We’ll avoid the obvious suggestion of workers powering office equipment when we report a study at East Carolina University that found sedentary office workers like the idea of having a portable pedaling machine under their desk. Like it, and will use it, in the case of 18 workers who had such a device placed under their desks for a four-week period. On average, the workers (88 percent of whom were…
Sometimes when I’m at the gym, I look at the woman next to me on the bike, the guy across the way doing bench press, the class behind glass doing Power Yogalates (something like that) and I wonder, “Why are they here? What’s motivating them?” Maybe that’s because I’m not entirely sure why I’m there. Yeah, it makes be feel good (afterward). Yeah, working out helps make it possible for…
The following is a expanded version, with links, of a story I wrote that originally appeared in yesterday’s (Feb. 1) The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer. You’re a month into your new fitness program and you’re not seeing the results you expected: You are not alone. And yet, you are. “Every person is different,” says Sue Dissinger, Health and Wellness Director for the YMCA of Greater Charlotte. Your age,…
Senior citizens in the Triad have helped in a key discovery about how they and their peers can retain their mobility: walk and lose weight. A five-year study of 288 seniors (ages 60-79) in Davidson, Forsyth and Guilford counties found that those who walked regularly and lose weight improved their mobility by as much as 20 percent. The Wake Forest University study divided the seniors into three groups: a control…
When he came onto the national scene in the 1950s, Jack LaLanne was a lone voice in a nation where bowling and horseshoes were considered ways to stay fit. When he left the world Sunday at age 96, LaLanne was a fitness icon who redefined our notion of living healthy with the simple message that eating well and staying active simply made you feel better. LaLanne became a household name…
I’m currently reporting a story, scheduled to run the end of the month in the Observers (News & and Charlotte), on why you shouldn’t get discouraged after your first month of working out because you haven’t dropped 10 pounds. There are valid reasons you may not lose weight immediately; there are also more pertinent indicators of improving health to watch during your initial days of a more active lifestyle. Again,…
The following originally appeared yesterday in The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer as part of the papers’ series on Fat. It appears today with helpful links to provide you with more information. Move more and eat better in 2011 using these seven simple strategies: 1. Mix it up. The big trend in fitness isn’t one thing, it’s everything. Avoid drudgery, avoid stressing the same muscles and work your entire…
More reasons to stay active from the world of science. Pump up … your brain. One of my favorite types of studies is the one that shows a link between an active lifestyle and an active brain. The latest comes from the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, where a follow-up of women 65-75 who participated in a once-a-week strength-training…
My friend Michael Bowers must have sensed I’d just done my first workout on a rowing machine. Hence the timely notice he sent of not one, but two openings on crews planning to row the Atlantic this winter. That’s row, as in row a boat, and Atlantic, as in ocean. Rowing the Atlantic seems a ridiculously over-the-top, Survivoresque thing to do, a true product of our obsessive society. Yet the…
Does obesity breed obesity? A 2007 study out of Harvard University found that hanging out with fat people increase your chances of being fat. Now, based on the result of that study comes a new study from the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology predicting obesity rates in the U.S. will slowly climb for another 40 years, at which point 42 percent of the population will…