Читать книгу The Little Book of Calorie Burning - Литагент HarperCollins USD, Ю. Д. Земенков, Koostaja: Ajakiri New Scientist - Страница 8

 Women tend to burn fewer calories than men when doing the same exercise with the same effort because they have less muscle and more fat. Not fair, huh?

 However, heavier people burn more calories doing the same exercise as thinner people, so a big, fat woman would burn more from a round of golf than a wee, skinny man.

 Our RMR slows down naturally as we age. That’s why we tend to put weight on more easily in our thirties and forties and find it progressively harder to shift. It seems very unfair to have to put up with this alongside wrinkles, baldness and memory loss, but regular exercise should help in maintaining a healthy RMR.

Doctors have another method of measuring the fat in your belly by working out your waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Researchers have found that it’s much more dangerous to have excess blubber in your middle than, say, on your hips and thighs, putting you at greater risk of heart attacks and diabetes, among other problems.

To see if you are at risk, measure your waist now at its narrowest point. Write the figure down before turning the page.

 If you are female and your waist measures more than 35 in (86 cm), you are in the danger zone.

 If you are a man with a waist of more than 40 in (102 cm), you need to slim down urgently. (Apart from anything else, your partner is going to have trouble getting their arms around you.) Now measure your hips at their widest point and divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement: waist ÷ hips = WHR. Write it down.

 Women with a WHR of more than 0.85 are in trouble.

 Men with a WHR of more than 1 are firmly in the ‘at risk’ category.

Shifting abdominal fat can be trickier than dealing with other kinds, but if you choose exercises that target it specifically (such as sit-ups or Pilates) you should see a difference after a while.

When you start a new fitness regime, it can be a good idea to take your measurements once a month and mark them on a chart on the bathroom wall so you can keep track of your progress.

(Make sure it’s not where guests can see it though, unless you want to give them a giggle.)

So, to increase your RMR, you need to replace your body fat with smooth, lean muscle and the way to do that is to become more active. One mega-workout a week is not the way forwards; it’s the steady, everyday type of activity that will make all the difference. We’ll look at the best types of exercise for boosting your metabolism in more detail on pages 32–7. But first, it’s worth looking at the amount of fuel you put into your body, via your mouth.