Tag Archives: fitness

One more thing to exercise … your willpower

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Comments Off

  From Eileen: The hardest part of any diet and/or exercise program is … staying on the diet and/or exercise program.

 We get tired. We get tempted. We give in. We give up. It happens to us all.

 And then we berate ourselves for our lack of willpower.  A new book called, appropriately enough, “Willpower” by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, examines the mysteries and vagaries of self control. The authors compare willpower to a muscle that needs to be built up.

 In a review in the New York Times, noted author Steven Pinker writes:

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Is it possible to get fit in six minutes a week?

Posted on July 22, 2011 | Comments Off

What if you could get fit and possibly lose weight in just six minutes a week?

From Eileen:  The biggest excuse everyone has for not exercising, of course, is the “I don’t have enough time” lament.

 I’ve talked about that before in terms of importance … meaning if something is important enough to you, there’s always enough time. (There’s always enough time to eat and sleep and watch TV, right?)

 But here’s another way to attack the time problem:  What if you could get fit in just six minutes a week? Yep, six minutes a week!

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The workplace is making us unfit

Posted on May 26, 2011 | Comments Off

Sitting behind a desk is making us fat. Try a walking meeting when you can.

From Eileen:  Working is not good for your waistline. Or should we say sitting at a desk for eight hours a day and only getting up to wander over to the candy dish is definitely not good for your waistline and your overall fitness level?

In a study of the American workplace, a group of researchers found that 80 percent of jobs are sedentary or require or light activity, which is way down from 1960 when 50 percent of the jobs in the workforce required some sort of moderate activity.

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Get going with your fitness pre-mortem!

Posted on May 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Joe:  In a prior post about candy jars in the office, I urged you to think seriously about the states of mind that characterized people who voiced opinions about whether or not candy jars were acceptable artifacts in an office setting. If you have already done that, you probably noticed that most commentators – no matter whether they approved or disapproved of such jars – framed the issue in moralistic terms: Candy jars are not a problem in themselves, they said.  Instead, the problem was in the people who lacked self-discipline, suffered from feelings of inferiority, had issues hanging on from their childhood or, as one commenter put it, need therapy. As far as I can see, this kind of moralistic discourse does nothing to address the practical concerns of people who are trying to devise lasting changes in life habits.

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Fight rising gas costs! Ride your bike

Posted on April 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Eileen: On the way to work this morning, I almost drove off the side of the road. Gas at $4.09 per gallon!  Boy, I knew it was going up, but there’s something about that $4 mark that makes it completely outrageous.

 Outrageous enough to do something about it? Outrageous enough to get me to stop driving everywhere?

 As the weather starts to get nicer, I am always gung-ho about getting outside in the fresh air .  I love to take walks in the nature center or take my bike for a spin in the forest preserve near my house. There’s something about being outside that really clears my head.

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Sleep Disorders, Stereotypes and Fitness

Posted on March 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Joe: Can your own stereotypes cause you to misunderstand your weight and fitness issues?

When the causal network of a medical disorder is poorly understood, social stereotypes readily come into action. Recently, for example, some Chicago sports commentators fretted that Bulls star Derrick Rose’s ulcers signaled that he had become too emotionally intense. The ulcers-are-caused-by-stress stereotype had gone into high gear. It took a few days for the relationship between ulcers and bacteria to make its way to the public.

Lifehacker Whitson Gordon reminds us that sleep deprivation – and, by implication, insomnia – can lead to heavier eating:

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The only exercise equipment you’ll ever need

Posted on March 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Joe: What equipment is absolutely indispensable to you when starting a new diet or fitness regimen? Do you need free weights? Special apps for the phone so you can count calories? A heart rate monitor? A treadmill? Elaborate progressive resistance machines? Or, that perennial favorite, a fancy new set of gym clothes?

 All that stuff is nice. But indispensable? Maybe not.

 For most of my adult life, I’ve spent 7 to 10 hours a week in gyms. All kinds of training fads and equipment fetishes came and went. Throughout it all, one apparatus remained perpetually useful.

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