Real Men Go To Sleep

I have a ton of photos from the NorCal Regionals to edit and upload to the Interwebs, but:

1. I've been up since 3:50 a.m.,
2. The effects of my 36 ounces of morning coffee (not kidding) have finally started to wear off, and
3. I'm not particularly interested in getting fat, aging faster and drastically lowering my testosterone levels.

From WBEZ in Chicago (dammit, I want to be Ira Glass):

Losing sleep might sap men’s testosterone, according to new research by Chicago scientists. Men release most of their testosterone during sleep, so University of Chicago professor Eve Van Cauter wanted to see if less sleep meant less of the hormone.

She recruited volunteers and restricted their sleep to just five hours per night for eight days. At the end of that stretch, her team took blood samples to test for hormone levels. They found an average 15 percent drop in testosterone.

“And 15 percent is not an insignificant amount, since it is about the amount that occurs with normal aging by 10 to 15 years,” Van Cauten said.

So in one respect, a week of bad sleep is like aging a decade or more.

Hell to the no. The photos will have to wait. Sorry, folks.

This is a great reminder that sleeplessness is not a sign of virility. It is, in fact, the very opposite. So go to bed.

'Night, y'all.

This Map Makes Me Sad

Check out this time-lapse video of the Centers for Disease Control's maps showing rising obesity rates in the U.S.:



And yet we're eating fewer calories and less dietary fat. Hmm.

[Source]

[Previously: The American "Paradox"]

Excuses, Excuses

University of Minnesota researchers have found that parents of young kids "tend to neglect their own health and are therefore generally fatter than their childless peers."

The results of the study were published today in Pediatrics, and in addition to other stats, researchers found that mothers with children under 5 years old on average consume 368 more calories per day than women who don't have kids.

The researchers are laser-focused on "calories and saturated fat" as the major drivers of obesity. I think they're wrong, but that's besides the point.

What really dismays me is the widespread acceptance of parenthood as a valid excuse to be unhealthy.

Here's a typical news article about the University of Minnesota's findings:

Sheri Lee Schearer, 34, says the results reflect her life with a 5-month-old son. Before, when she worked as a paralegal, she had time to make a spinach salad or go out for one. Now, as a stay-at-home mom in southern New Jersey, she grabs whatever is easiest and quickest.

"I often find that his needs come before mine," she said. "Do I get to the gym? No. Do I eat always healthy? No."

(Wha--? Did I miss something? When did making a FRIGGIN' SPINACH SALAD become a complex and time-consuming task?)

And here's another report:

“I think parents make sacrifices to their own detriment for their kids,” says Lori Francis, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Biobehavioral Health at The Pennsylvania State University. 

As a nutrition researcher and the mother of a 2-year-old, Francis says she felt her own life echoed in the study’s results. “I have a very picky eater, so I go through all kinds of acrobatics just to get him to eat, and what he doesn’t eat, I’m eating, or my husband’s eating,” she says.

Put another way, these folks claim they're getting fat because their schedules make it impossible for them to exercise or prepare halfway-healthy meals. And there's no way they can stop themselves from devouring the highly-processed leftover crap that their kids refuse to eat. Also? They're doing this as a "sacrifice" for their children. Such martyrs!

I call bullshit. I just don't buy the argument that becoming a parent means you get a free pass to Baskin Robbins and a permanent spot on the couch.

More after the jump...

Hump Day Link Dump

Enjoy.

• Regis Philbin shirtless: Not even close to being as bad as you think.

• Foxhunting is so 2005. If you want to hang with the cool kids, hunt humans.

• The Captain Morgan workout video isn’t nearly as funny as: (1) it thinks it is, or (2) the actual P90X videos it's parodying.

• Looks like there’s a correlation between Wal-Mart store openings and people getting fat(ter).

• Speed up the earth’s rotation and you’ll get fat and uninhibited. And if you’re already fat and uninhibited, you’ll probably become more so.

• Is dietary fat at the root of breast cancer? Or sugar? Denise Minger breaks it down.

• Not a surprise to us barefoot fanatics, but orthotics may not be the solution after all.

• Don't be a smug vegan. (Be a smug caveman instead.)

• I prefer this subway video to this subway video.

• Shocking: The L.A. Times reports that Cocoa Krispies aren't actually healthy for your kids.

• Remember the baby-swingers? Here’s an interview with one.

Friends Make You Fat

Especially Monica.

But really: The people you hang with can drastically impact your body weight and fitness -- "as much as 40-70% percent." Check it.

(Source: Consumerist)

Chris Pratt Gets Fat

It ain't all about weight loss, people.

Sometimes, you just need to get fat. Especially if you're Chris Pratt, who plays chubby slacker Andy Dwyer on "Parks & Recreation," and your job depends on getting and staying doughy after a summer of (gasp!) physical fitness.

In this slideshow, he lets us in on his weight gain tips.

My favorite of the bunch: "'If you see something, eat something.' This is key -- I cannot stress enough how important it is to eat many things."

Big Baby

He's ten months old and as heavy as a first grader. This can't be a good thing.

(Source: Tabloid Prodigy)

Exercise and Weight Gain Go Together Like Daris and Orange Afros

On Tuesday night's episode of "The Biggest Loser," the final four contestants -- Michael, Ashley, Daris and Koli -- were sent home and given a month to train for a marathon.

