Loathe Handles: Belly Fat Increases Early Death Risk

Loathe your love handles? A study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests the extra belly fat isn’t just an eyesore; it can increase your risk of an early death.

While the link between extra belly padding and health problems has been long established, this new study is the first to show such a powerful link between pant size and death risk.

For the study, researchers from Imperial College London studied almost 360,000 people from nine European countries. The average age of participants at study onset was 51. Across the 10 year study period, 14,723 study participants died.

Posted By: Worker Bee

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New Study: Exercise is Good and Lowers Obesity

In a new study out of the Archives of Internal Medicine investigators discovered that even people with extra copies of the “fat mass and obesity” genes called FTO did NOT get fatter if they were active throughout the day. In other words, a so-called genetic predisposition to obesity was effectively avoided when the owners of the so-called defective genes were active four to five hours a day doing low-level aerobic stuff. And it didn’t have to be much: brisk walking, housecleaning and gardening were sufficient. Just like Grok did in the original Primal Blueprint. 900 calories day of this was plenty.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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10 Simple Steps to Motivate a Friend

Before you jump into reading this post I’d like to encourage you to drop by yesterday’s with a comment or two. MDA is getting a renovation and we are looking for reader suggestions on how to continue to make this the best health and fitness blog on the net. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Your idea of a good weekend morning is to kick off with a brisk run (or a spin class or hike or other invigorating exercise), rustle up a healthy – and hearty – breakfast, and then get on with the rest of your day. Your friend, on the other hand, sleeps till noon, wakes up and drives to the bagel store and wastes the rest of the day watching re-runs of America’s Next Top Model. But then they come to you and ask for help…ask to turn their lifestyle around and become…well…more like you.

Posted By: Worker Bee

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Pregorexia: Fetus, We’re Hungry

Spinning nausea, wrenching vomiting and relentless exhaustion. No, we’re not talking morning sickness here (although we hope we didn’t give anyone traumatic flashbacks). This is just the everyday reaction to our media’s barrage of celebrity pregnancies. Sure, we wish all the best to anyone celebrating a new child, but the “baby bump” blitz (Did we really just say those words??), let’s face it, has nothing to do with babies themselves and everything to do with the starlets: how they look, how big they’ve gotten, who they’re wearing. (Please, please, make it stop….)

Posted By: Worker Bee

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Dear Mark: Healthy Body Weight?

Dear Mark,

What do you think about the claim that being heavier doesn’t necessarily mean you’re less healthy than someone who’s thin?

Thanks to reader Corey for his question and for sending the New York Times article that highlights recent research.

The article references a study published in this month’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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