Fun and Fitness for the 40-Something

From the July issue of Runner’s World:

“The proper dosage for naproxen [Aleve] is 200 to 400 milligrams every 12 hours, not 3,200 milligrams per day as listed in ‘What Hurts?’”

That’s a pretty significant difference!

Courtesy of Fitness magazine, a free 10-day trial of its online personal trainer.

Here’s how it works:

1. Fitness designs a plan with your favorite foods and workouts.

2. You track your meals and activities.

3. The virtual trainer adjusts to your changing fitness level, so you see results fast.

With Father’s Day on tap, you may be firing up the grill this weekend. Or maybe you’ve been scared off of barbecues by stories about how grilling meats can produce cancer-causing carcinogens known as heterocyclic amines (HCAs). If so, I have some good news—food chemical experts say you can cut the risks significantly simply by adding certain spices.

(more…)

I recently linked to a good article about some of the potential drawbacks of training with a charity to run a marathon. Lots of first-timers use the programs, but more and more newbies and veteran runners are conquering marathons with the run-walk approach.

(more…)

That’s the surprising conclusion of a study presented at last month’s annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine. Researchers at the University of Alberta found that people with lower back pain actually fare better if they lift weights more often than less.

(more…)

“We exercise to support our eating habits.” My sister wrote that the other night, as we were e-mailing about the snacks we each had planned for the evening. I’d run seven miles that day and expected to indulge a bit as a result. That’s a common rationalization for me, making me one of those active people that the American Council on Exercise has called out for making crucial mistakes in their diet. As the ACE notes, “not putting the right nutrients in your body could ultimately affect the overall fitness benefits of an active lifestyle.”

The ACE has compiled a list of the 10 most common nutrition mistakes active people make.

(more…)

Women’s Health says it’s not too late to tone up for swimsuit season. It has come up with an eight-move workout that promises to “incinerate fat and tighten muscle in record time.”

(more…)

From the American Council on Exercise: the stability ball wall squat.

Per Fitness magazine:

1)   Vitamin E

2)   Iron

3)   Potassium

4)   Zinc

5)   Magnesium

Have you heard about Newsweek’s takedown of Oprah? It takes the article quite a while to get to its “nut graf,” but the premise is that “some of what Oprah promotes isn’t good, and a lot of the advice her guests dispense on the show is just bad.”

(more…)