people are going through. What works for some people and not others.</p>
<p>I guess expecting to feel good the first 20 minutes might not be realistic. :)</p>
<p>If some of you runners feel yucky or kind of breathless the first 5 minutes, that actually gives me hope. Maybe, I can start running. Maybe it will give others hope too.</p>
<p>It’s funny. I walk 15 minutes to the gym. I start out slow. Still doesn’t feel great.</p>
<p>I was a B tennis player, so I was rarely in the zone while playing tennis. :)</p>
<p>Oh, this is inspiring – I don’t exercise as much as you all, but have been trying to be more <em>religious</em> about going to the gym the past few weeks (got serious right after Thanksgiving), taking classes, doing something. And though I feel stronger, I also notice that the first few minutes sometimes it seems like I haven’t exercised at all recently. Thanks for posting. I feel much better now, after reading those posts. Now, if I can just keep from raiding the refrigerator for a little while until bed time. I am back on weight watchers, and right now, feeling kind of hungry, though I’ve eaten enough today. I went on the elliptical today, but only for 20 min. I only did that much because I have been trying to do something everyday, even if just for 10 min. Now, after reading dstark’s posts, I think, I did the hard part, and should have kept on going!</p>
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<p>Actually, the first 20 minutes of exercise each day is going to pay the most dividends. Much better to do 20 minutes regularly than set an agenda of long workouts that you can’t bring yourself to do. I have a couple of workouts that I plan on only lasting 20 minutes. I try to do intervals – short bursts of very intense exercise, so that 20 minutes is plenty.</p>
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<p>Speaking of warming up. One of the best things I’ve gotten from the New Rules workouts is the 15 to 20 minute “warm-up” sequences. It’s really a nice transition from stone cold to ready for the more intense part of the workout. I have found that, if I can just start the first exercise in the warm-up, then everything else just flows from there.</p>
<p>My first interval on a walk/run or on the Airdyne is just as rough as the first ten minutes of a hike. It’s been that way since the very first day I went out for a walk around the neighborhood.</p>
<p>On how to allocate exercise hours for optimum fat loss, here’s an article by Mike Wunsch, the guy who writes the workout programs at Alwyn and Rachael Cosgrove’s gym:</p>
<p>[Quality</a> vs. Quantity](<a href=“http://results-fitness.com/blog/quality-vs-quantity/]Quality”>http://results-fitness.com/blog/quality-vs-quantity/)</p>
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<p>He goes on to outline exactly how their clients should allocate their exercise time if they have 1 hour a week or 3 hours a week or 5-8 hours a week, etc. The first three hours should be fast paced resistance strength training, done in a circuit format with fairly short rest so that you are 1) burning calories, 2) getting your heart rate up, and 3) building lean muscle.</p>
<p>Interesting read.</p>
<p>Mstee, go for it. Just take it a little easier in the beginning.</p>
<p>I know this has been commented on before, but if one more person tells me I’ve lost too much weight and I should eat more, I’m gonna scream! Was at a funeral today and friends of mine asked how much I had lost. When I told them, they both said it was too much and that I needed to gain weight (apparently my face is “too thin”). (At 59, I’m 5 1/2 pounds heavier than I was at a very athletic 25.) Having previously exhausted my self explaining to others that my weight loss has been (choose one) “intentional”, “planned”, healthy" etc, I said, “Yeah, my face may look thin but you should see me in my skivvies!”, at which point they said “TMI” and shut up :).</p>
<p>[Why</a> HIIT Is NOT Better For Fat Loss | StrongLifts StrongLifts](<a href=“StrongLifts 5×5 Workout Program: The Definitive Guide | StrongLifts”>StrongLifts 5×5 Workout Program: The Definitive Guide | StrongLifts)</p>
<p>I think weight loss depends on the person…</p>
<p>To me, it is a numbers game.</p>
<p>I want to burn a certain amount of calories. What is the best way for me?</p>
<p>An advantage for me… </p>
<p>I have time. :)</p>
<p>MichaelNKat lol. </p>
<p>I like your post. It is a nice issue to have. :)</p>
<p>Yeah…that face and neck thing…</p>
<p>A couple of my friends have told me I have to bulk up. Get some muscle. They are 6’+ and 200+ lbs.</p>
<p>I am a little smaller. </p>
<p>I am going for the Fred Astaire look. :)</p>
<p>dstark, I’m 5’8" and at 152-153 am lean but not, in my view, “skinny”. I wear a 42 suit jacket and would consider myself more of a “Gene Kelly” than a “Fred Astaire” but can’t come close to moving like either of them could! The neck thing is the other comment I get, particularly from my father who sees me frequently in a shirt and tie and can’t resist telling me my collars are too loose.</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>That author’s reliance on the “bodybugg” to measure caloric burn should probably disqualify the conclusions!</p>
