Chase That Oreo-Y's Health

Chase That Oreo: By:seoster seoster1; Chase that Oreo
I’ve got this great old pair of sneakers. I’ve had them for at least a decade, they’re scuffed and ugly and brown, the big toe pokes through a little and they stink, but man are they cozy. I wish I could wear them everywhere, but different circumstances call for different, sometimes less comfortable attire.
When I was in high school I bought a Camaro and thought I was the coolest thing on God’s green earth. I’d slide my Def Leppard tape into the player and turn up Pour Some Sugar On Me till it was all crackly and nobody could decipher the lyrics. The car was fast and I left a patch of rubber at every green light as evidence. Shortly after I bought it I took my Uncle out for a ride in it. He said he felt like he was riding in a pinball machine and preferred his Cadillac because the ride was more comfortable. I was appalled. Couldn’t he see that wasn’t the point?
You ever go into the gym and see some lady on the elliptical machine casually going along at a leisurely pace and reading Ladies Home Journal? What about the guy in the weight room who uses weights so light he’s easily able to continue his cell phone conversation between sets? Every gym has the guys in velour outfits that spend far more time panting at the leotards than they do panting because of their workout. Every gym also has the women in full makeup and impeccably coordinated designer gym clothes that manage to have a “workout” while not smearing their mascara.
On most evenings from 8:00 till 10:00 I can be found with startling regularity lying on my couch watching TV in baggy pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt. It’s comfortable, I love it, and I can’t wait to finish writing this so I can get back to it. Almost every afternoon though, you can find me in the gym or on the street, lifting or doing cardio until I’m gasping, sweat’s running down my face, and I’m concerned about wetting myself. The point is that I like and appreciate comfort and rest as much if not more than the next guy, but there’s a time and place for everything and the gym is not the place to strive for comfort.
I’ve heard people say that they don’t like to sweat when they work out. That’s like saying you don’t like to get wet when you shower. How can you do one without the other? If you get done with whatever you consider a workout and you’re not sweating, it wasn’t a workout. If you can read and turn pages of a magazine while you do cardio, you need to kick it up a few notches. If you can do the last rep of your set when lifting with as much effort as your first rep, you need to increase the weight a tad.
The only thing these half effort workouts pump up is your ego. It allows you to tell everybody that you “worked out” today and makes you feel healthier without all the uncomfortable strain of exerting yourself. These types of workout can actually do more harm than good! I’ve known more than few folks in my day that stroll on the treadmill for 20 minutes and burn off 150 calories and then proceed to wolf down pizza and Ding Dong’s that evening guilt free because they “worked out” earlier in the day. Here’s a good thing to try, get on the treadmill and go as fast or as slow as you want, but go until the calories burned display tells you that you burned 300 calories. Now go get some Oreo’s and line up how many you’d have to eat to negate your workout. When you see those six little crumbly cookies staring back at you, maybe you’ll realize you can never run off as much as you can eat. Chase that Oreo.
Ever run into some big fat dude who’s constantly worried about overtraining? They work out lazily twice a week for a half hour and justify it all by being concerned with doing too much rather than not enough. Like everything else, there’s a middle ground. The human body is capable of extraordinary things, most of us never reach anywhere near our potential. You have to really be kicking your own butt to do more than your body can handle, don’t kid yourself that it’s that easy to work yourself too hard. Even the most active of us are far more sedentary than active when compared to our ancestors. For the vast majority of us we live our lives in chairs and break it up with the occasional session of activity. Your body can handle your hour-long workout three times a week, don’t use that an excuse to stroll through your routine.
On the other hand, it does happen. Some people actually do train to excess with ridiculously long sessions or multiple sessions a day and burn out. Some folks don’t get enough rest and do overtrain more easily than others. Rest is crucial to recovery and to performing your best. Should I say it? I think I will.

Rest is more important than nutrition.

Run for the hills! Why do I say such blasphemy! Because I can eat pizza and nachos for a week straight and still perform at or near my previous levels. If I forgo or drastically decrease my sleep for a couple days, I won’t be anywhere NEAR where I was performance wise. So get your sleep. What I’m getting at is overtraining is a real concern for some people that are really pushing themselves hard or treating themselves terribly, but if you’re not making gains and no one is commenting that you’re a lunatic for spending so much time working out, you’re probably doing too little and not too much. Wishful thinking.