Category: In the News
Runners World reports today on a company that is selling cute, plastic gym equipment for kids. Apparently, they are “looking to capitalise on parental fears that playing computer games produces young couch potatoes.”
You know what produces “young couch potatoes” and fat kids? Being so terrified of letting your kid (gasp! shock! horror!) go play outside in the sunshine with scary stuff like neighbors and dogs where they might meet Mormons or break a bone or get exposed to cancer-causing UV rays.
For the sake of kids everywhere, I say “SUCK IT UP!” Hamster wheels for toddlers in “creativity-stimulating” primary colors are not the answer.
Alabama announced that it would start charging state workers for being fat. Overweight workers who suffer health problems and don’t make progress towards losing weight/resolving them in a year will be charged $25 per month for health coverage that is normally free. Alabama already charges people for smoking. Other states reward people for making healthy changes- paying for gym memberships or offering other discounts- but Alabama would be the first to penalize them.
What do you think about this idea?
The University of Houston department of health and human performance is launching an international effort to recruit 500 participants for a study promoting healthy dietary habits and physical activity. The research is aimed at helping people develop healthy eating and activity habits.
Great, right?! Awesome, yes?!
The whole thing takes place in Second Life.
Kudos to Ruth Parnell, an 88-year-old woman who completely kicks ass at the Sit and Be Fit! I admit, I harbor a bit of jealousy.
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“Meeeooowww… You’re a Mathematically-Significant 17.4!!” The international gymnastics douchebags, who were just one letter off in choosing the acronym “F.I.G.”, decided to be total tards and do away with the Perfect 10 in favor of a whole lot more math and way less clarity.
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OK, OK, without wanting to incite an argument over the usefulness/goodness/badness/douchiness of the thing, here is a pretty useful list of 50 Fitness-Related Applications for the iPhone. Do with it what you will.
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Have you read about the Exercise Pill? No, not that exercise pill. Or that one… C’mon is that really the best you’ve got? Supposedly, this one tell cells to burn fat, AND it actually mimics the training gains you’d get if you weren’t just sitting your lazy ass on the couch! Kind of takes the fun out of it, if you ask me.
What has your Board of Supervisors done for you lately? Well, they made it illegal for pharmicies to sell cigarettes, for one. They are pushing to prohibit smoking in ATM lines, Farmer’s Markets, common outdoor spaces of apartment buildings, and other shared public spaces. Oh, and… lobbying to charge a fee for selling sodas containing High Fructose Corn Syrup, Pushing to close streets so people can pogo stick and hulahoop without vehicular worries and more!
Check it out here and weigh in (so to speak) on what you think about the new proposals!
I hate the phrase “calorie counting” here, as I think it really discounts what these sites can do for you. I use The Daily Plate, and really find it useful. For years, I used FitDay, but found it to be clunky and lacking features like tracking what time of day you ate the foods and letting you create grouped items, like, say, the turkey sandwich you have for lunch four times a week, so that you don’t have to enter it item-by-item each time. FitDay is also sorely lacking on the search front- I had to enter a huge number of “custom items” like protein powders, Kashi cereals, All Bran crackers, specialty breads, etc., that were already entered into The Daily Plate.
I tried to use SparkPeople for a while as well, but found the whole site a little too pedestrian for me, so what little messing around with their food diaries was just cursory. I do remember them being a bit clunky as well.
If you don’t feel like you have a clear view of what you are actually consuming on a daily basis, I challenge you to log what you’re eating for a week. You might be surprised by what you find out!
The ABC Review of sites is located here.
A new study out from Kaiser Permanente indicates that people who write down what they eat (AKA “keep a food journal”) can lose twice as much weight. I keep track of what I eat on The Daily Plate (was using FitDay.com, but I find The Daily Plate free service is better than the FitDay free service. I’ll do a review/comparison post one day soon.)
Added bonus- SF Gate totally gets “awesome of the day” for finding a guy named “Tacotaco” as their “guy who ate way too much before he started a food journal!
This one makes me chuckle, after my “I did everything right, even quit drinking!” post… Thanks a pantload, Universe!
Quitting drinking to help with depression? Think again, according to a study from the University of North Carolina.
OK, so the example they used in this article was a shower curtain, as in “Your Shower Curtain Could Damage Your Liver,” but whenever I hear about PVC, I’m pretty limited in my scope of experience to “Rob’s best red plastic pants.”
Best quote ever:
“Virginia-based Centre for Health, Environment & Justice commissioned the study about two years ago to find out what caused that ‘new shower curtain smell’.”
Pro-Dommes, Folsom Street Spectators, Good Vibes shoppers, etc… beware the fumes of the phthalate!
LiveStrong.com (not to be confused with the Yellow Bracelet Brigade of LiveStrong.org) came out of beta today. The site is a community for folks “daring” to make positive changes. Some good stuff over there, have a look!