You pull into the drive-thru. As the voice crackles through the loud speaker, you scan the picture menu. The double cheeseburger catches your eye, leaves your mouth watering. Before logic, reason and health can beat down your craving, you find yourself ordering it and tacking on an extra-large fry for good measure. It’s wrong. You [...]

The truth about sitting and its ability to completely shut down your metabolism spawned another flurry of “stand while you work” advice. Once again, you were being told, by me, to get out of your desk chair and do all that you could on your feet. You probably guessed, and rightly so, that I typed [...]

Sometimes, those last ten pounds just won’t go away. You try everything from restricting carbs to cutting out protein to only eating orange-colored foods on Thursdays and red on Fridays, but to no avail. You’re doomed to remain overweight, so you accept it. You grab the bag of chips and plop down on the couch, [...]

First it was the monks and their cancer-minimizing lifestyle. Now it’s the Mormons. The commandments put forth by their church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, decree that the first Sunday of every month be a day of fasting.  Members go without food or water for two consecutive meals, taking the time to [...]

Walking through Athens, a couple found their path blocked by an illegally parked vehicle. The car sat in the middle of the sidewalk in such a way that no one could get around it.  The pedestrians viewed the obstacle with mounting fury. How dare the driver prevent them from continuing their healthy outing? They would [...]

I have driven drowsy more times than I’d care to admit – returning home from a night out at four in the morning, stumbling to work after hours of restless tossing and turning, or, my personal best, tackling the turnpike after less than two hours of sleep and a six hour drive the day before. [...]

What’s the one activity that fills the majority of your waking hours? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not exercise. In fact, it’s not even an activity. It’s sitting. Most of your day is spent on your butt, in a chair, on the floor, in your car or in front of the TV/computer. Your legs, [...]

I understand – the extra day in February has given you a distorted view of how much time is left before this contest ends. I did say that you had until the end of the month, and the end of the month is longer in coming than usual. But it’s still on the way. In [...]

You’ve been dreaming of it since the first icy gust bit through your jacket, sending chills up and down your body. Every time you pull on a bulky sweater and extra thick socks you imagine that you are donning your swimsuit, preparing to run onto a hot, sandy beach and languish in the sun for [...]

Today’s lifestyle is an open invitation for cancer. Everything we do from what we eat to how often we move promotes the disease’s development. Even our location and choice of profession can heighten our risk. There seems to be no effective method of prevention. We are all doomed to have at least one type of cancer before we die, [...]

Imagine if we treated every temporary and replaceable aspect of our bodies as unimportant or negligible. We would rarely wash our hair, reaching for the shampoo only when the mounting grease was too much to bear. Our nails would be long, chipped and decaying, but we would rationalize their ill health by noting that, eventually, [...]

The USDA regularly publishes appropriate serving sizes for all foods including pasta, meat, dairy and bread. It also advises on how many portions of each you should have, how many calories your diet should contain, and what you should and shouldn’t be eating. The information is available with the click of a button. Anyone can move from [...]

According to legend, when the Persians attacked Athens, Pheidippides was sent to Sparta to ask for help. He ran the entire way only to find that the Spartans would give the Athenians no aid. Rather than lamenting his city’s situation, he turned around and ran the entire 150 miles back to battle, taking up arms [...]

You go out to dinner and order the steak, chicken fried. You come home after a long day and pop open a beer falling numbly onto the couch, where you stay until you can muster enough energy to go to bed. You pour fried food, red meat and hoards of junk food into your body, [...]

Apparently, there’s something about high altitude that encourages the removal of clothing, both for brief moments of adventure and leisurely flights of nudity. Two in three Australians are or want to be members of the prestigious Mile High Club,  and travel agents in Germany are currently accepting reservations for a July 5 nudist flight.  The [...]