Tonight I watched two episodes of Horizon from the BBC.

The first was "The Truth About Exercise. "

You can read about the Truth About Exercise here:
www.independent.c
o.uk/arts-entertainment/tv
/reviews/last-nights-viewi
ng--horizon-the-truth-abou
t-exercise-bbc2-timothy-sp
all-all-at-sea-bbc4-7462470.html
and here:
www.bbc.co.uk/new
s/health-17177251 .

And this guy's blog sums up the take home messages, as well: www.oracle-base.c
om/blog/2012/03/09/the-tru
th-about-exercise-and-100-
rep-challenge/

Take aways:
+ Sitting all day is killing us.

+ You can improve your insulin production and reaction time and, therefore, decrease your risk of getting diabetes by quite a bit by doing HIT (High Intensity Training) for three minutes a week instead of the other way to get the benefit, by doing 2.5 hours of exercise a week. In some people (genetics are involved here), this will also increase your ability/what you can do during your max effort. HIT is done three times a week. You exercise (they did it on a stationary bike) for three 20 second intervals at your max level -- like a monster is chasing you -- then rest for like two minutes, and then do it again two more times, three days a week.

+ You can cut down the amount of fat your blood takes from fatty food if you exercise (he did a 90 minute brisk walk the night before the fat-in-blood test and that caused his fat uptake to be cut by a 1/3 or a 1/2 [can't remember!] from the test day where he hadn't exercised the day before).

+ Moving as much as you can during the day (getting up from your chair, walking while meeting with someone, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc) will help burn many more calories and keep you healthier without even going to the gym.

+ For weight loss, diet matters most, but exercise can help. Exercise can help get rid of more visceral fat than diet alone.
---------

I also watched the BBC Horizon show "Truth About Fat." The most interesting thing was that there are two recently discovered hormones which affect the feeling of hunger and the feeling of fullness. People have different amounts of these from birth (genetics). Some people feel hungry all the time and so eat a lot more than they need, and some people never feel full so they eat too much. Also, the time you spent in your mother's womb has a big effect -- esp. if your mom was malnourished. So, being overweight is not necessarily about lack of will power, as many people assume.

Also, visceral fat, the fat that clings to your organs, is way worse for you than subcutaneous fat, the fat under your skin. Even folks that don't look fat can have too much visceral fat.

Visceral fat increases likelihood for diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and dementia. ["Small fat cells produce a "good guy" hormone called adiponectin, which makes the liver and muscles sensitive to the hormone insulin, in the process making us less susceptible to diabetes and heart disease. When people become fat, the production of adiponectin slows down or shuts down, setting them up for disease, according to Fried and others." -- www.webmd.com/die
t/features/the-truth-about
-fat ]

Anyway, they were interesting shows, as British shows tend to be!

Cheers,
Dana