Read more here.

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Another reason not to obsess over your Body Mass Index, that sometimes misleading indicator of one’s health:  According to a long-term study by two Australian institutions, the Menzies Research Institute and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the circumference of a child’s waist is a better indicator than BMI of whether he or she will have cardiovascular issues down the line. In 1985, 2,188 Australian kids ages 7 to 15 had their waists measured. Twenty years later, the kids with a high waist circumference (in the top 25 percentile for their age and sex) were five to six times more likely to develop metabolic syndrome — various key cardiovascular risk factors — than kids in the bottom 25 percentile.

Read more here.

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Office jobs have become less physically demanding over the past 30 or so years and that’s why we’re getting fatter. That’s the conclusion of a study out of the Universite de Montreal which examined various Statistics Canada databases trying to figure out why we keep getting bigger. Quoted in the online Science Daily, lead author Carl-Etienne Juneau said: “People eat better and exercise more today than they did in the 1970s” — these are Canadians, remember — “yet obesity rates continue to rise. My professional hypothesis is that our professional life is linked to this seemingly contradictory phenomenon.” More evidence, perhaps, for Instant Recess?

Read more here.

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Finally, clinching your muscles is not only good for you isometrically, it can help you with everything from just saying no to a decadent desert to drinking an unsavory but healthy tonic to resisting pain. This from a study in the Journal of Consumer Research by  National University of Singapore and the University of Chicago. According to Medical News Today, researchers “put study participants through a range of self-control dilemmas that involved accepting immediate pain for long-term gain.” For instance, drinking a healthy but nasty-tasting vinegar drink and being tempted with a tasty but calorie-rich desert. Participants were then instructed to clench their muscles — any muscles. The clenchers  managed to down the elixir, pass on the desert — with one caveat: They had to want the benefits of the healthy drink, and they had to want to avoid the excess calories.

Say the authors: “The mind and body are so closely tied together, merely clenching muscles can also activate willpower.”

Read more here.

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Recess, which was abandoned in our grade schools about the time EOCs began dominating the academic landscape, is being pushed as a key way to help a sluggish, overweight America get its supersized butt in gear. The notion of Instant Recess, which is embraced by the recently formed U.S. National Physical Activity Plan,  activity during the workday is better than staying parked in your ergonomic chair for 8 hours. Thus, employers are being encouraged to conduct 10 minute recess sessions where workers can gather and elevate their heart rates in a healthy way. It’s creator, Dr. Toni Yancey, a professor in UCLA’s School of Public Health, is confident Instant Recess will take hold.

“In five years, Instant Recess will be in Congress, churches, waiting rooms,” Yancey told the Washington Post. “Once the opportunity is available, people will take it.”

There’s little doubt that some people will take it, those people being mostly women. I draw very few generalizations when it comes to exercise, but one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that women are much more open to embracing the new and unusual. Example: I’m currently reporting a story on Nia, a workout that’s dance-based and asks only that you drop your inhibitions and let yourself go. In the two classes I’ve attended, there have been two men — and one of them abandoned with 10 minutes left on the clock. While I thoroughly enjoyed the workout I took part in, I’m also quick to admit that I probably wouldn’t have tried Nia if I weren’t writing about it. What can I say: I’m a bottled-up guy. A guy likely to roll my eyes come Instant Recess time.

There’s also the notion of forced exercise to contend with. To many Americans, group exercise carries the baggage of a grade school gym teacher who took delight in seeing the weaker ones among us crack when confronted with the dread climbing rope. And who hasn’t cringed at video clips of Chinese workers loosening up en masse to Chairman/Coach Mao’s sweat-‘til-you’re-Red workouts?

Perhaps a bigger challenge to Instant Recess, though, is how it’s presented in the workplace. Twenty workplaces have already signed up for Instant Recess: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the YMCA and AARP among them. Alas, those organizations’ mission is helping people live healthier, happier lives. When it comes to the typical widget-producing operation, I can’t help but think that Instant Recess will meet a fate similar to “The Office” 5K Fun Run, right down to the nipple chaffing. If the boss — a boss who’s already drowning under a blizzard of directives from corporate — isn’t on board, expect the rank-and-file to follow suit. (Or worse, imagine Instant Recess in the hands of a boss like Michael Scott who thinks he’s on board.)

Instant Recess isn’t a bad idea, it’s simply one idea. For some, it will work. But for the self-conscious, the reluctant, the male, there need to be options. Options such as more flexible work hours. Rather than prescribing a time and place to workout, a growing number of employers, especially in the high tech sector, worry less about whether employees can be tracked from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. than whether they get their work done. Come in at 7:30, take an hour at lunch to run, leave at 5:30? No problem, as long as the Pensky File is on the boss’s desk by morning. Subsidizing onsite exercise classes is a good idea as well.

And frankly, while 10 minutes is better than nothing, it’s not nearly enough. Nothing is more frustrating than doing what you think is the healthy thing only to reap none of the benefits. For most, that means losing weight, and if you’re just working out for 10 minutes, you’ll be doing some good for your body, but you won’t lose weight. And that’s a problem, because when it comes to the bottom line Instant Recess is about one thing.

Downsizing.

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