Japan To Measure Waistlines!

Hey guys and gals,

I found this very amazing.  In order to keep the spread of diabetes and stroke to a minimum, Japan is going to measure the waistlines of 56 million people between the ages of 40 and 74, that’s 44% of the entire population!  The Japanese government is hoping it will also curb the increasingly rising cost of healthcare for the nation.

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Now I’m amazed at this!  Why can’t America do this?  Japan has beaten us in manufacturing, technology, and education…now they’re going to beat us in healthcare.  This country’s healthcare is also astronomical, but people don’t care, they care more about their quarter pounders with cheese, deep-fried hotdogs, and Red Bullshits with 8 spoonfuls of sugar.  America: WAKE UP!! Put the Big Mac down and pick up a carrot and get on a treadmill!  All the politicians and doctors are screaming that this country has a weight problem, only the politicians and doctors are also morbidly obese AND nobody does anything about it except complain….the amount of hypocrisy in this nation is mesmerizing!  America’s gone soft – figuratively and literally.

“To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets.”  (NY Times) This is perfect!  That’s why America isn’t doing it….Do you want to know another reason why America won’t do it?  Because the nation would go bankrupt.  Japan realized that there’s too many McDonald’s franchises in their country and they decided to do something about it.  Why can’t we do the same?

Lose Weight At Work

CNN came out with a list of 10 jobs that keep you in shape. Granted, I would say that 8 out of 10 of these jobs that keep you in shape don’t require any kind of degree, so it’s basically for those who are satisfied living at home with mommy for the rest of their lives.
Read Here

For those of you that have a little more ambition and work at a desk to afford your own place, it’s a little harder to lose weight (remember the Keith post, anyone?). Don’t worry, the Public Gym has your back.

For example, I have to get up two hours earlier than usual just to get a decent workout in before work. For those that don’t have kids, it would probably be more feasible to skip Happy Hour at your local watering hole at least two nights a week and get your workout in then.  Getting up early is well worth it though.  You feel great for the rest of the day if you get an early morning workout in!

There’s also plenty of things you can do at work to keep from growing the Secretary Spread. I, for one, constantly fidget…I’m incapable of sitting still in my chair. There’s plenty of other options, too. Whenever you need a break, you can get up and walk around the office instead of sitting there surfing the Net.

You can also stretch. Stretching burns many calories, look at all of those skinny Yoga people! When you recieve a phone call, if you don’t need to be in front of your screen, take the call while walking around your desk. You can even stand up, walk down the hall and visit that hot new secretary that just got hired last week and see if she needs any assistance as an excuse to see her in her low-cut top (Pervert)! There’s plenty of things you can do and they all burn calories. And, every calorie burned contributes to weight loss and weight maintainence.

Now, on the food front….DO NOT go downstairs to that awsome, yummy Mexican restaurant everyday! Instead, pack a lunch, it’s usually healthier (if you’re one who wants to lose weight) and it’s a lot cheaper. If you really want to go to that fantastic Mexican restaurant, order something light, like a salad or soup. Don’t order the sizzling fajitas with an extra plate of rice everytime. This goes for any restaurant: Order light!

To those of you who are trying to lose weight, good luck and remember these tips!

Investigate Before You Sign

Speaking of New Year’s Resolutions, here’s a good article on how NOT to get screwed contractually by a gym while trying to fill that New Year’s Resolution of yours.

Full Story

Finally, Live Up to Your Resolutions

Do you know that January is the most profitable month for gyms? It’s true! People have resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. The thing is, public gyms know this. They also know that people will throw their resolutions right out the window in three months when it becomes “too hard”. That’s the reason you must sign at least a six month contract at a gym, most of them are a year.

The Public Gym is here to help you with some tips to get your lazy ass into shape for 2008. Even though people say it was too hard, or they didn’t have time, or this or that, beating around the bush making excuses, the bottom line is that the reason why people quit going to a gym after a while and waste their money is because of two reasons: They either don’t know how to work out, or they feel uncomfortable working out with other people. The latter, I can’t help you with. That’s a psychological problem and, even though I’ve taken some psychology courses, I’m not an expert and I’d just tell you that you’re wuss.

