| Fitness has fallen since Ancient Greece
LEEDS, England, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- British researchers have determined that despite modern diet and training, humans today are not even as fit as were the people of ancient Greece. University of Leeds physiologist Harry Rossiter measured the metabolic rates of modern athletes rowing a reconstruction of an Athenian trireme -- a 121-foot-long warship powered by 170 rowers seated in three tiers. Using portable metabolic analyzers, Rossiter measured the energy consumption of a sample of the athletes powering the ship over a range of different speeds to estimate the rowers' efficiency. By comparing the findings to classical texts that record details of ancient rowers' endurance, he discovered rowers of ancient Athens -- around 500 B.C.-- were highly elite athletes, even by modern day standards.
To eat healthy, stick to basics
If you read a recent Sunday New York Times Magazine, you'll recognize the phrase. It was at the beginning of a long article on "nutritionism," but those three short sentences said it all. The author even thought so, but he still went on to write 1,000 words on the topic. It was a powerful examination of the American relationship with food. I read every word. And it's still consuming me. I announce, when I offer classes involving food, "I'm not a nutritionist or a dietician; I'm just an eater and a thinker." And because of Dr. Michael Pollan, the author of this food treatise (a profes-sor of journa-lism by the way, not a food scientist) I'm doing less of the former and more of the latter. See what you think. "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother would not have recognized as food." .
The Extreme Difficulty of Recommending Calorie Levels
[Disclaimer: as you know, I'm not a doctor, nurse, registered dietician, or gourmet chef. I'm just a girl practicing CR who lost a bunch of weight, feels great, met the man of her dreams, and bought a house with an orange kitchen. I've done a lot of research and have quite a bit of experience, but I am not an authority. And even if I was, you still shouldn't take anything I say as absolute truth -- reasonable people can disagree, and it's always best to combine advice you get from others with your own research and self-experimentation to come to your own set of conclusions.] I get a lot of questions along the lines of, "How much should I be eating?" That question is very difficult to answer because it depends on individual factors that vary tremendously from person to person.
Losing weight doesn’t always equal to gaining health
Health foods come first for me. I eat a good breakfast, skip lunch, munch on fruit and nuts all day, and work out like a maniac. If I dont work out, I try skipping both lunch and dinner. I dont eat anything fried or from outside, confesses Sheikh. On college trips I take along a lot of soya munchies to snack on and avoid the junk. According to Neha Gehi, whos studying diet ethics, the concept of a diet is a myth in itself. Nutritionists often provide weight-loss diets, but they still recommend healthy eating. However, the popular Atkins diet, a high-protein, high-fat diet, is blindly followed here, says Gehi. I think a hearty breakfast and organic food is the best diet for teens. Junk food and starving shouldnt be on the list of to-do things. I also recommend minusing processed foods.
|
