Day 85 – The Road To Fitness May Be Shorter Than You Think

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”

~ John F. Kennedy

186.1 lbs.

With a little more than 2 weeks left of the starvation phase of this project, the long road to bringing my BMR (basal metabolic rate, for new readers) back up to normal stretches before me like a… long road.

This movie has nothing to do with the research I mention in this article, but it's entertaining. And I needed a photo.

I’ve been down this road once before; going from fat teen to muscular army boy, with a stopover at getting my butt in the gym.In the year between deciding to get into a more human, less pear shape and joining the Canadian Forces I dropped about 100 lbs of fat and replaced it with 60 lbs of muscle.

Because most of the weight I’ve lost in this project has been muscle, I’ll have to do the same again. For me this will mean intensive cardio and weights – something my now lazy body isn’t looking forward to. Or maybe my body is waiting for me to do it. We’ll see.

Fortunately, some new research shows that for most people even a little exercise promises big benefits. Researchers have found that doing at least 10 minutes a day of exercise can have a profound and lasting effect in your body chemistry.

Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, and Boston University scientists measured 200 small molecules in the metabolism of average healthy adults, marathoners, and… er… less fit adults.

Massachusetts General’s Dr. Gregory Lewis, an author of the study, says that after 10 minutes of exercise on a treadmill or stationary bicycle, unfit and average test subjects had higher levels of the metabolites that process fat, sugar and amino acids in their bloodstreams. Levels shot up 98% in the average healthy adults, compared with 60 to 70% in the less fit. For the marathoners (as in people who run marathons, not people from that ancient Greek city-state), the breakdown of fat, sugar and amino acids went up 1,128%.

“Not only was there a significant change during peak exercise,” Gregory noted, “but many of these metabolic changes persisted after the 60-minute point. This means that their heart rate is down, they’ve presumably had a shower and they’re going about their daily activities, and the response largely persists.”

This just bolsters the “well DUH” factor in the evidence of the benefits of exercise, but the 10 minute figure is interesting. I should note that Gregory, a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic rowing team, also run marathons. I’m going to put him in the very fit category.

But for unfit adults, even a little exercise helps recalibrate the blood chemistry to start burning fat and sugar, which is good news for desk jockeys. For “average people in their late 50s,” even 10 minutes of exercise a day changes basic metabolism.

The almost freakishly radical fat and sugar burning that happens in the bodies of the very fit poses some questions for further research; are these people born this way, and so train harder because it benefits them more, or do the enhanced benefits come about as part of the training, and anyone can achieve this? What significance could this have for targeted exercise programs or nutritional supplements? Or as Gregory puts it: “if they get up from their desk and get a cup of coffee, do they naturally burn more fat than other people or can this be mediated by training? Can you go from less favourable to more favourable by training?”

On the other end of the spectrum it could also help with diagnosing diseases. “We really want to start to develop signatures of abnormal responses to exercise and stress tests. Exercise is a great tool to unmask disease states.”

“(One) of the nice things about this profile is that it’s a broad, comprehensive approach that can detect changes in the bloodstream,” said Lewis. “The whole premise for doing this kind of work is that one day we could take a simple blood sample to find out what’s happening to global metabolism.”