Fitness Pudding - Where The Proof Is

Vibration machines have been popular for a long time, and most of us probably have an image of the machines that use a belt to vigorously shake our fat away, or steamrollers to flatten fat to smithereens. We have known for quite a while that these contraptions do not work. A review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine states regarding such devices, "the usefulness of coarse vibration devices, often promoted by beauty salons as a...

You may have recently learned from several online sources that you have been ruining your metabolism and weight control efforts, simply because you have been drinking water that is room temperature. Their answer: Switch to cold water, and "ignite your body's fat burning furnace". Our question: Is there any truth to this? Where Did This Idea Come From? Prevention.com posted an article "10 Diet Mistakes That Slow Metabolism" , which has been reposted on everything from...

In the Trending section of Fitness Pudding, I posted a story about a British doctor who supposedly put the classic "tapeworm diet" to the test . Well, I also emailed the story to my Dad, Dr. F.C. Faries, who is a veterinarian, professor, and expert in parasitology with the National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense. We had discussed tapeworms over dinner once before, so I looked forward to his response. I thought I...

A recent video and article by Yahoo! with a "fitness expert" complied the 5 biggest workout myths. Myth #1 – Walking is a great way to lose weight. In other words, this fitness expert, based on her expertise, is saying that walking is NOT a great way to lose weight. However, if she were to look at the research, she may have come to a different conlusion regarding this myth. Let us bust her attempt to...

I have personally come across a proposed fallacy that being obese actually has a puzzling protective effect in diabetics, call the "obesity paradox". I am not quite sure where this belief has come from, but have heard several women with diabetes mention this to me. Perhaps it is wishful thinking? A recent article by a prestigious group of researchers has provided some solid evidence against the idea of this "obesity paradox" notion. Marilynn Marchione's, AP's chief...

As normal, I was handling the boredom of the grocery store line by catching up on my celebrity news and gossip from the tactful magazine covers (sarcasm). I recognized one of my favorite tactics to get us to pick up the magazine...exposing celebrities' cellulite, but blocking their face. Whether it is to feel more normal or empathize with these celebrities, we open the magazine to quench an insatiable urge to see which celebrities fall into the...

Recent media attention has been given to scientific discoveries which may suggest that a person is ‘genetically predisposed’ to being fat or lazy. Indeed, our laboratory recently published a scientific paper using rats, suggesting that genetics and gene products can contribute (key word) to laziness 1 . This report garnered a good bit of media attention, which led to message board posts such as, “now I can blame my genes for not wanting to get off...

If I had to rank the most common fallacies in the health and fitness industry, "spot losing fat" would be at the top. Also, millions of dollars are spent every year on products that claim to do it. So, let's learn why we can save our money. What is Spot Loss? The theory of spot loss (aka. 'spot reduction' or 'targeted fat loss') states that if we exercise a specific muscle, then the fat that sits...