Restaurant food: Healthier vs?

[Azael]

Azael,

I agree that you can't eat slop and then try to exercise yourself to death to counteract it. I agree that poor diets are hard on the liver, kidneys, and other organs.

I disagree that an average person can work their way up to 1000 kcal/hr exercise. From the time that I began biking, it probably took me about two months to get to the point where I can maintain 160+ bpm heart rate indefinitely, which burns about 1000 kcal/hr. I'm no elite cyclist by any means. I'm probably in the 60th-70th percentile among (recreational) competitive cyclists.

It sounds to me like you're hitting the stair master a bit too hard. The highest heart-rate that I can maintain indefinitely is about 175 bpm. Anything over 185 bpm (which would correspond to about 1400 kcal/hr) is not sustainable for me. That's above my lactate threshold, and I end up taking about five minutes to recover from even a brief sprint above 190 bpm. I strongly suggest that people use a heart rate monitor for any kind of cardiovascular exercise -- they make a remarkable difference. And, you're right, the vast majority of people are not physically capable of sustaining more than 1000 kcal/hr without enormous amounts of lactate-threshold training, which is pretty much hell on earth.

- Warren

Om doing a variation of HIIT(High intensity intervall training)on the stairmaster. What I have read about HIIT suggests that it is the most efficient way to increase endurance. Not sure if that is true but its fun and time efficient(I do it right after my weightlifting) :)

Most of my fatburning I do by regular walking. I walk 1,5 hours each day. Nothing like a long walk to calm the mind down

The rule of thumb in bodybuilding circles to burn fat is to stay betwen 75%-85% of max heart rate so that would be around 160 for me aswell. To bad that I have never dished out the cash for a heart rate monitor:grumpy:

If I sometime seem a bit defensive/offensive in my posts in this thread its just a bad habit, I am a moderator at a fitness forum so I have been discussing these things for years and years.

 

[Astronuc]

Each day that I ride my bike to work (around a 32 mile round trip), I burn approximately 1400 kcal. When I'm pedaling as hard as I reasonably can, keeping a heart rate above 160 beats per minute, I can easily burn a thousand calories an hour. It's not that hard to burn off a thousand calories. I burn 50-70 calories per mile at 20+ mph.

I've done several 100+ mile bike rides and burned more 5,000 kcal for each one.

When I was in university - I'd run about 3 miles a day, play soccer, ride my bike just about everywhere. During summers and holidays, I'd work construction (structural steel). I could easily burn 4000-5000 cal. I would have to eat about 1 kg of food a day to maintain weight.

Since I am older, and somewhat less active, I don't need to eat as much, but when I do gardening or start playing sports, I have to increase my food intake.

One has to be conditioned to be able to sustain a pace in which one would burn 1000 cal/hr.

I stay with a friend when I visit San Diego. We used to go to a gym for weightlifting and running on treadmill or stationary cycle. I used to max out the treadmill at 10 mph for several minutes, and my pulse rate would max out at 130 bpm.

I would not even recommend anyone to try to burn more than at most 1000 kcal/day through endurance training since I personaly feel it is a much better way to cut down bodyfat by trying to improve muscle mass. To much cardio doesn't go hand in hand very well with increasing muscle mass. Slow twitch fibers doesn't have much growth potential.

I don't necessarily agree with this assertion. With a proper combination of weight training, stretching and cardio one can add muscle mass and endurance (improve cardio efficiency). This is the approach I used 30 years ago, when I did weight training and construction (mentioned above).

I increased my body weight by about 10 kgs to 80 kgs, and I was lifting (military) more than 110 kgs with reps of 100 kgs, and on bench press I was doing about 140-150 kgs). At the same time, I was running long distance 3-5 miles daily, with the last quarter mile at full sprint, and riding a bicycle.

Stretching is really important!

