Fact of the Day .CA

Old Lady

I probably hear this the most of any objection when I try to get people started exercising by giving them my testimony as a former fatass who lost 60 pounds in about 6 months. When people say, “Oh, just wait until you’re older, ” I hear, “I’m looking for things to blame for my lack of initiative, and my peers’ collective lack of initiative is an easy target.” The problem is, obesity is an peidemic that knows no age barriers. 2/3 of American adults 18 and above are overweight. It’s not age, it’s attitude.

It’s true that older people tend to have more responsibilities than younger people do, and thus less time to get out. But to quote the 95-year-old fitness guru and juicer-hawker Jack LaLanne, “It’s not that tough. If you can’t afford a half hour, two or three times a week, to take care of the most important person in the world, yourself, you gotta be sick.”

If you want to be overweight, that’s your decision. I’ve learned in my professional tenure that you can’t change people’s lives unless they want them to be changed. But don’t blame your low fitness level on your age. There’s at least one trainer at every gym I go to who’s in their 50′s. And 19 year old kids who get winded going up and down our stairs. My own grandma remains mobile and mentally acute at the age of 88. Everyone can be as fit as they choose to be, by living like a fit person, through actions and not just words. Citing nonexistant age-induced decreases in fitness level to a) justify your own laziness and b)downplay the achievements of others is just uncalled for.

Muscle Milk

Muscle Milk is a protein supplement which has been carefully patterned after a mother’s breast milk, and is said to include the same healthy anabolic properties. Yes – you heard that right, a mother’s breast milk. The idea being, a growing bodybuilder can also benefit from the same anabolic properties of breast milk.  “You know, babies grow really fast, so if I, a grown adult, drink it, then I will grow really fast.  Actually collecting breast milk would probably get me arrested, so I’ll just buy Muscle Milk.” 

One thing I will give Muscle Milk: It tastes AMAZING!!!  But, as is often the case, it owes itsrich, creamy taste to the fact that it has lots of fat.  More fat in fact, than a double-dipped waffle cone at Ben and Jerry’s, which probably tastes a lot better.  Needless to say, anyone looking for muscle definition should steer clear

There’s also the issue of how much protein it has.  32 grams in the average serving.  Do you know how much protein your body actually needs?  About .12-.18% of your body weight.  For someone who’s 200 pounds like me, it maxes out at 80 grams.  Because you don’t need much protein, your body isn’t equipped to process much at any given time, any amount over about 25 grams just goes right through your system exactly as it came in.

What it is good for is people (like me) trying to gain both muscle and body fat, and if its advertisers were honest about that instead of marketing it to people with goals for just musclebuilding, I would have no problem with it.  But it’s marketing makes promises that the product doesn’t live up to, and the company has propelled itself into the area of fitness myth propogation just to make more money.  It’s sad, because Cytosport have a good product, just not good for everyone, in fact not good for 90% of the people who buy it.

Magnet Therapy

(By the way, Mesmer also is a creator of hypnotic healing (hence the term mesmerizing, and we all know how well that works.)

And, despite NO hard evidence that it actually works, the ball is still rolling more than 200 years later.  A cottage industry has sprouted and is generating about $150 million a year producing magnetic insoles, bracelets, knee braces, and even magnets, all claiming miraculous healing powers.  The most commonly cited reason is that magnets are attracted to the iron in your blood, and you can draw blood to any part of your body to speed the healing process.  Which brings us to the interactive portion of today’s blog.  Follow these directions below to participate

1)Prick your finger and place a drop of your blood next to a magnet.

2)Watch your blood not react at all.

There simply aren’t enough iron atoms in your red blood cells to form a magnetic surface.  To put it simply, magnets don’t affect our bodies because we’re not made of magnetic stuff.  The only benefit magnet therapy has is increasing the wealth of the people who choose to perpetuate the myth.  You might as well just burn a pile of money in a ritual sacrifice to cure your pain.  It least that would look kind of awesome.  That’s more than I can say for magnetic bracelets.

Shake Weight

It makes me question my hope for humanity’s future when THIS sells more than about 3 units

Hilarious Shake Weight Exercise for Women

This ridiculous and less-than-subtly suggestive ad was seen on many TV shows, most notably Ellen, and tens of thousands of these devices have been sold!  Which must mean that it works, right?  Nobody would carry a device like that around unless it actually lived up to the claims made by its manufacturer, right?

