• Might As Well Smoke: "About 40 years of health improvements from declining numbers of smokers may be undermined because too many U.S. adults are obese, researchers said." Yea you just replaced the Camels with Ding-Dongs, America, what was even the point?
• Take Advantage of the Extra: Docs now are happy to suck fat out of your body and inject it right into your breasts, where fellas think it looks nice. Take it from this lady: "I love that it's just mine, my own fat," she said. "I didn't have to put anything foreign in my body." Sure!
• You Can't Escape: They told you to stop smoking. They told you to embiggen your breasts. They told you to work out and get in shape. Sorry, it was all a male plot! Two health club workers in NYC are suing their boss for SEX HARASS. They "say the degrading behavior at Battery Park Swim and Fitness included bra-strap snapping, unwanted advances and remarks about their cleavage." It's enough to make you take up smoking.

The WSJ reports:

Men who didn't confront colleagues or bosses who treated them unfairly doubled their risk of heart attack, according to a study in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

*WASHINGTON POST JOKE.*

[Pacquiao for Congress!]

• Lincoln University (in Pennsylvania!) is mandating that students with a body mass index over 30 either lose weight or "take a one-semester fitness and nutrition course." Hahaha! That will be the reaction of their fellow students, which is why the school might have to back down on this requirement. Problem: You know who has a body mass index over 30? The Incredible Hulk. Who would make a fine soldier. A related problem there, and at other schools, is kids eating the fries and the pizza. Why not just remove "food" from the cafeteria? Cause, meet effect.
• In the San Francisco Bay Area, the toughest high schools are now forced to contend with yoga classes. "What began as small pilot programs has suddenly spread as more South Bay schools in neighborhoods challenged by poverty, drugs and gang violence turn to the power of yoga as a stress reducer," you see. All this does is make violent kids more flexible, which equals more torque on their kicks. Just great.
• More fat kid news out of California: Something called "Fitnessgram"—at least it's not a Golden Graham, ha—tells us that, statistically speaking, "teenagers are three times more likely to be overweight than their 1980s counterparts." If they made The Goonies today, the Truffle Shuffle would be a three-part dance routine. Furthermore, the rich kids are winning: "In suburban and wealthier communities, students generally posted higher fitness scores than those in urban areas with a greater percentage of low-income students." That's alarming, since our nation's Army is made up of the cream of the lower half of the graduating class of our poorest high schools. Will their yoga kicks be enough to fend off Saddam's remaining minions? Let's hope so.

The New York Times wrote a story about Biggest Loser. What did they find out?

• The winner of season one "dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood." Actually many of the people dropped mostly water weight, and gained much of it back after the show ended and they began hydrating properly.
• Whose fault is it that these dangerously fat people are dangerously dehydrating themselves in pursuit of a cash prize? The fault of the fat people themselves, according to the professional fitness trainer Jillian "Evil" Michaels. "Contestants can get a little too crazy and they can get too thin," she said.
• Don't go blaming the show for that; they never said they were qualified to know about health and weight loss and whatever! The show's waivers state that no guarantees have been made that the medical professionals are qualified to "diagnose medical conditions that may affect my fitness to participate in the series."
• Also the show tried to intimidate former contestants into not speaking to the New York Times.

Overweight Americans: Would you like to slim down, but don't have access to evil fitness trainer Jillian Michaels? Here is the secret formula! Eat a few hundred calories less than you burn every day; exercise for no more than an hour five days a week, with a sensible mix of interval cardio workouts and basic weight training; lose a couple pounds a week; continue until satisfied. Just read this! Better yet, forget about losing weight altogether. Put that weight to work for you. You can gain up to 30 pounds of pure power with THIS:

In 1983, when Microsoft was still a small (if fast-growing), privately-held software company, Allen left his company to battle Hodgkin's disease, undergoing radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant. (He retained a substantial stake in the company, which eventually made him fabulously wealthy.) A year ago, Allen underwent an "undisclosed medical procedure" that took him away from a local awards ceremony attended by his Microsoft partner Bill Gates.

His health then seemed to improve, but now Allen's announced a diagnosis of "diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common for of lymphoma." The good news: Allen believes he'll be able to continue his role as chairman of investment firm Vulcan, Inc. And he's been through this before. As Bill Gates told TechFlash, " I know [Allen] to be a strong and resilient individual."

(Pic: Allen, left, with his friend Gates at a 2000 Portland Trail Blazers game. Getty Images.)

