Pick a Cardio … Any Cardio
by David Banyas

Whether freely admitted, a well-shaped body is appreciated and often coveted. Just as often, a large amount of contempt is projected onto both the owner of the beautiful body and the fairly regular maintenance necessary to own one. Testaments to the general consensus that “working hard to have a good body is just too hard” are the fad diet, low-calorie food, vitamin supplements, and silly exercise equipment industries that crack the billion dollar mark nearly every year by hyping the minimal input required by the consumer. “In just 10 minutes a day … Just a shake for breakfast and lunch and another with a sensible dinner … In only three EASY payments” and that model’s body, which is professionally sculpted when he/she’s not doing commercials, will be yours. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There are many “breakthroughs” like the Ab-Buster, Olestra, and the Atkins diet that allege having the perfect way to make hard bodies and smoothed-out curves from a fast food-fed, Must See TV-watching chunk of chub, but it takes most people a very long time to know that the ultimate truth is that only regular exercise and healthy habits are the way to a slimmer, stronger body.

One of the best exercises to decrease body mass and increase mental well being is simple cardiovascular exercise, which is designed specifically to improve the health of your heart by exercising it. You think of cardio exercise and you think of what? Aerobics classes where you whirl and gyrate in cadence until you can stop wearing those big sweats? Running long distances and sweating like the pig that the latest Cosmo Quiz says that you are? Don’t exaggerate the simple. “There is no ‘best’ cardio,” says Linda Knecht (pronounced connect), an Exercise Physiologist at Woody’s Workout West in Camp Hill. “It varies with people’s tastes. Walking, jogging, cross-country skiing, biking, indoor cycling [the term “spinning” is apparently trademarked] … basically, when exercising cardiovascularly, you’re raising your heart rate into your ‘target’ heart rate range, which is based on age.”

To burn fat, Knecht says that one should remain somewhere around 70% of the target heart rate while exercising. Of all the workouts to do, Knecht says that walking is the most popular and oft-prescribed exercise by experts in the field simply because it requires, aside from feet and the ground, no equipment. She says that walking will reach your target rate “if you don’t dawdle,” meaning a brisk pace is better than that of a window shopper. Not only does it improve your body’s performance, but it brightens your emotional disposition.

“Anytime you exercise, your body releases endorphins,” Knecht said, [which are] “essentially, the painkillers that give you a natural high.” In general, Knecht feels that doing something good for your body will make you feel better about yourself. Even something as simple as eating an apple can perk up self-satisfaction while proverbially keeping away physicians. “Beside all of the scientific ‘you’ll have better blood flow, better circulation and it lowers blood pressure’, I think when people do something healthy and beneficial, it makes them feel better mentally.”

During cardio workouts, the increasing heart rate raises the body temperature into the “fat-burning stage.” Calories, colloquially, are the evil things that in large quantity make us fatter. Scientifically, a calorie is defined as the amount of heat required at a pressure of one standard atmosphere to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius. This is where the fat burning begins. “The time it takes to get there varies with people,” Knecht continued. “It can take 12 minutes. It can take 20 minutes.”

The way the body burns fat is that it starts with the easy stuff first called muscle glycogen, a white, amorphous polysaccharide (a complex sugar) stored in the muscles which serves as an energy reservoir, being broken down to glucose when needed. Some people think that by not eating, you burn fat. Not true. “When your body goes into starvation mode, it burns protein,” explained Knecht. “It takes your muscle away.” In fact, the more muscle you have, the more fat will burn to keep the muscle healthy. Fat burns in accordance with the amount of work a body does and the body’s weight. The heavier the person, the more calories burn. Weight loss is just one benefit from exercise.

“It helps prevent all kinds of disease,” says Knecht. “Like arterial sclerosis — the hardening of the arteries — cancer — any kind of cancer, really — improving circulation, lowering blood pressure helps prevent stroke, heart disease and heart attacks.”

Knecht also pushes moderation in exercise saying three to five times a week of 20-60 minutes of cardio work is excellent. “Don’t workout every day,” she says, citing the marathon runner condition which produces an overabundance of free radicals because of excessive exercise. Free radicals are not remnant members of Abby Hoffman’s Merry Pranksters, but are atoms or molecules with an unpaired electron. Unpaired electrons make for very unstable, highly reactive atoms and/or molecules. This odd, unpaired electron in a free radical causes it to collide with other molecules so it can steal an electron from them, which changes the structure of these other molecules and causes them to also become free radicals. This can create a self-perpetuating chain reaction in which the structure of millions of molecules are altered in a matter of nanoseconds wreaking havoc with our DNA, protein molecules, enzymes and cells.

Okay, then. All that biologically technical stuff amounts to this: Exercise, but don’t overdo it. Eat healthy, but don’t starve. Live to live long, but don’t avoid life. Just turn off the TV and take a walk.