Friday Reading Report: More Homework

I continue to work on my fitness nutrition certification.  As I have mentioned before, there is a lot of nutrition information out there, on the web, in magazines, in our friends’ heads.  Some of the information is better and some of it is misleading or plain old wrong.

My text offers the following advice from the American Dietetic Association on assessing the credibility of websites.  I am including some comments as well, because the most important thing to remember is to engage our critical faculties when deciding what is most likely to be true and correct.  Here goes:

•      What is [sic] (apparently knowing the nutrition stuff does not mean they know the grammar thing; they wanted to say “are.”) the background, credibility, and affiliation of the researchers or sources?

•      Does the website identify the publisher and any sponsors?  (The kind of people who need to ask this probably also need to be told why this might be important.  Sponsors who, say, manufacture the product in question, have a vested interest in providing information that is positive about the product.)

•      Does the website say who wrote it or how it was approved?

•      Is the information up-to-date?

•      Does the information include credibly references such as peer-reviewed journals?

•      Does the information present both [sic] (What?  Some kinds of information have WAY more than two perspectives to consider.  Also, um, some stuff is just plain bad for us; there is no other side…) perspectives of (ON, people.  ON the issue.) the issue?

•      Is the information balanced and [does] it state any caveats?

•      Is the website designed to sell products?

•      Are there links that provide support or more detail?

I realize I am a cranky older student compared to the target audience of the text.  That said, can we please decide as a culture that we are in favor of critical thinking and maybe even proofreading and grammar?

I keep doing my homework.  May we all continue to do the same.

Five!

Some days we need a little nudge to get us moving.  Here are five good reasons to move today:

It helps us maintain our body weight.  I am not into fat-shaming, even a little bit.  I believe that healthy bodies come in many sizes and all are amazing and beautiful.  However, we all know that everything we do would be harder if we had to carry around a 25-pound backpack all day.  Let’s make it easier on ourselves and ditch the built-in backpack if we need to.

It gives us more energy.  In our sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled culture, we can all use a little boost.  Walks are free and can jump up our physical and mental batteries.

We can have better sex.  Or whatever we want to do.  Pretty much everything is easier when we are in better shape.  We can do the things we love for longer and with greater coordination.  Flexibility is also a plus in most contexts.

We get empowered.  It may be as simple as opening our own jars or as complex as getting the confidence to start a business, confront a bully, or write a novel.  What we learn in our workouts transfers to our lives.

It’s fun.  Maybe not all exercise is fun, but an awful lot of exercise things are.  We can splash, roll, dance, wiggle, and chase our way to fitness.  Anything that makes us laugh gets us bonus points for working our abs.

Let’s do it!

In Out Repeat

We all have to breathe or die.  The quality of that breathing makes a difference to our quality of life.

Workouts, whether they are cardio, strength, Pilates, or flexibility, can help us learn to improve our breathing.

Cardio works to make our breathing more efficient.  When we practice getting our heart rate up and letting it recover, we improve the function of our heart and lungs.  Our bodies process oxygen better.  We also learn to stay calm when we have stress because we know what to do when our hearts start beating faster:  we breathe more.

The other kinds of exercise all help us to coordinate our breath with our movements.  We learn that some movements work better when we do them with an exhale; others flow better from an inhalation.  We practice breathing with awareness, taking control of our breathing when necessary and letting our autonomic system handle it the rest of the time.

The workouts at the most obviously mindful end of the spectrum (Pilates, yoga, etc.) specifically train the breath with the movement.  We learn to turn our focus inward by noticing the breath and then working with it.

We all have to breathe, but we can all do it better.