Fitness News #55 - Would you put petroleum in your body

Greetings, its been great to be back but I must admit that I suffered a bit, with 2 periods off, my fitness suffered a bit, but like yourself when you've had time off, I will bounce back.

Hope you liked the new release RPM54.  At each class I asked for your approval rating and at all classes except one, got almost 100% approval,  while for track 5 scary monsters all but 2 classes gave it a 50/50 rating, either you loved it or you hated it.

 

Would you put petroleum in your body

How ridiculous of course you wouldn't, but you already are, some of the artificial flavours, enhancers and so on are made from petroleum products.  Not convinced?  Google is your friend;
Artificial Food Coloring Truth
Fake Food: Petroleum and Other Dangerous Non-Food ingredients in Our Food
ARTIFICIAL FOOD COLORING (even our pets ain't safe)
Wow, didn't need to look far for those, however rather than looking at each one and deciding which one to put on the ban list, I've got a different approach.

The marketing machine over the say last 50 years has put brightly packaged products in the household that are cheaply manufactured and have little nutritional value.  Low manufacturing costs are a primary key to profitability and regrettably most people take little interest in nutritional value.  However it just doesn't finish there, its a competitive market and while finding ways to reduce manufacturing costs, you also need to ensure that the product is more appealing than the competitors.  To use an example is the use of artificial colouring, but this artificial ingredient is so cheap that its even included in canned soft drink.  How much of that product do you actually see.

Health Alternatives

But the marketing machine doesn't finish there, why not produce another product that claims to be healthy by encouraging you to consume more artificial ingredients, the example being diet soft drinks, where they produce the same product but replace the sugar with an artificial sweetening.  I highly suspect that these diet drinks are cheaper to manufacture, do the maths on how much profit there would be for a major soft drink manufacturer to reduce unit cost by 1 cent, enough for you to retire on.

But lets roll back from the word Health, pick up a can of 'Diet' soft drink and look at the nutritional information.  Is there anything in it that provides you a nutritional benefit?  Yeh right, its claims come from the unhealthy product it marketed, being substituted by the a product of dubious value.  Its a bit like me claiming that I was environmentally friendly because when I drove my V6 down to the shops, it used less fuel than my neighbors Hummer :)

Avoiding Artificial Substances

This is a no brainer, read the Nutrition Information, you will find (up to) 3 types of ingredients;

1. Things that are good for you
2. Things that are bad for you
3. No idea on that

Simple solution is to not purchase products that have 2 or 3

Generally your a lot safer with products with little manufacturing aka closest to the farm - fruit and vegetables, water etc etc.

The right decisions

Good decisions come from good knowledge, its really simple doing a supermarket shop, when you know what your looking for.  Do the ground work and you will reap the rewards.

I've found that over the last 2 years, that I naturally head towards better and better products.  A process of knowledge enrichment and adaption.

Weight

As promised last week, I'd give you a report on weight and report back, on time line;
Early January - 78kg
Then I had my NZ holiday and my accident
Late February - 75kg.  So I lost 3kg while I was on holiday and was off with injury
Then I had more time off with my collarbone being plated
Mid March - 77kg
Late March - 79kg

What the???? I don't exercise and loose 3kg, then I get back to exercise and then I put weight on.  I have some theories on this around muscle loose and effect latency, but probably the mirror is my best judge and to be honest, I don't see the fluctuation.  Have heard of inaccuracies in electronic scales, but  I'll leave the conspiracy theories to the tabloids.

Racing

As mentioned last week, I'm not racing yet, my return to racing is in May.  Tomorrow (Sunday), I'll do my first on road training ride, 80k so to test out the shoulder

Classes

Watch for Easter timetables next weekend

Fitness First

Rockdale Mon 6.00am Ride

Five Dock Mon 5.45pm RPM

Rockdale Tue 6.30pm RPM

Walker St Thu 6.00am RPM

Rockdale HiPf Sat 8.15am RPM - probably not on

YMCA

Riverwood Mon 7.30pm RPM

Riverwood Tue 6.15am RPM

SCG

Stadium Fitness Centre Friday 6.15am RPM - not on

--
Posted By Michael Clement to Mikes Fitness at 3/31/2012 04:06:00 AM

--
Michael Clement
clementmi@gmail.com
------------------------------------------------------
Sleep Ride Eat Repeat