Running roundup
A couple of interesting things about running in the news recently…
The metabolic secrets of good runners
A healthy heart and svelte physique are not the only physical changes wrought by exercise: researchers have also identified a host of metabolic changes that occur during exercise in physically fit athletes.
These changes suggest that exercise revs up the pathways that break down stored sugars, lipids and amino acids, as well as improving blood-sugar control.
A Calgary distance runner is set to run his 100th marathon of the year on Sunday. Five days a week, when most adults are at work, Martin Parnell runs 42.2 kilometres. Each session lasts about 51/2 hours, not counting a couple of eight-hour marathons he walked in minus-30 degrees with a leg injury this winter, a water pack frozen on his back.
He is raising money for Right To Play, a charity that uses sport to improve the lives of children in developing countries. The organization’s core values match the beliefs instilled in Parnell when he rode a bicycle through 10 African countries, stopping to kick rag-tied soccer balls with youth who owned little else.
Rant 58 June 2010: Hot for Teachers
Here I was, Dr. Krista, gentle creator and longtime tender of Stumptuous.com, coach to hundreds of women as part of the Lean Eating program, emailing my buddy Kyle to ask — really sort of beg — him to check whether I was eating my spinach. What’s up with this?
“Reverse retouching” of models to fatten them up
“There’s another type of digital dishonesty that’s rife in the beauty industry, and it’s one that you may well never have heard of and may even struggle to believe, but which can be just as poisonous an influence on women.
It’s been dubbed ‘reverse retouching’ and involves using models who are cadaverously thin and then adding fake curves so they look bigger and healthier.
This deranged but increasingly common process recently hit the headlines when Jane Druker, the editor of Healthy magazine – which is sold in health food stores – admitted retouching a cover girl who pitched up at a shoot looking ‘really thin and unwell’.
It sounds crazy, but the truth is Druker is not alone. The editor of the top-selling health and fitness magazine in the U.S., Self, has admitted: ‘We retouch to make the models look bigger and healthier’…
I have taken anguished calls from a fashion editor who has put together this finely orchestrated production, only to find that the model they picked six weeks ago for her luscious curves and gleaming skin is now an anorexic waif with jutting bones and acne…
Naturally, thanks to the wonders of digital retouching, not a trace of any of these problems appeared on the pages of the magazine. At the time, when we pored over the raw images, creating the appearance of smooth flesh over protruding ribs, softening the look of collarbones that stuck out like coat hangers, adding curves to flat bottoms and cleavage to pigeon chests, we felt we were doing the right thing.
Our magazine was all about sexiness, glamour and curves. We knew our readers would be repelled by these grotesquely skinny women, and we also felt they were bad role models and it would be irresponsible to show them as they really were.
But now, I wonder. Because for all our retouching, it was still clear to the reader that these women were very, very thin. But, hey, they still looked great!”
Former Cosmo editor Leah Hardy’s column in the Daily Mail
Blog commentary: Reverse airbrushing: Photoshop Jumps the Shark
More Photoshop Phun
If you liked this month’s rant, check out this Photoshop transformation.
Yooo are soooo beautiful… to meeeee!
Blood pressure in younguns
From Statistics Canada:
Data from the 2007 to 2009 Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) found that mean systolic blood pressure was significantly higher among boys aged 12 to 19 and girls aged 6 to 11 who were overweight or obese. Mean diastolic blood pressure was significantly higher only among obese boys aged 12 to 19.
Excess weight is believed to influence blood pressure through increased sympathetic nervous system activation, which is associated with systolic blood pressure.
Elevated blood pressure is one of the most important causes of death and disability worldwide, accounting for 7.6 million premature deaths and 92 million disability-adjusted life years annually. Children who have higher blood pressure tend to stay at higher blood pressure levels when they reach adulthood. Hence, high blood pressure in youth may be a risk factor for the development of hypertension in adulthood. This persistence of high blood pressure from younger to older ages is more apparent among overweight and obese youth.
I don’t suck!!
Hooray! Stumptuous.com got a great shout-out in 3 Fitness Blogs for Women that Don’t Suck.
The rest of Grit & Glimmer is totally worth the read, too. It’s smart, interesting, well-written, and purdy. I cracked up to discover that the “Food” section includes both “Nutrition” and “Booze”.
C’mon… check it out… what have you got to lose besides your meaningless workday anyway?
Rant 57 May 2010: What’s Eating You?
Once upon a time there was a magical land. The inhabitants of this land were lean and sculpted. These divine citizens wore hot pants Rollerblading and tiny swimsuits to do their laundry, and lo, it was good. There was only one problem with this magical land.
It was complete. And utter. BULLSHIT.
Reader Mail 9
“Krista, thanks to you, I’m telling all of those douches to fuck off — by getting super fit a la your advice, and squatting myself into emotional independence. Circus acrobatics, here I come!”
Everything you need to know about fitness modeling… which is enough to turn me off it
First of all, fitness models are no slouches. It requires years of difficult training and months of rigid, restrictive dieting even to make it on an amateur stage — never mind a professional one. It’s a hard road, so much respect to the women who do it.
However, it’s hard to argue that as a practice, fitness modeling really highlights athleticism — i.e. the performance of tasks. This video kind of sums it all up for me.
Physique competition is better understood as a body modification subculture, not a sport, nor — this is key — a role model for most women’s fitness. Ironic, of course, since “model of fitness” would be implied by the job title. Also ironic that women competing as fitness models do have an all-round athleticism — strength, flexibility, fluidity of movement, work capacity — that would be a great thing to emulate. However, sadly, the athleticism of these women is generally overlooked in favour of the fitness-industrial complex chewing them up into supplement hawkers and spitting them out as metabolically damaged (as Scott Abel has extensively critiqued).
I maintain that a wicked “fitness model” competition would dump the eeny-weeny bikinis, makeup, and Lucite heels, and get the ladies running some bitchin’ obstacle courses!
Today’s crock of crap: Becel Vegan
Wow! Becel has an all-vegan, kosher formula! Omega-3s! That must be good for me!
Oh wait… canola & sunflower oils 74%, water 19%, modified palm & palm kernel oils 6%, salt 0.4%, soy lecithin 0.2%, vegetables monoglycerides 0.2%, potassium sorbate 0.1%, citric acid, alpha-tocopherol acetate (vitamin E), natural & artificial flavours, vitamin A palmitate (vitamin A), vitamin D2, beta carotene… and you had to make that all into a shelf-stable (‘How long can you store Becel Vegan? Several months (refrigerated)”), solid, pleasingly golden-coloured product?
Why am I eating this again?
Next up: Vegan Candy.
Read your labels. “Vegan” is not a magic talisman of health promotion. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. And remember, the more a food trumpets how “healthy” it is — the more likely it actually isn’t.
