On 05/02/2013 04:27 PM, scott wrote:
>> Right now I have a cold. But for the last few days, I've been running 1
>> mile every night. That's 10 minutes of running at 6 MPH. Sounds easy,
>> right? Well let me tell you, by the end of those 10 minutes - no, wait,
>> *before* the end of those 10 minutes, I am absurdly exhausted.
>
> Go slower and further - once you have built up to 3 or 4 miles at a
> slower pace you'll find if you go back to 1 mile you can do it a lot
> faster without much effort. Get a heart rate monitor watch that beeps
> above a certain limit, it helps to control your speed and stop you
> getting worn out too quickly.

Actually, I already have a heart rate monitor. And the weird thing is, 
if I wear it while standing next to the exercise machines, they pick up 
the signal and display my heart rate. It's almost as if somebody devised 
a *standard* for heart rate transmissions...

You would think that running at a constant 6 MPH would use a constant 
amount of energy, leading to a constant heart rate. You would be wrong. 
When I start running, my heart rate just keeps on climbing. By the end 
of my run, it's usually parked at around 188 BPM or so. (According to 
the graph on the front of the machine, my "maximum heart rate" is 178 
BPM. But what does a machine know?)

Another interesting thing is that when lifting weights, I often become 
aware of my heart thumbing more forcefully. And yet, according to the 
monitor my heart *rate* hasn't actually increased at all. Strange, but 
true...

>> According to this machine, my flabby 180 lbs pounding the treadmill at 6
>> MPH burns about 15 kcal per minute. So a 1 mile run burns off a 150 kcal.
>
> But when compared to what your body burns off anyway during the day
> without any exercise (around 2500 kcal) running 1 mile doesn't really
> allow you to eat significantly more than if you didn't run.

That's kind of my point. I used to think that no matter what you eat, 
you can just burn it off with enough exercise. Now I plainly see that 
there isn't enough time in the universe for that to be even vaguely 
possible. A single meal can /easily/ contain far more calories than you 
could possibly hope to work off if you exercised for 24 hours straight.

No, clearly the /only/ way to lose weight is to drastically reduce 
calorie intake. (What did I say about cheese? 410 kcal/100g? OK, so 
there's not much chance of reducing that then...)

> That's why there's a million diet options available - the 600 ml bottle
> of pepsi max here on my desk has 100x less calories :-)

It weirds me out that pepsi max tastes drastically sweeter than normal 
pepsi, despite NOT CONTAINING ANY SUGAR. O_O That's just creepy...

>> It seems crystal clear to be that the /only/ reason the manufacturers
>> would possibly do this is so that they can print smaller, less
>> frightening numbers on the packet.
>
> That reasoning doesn't explain then why they put the values per 250 ml
> serving on the front of drinks, when they could put the values per 100
> ml instead. I wonder if there is a set of "standard" serving sizes?

Yeah, maybe it's some government-mandated serving size thing?

It's a bit like how all products have a picture of the product on the 
box with the magical incantation "serving suggestion" written text to 
it. It's not that they're suggesting you should actually serve it like 
this; it's that this incantation has magical legal properties which 
roughly equate to "the product actually looks nothing like this, and you 
cannot sue us for this fact".

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