Here, in a few snappy sentences, is what dietary guides generally and de- liberately try to keep secret: weight reduction is virtually impossible without endurance training. Anyone who tells you that you can take off weight bygoing for a walk or lifting weights in a fitness studio is spinning a yarn.Many things become easier to follow when we take the trouble to think of the biochemical processes in our body. To put it simply - very simply - the secret of weight reduction is to eat less, and especially to eat fewer calories. If you do, the trucks will travel to the power plants half-empty. If you then take up sports - and running is especially useful - you force the power plants to work at full steam. But because the trucks are not bringing enough fuel from the liver to the muscle cells, your body has to take recourse increasingly in stored sources of energy. The fat deposits open their floodgates, and potential energy is converted into working energy. And the more often you keep those power plants working all out over extended periods, the more energy they will fetch from your fat cells.
But there's a hitch. Simply put is still a long way from simply done. Not until your organism has been taught by proper training to tap these inexhaustible sources of energy will the bulges slowly - very slowly - begin to disappear. At the same time, you have to reduce your daily intake of fresh fats by eating less or turning to low-fat foods. This is because thepower plants always serve themselves first from the free fats circulating in the bloodstream. So, if you want to lose weight by jogging, keep yourfat cells at starvation point.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't want to spoil your appetite or force a new and unfamiliar diet on you. If you want to go on banqueting as before and do a bit of jogging on the side, please go ahead. I just want to point out that natural dieting can only work slowly - very slowly - and that it is healthy as well. In case you want to try it out, I've made a calculation for you: one kilogram of body fat contains about 7,000 calories of energy. If you want to get rid of that kilogram, there are a couple of ways you can go about it. Here are two of them.
The first is a hypothetical solution intended merely to illuminate the situation. You can get rid of that kilogram of fat in a single day by eating nothing at all and jogging non-stop for eleven to twelve hours. For each hour of jogging you will consume six-hundred calories from your fat deposits, provided you run five to six miles per hour on average. The laws of arithmetic inform us that the kilogram of fat will be gone after you've run sixty miles. Those are the plain facts.
The second solution, though exhausting enough, is at least feasible. Here the target is to get rid of that kilogram in a week. Every day you will need anenergy deficit of one-thousand calories. Half of that deficit can be achieved by sensible nutrition. Instead of consuming a daily average (for men) of 2,500 calories, consume two-thousand. The fat cells will already be feeling hunger pangs before you even notice the difference. The remaining five- hundred calories are fetched from the fat deposits by running for forty-five minutes at a speed of about five miles per hour, i.e. about twelve minutes to the mile. That's a relatively slow pace. The problem is, therefore, not the speed, but the fact that you have to do this every day. For the moment, then, this example too is merely hypothetical. My only point was to show you that, as far as weight reduction is concerned, you can't expect miracles, eventhough jogging and eating less is probably the easiest way to shed pounds. Of course, you will have to invest sweat, will power, and above all patience. I hope you're not deadly serious about losing weight. At the beginning of Hey! Jogging is easy! we agreed that our goal is to run. Well then, off yougo - and enjoy the surprise when you look at yourself in the mirror at the end of a year of running.
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