Tag Archives: health

Metabolic Conditioning: An Actual Fitness Post

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Introducing Dr. Lenny Kravitz.

Introducing Dr. Lenny Kravitz, Program Coordinator of Exercise Science, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

A few weeks ago, I heard Lenny Kravitz present his research at the the annual Can-Fit-Pro conference in Edmonton. I was quite excited by the chance to learn how the sultry retro singer maintains six-pack abs despite being in his late 40s. Imagine my surprise, then, when a white man wearing a bolo tie entered the room to grab the microphone. This Bizarro Lenny was actually quite a hoot, joking and laughing while discussing his recent findings on nutrient timing, the relationship between stress, cortisol and obesity, and metabolic conditioning. The last topic particularly caught my attention and, with Dr. Kravitz’s permission, I present some of his key points here. [Aside: my LSP has a great story about literally bumping into the “real” Lenny Kravitz in a Marais bagel shop in 1994, when we were living in Paris. At the time I was unfortunately in the library, reading about seventeenth-century French vaginas]. Continue reading →

Body Shame

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si-mammomat“I am now going to gather up the breast tissue from under your arm and push it onto the tray,” says Ana as she transforms my body into a scientific specimen. I am literally squeezed into place by the mammography machine, which feels smooth and cool as I lean in to embrace it. I look down in amazement at my right breast, now pancaked between two glass slides. At the same time, I am intellectually riveted, thinking about my relationship to technology and the Canadian health care system, especially my recent promotion to the age-related category considered “at risk” for breast cancer.  Continue reading →

Sweat

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front-new“What happened to you?” my mother asks, turning around to look at the dusty farmer now sitting beside me in the back seat of the blue Valiant. The man is hunched over and emitting small gasps of pain. Raising frightened eyes, he slowly unwinds a stained cloth to reveal his right hand. As the farmer starts to shake and sweat, I catch a glimpse of two severed fingers, covered in blood. I am surprised by how small they are. The man then gathers the stumps back into his handkerchief, and presses the injured parts to his chest. I am not quite six years old. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Intervention

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The group of mottly New Brunswickers had no coxswain.

That will teach you to laugh at our hats, European bitches! 

Brits sure love to row, I think to myself, flashing back to the televised Heritage Minute in which a group of Canadians win the World Championship in 1867. Oh how the badly dressed fishermen sniggered as their heavy boat slid by the fancy pants team from Oxford. Now it’s my turn to show those weedy coxswain-knockers what’s what. After hunching over musty medical books at the Wellcome Library all week, I cannot wait to work my back. I settle onto a machine at the busy Tottenham Court Road gym—ah, the seat is still warm—turn the tension up to 10, pop in my earbuds, and push through my legs and torso before pulling the bar to mid chest while leaning back slightly. Check that form, baby! My feeling of euphoria does not last long, coming to an abrupt halt when a young woman awkwardly straddles the machine beside me. She is skeletal, her painfully knobby knees and shin bones protruding though a layer of thin skin.  Continue reading →