For the former, though, I probably can help you…People don’t know how to properly work out at a gym, they get sore almost immediately mainly because they try to push too much weight or run too many miles after a year of their muscles practically at the point of atrophe from sitting around so much.

There are so many books and postings on the Internet that tell you how you should work out, how you should eat, when to go to bed for the best weight loss, what kind of diet pill you should take….You don’t know where to start. Here’s a good place to start: Start with you. You, above everybody else, know your body better than anyone. You should consider which workout would be the best for you and then tailor it even further to suit your needs.

Now, when you first work out, you’re going to be sore, that just comes with the territory. Have no fear, it’ll only hurt for a couple days, you pansy…Don’t try to bench press 200 pounds for the sake of seeing the other guy do it, you’re not gonna be able to lift that….start in the mid two digits. If you’re a cardio person, only run for about 5 to 10 minutes on the treadmill…don’t go for the 5 mile marathon right off the start.

Before you do anything, you have to stretch. This may seem like a waste of time, but in order to get your muscles loose you have to stretch. This will also help with the soreness afterwards. Also, like I said, you’re going to be sore, so if girly-man can’t stand the pain, I suggest an ice wrap to put on your muscles for at least 20 minutes a day, five times a day, for several days. This also works for muscle pulls and muscle spasms. If you have a muscle pull, don’t go all hypocondriac, just treat it with an ice pack, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than physical therapy rehab.

Overall, ice packs will help with anything relating to muscle damage, whether it’s a pulled hamstring or a muscle spasm to general muscle soreness. Just by an ice wrap and some topical aesthetic muscle and joint pain relief cream and you’ll be fine. Gyms are expensive, don’t waste your money by going there for only three weeks and paying for it for the rest of the year.

The Heavy Costs of Health Insurance

Do you know that the average American resident pays about $6700 in health insurance a year? Do you know why this is? It’s because America is the fattest nation in the world!! As a matter of fact, six out of seven most common chronic diseases that are caused or worsened by being GIGANTICALLY HUGE!!! cost employers $1.1 trillion in lost productivity alone. Here’s another little nugget of useful information: Some insurance companies charge a 10% to 30% increase in premiums depending on how gargantuan you are! Here’s one more tidbit of info: You fatasses are the reason why health insurance keeps going up! The cancer rate is going down, as well as people with incurable diseases like HIV and the like. Obesity, on the other hand, is going up, waaaaay up, like the needle on your scale and your cholesterol numbers. With obesity going up, so are insurance premiums. The reason why premiums are going up is because the national weight average is going up!

On the other hand, the price of joining a gym ranges from $250 to $500 a year. That’s about $21 to $40 a month, not including initial costs and fees. Plus, if you spend that money, you’ll be doing something good for yourself! Something else will go up too: You’re heart rate! When your heart rate goes up, your body burns more calories, when calories burn, you lose weight. When you lose weight, your insurance premiums go down. I bet you that if you spend two months at a gym, you’ll save about $21 dollars a month in insurance premiums!

But, like everything else that requires hard work, there’s a whole bunch of excuses to go along with joining a gym. All the time, you hear people bitching and moaning, “It’s too hard, it’s too stressful, it hurts my back, I don’t have time….” To these few, of many many more, excuses, I say this:

“Of course it’s too hard at first, your body hasn’t moved since you were 4 years old…lazy ass.”

“If it’s too stressful on your joints, decrease the weight. you’re not Lou Ferrigno, more like Drew Carey. Does he look like he works out?”

“Of course it hurts your back…You know what else hurts your back? All that weight in the front! Your spine has to support that! If it really hurts your back you HUGE baby, put an ice wrap on it…”

“You don’t have time? Well you certainly had enough time to shovel all that food in your mouth, contributing to you being fat, unhealthy, disgusting to look at, great to make fun of and one of the reasons why health insurance is going up…”

Do you see what I mean, people? Excuses are like assholes…everyone’s got one and they all stink. How about this? If you want to work out but don’t want to go to a gym for fear of people making fun of you, buy some used equipment for your home. It costs an average of $375 for a good, used home gym….and no monthly payments! Your excuses, now, are starting to dwindle.

