What seems likely as ways that people will lose weight and tone up in the future? I’ve heard some ideas, but I’d like feedback on them.
(Yes, exercise would work, but it seems like a waste if you could get the body of a runner without having to run. As in, the ability to run if desired is handy, but the outlay of time isn’t. Being ‘lazy’ just seems like being smart.)
0-calorie foods. Either stuff like celery, which doesn’t provide any net energy gain, or specifically constructed food with modified (amino acids spiraling in the other direction, or whatever).
Unconcious exercise. Make your body work in a way you don’t find distracting. This is the idea being the suggestion of eating ice, to spend calories heating it up. Similarly, people have suggested turning the heat down a notch or two and generating more of your warmth yourself. I’ve seen a stomach-crunch buzzer, that reminds you to tighen your abs, and supposedly that bit of work becomes unconcious, and strengthens them while burning quite a few excess calories. Also possible would be some sort of implanted electrodes to exercise the muscles in a sort of Charles Atlas, self-resistance way…
Telling the body to not get fat. This could be done at many stages, from not absorbing ‘excess’ food, to telling fat cells to turn over more quickly, instead of storing fat for years. This topic sort of includes ways to program muscles to not deteriorate to save energy, so you wouldn’t need as much maintenance exercise.
I think some sort of muscle building method is ideal, being that the ammount of fat carried is just a fashion thing. (I myself prefer women (and men) to not look skinny. Ribs shouldn’t be seen except in X-Rays.) But, more muscle is always handy. It makes moving easier, makes biking to work and other energy saving measures more reasonable, and is a safety factor. A strong person will always have an advantage over a weak one in surviving any sort of disaster.
I also don’t see a moral issue in this, as many people do. I don’t think people who don’t like exercise are any lazier than people who don’t like fending off wild animals with sharpened sticks, yet who prefer not to be eaten.
Society also benefits from stronger, more fit people, medical costs would be a lot lower.
It seems that you start out with the idea that we should not have to exercise and you end up with we should be in shape in case we need it.
People have worked on devices for many years to help you get into shape without having to work at it.
In the movie the Dragon (Bruce Lee’s story), he is shown wearing an electronic device that he says wearing it for a number of minutes or so is like him doing a hundred push-ups. If this really worked would not everyone have one. There would be no gyms. (It is really a conspiracy by the health industry.)
There are pills to raise metabolism, pills to block fat absorbtion (sp), pills to give you that body that you have always wanted. There is plastic surgery, liposuction, etc.
Why not just do what your body is intended to do, eat right and exercise and live a long healthy life. What is so hard about that. You do not have to exercise that long to maintain health.
Why not take the stairs in buildings instead of using the elevator? Why not bike to the store or to work? Why not park at the end of the lot and walk the rest of the way. Choosing these things over the modern labor saving devices will go a long way to maintaining good health.
Is it possible that you could use drugs to stimulate the body to behave as though it were being exercised? In a very crude way that’s what steroids do. NASA for one would love to be able to give astronauts “exercise pills” to counteract the effects of weightlessness. But it’s possible that the actual mechanical movement of flexing and tensing muscles and ligaments is an essential part of the muscle building process.
Steroids are just an overdose of growth hormone. In order for muscles to be stimulated to grow in the first place, you have to physically tear it down (pump some iron!). Just taking steroids without lifting weights would do nothing but give you Mike Tyson’s voice without the bulk!
Really, its not that hard to get into a comfortable habit of daily excercise and choosing to do little things like take the stairs or walk a few blocks to lunch instead of driving.
I predict that in the future the vast majority of people will continue to ignore this little factoid, and the magazines in the supermarket checkout lines will be full of ideas of how to shrink your fat butt while still sitting on it.
Considering our ever-increasing knowledge of the genetic code we may be able to engineer a person who could do nothing all day and remain aestheticly trim by tinkering with the metabolism. But in order to even have the ability to be athletic for short periods of time this person would also have to have an abnormally large heart and lung capacity for their lifestyle. And then you have to wonder how do you program in endurance in a person designed to essentially have none? Especially considering the massive jump in burned calories between the active and the sedentary lifestyle. If you were forced into an active lifestyle would you die of malnutrition if you didn’t consume massive amounts of food?