<p>The reason that high intensity intervals are effective for fat loss seems to be that the body responds differently to high intensity exercise from a hormonal standpoint. It appears that high intensity exercise such as sprint intervals or weight lifting or other things that engage fast twitch muscles reduce insulin resistance and increase the production of human growth hormone in ways that steady state cardio does not.</p>
<p>It’s a shame that there hasn’t been more research in this area. Almost all of the “exercise fat loss” research involves standard low intensity cardio as the “exercise” component. That has pretty consistently failed to show any particular fat loss benefit from exercise. Those who diet lose the same amount of weight as those who diet and exercise in that way. On the surface, that’s pretty discouraging.</p>
<p>What the studies have generally shown is that exercise or the type of exercise doesn’t make much difference in weight loss, but that exercise and the type of exercise have a significant effect on fat loss. This explains how it not unusual for Rachael Cosgrove see women in her Thermometer Jeans challenges go down two sizes in jeans without losing a pound on the scale. They’ve stayed the same weight, but traded fat for muscle.</p>
<p>Here’s one of the early studies from the mid 1990s:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3700_Greene/TIPS/exIntesity/Tremblay.pdf[/url]”>http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3700_Greene/TIPS/exIntesity/Tremblay.pdf</a></p>
<p>In this one they compared two groups, one doing a 20 week program of low intensity steady state workouts on exercise bikes and one doing a shorter program of high intensity intervals on the exercise bikes. The total calories expended for the low intensity group was double the calories expended by the high intensity group. Neither group lost any weight (I don’t think they were dieting). However, the high intensity group lost significantly more body fat (as measured by skin fold calipers).</p>
<p>Here’s another really interesting small study, done by Jeff Volek et all at UConn:</p>
<p>[Influence</a> of exercise training on physi… [Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1999] - PubMed - NCBI](<a href=“Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men - PubMed”>Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men - PubMed)</p>
<p>This one divided the subjects into three groups. They all did the same diet. One group did diet-only, one did diet plus cardio, and one did diet plus cardio, plus strength training. All three groups lose about the same amount of body weight (the diet plus cardio group lost slightly less weight). However the diet only group’s weight loss was only 69% fat loss (33% was lost lean muscle). The diet and cardio group’s weight loss was 78% fat loss. The diet, cardio, and strength training group’s weight loss was 97% fat loss (only 3% lean muscle loss). That’s a pretty amazing difference, especially if you believe that having more muscle burns more calories, day after day after day. Not to mention that having more muscle and less fat for a given body weight looks better (especially in your “skivvies”).</p>
<p>There really should be much more research on this stuff. Unfortunately, it’s ridiculously expensive to do and there isn’t a natural constituency (e.g. pharma) interested in paying for it.</p>
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<p>You must be pretty ripped to have a 42 shoulders and chest at your size and weight!</p>
<p>I think the whole “skinny” thing comes mostly from people used to seeing us a lot heavier. I went from 44 inch pants to 32 inch pants. That’s a pretty dramatic change, so I don’t begrudge them saying that I’ve lose enough weight!</p>
<p>What I’ve found, at least for guys or at least for me, is that it’s impossible to keep losing weight. It just stops, even eating under 2000 calories a day.</p>
<p>What I’ve found interesting is how my body shape changes a bit as I get stronger. Weighing the same, or even a little more, my waist gets smaller, shoulders a little bigger.</p>
<p>MichaelNKat, I love Gene Kelly too.</p>
<p>Wow. I am 5’8" 153 pounds.</p>
<p>I have never been a 42 inch chest in my life. You must look fantastic. Obviously you have more muscles than I do. :)</p>
<p>When I stand up, I do have a flat stomach. It is just not hard. (i thought I would throw that in the post). :)</p>
<p>Interesteddad, I love your post explaining the difference between high intensity and low intensity workouts, and your post makes a lot of sense.
It is a great post.
I think if people can handle high intensity workouts, they should go for it.</p>
<p>For me, I have two problems with high intensity workouts. One, I get
hurt. After a few weeks of trying to lose weight, I did the high intensity stuff. I hurt my calves. My quads were very sore. I would have to ice my legs after workouts. I am sure I could have adjusted, but that leads me to two…</p>
<p>Two, I don’t like the high intensity workouts. And if I don’t like them, I
won’t do them.</p>
<p>I am not saying what I am doing is ideal. Definitely not ideal for others. At 600 calories an hour, I can work out at a level where I am “kind” of comfortable and I can work out multiple hours.</p>
<p>You mentioned how many calories a day you try to eat… 1800- 2400. I think that is ideal for me too, but I know myself. I am really going to eat 2400-3000 calories a day, so, I have to burn 1200 calories a day. I can’t do that with the high intensity workouts. At least not yet.</p>
<p>And burning 600 calories an hour is not low intensity. :)</p>