Getting Better One Step at a Time
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It’s Never Just One Thing
Some say you can’t outrun your fork, or “weight loss happens in the kitchen.” You can outrun your fork — if you love running (or don’t tend to eat a lot), and as long as you don’t get injured (and knocked out of your routine). And you can definitely out-eat your exercise schedule, as many…
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Cleansing the Mind of Snake Oil
You can’t actually “detox” your body, but a market eager to sell you One Weird Trick and various magic elixirs makes it impossible to go very far without seeing a pitch for it. The reality is both harder (a single purchase won’t restore health) and easier (regular walking and sensible eating can). So why do…
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5 Lessons About Exercise You Can Learn From Your Dog
Being in love with exercise is a minority attitude, but regular activity offers so many health and well-being benefits that anyone should be able to find it pleasant, even if they’d rather be curled up on the couch with a book. If you’re struggling with the willpower to exercise regularly, you could probably use some…
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Early Weight-Loss Gimmicks and Plans
A few years ago, NPR’s Scott Hensley attended an event at the Library of Congress about modern attitudes toward obesity and weight-loss. “Annals Of Weight-Loss Gimmicks: From Bile Beans To Obesity Soap” features a slide show and a meal-plan from a 19th century diet book (William Banting’s Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, which…
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Problem Areas
Especially if you’re a woman, you probably have a specific part of your body you wish you could change — it’s an unfortunate consequence of a thousand cultural cues and media representations. The fitness industry and women’s magazines are happy to market to this wish with their thousands of pitches about toning your arms, flattening…
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One Weird Trick?
The fitness industry is full of hard sells for simple solutions. Some of them are just junk, but most of them have a grain of truth to them, which is part of what makes it so hard to figure out what will help you. Effective weight management and healthy habits are never down to just…
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Strategies and Goals, Tactics and Steps
Some of us excel at seeing the big picture, and others are better prepared to just roll up their sleeves and work. If you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before, you’ll need to be able to do both. Goals: Goals are the end results we want. Examples include “do a pull-up unassisted,” “jog…
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A Simple Trick for Better Eating
What if you forgot completely about everything you ate as soon as you were finished eating it? A (very small) study in people with amnesia found that they would simply eat another meal if it was served outside their memory window, even if it was shortly afterward. (Interestingly, they showed a preference for different foods…
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Stop Making Sense, and Start Getting Strong!
Do you like getting swole? Do you also enjoy the band Talking Heads? Then do we have the workout video for you! There’s plenty of snow on the ground in the Northeast right now, making home workouts more appealing than ever. And it turns out anything can be a workout DVD — even a concert…