Black Swan Theory (and other Fat Facts)

(Marie Claire - Diet and Fitness Tips)

Surprisingly it appears that working the legs and thus some of the largest muscles in the body is better at honing those abs than crunches.


Then. why. do. we. have. to. do. ab. work? It hurts.

I have long held the belief that I must have fairly decent abs by now given the number of diver crunches, planks etc that I have attemped over the last few weeks but that sadly all my hard work is hidden, buried under a layer or three of fat so all in all it is pretty much pointless! However Cat would kill me if I didn't concede that ab work strengthens your core and allows you do complete all that leg work or just slob out on the sofa if you so choose - see, occassionally I listen.

Another interesting fat fact:

"If you want to burn off body fat with cardiovascular exercises, remember that the body will not get into the fat burning zone until about 30 mins. When you start exercising you are drawing energy from your muscles and fat at about a 50-50 ratio. The longer you exercise the higher the fat percentage. After about 1hr the ratio is about 75-25% in favour of fat as an energy source." Marie Claire Diet and Fitness

Does that mean that I can sit out of the first thirty minutes of SuperChicks?!

Considering that I have gone from probably 1-5 hours of exercise a week pre-misson and definately nothing lasting over an hour to currently an amazing 20-28 hours of exercise a week with a walk or walk/training session typically lasting over two hours, my fat busting capacity must be expanding exponentially as my waistband hopefully shrinks.

(Before you all panic with concern that I'm overtraining - 20 hours of this weekly total is attempted power walking interspersed with window shopping, moseying around interesting boutiques, sandwich browsing or stopping to watch the two jet black swans with their pinky-red beaks that I am lusting to adopt (white swans are sooo passe!!) All in all, fairly low impact cardio. Please also rest assured that I'm in no danger of fading away in the near or even fairly distant future judging by veritable tyre still enconsed around my midrift).

Personally I have never seen a black swan before or even knew that they came in black - do they come in pink also or is that a flamingo? However to partially redeem my massive ignorance apparently Black Swans are so rare that there is an official "Black Swan Theory" which according to Wiki, "is used by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain the existence and occurrence of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations"

Even though I can't actually adopt the two black swans (I'm fairly sure Queenie would object particularly as they inhabit her front garden so to speak - Am I right in thinking the Queen owns all swans? Clearly swans and royal traditions are not my preferred Mastermind topics). Nevertheless I am officially adopting the black swan as the motif/mascot for Girl on a Mission as there are serenpiditous parallels that can be drawn:

a) no-one could have predicted that I would finally get off my butt and be motivated enough to exceed everyone's expectations

b) my mission has the potential to be high impact if I manage to squeeze into a bikini - a very rare event in itself!

c) who doesn't love the ugly duckling to beautiful swan fairytale?!

So get down to St James' Park and check out Muffin and Rascal (my monikers for them not Queenie's) - so cute. If you do go, BEWARE of the ginormous Pelicans who I'm sure regularly snack on tourists' heads - not so cute. x