Fitness

I'd heard people talking about the Olympics. I looked them up and it turns out they started last week. I doubt I'll watch much. Why not? Not for lack of potential interest: I love sports. I love athleticism, fitness, and people reaching their potential. I love competition and the drama of not knowing how a competition will turn out. For one thing, when I clicked to the official page at olympics.com, they featured corporate ads for Visa and Roblox, which I believe is a video game, and what looked like a docudrama to watch about past competitions (or something with Nadia Comaneci), and other things unrelated to sport. They know who butters their bread. I scrolled down and they showed medal counts. Nothing about sport…

I attended a reunion of my college ultimate Frisbee team today. Mostly current players attended, as in class of 2026 and 2027. I was class of 1993, over three decades earlier. It's weird for something once one of the most important parts of my life for nearly twenty years to have ended over twenty years ago (I played after college, into my thirties). I noticed one of the recent jerseys had the name of a web site on it for some reason. It led me to say something illustrating how long has passed since I started playing in college in 1988. I said to someone, "It's been so long since I started, between then and now, the internet happened." I recently posted about my art…

I eat at restaurants less and less the more I avoid doof. They're similar. Sometimes social obligations lead to me to join groups at restaurants. I don't mind not eating. One of my greatest discoveries in avoiding packaged food was my first two- and three-day fasts. I used to think there was danger in skipping a meal or two. Then I skipped nine meals in a row with no problem. I can just eat when I get home. I consider vegetables the most important part of a meal. Restaurants put a fraction the amount of vegetables I eat in a meal. They also cover them with salt, sugar, and fat. I think they think, "We included something healthy. Now we have to make it taste…

Spring is around the corner. Time to sign up for a CSA. If you don't know, CSA is an acronym for an unhelpful name Community Supported Agriculture. You pay a farm a fixed amount before the season starts. Then each week you pick up your weekly load of produce. The benefits are big: more delicious produce, lower costs, more variety, you can meet your farmer and other CSA members, more connection to nature and people. I don't know how many of you live near New York City, but the consistently best vegetables I've tasted come from the farm I do my CSA with. I recommend signing up to them if they deliver near you. If not, here's a site to find CSAs near you. Here…

More refined than concepts overweight and body mass index is overfat. I'm not a professional in the field, but I believe professionals consider the term more useful and are using it more. Someone with little muscle but enough fat to cause health problems can appear not overweight and have what looks like a healthy BMI so might be overlooked for care. Americans are more overfat than I would have predicted: the number of overfat Americans at 91% for adults and 69% for children. Here's the peer-reviewed research I quoted so you can read the full paper: The overfat condition is defined as excess body fat sufficient to impair health. The problem exists in most overweight and obese individuals and can also occur in those who…

A few years ago I led an Earth Day workshop at Lululemon's flagship store on Fifth Avenue. I think it's a flagship store, anyway. The main guy leading thing from Lululemon's side told me how much he loved the company's culture. He said at the store, despite him working and others shopping, everyone felt like they were part of a community of mutual support. Since I focus on sustainability, he added that he grew up as a surfer in Australia and was sensitive to ocean plastic. It dawned on him that nearly every product Lululemon sold was plastic and would end up in the ocean for centuries. It would become this: Since then, yoga pants and athliesure have increased like crazy. A lot of it…