I’m serious, fat-ass people, you need to get in shape. You could at least lose some of that body fat. If you had half the ambition to join a gym that you have eating yourself to death, insurance would go down considerably in this country! Please, us thin people beg you: Put the double-crust meatlovers pizza with extra cheese down and pick up that celery stick. Stop riding through Wal-Mart on those little f&^king scooters that block the ailes and start walking. And, please, when you start walking, don’t walk side by side until you lose weight. You look like a fleet of interstate tractor-trailers. Walk in back of one another. I feel like running for cover, I think I’m gonna get run over.

Staying In Shape Over Winter

Now that Winter is approaching in most of our lives, the thoughts of the beach vacation that we took last summer are slowly fading away. The only clear memories we have of it are the hundreds of pictures that you took of monuments, ocean waves, seagulls and obese people that you swore you would never look like.

Winter is a tricky thing, though. It’s where more primal animals start gathering food and hibernating for the winter. Humans are no different. Humans naturally pack on a couple of pounds over the winter months because our body’s natural state tells it to do so. Not many, but sometimes it’s noticeable. Coupled with the fact that people are less likely to be active in the winter months, gorging yourself at Thanksgiving, and eating yours and everyone else’s share of Christmas cookies, plus the leftovers (Oh my! The leftovers!!) you could gain more than 5 to 10 pounds over Winter!

Pretty soon, you’re well on your way to becoming that obese man or woman that you had to walk backwards about 200 yards to get their whole wide behind in the lens so you could snap a picture.

Have no fear, though! There are ways of combating the Winter weight. First and foremost, you must eat less. Lay off the cookies and the eating competitions at Thanksgiving. You don’t need to be rolled over to the pumpkin pie after you’ve had 18 servings of grandma’s stuffing. Go easy on the carbs and the refined sugars. Instead, eat more fruit, vegetables and protein with little or no fat.

Get a membership to a gym. If you feel insecure about other people staring at your jiggly butt, buy a treadmill or an exercise bike and get involved with one of those home – yoga or pilates workouts you see on TV at 5:00 in the morning for those housewives that actually still like to look good for their husbands after 5 years of marriage.

Third, move around at work. Nobody likes seeing a once – good looking girl’s brand new secretary spread, you know, how her a$$ hangs out over both sides of the chair about six inches…So what if you can’t go for your jog over lunch, go for a walk around the office, or right outside. Some movement is a lot better than no movement at all.

If you do these three little things over the Winter months, you should have no trouble staying thin, keeping in good shape and looking good. Plus, the less you put on over the winter, the less you have to lose come Spring! If you’re a diehard gym rat, the less weight you put on over Winter means you’ll lose more weight than you did last Spring and look even better.

There’s no doubt you’ll be turning heads in nothing but a skimpy bikini and flip flops (check these flip flops out!) while you aggressively try to maneuver to get the perfect shot of that shirtless oversized load waddling down the boardwalk on your next beach vacation.

Parents’ Performance…

This is for all the parents out there. Do you have a fat kid? Does your kid just sit around and watch TV after school? When the family goes out to eat, does your kid look at the menu and say, “okay”? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. There’s plenty of other parents that have fat children too. As a matter of fact, about 20% of the children in this country are overweight. And it’s only getting worse. It’s been said (I forget by whom) that this generation may just be the first generation to NOT outlive their parents…Isn’t that nice?!?!

Chances are that if your kid is fat, you probably are too. Like anything else, it always goes back to the parents. It’s parents’ performance that initially shapes a youth’s mind. If you sit on the couch for hours on end and eat potato chips and ring dings while the button on your jeans is screaming to release some pressure, you’re kid will inherit that same talent. Therefore, you should really lead by a good example. Go out and be active, put down the cheese doodles and take a walk….and take your kid with you. Have you ever taught your kid how to throw a baseball? Now’s a good time to play some catch with him and actually tell him that kids used to play outside! How about you get in shape yourself. Buy a treadmill and some free weights and tell your kid that you’re sick of not being able to fit through a doorway. If that’s too strenuous for ya, at least teach your kid about physical activity and enroll him into sports. Believe me, when you have a heart attack at 50, he’ll thank you for it.

