chAMpagne bdaYs: toast life

A Weigh In on the Weight-Loss Wars

Just in time for our resolutions to start chugging their way to their respective early deaths, Tara Parker Pope’s story on why permanent weight loss is often a pipe dream rears its head, a monster of a magazine feature that’s as depressing as it is illuminating.

“The Fat Trap,” one of this week’s most e-mailed stories, examines what happens to the body after weight loss. Instigated by the research of a physician from the University of Melbourne, the story details why motivated people have so much trouble maintaining their weight loss.

And trouble is putting it lightly. Joseph Proietto’s study proved the body basically launches a hormonal assault, upping the hunger hormone, ghrelin, weakening peptide YY, responsible for satiation, and lowering leptin, the hormone tasked with appetite suppression and metabolism activity. In other words, after weight loss, your body’s hormones fight to bring the fat back. An hunger does nothing for one’s preoccupation with food. It’s a vicious attack against the best intentions.

Read the post to learn more, and meet the couple profiled, two people who collectively lost roughly 300 pounds but must do everything in their power to keep their weight in check.

image: pinterest.com

Tags: Diet, health, Lose Weight, science, weight loss

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Categories beauty & fitness, food & nutrition

Words on Wednesday: Looking Back Edition

26 Oct

img via geekarmy.com

A favorite poem, by Sylvia Plath…

“Mirror”
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Tags: Plath, Poetry, words, writing

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Categories narrative

What Your Group Fitness Instructor Won’t Tell You

16 Sep

via weheartit.com

1. Follow my lead.
I get aggravated when students do a different workout than the one I’m teaching — and they’re in the front row! You come to class but choose to do your own thing… really, what’s the point?!

2. It takes a lot to be entertaining, funny, and likeable
all while trying to motivate people to do things that will cause them pain. I think the 80’s thong leotards and side-ponytails gave aerobics instructors a bad rap. We’re also not all super bubbly and rail-thin.

3. Leave your cell at home.
Can you not exercise for an hour without checking your text messages?

4. Yes, I’ve embarrassed myself.
I was chewing gum while teaching and it flew out and stuck onto the mirror in front of me during class. Oh, and it was bright green!

5. Coffee’s my friend.
When I don’t feel like teaching I have a GIANT cup of coffee. I usually don’t feel like teaching when I’m tired or run down, so caffeine usually does the trick. And if that fails, keep smiling. As the saying goes, fake it ‘til you make it!

6. Preparing is a lot of work!
Pre-choreographed classes, like BodyPump and Turbo KickBoxing, take hours of prep. We’re sent materials every 6 weeks and we have to review and learn all the music and choreography before we teach it to you.

7. Stop weighing yourself constantly.
Newbies expect miracles without realizing that the added muscle will not only make them smaller and leaner, but also heavier (muscle weighs more than fat, remember?). You can’t change your physique simply by working out; 80 percent of any change and fat loss is the result of a clean diet.

8. I wish you’d be more vocal when you’ve had a great workout, but save the moaning, grunts, and other weird noises for home.

9. Dress appropriately.
Ladies, consider wearing a cami or additional liner under your low cut Lululemon or Lucy yoga tops. I get an eyeful I really don’t wish to see when you’re in downward dog. And guys, don’t forget your liner shorts! I don’t want to see anything poking through your gym shorts in class!

10. When you’re sick, stay home.
You may want to sweat out your cold or flu, but I don’t want your germs, especially when you want a really good workout and position yourself in the front row and cough and sneeze your way through the class.

See more at ReadersDigest.com.

Tags: exercise, fitness, health, weight