Hourly Calory Use -- [Was: Re: [at-l] Re: Weight Loss]

[jestbill at yahoo.com (william fitzpatrick)]

Well now, there's calculus and then there's common sense.

When you hike a certain distance you're not just moving your body's mass that
distance.  You're also moving the power supply.  You're also converting food to
energy, taking in oxygen and emitting powerful odors.

The "efficiency" that improves as you hike is that of breathing easier and more
slowly and you moving your arms and legs more purposefully.  The power plant
produces more and the transmission equipment uses less.

If it was irrelevant to talk about your body's efficiency, then it would cost
the same energy to ride a bike as to hike. 

---------------------------------

--- Rafe Bustin <rafeb@speakeasy.net> wrote:

> At 11:35 AM 8/25/2005 -0400, Jim Bullard wrote:
> 
> >You can't really reduce it to a formula except in a generalized sense. 
> >Take Lance Armstrong for instance. He has an over sized heart and higher 
> >than normal muscle efficiency (the capacity to turn fuel into energy). If 
> >an individual's circulatory system is less efficient at getting fuel to 
> >the muscles, if your muscles (in particular those muscles used for a given 
> >activity) are of a less efficient type than the average then you will burn 
> >more calories than the charts/calculators indicate. It also would vary 
> >with how often you do it. As you become more accustomed to the activity 
> >your efficiency may improve and you will burn fewer calories for the same 
> >amount of exercise. I also suspect that running a given distance burns 
> >more calories than walking it just as driving 'X' miles at 80 mph burns 
> >more gas than driving the same distance at 50 mph.
> 
> 
> 
> Work (energy) is force over a distance.  F delta s.
> 
> Calories and foot-pounds are in the same units: energy (Joules).
> 
> If your analysis were correct, a thru-hiker ought to require
> less and less food-per-mile as he/she improves in fitness
> along the way.  I don't think it works that way.
> 
> Your automobile analogy works OK, because the
> force (wind resistance) term goes up with velocity,
> and total distance ('X' miles) is the same.
> 
> 
> 
> rafe b
> aka terrapin
> 
> 
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Too curly for the straights, too straight for the wild ones
...and the rest never know what insanity walks among them...
JestBill  Ga--->Me '03


		
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