Wow. Congrat’s, Gemme. You have been doing well! And I can feel the cold just reading your post. Brrrrrrrr.

At some point, please let me know if you’re substituting sugar or just decreasing it. If you’re substituting, would love to know what you’re using. I’m using a granulated and powered Monk Fruit blend that I like.

Congratulations!!

:cheer::thumbsup::cheer:

I understand. I used to eat a lot of sugar, too. Congrat’s on breaking free, Gemme. I need some sweets in my diet, too, and the low-carb foods I bake help me stay on track. I’ve also found good substitutes for sugar and gluten.

And g’on girl with those steps! 17K is outstanding! And your “essay” posts are informative and fun to read.

I’ll ride the exercise bike later this morning but will not do any arm rolls. I need to be kind to my shoulder for awhile.

11 Minutes of Exercise a Day May Help Counter the Effects of Sitting

The sweet spot for physical activity and longevity seemed to arrive at about 35 minutes a day of brisk walking or other moderate activities.

By Gretchen Reynolds
Dec. 2, 2020

https://www.curvemag.com/wp-content/...nto-149663.jpg

Walking for at least 11 minutes a day could lessen the undesirable health consequences of sitting for hours and hours, according to a helpful new study of the ways in which both inactivity and exercise influence how long we live. The study, which relied on objective data from tens of thousands of people about how they spent their days, found that those who were the most sedentary faced a high risk of dying young, but if people got up and moved, they slashed that threat substantially, even if they did not move much.

For most of us, sitting for prolonged periods of time is common, especially now, as we face the dual challenges of Covid-related restrictions and the shortening, chilly days of winter. Recent surveys of people’s behavior since the start of the pandemic indicate that a majority of us are exercising less and sitting more than we were a year ago.

Not surprisingly, there could be long-term health consequences from this physical quietude. Multiple past epidemiological studies show links between sitting and mortality. In general, in these studies, couchbound people are far more likely to die prematurely than active people are.

But how active an active person should be if he or she hopes to mitigate the downsides of sitting has remained unclear. If you sit for eight hours at work, for instance, then stroll for half an hour in the evening — meaning you comply with the standard exercise recommendation of about 30 minutes of exercise most days — is that enough movement to undo most of the health risks of too much sitting?

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos...I0ecLVsH7HxII=

Some past research had suggested the answer is no. A 2016 study involving more than a million people found, instead, that men and women needed to exercise moderately for about 60 to 75 minutes a day in order to diminish the undesirable effects of sitting.

That study, though, like most similar, earlier research, asked people to remember how much they had moved or sat, which can be problematic. We tend to be unreliable narrators of our lives, overestimating physical activity and underestimating how much we sit. But if large numbers of people misremember this way, the paradoxical result is that exercise looks less potent than it is, since the studies’ “active” people appear to have needed plenty of exercise to gain health benefits, when the objective amount of exercise they actually completed was less, and this smaller amount produced the gains.

So, for the new study, which was published last week in a special issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine devoted to the World Health Organization’s updated physical activity guidelines and related research, many of the authors of the 2016 review decided to, in effect, repeat that earlier research and analysis, but, this time, use data from people who had worn activity monitors to objectively track how much they moved and sat.

The scientists wound up gathering results from nine recent studies in which almost 50,000 men and women wore accelerometers. These studies’ volunteers were middle-aged or older and lived in Europe or the United States. Combining and collating the nine studies’ data, the scientists found that most of the volunteers sat a lot, averaging close to 10 hours a day, and many barely moved, exercising moderately, usually by walking, for as little as two or three minutes a day.

The researchers then checked death registries for about a decade after people had joined their respective studies and started comparing lifestyles and life spans. Dividing people into thirds, based on how much they moved and sat, the researchers found, to no one’s surprise, that being extremely sedentary was hazardous, with people in the top third for sitting and bottom third for activity having about 260 percent more likelihood of premature death than the men and women who moved the most and sat the least. (The researchers controlled for smoking, body mass and other factors that might have influenced the results.)

https://i.postimg.cc/Qxj1vHSN/health...-1-16x9-lg.jpg

Other combinations of time spent sitting and moving were less alarming, though, and even heartening. People in the middle third for activity, who exercised moderately for about 11 minutes a day, were significantly less likely to have died prematurely than people who moved less, even if all of them belonged to the group that also sat the most.

