Nicole Maalouf
Emily Quinlan
Reading Summaries for 9/22-9/25
The Cure For Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages About Health, Fitness
and Happiness. (Pages 1-42)
Chapter One: FITNESS
 We are constantly told we must be fit, but what is the exact definition of
fitness?
 Fitness in the modern world is largely a commercial enterprise (industry is
based on sex, but this masks why fitness is so important in the first place.)
 Caulfield explores what kind of exercise is best to achieve maximum fitness
 Exercise is undoubtedly good for you
o Reduces the risk of 25+ chronic conditions, like coronary artery
disease, stroke, hypertension, breast cancer, colon cancer, type 2
diabetes, osteoporosis
o Good for mom & baby during pregnancy
o Huge psychological and emotional benefits
o Helps brain function
 Caulfield attends a strength & conditioning conference in Vegas to hear the
latest research on exercise and learn about the fitness industry
o Found that aesthetics is the primary driver in exercise, but it is
incredibly difficult to drastically change appearance through exercise
alone.
o Recent research says exercise cannot be used as a principal means of
weight loss
o Everyone puts on weight as they age, so if you keep your weight
constant, you are “winning the battle”
 The word “fitness” includes strength, aerobic capacity, and an improvement
in the biomedical markers of health (blood pressure, cholesterol levels, etc.)
 It is a myth that muscle burns more calories than fat. Resistance training and
having more muscle is a good thing, but does not justify eating whatever you
want
 “Spot reduction” does not exist. You cannot “tone.”
 Stretching and the emphasis on flexibility is a major fitness misconception—
recent research suggests it is unnecessary and futile in preventing injury. In
fact, it may actually be bad for certain athletic abilities.
 What should be high on the priority list?
o Lifting heavy weights at least a few times a week (squats/lunges,
bench pressing/push ups, chin ups, and deadlifts)
o Running is overemphasized. You can get almost all the health benefits
associated with fitness from resistance training (this is not true of
aerobic workouts)
o Train in circuits to increase energy expenditure
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o Although overemphasized, aerobic training is necessary. Most
efficient way: high-intensity interval training.
o Steady-state aerobic training may actually just be a waste of time
Evidence is better that obesity causes a decline in activity, not the other way
around
o Obese kids are not active, have poor body image, and too often adopt a
lifestyle that only makes them fatter
Food industry has a strong interest in portraying physical inactivity as the
primary cause of obesity
As a general rule, all fitness gimmicks are useless and unnecessary
o For example, yoga has numerous health benefits, but its fitness effects
are “modest” perceived as a fitness activity because of all of the
marketing surrounding it (like Lululemon)
The Role of the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women: A MetaAnalysis of Experimental and Correlational Studies
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Body dissatisfaction has reached normative levels among American girls and
young women (~50% of girls and undergraduate women report being
dissatisfied with their bodies)
Increasingly thin ideal dominating the media is believed to play a role
Experimental Research
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In a typical experiment, women are shown a series of magazine or television
advertisements that contain either images of thin-ideal bodies or images that
are considered neutral. Respondents are asked to assess the body-imagerelated constructs.
o Body-image researchers have repeatedly shown that women who
view thin-ideal images in the lab experience lower body satisfaction
than do women who view neutral images
o Other research, however, suggests that this is not invariably the case
and that the experimental effects of exposure to the thin ideal are not
universal
o Although some null or conditional outcomes emerge, the majority of
evidence from these experiments indicates that brief exposure to
media images depict- ing the thin-ideal body often leads to short-term
adverse outcomes in women’s body image and related concerns.
Correlational Research
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Findings indicate that more frequent exposure to fashion magazines or to
television programming featuring the thin-ideal body type is associated with
higher levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptomatology
among girls and women
Meta-Analysis
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Meta-analytic work that allows for the quantitative combination of all
relevant data can estimate the magnitude of the effects, analyze variations in
study outcomes, and investigate potential moderators of the relation
between media effects and body image.
Conclusions are somewhat inconsistent
One indicated that women feel worse after exposure to thin images versus
neutral images, but one suggests there is little influence of media exposure
on women’s body image. There remains a need to examine the issue more
closely. Furthermore, neither meta-analysis reflects a comprehensive review
of current research.
Measurement of Body Image and Eating Behaviors and Beliefs
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Body image concerns are multidimensional and include thoughts, feelings,
and behavioral responses related to one’s body
Different components of body image and related consequences such as
disordered eating behaviors have gained increasing attention since the
1990s
Given this complexity, it is common for researchers to include in one study
several measures of body image or related constructs.
Method
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Measures
o Grouped review of relevant studies into four categories of outcome
variables: body dissatisfaction, body selfconsciousness/objectification, internalization of the thin ideal and
drive for thinness, and eating behaviors and beliefs.
Measurement of Media Use
o Included only those studies that investigated media use or media
exposure, as opposed to self-report of media influence
Sample of Studies
o Used a computerized database search to generate a pool of potential
articles. Abstracts were then printed, examined, and excluded on the
basis of certain criteria.
Results
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Findings suggest that the relation between media exposure and eating
behaviors and beliefs is slightly stronger for adults than for adolescents, for
generalized media use as opposed to television or magazine use, and much
stronger for published versus unpublished manuscripts.
Discussion
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Results show consistent associations across both experimental and
correlational designs and across multiple measures of women’s body image
and eating behaviors and beliefs.