 

[Azael]

I don't necessarily agree with this assertion. With a proper combination of weight training, stretching and cardio one can add muscle mass and endurance (improve cardio efficiency). This is the approach I used 30 years ago, when I did weight training and construction (mentioned above).

I increased my body weight by about 10 kgs to 80 kgs, and I was lifting (military) more than 110 kgs with reps of 100 kgs, and on bench press I was doing about 140-150 kgs). At the same time, I was running long distance 3-5 miles daily, with the last quarter mile at full sprint, and riding a bicycle.

Stretching is really important!

Again I was to unspecific
I should have mentioned not burning over 1000kcal/day through cardio while on a fat loss diet. I am so used to talking about conditions during a kcal restricted diet that I by habit leave it as unsaid but understood on the board I browse. If you gained 10kg I assume you where eating atleast 500kcal above maintanance(including the kcal burned during cardio into the maintanance).
Offcourse the kcal and macronutrient ammounts can be tweaked to allow it. That I agree with 100%.:tongue2:

Doing a excess of cardio and a lot of weightlifting during kcal restricted diet can screw up the body royaly. I did the misstake once myself and it took me 5 months to get back on track again.

Imo its better and easier to maintain strenght and muscle on a restricted kcal diet if using the absolut minimum of cardio nessecary to boost fatloss.
Using some high intensity cardio aids a lot in explosive strenght gains. But to much long distance cardio will hinder strenght gain.
Especialy since the body want to convert muscle fibers into slow twich fibers because of endurance training and into fast twitch fibers from strenght training. Fast twitch fibers are what is used in explosive/strenght movements. If someone wants to maximise strenght and muscle tissue gains long distance endurance training should be avoided.

That is a very respectable benchpress for that bodyweight :) and the militarypress is awsome.
What kind of style of training did you use? Was it a more bodybuilding style routine or was it more of a powerlifting routine?? I would love to know your entire layout both cardio and weightlifting if you remember it and have patience to write it up

Best I have done is 140kg in the bench at 84kg bodyweight. I am more of a deadlifter/puller though. I am a very poor in all pressing exercises mostly because of my very poor shoulder strenght(triceps are by far my dominant pressing muscle).

How many kilometers is 3-5 miles? Around 4-7 kilometers right?? When I speak of long distance I usualy mean running more than 8-10 kilometers.
Doing 3-4 kilometer runs and periodicaly switching pace from slow pace run to sprints would be a very good way of doing a HIIT sessions. I would do it myself if my knees would allow it:grumpy:

I have split feelings about stretching. I stretch some for safety reasons but not to much. Many powerlifters avoid stretching(atleast as a wamup) because(they claim) a stretched muscle is not as strong as a unstretched(but warm offcourse) muscle. I have noticed that myself but might be just mental.

 

[Astronuc]

How many kilometers is 3-5 miles? Around 4-7 kilometers right?? When I speak of long distance I usualy mean running more than 8-10 kilometers.

3 - 5 miles is ~5-9 km. I also did sprints on a bicycle, which in combination with squats can build very strong leg muscles (thigh and quadraceps).

Doing 3-4 kilometer runs and periodicaly switching pace from slow pace run to sprints would be a very good way of doing a HIIT sessions. I would do it myself if my knees would allow it:grumpy:

Consider wearing knee braces for those times when the knees are stressed.

I have split feelings about stretching. I stretch some for safety reasons but not to much. Many powerlifters avoid stretching(atleast as a wamup) because(they claim) a stretched muscle is not as strong as a unstretched(but warm offcourse) muscle. I have noticed that myself but might be just mental.

In my experience, stetching alone tends to increase muscle strength (by 10-20%). I never had bulging muscles. I prefer to retain full and maximum range for arms and legs. I also did Tae Kwon Do, briefly Karate, and recently some Kung Fu/ Kempo which are also good exercises for strength and cardio fitness, as well as relaxing.

I prefer strength to size, so I trained for maximum strength-to-mass ratio.