If you don’t know what can happen to an overweight kid, here’s some stuff to get you started, consider it a reference of sorts:

- childhood obesity is the leading cause of pediatric hypertension

- childhood obesity is associated with Type II diabetes

- childhood obesity increases the risk of coronary heart disease

- childhood obesity increases stress on the weight-bearing joints

There’s also psychological factors too, like a drop in self – esteem and poor relationships with peers. What this means is that your fat kid goes to school everyday and gets picked on by kids specifically for being fat. They call him “jellyroll”, “tons-of-fun” and “Fatty McButterpants”. In turn, your kid is now thinking he’s worthless and feels lower than whale crap. Who wants to deal with a suicidal 10 year – old? In some cases, it also leads to anorexia.

I’m not saying go out a purchase a treadmill and weights for him, that’s for you. Instead, get him active! Get him away from the Playstation, the after – school cartoons and the four cans of soda a night. Have him join a football league, a baseball league. Instead of feeding his face with fatty junk food, have him eat fruit and drink water. Also, like I said, lead by example. Kids aren’t going to take you all that seriously if you don’t do it yourself. That “Do what I say, not as I do” crap doesn’t work. Stop making excuses for your child (ie. “You’re not fat, your big – boned…”, “You’re just a growing boy, don’t mind those Husky pants we just had to buy”, “It’s just baby fat…”) and tell him to go outside and run around. Let me tell you, the thinner he gets the less he’ll be coming home from school with an “Oversized Load” post – it on his back.

Don’t Let This Happen To You!

Did this ever happen to you?

If you want a hassle – free workout try a LifeSpan Fitness treadmill!

Soda: Fat People’s Nectar of the Gods

One of the reasons why people are fat is because of sweetened beverages. Nothing is worse for your diet than sweetened beverages. According to CNN.com, detractors call it “liquid candy”. Sweetened beverages doesn’t just mean soda, (although soda is the biggest culprit) it also means artificially sweetened juices and drinks. Any and all of these drinks are very high in calories and no nutritional content whatsoever. It’s not just the sugar, it’s the corn syrup, starches, additives and other crap that they throw in to the drinks that causes an addictive reaction in people’s brain to keep drinking or to overeat.

“Highly concentrated starches and sugars promote overeating, and the granddaddy of them all is sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Ludwig, who runs the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

It’s not just adults who drink this rubbish, it’s children too, probably even more so than adults. If you think about it, children love sweet things, from candy to gum to soda. Soda is quintessential junk food just like tootsie rolls and tastycakes. They love it, it’s like liquid heroin! The parents of these children really need to take some kind of initiative to stop their kids from drinking soda and artificially sweetened juices. These inept parents keep ramming soda down little Johnny’s throat through a sippy cup because he complains of thirst and in a couple minutes he’s bouncing off the walls. They need to understand that giving a child a cup of soda gives off the equivalent effect of an adult drinking eight cups of coffee.

After a while of feeding their wild demon spawn, Johnny, soda or other juices, they notice that little Johnny is starting to gain weight, even though he’s being hell on heels and can’t control his hyperactivity. Pretty soon, little Johnny will look like the Michelan Man’s baby…all because his senseless, soft – witted parents (most likely overweight and drink 6 sodas a day, themselves) couldn’t think about the consequences of giving their kid soda. Of course, parents can’t just be blamed for this ( although it is the parents who are at fault), it’s also the marketing that goes into these soft drinks, along with McDonalds, useless toys and everything else marketed to kids (See Pepsi ad below). You think that kids don’t notice this? THINK AGAIN!!!

If you’re an avid soda drinker that wants to lose weight, stop drinking it entirely. Diet soda is fine once in a while, but start drinking water. If you don’t like water because it has no taste, then…

1. Your probably fat and consume 10 sodas a day. You’re so addicted you probably have to have a taste with anything you imbibe.