Ladies who've just had babies (they get all the luck, fitness-wise!) can simply attach their nipples to the mouths of said baby, and allow the child to extract hundreds upon hundreds of calories worth of breast milk every day, leading to slim, trim, pre-baby body in no time. So says a gross simplification of a NYT trend story today (with a priceless lead photo)! At last, science has discovered a use for babies. New mothers couldn't be happier:

"Nobody wants to admit they are doing it for themselves, or ‘I'm doing it to help myself look hot again,' " said Jesse Comer, from Portland, Ore., whose main motivation to breast-feed was her baby's health.

Ha, we'll take your word for it, Jesse! And for those of us not fortunate enough to have an attachable fat-remover, scientists have bad news: the bacteria in your very gut is conspiring with the food you eat to make you fatter. The simple takeaway is that, if you want to lose weight without being forced to reach inside your own intestines and engage in hand-to-hand combat with allegedly "friendly" bacteria, have a baby.
[Pic via]

• Bread.
• Beer.
• Corn.
• Sushi.
• Wheat.
• Rice.
• Chicken.
• Sunflower seeds.
• Nuts and berries gathered in the forest.
• Wild game.
• Grass.
• Any other substance containing "calories," a measure of energy stored in food, which makes you fat. To ensure you don't get fat, avoid any food with "calories," or just kill yourself.

The highlight is probably the unveiling of the conspiratorial internal organ chalkboard. All the notes—references to old and discredited texts, the Founding Fathers, transparently phony stabs at nonpartisanship, crying—are hit, though Stewart never quite reaches the operatic unhingedness of a genuine Beck performance. The glasses are a wonderful touch, though.

"While science shows that these antioxidants help support the immune system, given the public attention on H1N1, the company decided to make this change," the statement read. "We will, however, continue to provide the increased amounts of vitamins A, B, C and E that the cereal offers."

THANKS KELLOG CO.
[Ad Age]

So yea, breast cancer is a big thing, among ladies and all, and people are always talking about "Examine your breasts, ladies," but nobody is actually showing that breast exam, right? That is where WJLA "News" comes in! They're going to show a couple ladies just stone cold examining their bare breasts, for education of the public. Tune in to WJLA during sweeps week to learn about this important issue, of breasts. No reason for mature people to get all titillated! They're doing it for you, the breasted public, reports the Washington Post:

"The public benefits of this will outweigh any criticism," [says WJLA's general manager]. "I suppose some people will call up and say, 'I won't watch your station.' But they'll be outnumbered by those who say, 'You helped my sister. You helped my mother. You helped someone I love.' "

"You helped me leer."
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Next headline: Selfish Obama Wants Your Kids to Die! Why, God, Why?!

[Story: White House Blog
Pic: Dance With Shadows]

According to a survey from the University of Michigan that polled therapists on college campuses around the country, "over 90 percent" of college counseling services are "seeing an increase in the number and severity of students with mental health problems." With all of the bad performance art, binge drinking, and meaningless political "activism" that goes on at colleges these days, it wouldn't be surprising if students were going nuts, but the experts say they don't actually think today's collegians are crazier than previous generations.

Daniel Eisenberg, who directs the Healthy Minds Study, says the spike in mental health issues on college campuses may be due to "better screening and earlier diagnosis of mental illness in high school." All of this extra counseling might not be such a good thing though. Mental health professionals have a lot to do with the college ADD drug epidemic. Maybe so many students are rushing to the shrink and claiming to have serious mental health conditions because they all want to score Adderall.

Colleges See Rise In Mental Health Issues [NPR]

The science is clear: a new meta-study shows that in places where smoking's banned in public places, heart disease and cardiovascular problems drop off noticeably and rapidly. Which makes sense! More suckily, the smokers among us—and the obese—are about to screwed, by the law:

By more than doubling the maximum penalties that companies can apply to employees who flunk medical evaluations, the legislation could put workers under intense financial pressure to lose weight, stop smoking or even lower their cholesterol.

Being a fat unhealthy smoker already means that you're probably a poor miserable bastard who's going to die young. Must we penalize America's poor miserable bastards even more? If so, start with this guy.
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Is your daily consumption of 12-pack upon 12-pack of Coca-Cola holding you back from your fitness goals? For you, Coke is introducing eight-packs of new 7.5 ounce "mini cans." Only 90 empty calories each! As doctors and fitness professionals always say, "Consuming your corn syrup-laden swill in more frequent, smaller servings throughout the day as you sit motionless in a chair gazing at a computer screen and allowing your ever-deteriorating posture to further crumble is preferable to guzzling it all in one serving directly from a two-liter bottle, except by economic standards, or nutritional ones."

But Coca-Cola alone won't make you a champion. You also need a certain kind of perfume. And don't bother to cool down after your workout. That would require you to work out.

American soda abdominal dominance!
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