I recently found myself in a friendly argument over the origins of the obesity epidemic. It (the argument, not the epidemic) started with a post on my Facebook page (scroll down to January 2), which itself came from this article on weight loss in the New York Times Magazine.
The argument was over how much of the rise in obesity can be attributed to genetics vs. environment. Anoop Balachandran, a fitness professional studying for his Ph.D. in exercise science, argues that it’s virtually all genetics, and makes his case on his blog in this post and this one. His biggest point is that the people who are obese today are the people who would’ve been obese anyway, and what we call an epidemic is a rise in their weight,…
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I love working out in December. The January newbies are long gone. Even the novices who work out with the gym’s trainers have mostly given up. It’s easy to get to the equipment I need, and to find space to use it. There’s an easy camaraderie among those of us who lift 52 weeks a year. Even if we don’t know each other by name, we know the woman to the left won’t try to step over the bar we’re about to lift off the floor, and the guy to the right won’t bump into the arm that’s pressing a 70-pound dumbbell.
But it’s January now, and January is different. January is when you see people you’ve never seen in your gym before, some of whom are there for the first time. Most of…
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The first to come after you when you turn 50 is the AARP. Nonstop pressure to join, nonstop pressure to buy useless crap while you’re in, and nonstop pressure to rejoin when you quit because you’re sick of the AARP selling your address to every company that wants to make a quick buck off people who’re slipping into dementia. The second is the healthcare industry, which give you the full-court press for a colonoscopy.
I have nothing against diagnostic procedures in general, but I have a real problem with procedures that require an empty stomach. That’s why I minimize blood tests. I’m as concerned about my HDLs as the next guy; I just don’t want to have to fast 12 hours to get a reading.
A colonoscopy requires a full 24 hours without food, about 6 of…
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I first heard about intermittent fasting a few years ago, while interviewing a nutrition researcher for a magazine article that never ran. The article was about the cleansing craze, particularly the crazy idea that we’re loaded with toxins that can only be purged with prolonged administration of juices and enemas.
The researcher noted in passing that her preliminary studies of intermittent fasting showed promise. I filed the information away but didn’t pursue it. I’ve been recommending four to six small meals a day for as long as I’ve been writing books. If fasting works better, I have a lot of backtracking to do.
All of which is a long way of introducing Experiments with Intermittent Fasting, a new, free book by John Berardi, Krista Scott-Dixon, and Nate Green of Precision Nutrition….
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Conference season ended with a bang.
After The Fitness Summit in May and Perform Better in early June, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the International Society of Sports Nutrition conference in Las Vegas last weekend. I knew I’d get to hang out with the smartest people I know — you can’t spit at ISSN without hitting a Ph.D, M.D., or doctoral candidate — but I wasn’t sure how much I’d get out of it. In previous years some of the presentations have been way over this bald head of mine.
Lucky for me that I got to eat some bugs.
Daniella Martin, host of a show called Girl Meets Bug, gave a presentation on the case for eating more insects. Some of them are seriously high in protein and calcium, and in some…
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I spent last weekend at the Perform Better Summit in Providence, Rhode Island, where I was exposed to more information than I could possibly absorb. There was all the great stuff I expected from Stu McGill, Thomas Myers, and Gray Cook. My coauthor, Alwyn Cosgrove, spoke about fat loss in what I thought was the best presentation of the weekend. (And that’s really saying something.)
I missed a bunch of speakers whose talks would’ve been at the top of my list at any other conference: Dan John, Mark Verstegen, Charles Staley, Chris Mohr, Mike Boyle.
Even with all that talent and experience on the lineup, I thought the most provocative presentation came from Thom Plummer, who spoke about the future of the fitness industry. As I told a couple of friends afterwards, almost…
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I spent last weekend in Kansas City for the ninth annual Fitness Summit, which is both my favorite fitness event of the year and a great opportunity to visit my family. My mother and two brothers live there, along with two sisters-in-law and six nieces and nephews.
One of the those nephews is a 15-year-old who, I believe, is now the tallest member of my immediate family. He’s 6-foot-2, and according to his dad, already throws a fastball in the mid-80s for his high school’s junior varsity team.
But, because his hitting is less advanced than his pitching, he never gets a turn at bat. Yes, even as a 15-year-old, he’s a specialist. A designated hitter takes his place in the batting order.
You probably think I’m going to rail on how the DH has…
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Saturday morning, and I’m sitting in my car while one of my kids does one of those things parents pay money for kids to do. I’m geeking out on the sequel to A Game of Thrones, and I’m happy to have an hour to do nothing but read.
A couple of the other parents, though, are more ambitious. They’re dressed for a workout, and apparently serious about it. They take off jogging, and don’t come back until the hour is almost over. When they do, I can see by the way they’re walking — short, stiff-legged strides with feet splayed slightly — that they’ve pushed themselves. They spend the next five minutes going through a choreographed stretching routine.
They move like people who work out. But they don’t look like people who work out. They’re obese by…
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The Rundown
Lou Schuler is an award-winning fitness journalist and author of many popular books about strength training and nutrition. For the full story, click here.
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