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Friday, July 04, 2008

Obesity on the Map

Obesity on the Map

And I mean literally. I found this little gem today: a map of the United States showing the distribution of obesity by state. The clear winner who could stand to be the "biggest loser" is Mississippi. The winner? Colorado. The catch? Obesity maps are based on Body Mass Index (BMI), which doesn't take into account how muscular you are. I wonder how California would place if they charted it based on body fat and lean mass instead? Click here to view the map.

Food Gets Fatter

While the debate rages for how and why we have an "obesity epidemic" one thing most people agree on is that portion sizes have steadily climbed the past few decades. Take a look at this food photo gallery and see how things like the bagel and cheeseburger have grown in size. The bagel is 210 calories heavier, which means if you have one of these every day for breakfast you are consuming enough calories to put on an extra pound of fat every other week.

Free Calorie Tracking Done Right

There are two issues I've always had with online nutrition tracking programs: the first is that you seem to either get "here is your meal plan generated for you" or "here is where you track your meals" as opposed to "this is a recommendation, but tell us what you really ate." The second is that it's tough to enter foods, and when I do take the time to enter all that information from my nutrition facts label, it would be nice if other people using the system could benefit as well.

The other stay I found a page that does all of this — and the best part? It does it for free. So check out The Daily Plate for a solution that I think is done right. You can enter your own foods, people can rate and vote on them, you can receive a suggested calorie recommendation, key in your exercises, and network with others. I keep talking about building my own software but if I keep finding gems like this one I might never have to ... it's a great site and while I'm not tracking calories in my current program, I keyed in a few days to see how it worked and the user interface is fantastic.

Good job, "Daily Plate!"

Muscle Mags May Backfire

I recently read that a study says muscle magazines may backfire. They mentioned giving false hope. Women reading magazines while training apparently become more depressed and anxious. The key takeaway is that many of the pictures are either not real or may have involved the use of illegal substances. While I'm a fan of photos for inspiration (you can see my inspirational pictures on the wall behind me in many of my gallery pictures, I do agree that most muscle magazines are not the way to build a better physique. I will give you two reasons:

1. If it were true that their "latest breakthrough program can put 2 inches on your arms in just two weeks!" then it would only take me a year to have biceps bigger around than my thighs. Sorry, it's not going to happen. Many are completely clueness when it comes to how much muscle you can TRULY gain (it's not much ... moreso when you start training, but natural bodybuilders who have been training for decades are excited to put on ONE POUND of lean mass in an ENTIRE YEAR).

2. You only have to thumb through a few advertisements to see who is funding the magazine. Here's a hint: the cover price and subscription fees have nothing to do with it. If there are dozens of ads for protein powder, guess what? You're likely to find articles that say the only way to gain mass is to eat a lot of protein. Lots of fat burner advertisements? You'll probably see a review of the "latest fat burning supplements that work" and surprisingly, several in the top ten may "coincidentally" have ads in the same magazine. Buyer beware!

Have a pleasant and safe 4th of July!

Jeremy Likness

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posted by Jeremy Likness | 8:52 AM | 0 comments



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