No or Little Exercise

We were looking for: ways to exists, reasons to be. Then we encountered the same research but interpreted two different ways in the media. While watching the NBC Nightly news with Brian Williams we heard what "couch potatoes" love to hear that exercise doesn't work even if you do it for an hour. If you aren't thin you aren't going to lose weight even if you work out for an hour. Then we see in the LA Times, News Channel 8, Reuters, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal that women need to exercise at least an hour or in Reuter's case that an hour "may be too much" for women.

How do they get that from this conclusion?

"Among women consuming a usual diet, physical activity was associated with less weight gain only among women whose BMI was lower than 25. Women successful in maintaining normal weight and gaining fewer than 2.3 kg over 13 years averaged approximately 60 minutes a day of moderate-intensity activity throughout the study." - The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) March 2010.

We love it! We love it! We love it! We are "couchers" from way back. Another reason to not get up early or to cancel that gym membership. It's in the genes after all. Commercials are for stretching and bathroom breaks. We don't mind the leg lift that comes from lifting them off the lounger but after so long even that gets to be difficult.

NBC and Reuters got it right and everybody else got it wrong. That's why we exists. The news isn't always the facts and the facts aren't always the news.We will admit that the researchers in the talking heads say something completely different than what their published research concludes. NBC even used the contradiction in their report and you can see and hear it below as well.

The video says that to simply maintain your weight and not get fat that exercising for at least one hour a day is the minimum daily requirement. You can't do that from the couch - we don't love that. Again that's not the conclusion in the research even if the researchers don't standup and say it.

We'd rather go with, if we have to exercise, John Gray's "super exercise" that only requires us to stand for at least ten (10) minutes and shake in a non-vigorous way. We haven't reviewed the science and research behind it but it requires a lot less sweating and is a lot easier than doing what the women in the video are doing when working out. We admit that our desire to do something "super" and requires less effort is whats most appealing about the Ph.D's advice more than anything else. Since it's unverified we also have to admit that as well. You might want to check out the PBS broadcast for yourself: Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice. We want to believe. We really want to believe.

You didn't put it together but we did the news from Cornell University where they studied art work through art history comparing food portion size as compared to head size to current portions. As we've gotten older the research suggests that our food serving size has increased. This is especially noticable when we visit other countries where their health exceeds our own and compare their individual servings to the United States standard portions. The utinsels and the food portions are much much smaller than the standard American sizes.

As published in the ChronicleOnline by Cornell University:

"The size of food portions and plates in more than four dozen depictions of the Last Supper -- painted over the past 1,000 years -- have gradually gotten bigger and bigger, according to a Cornell study published in The International Journal of Obesity (April, online March 23), a peer-reviewed publication."

This information is important only because Pearlie Mae would also say: "You eyes are bigger than your stomach" when we piled our plates so high with food and couldn't finish everything on our plates. Not eating more seem like something we can do from the comfort of our loungers or couches. Just use smaller plates, have a variety of food and just have smaller portions. That's still alot easier than exercising! If we have to exercise we can stand and shake per John Gray's suggestion and call it a day!