newsweek-related stories
Obnoxious gym habits -- Are you guilty?
Going to the gym is a personal thing -- when I'm there, I'm there for me (or, occasionally, for a really cool class). I wear clothes that are conducive to the workout I'm doing that day, and I generally don't worry too much about the other people there.However, there are occasions on which I can't help but notice some of the other people. Often it's when someone is grunting really loudly, but there are plenty of other examples of bad gym habits. In fact, Newsweek has come up with a list of Nine Most Obnoxious Gym Sins.
To see all nine, you can check out the article, or you can see some of the common ones in our gallery. Got something to add? Leave your gym gripe in the comments!
Fit Factor: The body politic
Diet & Weight Loss, Fitness, Celebs & Entertainment, Nutrition & Supplements
Come November 4th, 2008, a new President will be elected into office in the United States. This much we know almost with certainty. What is not known, however, is who that person will be. While I would love to wax on about my political beliefs and who I think the next person will be to sit in the Oval Office, I have no interest in causing a war of words -- polemics aren't really our thing here on That's Fit. Things concerning the human body? Yeah, that's more our speed. To that end, there are very specific physical traits that many of our past Presidents have possessed, some of which may serve as a predictor of who will win the race for the White House. Newsweek recently used this criteria to create a physical feature-by-feature breakdown of how John McCain and Barack Obama may fare come November.
Here's a summary of their findings...
HEIGHT: Four of the last nine elections have been won by the shorter candidate, giving the 5'7" McCain a fighting chance against the 6'3" Obama. However, in most of those cases the height disparity was not significant, whereas in this case McCain is giving up 6 inches to Obama. The last time anyone overcame such a blatant difference in height was in 1852. What's more, we haven't had a shorter-than-average President since the 5'6" Benjamin Harrison. Advantage: Obama
Fit Factor: Nap time
Womens Health, HealthWatch, Diet & Weight Loss, Men's Health
It's 9:30 in the morning. If you wake up at 7:00 every day, you've now been churning and burning for a solid two and a half hours. Shower: check. Shave: check. Get dressed: check. Eat breakfast: check. Drive to work: check. Log on: check. Begin task number one of 1,000: check. Respond to 25 emails: check. Leave first meeting of the day: check. And that just about brings you to where you are now at 9:30. If you're already feeling like you need a nap, it's clearly for good reason.What are the chances that your boss will let you curl up under your desk for twenty minutes to catch some Z's? Well, if you happen to work for any of the growing number of companies in the U.S. that are allowing employees to take power naps, your chances are actually quite good.
Newsweek reports that 37 percent of Americans nap during the day, citing a survey by the National Sleep Foundation. What's more, about a third of people surveyed stated that their employer permitted naps, and that more than a quarter said they would sleep at work if they were allowed to. While this may seem counterproductive to improving employee output, it actually offers both employees and employers long-term benefits.
The cholesterol IQ test
Healthy Aging, Womens Health, HealthWatch, Diet & Weight Loss, Fitness, Celebs & Entertainment, Nutrition & Supplements, Men's Health
As part of National Heart Month, Newsweek offered a multi-page advertisement for Vytron, a pharmaceutical drug that was supposedly shown to reduce bad cholesterol more effectively than either Crestor or Lipitor. However, unlike most ads, included in these four or five pages were articles on how to keep your heart healthy -- with or without resorting to the product that was paying for them.
Always a sucker for a good quiz, I was immediately drawn to the "Test Your Cholesterol IQ," a somewhat eye-opening look at how misunderstood this silent killer can sometimes be. Here's a quick, paraphrased version of some of the questions that appear in this True or False quiz.
1. There's Nothing Good About Cholesterol. - False. Cholesterol is required for life. The problem is when there is too much of it in the blood, increasing the risk of heart disease and heart attack.
2. When It Comes to Cholesterol, Less is More. - False. Depending on the type of cholesterol you're talking about, low cholesterol levels aren't always best. For bad (LDL) cholesterol, yes, this is the case, as an elevated level can cause plaque build-up on the walls of arteries and other blood vessels. But, insofar as good (HDL) cholesterol is concerned, no, this is not the case. That's because good cholesterol removes cholesterol from the blood and artery walls and to the liver, from where it can later be eliminated from the body.
Keeping secrets: Is it healthy?
Healthy Habits, Diet & Weight Loss, Motivation
You can call me the extroverted type. Sharing is caring -- like it or leave it -- with inner secrets slim to none. Personally, I usually find a tremendous amount of comfort and relief in getting secrets off my mind. Be free, I cry, be free! When I've confided my silliest and darkest stories eating me up inside to friends or complete strangers, I often found I wasn't alone with many of them. Will I be sharing some of them here? Not today, but let's talk about secrets. Is keeping secrets a healthy thing to do or not?Last year I was completely turned on and freaked out by Frank Warren's PostSecret project, where hundreds of people could confess anything from munching on boogers (sorry) to having experienced childhood abuse by sending a postcard to an address in Maryland. From those postcards a book was born called PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives. Checking out the PostSecret site will give you an idea of some of the stories shared, and apparently how revealing has lead to healing.
On the flipside, I just came across this Newsweek piece which discusses why keeping secrets can be a healthy thing. The article first speaks on the new Secret deodorant campaign urging women to spill the beans and applauding them for doing such. Moving onto how and why keeping secrets can be considered an ill and toxic thing for the mind and body, researchers went on to explore to the effects and health of people carrying secrets. In their study scheduled to be published in the Journal of Personality in October, they found that people hiding something had fewer psychosomatic symptoms than those with clear consciences. They also note that well-chosen secrets can preserve a more idealized and healthier self-image.
Take a look at both sites and let us know what your take on confessing, confiding, sharing and shouting your secrets is. Does it make you feel good or sick and sad inside?























