“Flush,” the sorority wannabe chick yelled in a squeaky high voice as she scurried out of the guy’s bathroom.
And immediately I jumped out of the shower like a scalded rat hoping she was gone. And I would have been a scalded rat if I had stayed in the shower since each and every shower was thoughtfully equipped by the university with a CVTD (Continuously Varying Temperature Device).
The year was 1982 and I was a freshman living in the Farrand dorm. We lived on a coed floor, which did not include coed bathrooms, at least not for the first two weeks of school. But two weeks was a long as it took for the girls to figure out that the guy’s bathrooms were usually empty in the morning while theirs were crowded with other young freshman sorority wannabe’s priming for their first class.
We, the men of the 4rth floor of Farrand, didn’t mind the girls using our bathroom as we were all eighteen, horny as horny toads, and even the mere thought of seeing a young lady naked made us giddy with anticipation.
Alas the young lady’s never used our showers, but only our toilets and mirrors. It wasn’t long before we figured out that we had gotten the short end of bathroom stick. All that was left to us was to jump out of the shower every time one of these young ladies’s flushed, or risk getting water fried.
I bring all this ancient history up because I really enjoyed all the discussion that my last story called “The Trainer’s Dirty Little Secret” prompted. You can read the story and comments by clicking HERE.
Thanks to all of you fine folks who commented on the story, and who left some really great discussion points.
Basically the discussion boiled down to whether weight lifting is a good way to burn fat? A lot of you pointed to numerous studies by well known and respected pros in sports nutrition that showed the benefits of muscle building by weigh lifting.
Here’s a good example of one such comment:
“Lifting weights burns calories - of course, there's always the matter of intensity (e.g. how much time is spent resting between sets). Muscle tissue increases your basal metabolism; you'll burn more calories when you're just sitting around. Weightlifting first thing in the morning also raises your metabolic rate for hours. There's a huge amount to be said for weightlifting as part of a program to decrease body fat.”
Here’s another great comment that expound on the first point:
“For most people an hour of vigorous weightlifting in the morning will do more for fat loss than an hour of vigorous aerobic exercise, at least until their gains in muscle mass have plateaued.”
I whole-heartedly agree with this point of view except for my CVTD (Continuously Varying Temperature Device) theory.
The CVTD theory, as I shall call it from here on (after all this is my theory so I can name it what I want) states the following:
There is an inverse (or in fact a continuously varying) relationship between the amount of weight lifting done (sets actually lifted) and the number of calories consumed.
Now please keep in mind that this is only a theory, but I have put it through a rigorous double blind testing program (that being thinking about it in the shower this morning so hard that I got shampoo in my eyes until I was blind in both eyes for a bit).
For all you layman out there, let me explain my theory in layman’s terms.
My theory states that for every 10 sets you lift in the morning, you’ll potentially consume 1 hamburger in the afternoon or perhaps 2 donuts for a midday snack, and that this relationship (here’s the CVTD) part is continuously varying based on a devise in your head called your brain.
In other words, while it is indeed a fact that, “weightlifting first thing in the morning also raises your metabolic rate for hours.” Many of us (read Roman) will use this as a “get out of jail free card” to consume as much junk as possible through out the day.
So here’s an example of what I mean.
I used to go lift religiously three times a week. After spending an hour or so at the gym and burning perhaps 500-800 calories I would go home and make myself a “small” snack. At this point my internal CVTD (Continuously Varying Trick Device) would kick in and I would gobble down two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like they were Tic Tacs.
How many calories do you think that two PB and J’s have? I bet at least 1000, if not more.
Unfortunately, the same device is still hard at work in my body today. I’ll go for a short run (perhaps 4 miles) and I’ll be ready to gobble down a power bar of three.
If you are like me you are often powerless to fight the adverse effects of your own CVTD. It seems that when it comes to actually, and realistically, measuring calories taken in versus calories burned, we tend to vary, and wildly vary, toward the over optimistic part of the scale.
So next time you are thinking about that donut after an especially grueling 2 mile run just yell “Flush” and grab a glass of water instead.