Are You Stumptuous? (Part 2)
Here’s Part 2 of a really fun interview I did with Modern Athena. Find out what lurks in my closet and what I cried at last week.
Do you lift things up and put them down?
Many of you have undoubtedly seen the Planet Fitness ads that mock bodybuilders.
Personally, I find the “I lift things up and put them down” ad somewhat poignant — there is a certain existential purity and focus to the bodybuilder’s mission that many of us might wish to emulate in purging the distractions of modern life. He is akin to a Zen prophet — simply a traveller on the Way of Weights, where enlightenment comes simply from moving the body towards a dedicated objective.
Are You Stumptuous? (Part 1)
Thanks to the lovely and talented Becca Borawski for a great interview! Here’s Part 1 of my interview with Modern Athena, in which I dish about starting weight training and what the heck Stumptuous means.
In honour of a beautiful May day…
…which I enjoyed, in part, with a walk — one of my favourite things in the world:
A good walk cures most problems. Want to lose weight and get fit? Walk. Want to enjoy life but spend less? Walk. Want to cure stress and clear your head? Walk. Want to meditate and live in the moment? Walk. Having trouble with a life or work problem? Walk, and your head gets clear.
–Leo Babauta, “38 Life Lessons I’ve Learned in 38 Years“
New meaning to “joint mobility”: Yoga in prison
Prisoners are famed for their low-tech and bodyweight-style workouts. Now, it seems, a yoga program is also showing benefits.
“Yoga helped me to be more present in the moment and observe what came up. The insights that this gave me helped me to move on from that paralyzing state of guilt. It helped me to understand myself better. Before, I had not really dealt with the anger inside of me and had no tools to handle my emotions. I don’t mean in any way to diminish accountability for what I’ve done: I’m the one who made all the decisions in my life – including stabbing an innocent man – I don’t use any of the understanding I’ve gained to deflect responsibility for what I’ve done.”
Check out the full article – great photos.
Tofu makes you dumn?
I am often asked why I do not recommend soy protein for vegetarians. The aggregate data suggest that whatever benefit soy may offer is vastly outweighed by its many liabilities — especially when it is processed. (Really guys — did you honestly think that Tofurkey was healthy?) One key problem with soy appears to be its effects on brain health with aging.
Review: Everyday Paleo
A mother of three children ranging from 3 to 15, Fragoso created EverydayPaleo.com as a way to keep herself accountable, to try out new recipes, and to build a community of Paleo-style eaters trying to figure out how to implement this way of eating into their (imperfect) daily routines.
Skinny fat: Not just Hollywood’s problem
An interesting breakdown of the famed “skinny fat” phenomenon, particularly as it pertains to self-starved celebrities.
The concept of SF, of course, is that one is thin but has poor body composition — what’s there is bone, gristle, and fat. In clothes, great. But according to the calipers and metabolism, not so much.
Now, I realize that the Gwyneth-Tracy story is kind of a car crash that we’re all craning our necks to see, but still… the extreme example offers us a cautionary tale on the subject of feminine musclephobic orthorexia and its consequences.
Trainer Graeme Thomas runs a nutritional analysis on Gwyneth’s diet
It breaks my heart to see the abuse of such a noble vegetable as kale.
Fat + sugar = metabolic derangement
A recent study of interest in the International Journal of Obesity explores whether problems with glucose metabolism (aka metabolic syndrome) are related to obesity (and hence the chemical properties of adipose [fat] tissue) and/or the diet itself.
The effects of the diet may be related to the digestion of the food (i.e. the pancreas having to deal with the sugar load, etc.), but interestingly, they can also be related to the way the brain and appetite hormones process the food. So basically we’re asking: How does a poor diet screw us up?
Get some ass
Having grown up in the 70s (BTW guys, there’s no apostrophe), the concept of “70s Big” always cracks me up. For those of you born after Magnum PI, you have to understand that the 70s was a very earthy, hairy, body-positive kind of time where the human physique was frequently revealed in all its resplendently awkward glory…