Crunching the numbers further, the researchers concluded that the sweet spot for physical activity and longevity seemed to arrive at about 35 minutes a day of brisk walking or other moderate activities, an amount that led to the greatest statistical improvement in life span, no matter how many hours someone sat.

Of course, this study was observational and does not prove that exercise caused people to live longer, only that physical activity, sitting and mortality were linked.

But the results strongly suggest that if we sit all day, as so many of us do, we should aim, too, to get up and move, says Ulf Ekelund, a professor of epidemiology and physical activity at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, Norway, who led the new study. “Brisk walking is excellent moderate exercise,” he says, and, in half-hour stints — or even less — might help to lengthen our lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/w...gtype=Homepage

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Unaltered text is from NYTimes.com. Uncredited photos found on the internets.

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To be thread compliant: I will ride 5 miles on exercise bike later this morning.

I'm glad they redid the study with better data. Subjective memory is usually wrong. We can look forward to more and better studies with so many wearing tracking devices. I have noticed that my watch, which I wear whether or not I'm paying attention to it, shows my step counts down a lot since last year with the shut downs. I will be glad when life can get back to semi-normal.

This week on exercise bike:

– 35 miles
– 2.63 hours
– 20 Arm rolls

Shoulder is better and will start slowly adding on arm rolls.

:fastcycling:

In addition to PT, I have made it up and down the stairs 3 x a day for the past two days!

Had a good workout this morning. Stayed with the beat of all music.

I like doing a little upper body workout but have shut down the arm rolls. Need to let my shoulder fully heal. Maybe it will be good by the end of the year. It's feeling better than it has in weeks, I know I could easily do 60 or more arm rolls, but I'm not going to rush it. No arm rolls till the beginning of the year, if then.

In the meantime, I bought a resistance band with handles (and a door thingy) and it's working well. Have found some videos like this at youtube and am just focusing on biceps and triceps. Nothing that affects the shoulder.

Today I rode:

– 5 miles
– 21 minutes
– 40 curls (20 each arm)

:fastcycling:

Shoveling and shoveling and shoveling oh and some more shoveling.

Seriously. And the upper body from using a snow rake to clear the roof. Jeeze louise. I feel like I should have woken up ripped but I just feel sore and old. :seeingstars:

This week I rode:

– 35.8 miles
– 2.75 hours
– 200 curls

Had a good exercise this morning. Did a cardio workout on the bike. That's the hardest for me but the one I enjoy the most.

• For the cardio workout my speed is between 14 and 16 mph with no tension.
• For the muscle building workout my speed is between 10 and 13 mph with tension at 2 or 3 (4 if I'm feeling game).
• For the "just get your behind on the bike" workout my speed is between 5 and 9 mph with no tension and with the Price is Right on the screen.

:fastcycling:

Speaking of pedometers and yours specifically, it's the best pedometer ever. I bought it back when you talked about it on this thread. I love it. I have loved it since I first started using it. It doesn't have fancy bells and whistles but it is affordable and the most accurate I've ever owned. Thanks for the tip.

If anyone is looking for an easy to use, accurate pedometer that you can wear or carry on your person easily or put it around your neck for easy access this one can't be beat. Gemme spoke about it on pg 238 of this exercise thread post#4756. It would make a nice stocking stuffer.

I love it. Thanks Gemme.

I bought the 3DTrisport pedometer on Gemme's recommendation too. It is a really good one! It's much more accurate than my Fitbit was (due to the fact that I use a rollator).

Thank you, Gemme!

This week I rode:

– 35.5 miles
– 2.63 hours
– 22 minutes of curls

Am using 5 lb hand weights along with the resistance band for the curls. I'm all over the place when curling with the hand weights (posture isn't good, elbows aren't at sides, etc. LOL), but it will improve with more practice.

:fastcycling: