You’re still running the same amount of miles
In: 37
i haven’t seen this answer here yet so… we as mammals have several main energy storage systems that store different scales of energy. a short exercise only touches the bottom levels. in order to “fully exercise” you have to deplete each storage stage in succession. 🤔
at the lowest biological level is ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which is the battery that powers most cellular processes. space and mass wise though ATP is not efficient. we have to produce ATP continuously to keep up. i have seen it said on ye internets that we produce and use over our own weight in ATP every day! So in exercise mode your body depletes this reserve in a couple minutes. All gone need more.
I’m going to skip a few steps up to sugar. every cell in your body has a bunch of “mitochondria” which are almost their own separate life form but are also oversimplified like a parasite such that it blurs the line of what is life. these mitochondria maintain a stable temperature a couple degrees warmer than the rest of you and that helps them create an ideal environment for turning each molecule of sugar into over 30 fully charged molecules of ATP! Without enough oxygen for the mitochondria to do their thing… we eukaryotes are forced to fall back to a system that produces like… 4 ATP per sugar atom? But the sugar is far more efficient storage wise… each atom of sugar is almost 3 times lighter than a single atom of ATP. 😲
the next step is a lot more complicated. but the cliff notes is that we can stack up sugars into what are called cholesterols and fats. fully hydrogenated fats (which are the only kind made by animals) themselves stack up for storage extremely efficiently.
so… longer exercise forces your body to develop the full chain ability to go from fat to ATP in real time. if you don’t exercise long enough your body doesn’t have to do that.
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