I think you would have to chose one one or the other. The present is active and thin, sedentary and fat. The alternative may be sedentary and thin, active and malnourished?
I’ve heard of this, but only at the theoretical level, where it could exercise muscles for the disabled, or the seriously injured, those in coma, etc. It seems plausible that we could do this, but I imagine we’d feel the same as if we did the exercise, with the difference that we wouldn’t have to make the concious effort.
Why? It seems like a complete waste. I do this already and it irks me to no end. If I can walk to the store, or something, fine. But having to do pushups, or run in place, etc… why? I don’t have to huddle in a cave at night, or hunt my own food, or a million other things, and nobody is calling me lazy because I don’t want to do those things. Why is there so much stigma when I say I’d rather not run in place or use a stair climber, or whatever?
Most of this is cosmetic. I’m not concerned about that. I’m interested from the point of view of being healthier, and so on…
There are ways, both phen-phen type ways that used to be medically approved, and caffeine/asprin combos that you hear mentioned at the gym. Both are mostly cosmetic, because while they help burn fat, or something, they cause other health problems.
The goal isn’t to die skinny, it’s to live longer.
Lumpy:
Sure, there might be some processes that need motion, like the lymph system relies on body movement. But, if you have a bunch of exercised muscle fibers, why do they have to shut down when you shot exercising? This seems like a ‘If you aren’t used in N days, go to sleep’ trigger, and one that could probably be short-circuited with the proper hormones or whatever.
Cooper:
You miss the whole point though, there are many things which won’t kill you if you do them, but they aren’t pleasant. Why the hell should we just grin and bear it instead of looking for a way around it?
I’ve been spending between 30m and 2h a week, for years, on exercise, this doesn’t count things like walking to the store, practicing karate, etc, just wasted movement, for the sole purpose of keeping my body from letting parts atrophy. That’s between one and four days a year spent doing nothing but doing sittups, or walking on a stair climber, etc.
Am I the only person not so caught up in fat phobia that I can say, “This sucks”?
I’d like to be able to take back that wasted time, yet still be able to walk to the store, practice karate, going biking, etc, when I feel like, not on a schedule designed to hold back a process I feel has no purpose in modern society.
Kuwatto:
If we ‘programmed’ someone to be as fit as someone who worked out for an hour every day, their heart an lung capacity should be no larger than the person working out. Unless you’d point at someone who works out in the evenings and has a desk job during the day and say that they have an ‘abnormally large heart and lung capacity’ then it shouldn’t be an issue for the person artificially programmed for it.
By telling the body to maintain the same processes it does in someone who exercises a lot, even if the exercise cues are absent.
Yes, it is expected that someone with a more active metabolism and larger body (more muscles) would require more food. I require more food than someone shorter/smaller than me at the same activity level.
I’m sure the reason muscles waste away when not in use it to conserve food, in the winter, there’s no reason to support those huge farming muscles when you’re living off of stored food, so they can shrink away to a degree. If food is scarce, this would help a lot.
But, I’ve never been hungry because of scarcity of calories. I’ve been hungry because I forgot to pack lunch, or was in a hurry and couldn’t eat, or forgot to buy food, but I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t find enough calories (by a large margin) to sustain me at the nearest food store, or when I lived on a farm, in the celler/barn/garden. And I don’t think many people in North America of non-war torn parts of europe have ever lacked for calories. (Many people in NA are malnourished, but that’s for a lack of the right foods, not for a lack of raw food energy/calories.)
This idea of telling our bodies to not hold onto insane ammounts of fat, and to maintain a fairly steady muscle/fitness level may not be possible now, and may not be for a while, but it strikes me as a goal worth striving for. The only problem with it that I can see is this ‘not wanting to exercise = lazy’ attitide that was expressed…
I urge everyone with that attitude to start raising the food they require. It’s easy, gardening doesn’t take too long, and small animals (chickens, etc) pretty well raise themselves. 15m a day and an hour or so on weekends is all you need. I mean, if you can’t be bothered to do that much, you’re fairly lazy, right?