If you were a cheetah, your calorie burn rate would be 33% higher!
* According to a recent study, primates (including humans) burn “50 percent fewer calories per day than other animals.” (I’m assuming that the article means on a pound for pound basis; otherwise, it would make no sense to compare us to animals ranging from squirrels to elephants.) Anyway, the article goes on to note that “a human – even someone with a very physically active lifestyle – would need to run a marathon each day just to approach the average daily energy expenditure of a mammal their size.” Run a marathon each day? Well, what are you waiting for? Lace up and get out there!
* Feeling jealous of baseball players who get to “enhance” their on-field performance with steroids and other drugs? No problem, just start popping acetaminophen and see your interval sprint times speed up! NOTE: The study is real, but the advice is not!!!! As the blog author notes, “There’s the potential to increase risk of injury; drugs like Tylenol may in some contexts contribute to liver, kidney or GI damage….”
* FitBit and other gadgets can be great tools to help you achieve fitness goals, but they aren’t going to make it happen by themselves. Six suggestions for how to make them work for you. I guess that makes them much like gym memberships, of which as much as 80 percent are essentially wasted. (I should admit, however, that being in the 20 percent, I love that I can almost always get on the Concept2 rowing machine for 10K without feeling like I’m hogging it.)
* Here are some more suggestions on how to stick with New Year’s fitness resolutions. I especially liked this one: “Promise yourself an hour of television after 30 minutes of walking through the neighborhood, and the walk can seem more pleasurable.” (Apparently TV is a better motivator than even cash, according to some research.) But hey, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, why separate TV from fitness? The combination of Kindle Fire + free wi-fi at the gym + Amazon Prime (free streaming of lots of TV and movies) = treadmill nirvana. I’ve been known to stick around longer for “just one more episode of The Shield.”
* Remember that study that found that people who were somewhat overweight (but not obese) according to the body mass index lived longer than people who were normal weight? Not so fast…. This study found no “obesity paradox” as far as diabetes risks go.
* Looking for books on running? Here’s the top running-related books from 2013, according to the cross-country coach at the University of Houston.
* Exercising versus training: “Training is physical activity performed for the purpose of satisfying a long-term performance goal, and is therefore about the process instead of the workouts themselves.” Oh, well, then I’m always training, since I have these time goals that I’m obsessed about….
* Here’s another one of those “top 5 reasons to run” posts, including the physiological explanation of “runner’s high.”
