That's Fit

Last night, I watched in both horror and hysterics as Bear Grylls, one of my past Celebrity Fitzness Report interview guests, devoured "too many" worms in Zambia -- which left him with an atrocious case of diarrhea. Imagine that!!! He cooked and ate a few big, gooey, spiny worms that he found on a tree, then continued to groan in agony throughout the rest of the show due to his "killer diarrhea." The guy is a combination of handsome, athletic, daring, brilliant, and accidentally hysterical all at the same time.

If you've never seen Bear's show Man vs. Wild on Discovery Channel, it's about time you check it out. Bear was a survival expert in the British Special Air Services (21 SAS). He's an elite adventurer and stops at nothing to teach us how to survive if we ever happen to get stranded in the wild. A part of survival is finding safe and energy-filled food sources. Normally I find this disgusting; typically I watch much of Man vs. Wild with my eyes under my blanket. Lately though, I've been peeking out, because Bear's facial expressions in response to his nasty food choices are side-splitting.

Watching him climb up waterfalls and run through the brush agonizing over diarrhea was priceless. My husband and I squirmed as he ate the worms, giggled as Bear grimaced while chewing on them, and then rolled in laughter as he suffered through his tummy troubles.

Sometimes incentives are all it takes to motivate the masses to lose weight. For the masses of breast cancer survivors out there, here's an incentive: New research indicates that for every 11 pounds a woman gains following her diagnosis, the chances of the disease proving fatal rise 14 percent. While I didn't previously know these precise numbers, I was aware of the fact that carrying extra weight hurts chances of breast cancer survival. This is, in large part, why I've been tweaking my diet and exercise practices over the past seven months. I'd gained 10 pounds throughout my own treatment. Now I've lost 15. In light of this new finding, I'm certainly relieved I'm not going in the other direction.

This new study -- paid for by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Breast Cancer Foundation -- is not completely definitive at this point, but it does supply strong evidence that controlling weight gain may be especially important after breast cancer. For women considered obese, researchers found the death risk to be more than twice that of women with a normal weight. Pretty compelling, I think.

The sad reality of breast cancer treatment is that it often causes women, like me, to gain weight. And while this may not be preventable throughout the treatment phase, it's critical that survivors get back on track as soon as possible so they can keep from gaining weight over the long term. This is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Curious to know how celebrities squeeze fitness into their daily lives? Want to know the secrets of the stars? Bi-weekly our That's Fit fitness expert Fitz sits down with the celebs we want to know more about, and digs out their great and not-so-great methods to staying healthy.

This week I'm featuring one of the coolest guys in the world. A real life action hero who actually couldn't answer some of my questions, because he's been sworn to military secrecy. I love it! Bear Grylls is the star of Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel.

Bear was a survival expert in the British Special Air Services (21 SAS). He's obsessed with adventure as well as breaking rules and records. Bear is a brilliant outdoors man, built like a guy movie producers choose for their action flicks, and handsome enough to make girls want to watch him eat zebra guts. A fantastic combination for television.

To shoot each episode of Man vs. Wild, 33 year old, Bear gets dumped out of a helicopter in to the wildest most extreme regions in the world where tourists are likely to become stranded. He then gets to work trying to teach our sorry butts how to escape eminent doom. On Man vs. Wild, Bear has: thrown himself into both quicksand and an ice lake to demonstrate exit strategies, hidden from a sandstorm inside of a camel he'd previously gutted, and chowed down on everything from elephant dung to goat testicles. All for our benefit.

While interviewing Bear, I started the conversation off by telling him that I love the show, but spend half of the run time covering my eyes and ears. He didn't seem surprised. I often inquired about why he is willing to go to such extremes. He also didn't seem phased; unlike you and I....hiding inside of a camel doesn't seem appalling to him. The man is the real deal. He takes his job seriously and is literally willing to do anything to survive. I think I'm inviting Bear to vacation with me from now on.

Fitz: How did you get into this whole survival thing?

Bear: I was a survival expert in the Royal Marines. We had a tight unit and I loved it. I served twice.

Fitz: What kind of exciting missions did you go on in the military?

Bear: I can't tell you much, it's all kind of hush-hush! But in one of my unfortunate incidents, I broke my back in three places during a free-falling parachute accident in Africa.

Fitz: Ouch! I'm impressed that you recovered and came back for more. What kind of kid were you?

Bear: Oh God! I was always dirty and causing lots of trouble. Kind of like I am now.

Fitz: How did you end up with your own show on Discovery Channel?

Bear: I had done a television series about the French Foreign Legion in the UK. The people from Discovery Channel invited me to do Man vs Wild. They had to ask three times, because the first two times I told them no. I felt like they wanted some 'smart guy' and I was not what they were looking for.

Never a dull moment with Bear Grylls. The star of Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild and I spoke last week during a long interview in which he will be featured in an upcoming Celebrity Fitzness Report. Definitely 45 of the most interesting minutes in my life. I can't imagine anyone having more incredible tales.

Bear told me about visiting the Sahara Desert in Africa and enduring the extreme temperatures, highs of 130 and lows of 20 degrees ferenheit. What he didn't tell me is what I saw last night while watching his show. He was given a camel from some local tribesmen that he met on his journey, and showed how to skin it to make a blanket (which he slept with later that night). Fun! He also demonstrated how to remove the water reservoirs from the camels humps in order to drink. Tasty! But wait ...there's more!

Interesting research out of the U.S. and Europe this past week, as it was concluded that the season in which a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer can affect his survival rate from the disease.

Summer and fall months seemed to give an increased survival rate to those with prostate cancer.

In what I consider to be pretty interesting as a conclusion of why these months offer some kind of better protection, the researchers referenced that higher amounts of Vitamin D are taken in by the body during those seasons due to increased outside activity and sunlight exposure.

Men and women all over are prepping to walk and run their butts off this October, all in the name of breast cancer and the month dedicated to this deadly disease. There's the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and Susan G. Komen 3-Day, to name a few. These events will raise awareness, funds, even hope. This is all so important. What I like about these charitable causes, though, is that they center around fitness.

There seems no other appropriate way to honor those fighting and losing their battles with breast cancer than by pounding the pavement. Exercise is critical in the prevention of cancer. It helps alleviate the burdens of cancer treatment. And it helps ensure survival of a disease the American Cancer Society reports will strike 178,480 women and kill 40,460 women in the United States during 2007.

If you've not yet registered to make your own strides, consider walking or running in a local event. Or just start walking and running. It's good for breast cancer. It's good for your health.

Some of the time the posts on That's Fit can be a bit gloomy -- stories about all the things that will give you cancer and how death rates are rising because of obesity, aren't exactly feel good fare. While these posts offer important information, I always enjoy the pieces that are a bit silly or goofy, because if we only ever talked about the serious side of health, we'd be a pretty stressed-out bunch.

So for that reason, I thought that today I'd highlight a fun but serious series of books that offer real advice for ridiculous and bizarre situations. The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbooks tell readers, in detail, how to:

• Survive if your parachute fails to open,
• Build a shelter in the snow,
• Treat a scorpion sting,
• Crash-land a plane,
• Survive in a plummeting elevator,
• Stop a car with no brakes,
• Fend off a shark,
• Wrestle an alligator, and
• Use a defibrillator to restore a heartbeat, among other things.

There are books dedicated specifically to Travel, Dating and Sex and Work situations, in addition to the original handbook. While the books can be quite funny as it's unlikely that any of the crazy stuff they discuss will ever actually happen to you, the advice given is sound and you just never know when it might actually save your life.