Concerns about eating disorders—specifically, anorexia and bulimia—must
be balanced against concerns about the epidemic of obesity in the American
population, including the population of American women.
The findings related to women’s self-consciousness sur- rounding their
bodies were too preliminary to be conclusive.
Conclusion
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Media exposure is linked to women’s generalized dissatisfaction with their
bodies, increased investment in appearance, and in- creased endorsement of
disordered eating behaviors.
Should reduce the emphasis on an unrealistically thin ideal that is
perpetuated through the objectification of women’s bodies in the media
It would be important to examine potential defenses against the negative
correlates of media use.
Minimizing the importance of attractiveness seems to be an important
avenue for inoculating women against thin-ideal media images.
New policies adopted in Spain and Italy, and more tentatively by the Council
of Fashion Designers of America, that exclude hyperthin women from
modeling may be helpful not only to the models themselves but also to
millions of girls and women who view these images.
The Scientist and the Stairmaster
o Article questions why most people think exercise will make them lose
weight and why this belief is incorrect
o Authoritative organizations use vague reasons supporting their
exercise recommendations
 Recommendations range from 30 minutes of physical activity
five days a week (AHA-ACSM) to 60 minutes every day (USDA)
 Reasons usually being to avoid “unhealthy weight gain”
o One Finnish study found that exercise can increase and decrease the
rate of weight gain in people who have lost weight dieting
o Because exercise burns calories and makes people more hungry,
active people have a larger appetite
This concept caused experts in the 1930s and 1940s to
recommend that people trying to lose weight should not work
out
o Jean Mayer
 Most influential nutritionist is the country in the 1950s/1960s
 Was a physiological chemist
 Published hundreds of papers on nutrition but never worked
directly with obese patients
 After studying mice for years, he began praising exercise as a
form of weight control
 Said that obese people often eat the same or less food as
lean people which must mean fat people are less
physically active
 Began studying and comparing caloric intake and physical
activity of school girls and babies
 Believed a sedentary lifestyle was the most important
factor leading to obesity and the chronic diseases that
come with it
 Believed modern conveniences (cars, electric
toothbrushes, power windows) led to lower calorie
expenditures
 Hypothesis had shortcomings
 The correlation between obesity and inactivity doesn’t
explain cause and effect
 Obesity and physical inactivity may both by symptoms
of the same underlying cause
 Said that exercise does not necessarily make us
hungrier (based on two of his studies that have never
been replicated)
o Our culture of exercise began in the late 1960s
 Popular belief went from exercise being bad for you to
strenuous physical activity being good for you
 While evidence supporting Mayer’s hypothesis never came,
people still bought into his idea of exercising more without
compensating by eating more
 Health reporters bought into idea, readers believed
what reporters wrote and never did further research on
matter
 Later research supported that continued exercise could help
maintain weight loss as long as people do not overeat
o Resent researchers focus on calories in versus calories out when
looking at weight maintenance and the cause and effect of physical
activity and fatness
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Do lean people work out because their bodies do not want to
store fat? Do fat people sit around because their bodies do
want to?
 Body homeostasis – keeping the internal environment of an
organism stable no matter what is happening outside
 The amount of fat a person carries is regulated by
homeostatic system – some bodies send excess calories
to be burned off in muscles while other bodies store
excess calories as fat
 Hormone insulin and enzyme LPL are responsible for this
process
 LPL levels spike in muscles during exercise pulling
calories to muscles, LPL spikes in fat tissues when
exercise stops causing hunger – calories needed to
replenish fat burned off during physical activity
 Insulin affects the activity of LPL in our cells –
explaining why biology might be to blame for why
exercise fails some people
o Some people’s bodies secrete too much insulin
 Easily digestible carbohydrates lead to insulin
stimulation – idea behind low-carb diets
o It is still difficult to argue that exercise alone can cause weight loss
o Unanswered question: do we exercise because we eat fattening foods
or do we exercise so that we feel we can justify eating fattening foods?
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Why would anyone want to work out until they puke?
o Intense exercise currently very popular (Crossfit, P90X, Insanity,
Tough Mudders)
 Being difficult is a selling point to programs
 Crossfit mascot Pukie the Clown
o Why are people attracted to such extreme exercise? Why exercise at
all?
 Intrinsic motivation (exercising because you actually like to
exercise) is ideal for creating a long-term habit
 Exercising won’t make you love it if you don’t
 Other good motivators: exercising because you know
it’s good for you, exercising because you want to feel
good (doing it for yourself, not for others)
 People with intrinsic/autonomous motivation are the ones
attracted to intense exercise programs
 New challenge
 Enjoy how the hard work makes them feel after they’re
done
 Troubling motivators
 People exercising for a reward (losing weight)
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 People with a fragile sense of self-worth
Nausea
 Nausea is a warning sign of dehydration
 Nausea during extreme exercise can be caused by
working so intensely that the body cant get enough
oxygen to fuel its muscles leading to a build up of waste
product lactate
 In rare cases, nausea can be a symptom of
rhabdomyolysis (muscles break down, their protein
enters the bloodstream)
Appeal to pushing yourself as hard as your can: you will never
know where your edge is unless you push yourself over it
Some people are drawn to hard work when they feel
overwhelmed
 Feeling out of control can lead to appeal of intense
workouts – exercise is something you can control when
you can’t control anything else in your life
Some people believe exercise is not effective unless it hurts
which is not always true
 The American Council on Exercise does not advocate
working out to the point of nausea