THE CLAIMS MADE BY ITS MANUFACTURER

• The Shake Weight works with a method called Dynamic Inertia in which you work your muscles by shaking the weight instead of lifting it.   (Dynamic inertia is an oxymoron.)
• A scientific study showed that this product is more effective than regular weight training in many aspects. (I tried to find reference to the study on their website, to know what aspects were tested, but couldn’t so I don’t know who conducted this research and what the exact findings were.  As I’ve stated before, if results of a study are hard to find, it’s usually not because they’re good.)
• That you can get terrific results in just 6 minutes a day.  (If you believe that, then you deserve to walk around looking like a callgirl for The Invisible Man)
• The Shake Weight can help women get that long muscle growth instead of the bulky growth which men prefer.   Traditional weight training machines and dumbbells is what causes bulky muscle growth. (The real cause is genetics.  Women generally don’t have enough testosterone to get really bulky muscles.)  (There’s also one for men.  It’s the exact same product, except now it suddenly STIMULATES bulky muscle growth instead of preventing it.)

There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that using this machine is any more stimulating than waving your arms in front of you.  This is one of those products that proves how easy it is to delude people into buying pretty much anything.  

Blood Type Diets

“Blood type is the key to the body’s ability to differentiate self from non-self.”  

See what I mean?  Inane babble.  Blood type is based on the presence or absence of antigens on the surface of red blood cells.  The antigens can be made of pretty miuch anything, depending on the blood group system.  And it is in no way in control of or affected by your diet.  Your diet should be determined by your caloric and nutritional needs, with compensations for any dietary limitations imposed by your body or your own choice.

 The real explanation is pretty boring, huh?  Let’s go back to the crazy guy.

• Blood group O is  the hunter, the earliest human blood group. The diet recommends that this blood group eat a higher protein diet.  O blood type was the first blood type, originating 30,000 years ago.   (Yeah, and 30,000 years ago, people also lived a maximum of about 30 years, in large part because their diets were awful.)
• Blood group A  the cultivator ,  a more recently evolved blood type, dating back from the dawn of agriculture, 20,000 years ago. The diet recommends that individuals of blood group A eat a diet emphasizing vegetables and free of red meat, a more vegetarian food intake. (Get it?  People started growing food around this time, so your antegens need more vegetables today.)
• Blood group B is the nomad, associated with a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system. The blood type diet claims that people of blood type B are the only ones who can thrive on dairy products and estimates blood type B arrived 10,000 years ago. 
• Blood group AB, according to D’Adamo, the enigma, the most recently evolved type, arriving less than 1,000 years ago. In terms of dietary needs, his blood type diet treats this group as an intermediate between blood types A and B.  (So do you eat dairy or don’t you?  Peter D’Adamo doesn’t say)

We (me) here at Fitness Myth Monday, try to be objective.  So let’s look at the D’Adamo’s clinical trial record for his blood type diets.

• In his book, he mentions being in the 8th year of a 10 year study.  The book came out in 1997, and the results of the study were never published.
• In his other book, about curing arthritis with blood type diets (?!?!?!), he assured us that a clinical trial was pending, and he just couldn’t wait for his claims to be backed up by fact before subjecting all of us to them.  The results have never been published.
• A self-reported internet survey with 6627 respondants conducted by D’Adamo’s website reported that people following the Blood Type Diet for a period of one month or more, in 71-78% of cases, had improvement in a variety of health conditions. The most common reported improvement was with weight.  These results are self-reported and there’s no reference to how this information was gathered.  And, in a 1990 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans said they’ve been able to use ESP.

Here’s the purpose of  all those bullet points.  If your diet is actually working and effective, you’re getting those results published immedeately.  You’re not mentioning studies and then not telling people how they ended.   A withholding of results is an indication thart he doesn’t want them to be seen.

This diet preys on a weak point that is the carcass to the fad diet’s vutlure; something that people have heard of but actually know nothing about.  Everyone knows their blood type, but very few know what it actually means.  And the answer to how different it makes people is, not much.  And the answer to how it relates to what you should and shouldn’t eat is, not at all.