Skinny jeans and DQ Blizzards
Way back in the last century lots of people thought that climbing never-ending flights of stairs and pedaling to nowhere was the best way to get and stay lean. So, everyday in gyms across America hundreds of thousands of people sweated it out on cardio machines while they listened to there iPods, watched TV, and/or checked out the rear of the person on the machine in front of them.
Day in and day out all these people spent hours on all these machines convinced that their “workouts” were really helping them shed unwanted fat. They watched the calorie counters on the LED displays go up and up. Visualized themselves in skinny jeans and/or diving into a DQ Blizzard. Bragged and complained about how hard they were working to stay fit.
But some of these cardio addicts, somewhere deep into their second hour of going nowhere, fast, on the treadmill, began to question the sanity of their actions. Looked around at all the still not lean people sweating on the ellipticals. If this is what it takes to fit into my skinny jeans and enjoy the occasional DQ Blizzard, they thought, two hours of this stuff everyday? I give up!
Many of these people walked right off their treadmills and out of the gyms and were never seen again.
Then the 21st century brought enlightenment. Scientists began to measure exercise afterburn and discovered that lifting weights could burn as many or more calories than traditional cardio. A separate, but related breakthrough was made at Tufts University. Researchers there coined the term Sarcopenia to describe the phenomenon of age-related muscle loss.
And in one of those ah-ha moments that can change the course of history, someone (perhaps one of those ex-cardio addicts) reasoned: We know that muscle is a very metabolically active tissue. And we know that most Americans start losing muscle pretty much the day after they get out of school. So maybe the answer to getting and staying lean is not doing loads and loads of cardio, but rather building muscle and keeping it into middle age. And since lifting weights can burn as many calories as cardio…And because doing cardio everyday can interfere with muscle building…Why should anyone waste valuable gym time doing cardio ever again?!
Someone reasoned this and it made sense and the word began to spread.
Then something magical happened. The cardio machines in gyms across America became less popular and began to gather dust. People began lifting weights and the crickets got run out of the power rack section of the gyms. These newbie weightlifters were no longer slaves to cardio, spent significantly less time in the gym, reclaimed their lives, (re)built muscles AND got lean.
But the best part of this story, the part that give me chills…is that the ex-cardio addicts, many who had not been seen for years, began to return to the gyms and started lifting weights. And within months, that’s right within months, I said within months, they were all in their skinny jeans and enjoying an occasional DQ Blizzard.
True story (for the most part).
April 7, 2009 at 11:33 am
An excellent story and hopefully it will become more true each day. I doubt people will "see the light" from Oprah, lifestyle magazines, or infomercials so this is going to have to be a grassroots movement. If we all keep spreading the word gymrat by gymrat (and non-gymrats too), we can really make an impact on the health of this country.