2. There’s flavored water, like Propel, which gives you a great taste, very minimal calories and a lot of nutritional value.

Soda is such a huge part of people’s diet that people drink it with every meal, as well as in between. A 32 oz. soda contains about 400 calories. That’s almost a quarter of an average person’s caloric intake a day. If you cut soda out of your diet and start drinking water, you’ll immediately start to see results of weight loss. Just don’t replace it with anything else that should come complete with a shot of insulin. Believe me, you’ll look better, you won’t feel like you’re about to have a diabetic stroke all the time and it’ll do a lot for your personal finances!

If you would like to read more about the article that inspired this one, go here:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/09/18/kd.liquid.calories/index.html

The Skinny on Anorexia

Further Response to “The Skinny…”

Hey Ladies…

Would you rather look like this:

Or like this:

But, let’s hope you don’t wanna look like this:

Here at The Public Gym, we don’t just make fun of obese people. We make fun of very skinny people too…we don’t discriminate on eating disorders! There may be an “obesity epidemic” (everyone knows we love that term here at The Public Gym…) running through America, but there is also another disease festering itself in the underbelly of this nation. It’s like the big pink elephant in the room, everybody sees it, but nobody wants to acknowledge it: Anorexia.

Anorexia is an eating disorder, especially in girls (approximately 95%), where people starve themselves because they think they’re fat. Weight loss is usually 15% below the person’s normal body weight. The disorder is largely psychological in the fact that since someone thinks they’re fat, they just don’t eat. They continue to do this over a long period of time, all the while losing more and more weight. The problem is, when someone with this eating disorder looks at themselves in the mirror, even if they weigh all of 95 lbs. in wet clothing, they still think they’re fat.

Anorexics’ diet mainly consists of water, diet pills and diet soda. The “Anorexic food pyramid” shows their diet in more detail:

The reason why coffee and smokes are up there is because these are stimulants. Stimulants raise the body’s metabolic rate, thus burning more calories and losing more weight.

Needless to say, this is not healthy at all, and people do die from Anorexia. Plenty of therapists are working with anorexics to recover and maintain a healthy lifestyle, but this eating disorder continues to escalate in people at an alarming rate. Anorexics are even setting up pro – anorexic websites to suck young girls into their warped little reality.

The thing is, if people want that killer body, guys or girls, the key is to eat. Having a lean, toned, muscular body is about 70% diet, only 30% actual exercise. There’s no way that you can get all of your nutrients from coffee and diet soda. If you have a balanced diet of proteins, carbs, and fat (very little), and even a little bit of exercise, and you’ll achieve something that looks a lot better than a twig and you won’t look like a strong fart could knock you over. You’ll look very healthy, very attractive and you won’t feel starved!

The Public Gym also has another idea on how to battle anorexia…Like I said, the eating disorder is mostly psychological. Let’s start with how men would look at anorexic girls. Men like curves, not a lot of curves, but they like healthy – looking women. Contrary to popular belief, men do not like stick figures. They feel like they could crack them in half, they’d have to be very careful with an anorexic. So, there is no way that a man would think that an anorexic is attractive or even worth their time, plus, no man wants to be seen walking around with someone that looks like a cancer patient…that would be a big blow to their ego! They think anorexics are downright ugly, gross and disgusting. How would this go over psychologically with an anorexic girl? Probably not too well! So, men, the next time you see a girl that’s anorexic, don’t tell them they’re fat (obviously…), tell them they’re ugly! No girl wants to hear they’re ugly. Tell them you would rather sleep with a slobbering bulldog than her. Then tell her to go eat a cheeseburger to put some meat on them bones! Or better yet, take her out on a date: buy her $10 worth of cheeseburgers from the dollar menu from Mickey D’s and sign her up at the local gym. Get her a personal trainer and a nutritionist. Don’t forget to give her your phone number and tell her that when she transforms herself from a ratty chew toy to a swimsuit model to give you a call.

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