After shedding 150 pounds (and trimming back his Chia curls), Daris appears to be in the best shape of the bunch. He's under 200 pounds, and can exercise like a maniac. During his training runs, he must have pushed himself harder than anyone expected -- Jillian Michaels circled in a helicopter for what seemed like an eternity before spotting Daris running around the open fields of rural Oklahoma in his orange t-shirt.

But as NBC's eerie-green night camera footage shows, intense training for a 26.2-mile footrace makes Daris hungry. He raids his kitchen late at night (but remembers to turn on the videocamera and aim it at the refrigerator first), and confesses that he can't help himself.

His hardcore training paid off, though: Daris broke the "Biggest Loser Marathon" record by finishing the race in just 4 hours and 2 minutes -- more than 2 hours ahead of second-place finisher Koli, who looked like he was going to seriously fucking die of cardiac arrest when he crossed the finish line. Michael and Ashley strolled in sometime after everyone stopped caring.

At the weigh-in, however, our man Daris was the only contestant to have gained weight, going from 195 to 197 (even after the removal of 65% of his hair)! Cue the flabbergasted stares and accusatory WTFs from Jillian and Bob, whose eyes looked like they were going to shoot across the stage and riddle Daris' naked torso with holes. Daris, you sabotaged yourself! You have no self-control! Stop eating like you're stoned! AAAAAAGH!

But let's take a deep breath and consider: Was Daris' weight gain all that unexpected?
The guy trained for a marathon by busting his ass. You don't go from looking like a life-sized Cabbage Patch Kid to running an almost sub-4:00 marathon by kicking back. And guess what exercise does to your appetite?

As I've mentioned before, intense physical activity makes people hungrier. I know: This isn't rocket science. But for some reason, the "Biggest Loser" trainers appear to pin the blame on Daris' lack of willpower rather than on the physical demands he put on himself in order to kick everyone else's ass in the race. The harder you train, the greater the likelihood you're going to eat more. As Time Magazine put it:

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," says Eric Ravussin, Chair in Diabetes and Metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn't as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like "The Biggest Loser" -- or for that matter, from magazines like this one. The basic problem is that while it is true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

There are plenty of reasons to squeeze in some vigorous physical activity. But on a show like "The Biggest Loser," where the name of the game is pure weight loss (and not setting marathon records or even achieving optimal health, for that matter), simply cranking up the intensity level of exercise isn't going to do the trick.

Link Dump

For those of you who think the KFC Double Down is for pussies, check out IHOP's Pancake Stackers -- a "crustless cheesecake" sandwiched between two pancakes, topped with artificially flavored fruit compote, and served with eggs, bacon and hash browns. And it contains only 1,250 calories!

I bet the increasingly girthy fast food fans over in Qatar can't wait to try out this barftastic combo.

Speaking of emetic mash-ups, half-spinning/half-yoga classes are popping up all over the place. (Well, New York, anyway.)

But before you bike like crazy, slurp down an ICEE first. As the New York Times reports, "researchers have found they can delay the time to utter exhaustion by getting people a bit chilled" prior to exercise. And apparently:

all you have to do is drink an ice slurry, also known as a slushie, before exercising. In a new study, [it was found] that young male recreational athletes who drank a syrup-flavored ice slurry just before running on a treadmill in hot room could keep going for an average of 50 minutes before they had to stop. When they drank only syrup-flavored cold water, they could run for an average of 40 minutes.

And while we're on the topic of food, we eat too much salt, as this handy (and scary) infographic shows:


Good thing PepsiCo's on the case. Rather than changing the flavor of its overly-processed snacks, PepsiCo's investing time and effort into rejiggering the crystal structure of salt to keep us happily addicted to the company's abhorrent (but tasty!) junk food.

By the way, soda makes you age faster. There's nothin' like being fat and old!

But don't worry: The Wall Street Journal tells its fat cat readers that carrying around an extra ten pounds is no big deal. (Best quote: "And it can make you look younger, too"!)

Lastly, I've been eying the Tough Mudder (which the New York Times just wrote about). But I suspect that -- as with most things that involve barbed wire, flaming hay bales, copious amounts of mud, and two-to-three hours of sustained physical exertion -- I probably won't follow through.

But the Tough Mudder home workout looks pretty decent.

Freakishly Common

A century ago, Chauncy Morlan was a sideshow "fat man" who made his living displaying his "freakish" size to audiences who marveled at his girth.

But in a day and age (and country) where almost two-thirds of us are overweight or obese, Mr. Morlan doesn't appear very much out of the ordinary at all, does he?

(Source: Neatorama)

Because World Records Are Super-Important

A New Jersey mother of two is vying to become the fattest woman on earth. Her target weight? 1,000 pounds.

Donna Simpson claims to make money by charging people to watch her eat on the Internet, and is evidently unfazed by the stigmatization of fat people:

When Donna was 19 she met her first husband, who worked as a chef at a steak restaurant. "He worked night shifts and would come home at 2 or 3am and bring the leftovers with him," she said. "We'd stay up and eat huge piles of steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy with butter. I started gaining weight quickly and my husband liked it. He said I was sexier when I was bigger, and I felt happier too."