Fitness Friday: Funny (at least to me) Fitness Headlines

All the rage in Hong Kong, women there are eating giant intestinal roundworms in order to lose weight.

Lovely.

The good news (?): the worms are making women thinner.

Duh, there’s a 40 centimeter parasite living in their intestines!

Here’s a diet craze that will make you feel younger…like really, really younger: It’s called The Baby Food Diet, and we can thank celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson (aka, Madonna’s former trainer) for its popularity.

Jennifer Aniston—who, at the age of 41, seems to defy all typical aging processes—reportedly lost 7 lbs on this diet. Her publicist adamantly denies this. She’s not on this diet, he says, and is absolutely is NOT going pee-pee in her pants.

And finally,
• Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat than the pleasure you receive from eating it?

• Does your diet socially isolate you?

• Do you spend more than 3 hours a day thinking about healthy foods?

• When you eat the way you’re supposed to, do you feel in total control?

• Are you planning tomorrow’s menu today?

• Has the quality of your life decreased as the quality of your diet increased?

• Have you become stricter with yourself and adopted a long list of “food rules?”

• Does your self-esteem get a boost from eating healthy?

• Do you look down on others who don’t eat this way?

• Do you skip foods you once enjoyed in order to eat the “right” foods?

• Does your diet make it difficult for you to eat anywhere but at home?

• Do you feel guilt or self-loathing when you stray from your diet?

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, I would call you my twin.  But others may call you orthoexic.
The term, coined in 1997, literally means “correct appetite.” Though it is not an official medical diagnosis, it refers to an eating disorder where the patient is so fixated on eating pure or eating clean, she limits herself and becomes obsessed.

I, Fitness Friday Girl, cannot relate to this…AT ALL.

According to Registered Dietitian Jill Brown of The Hull Institute, health professionals are seeing more orthoexics who take it to the extreme, partly because of increasing popularity of organic and all natural foods.

“It takes over and it interferes with relationships and they obsess about it. There’s a certain righteousness that goes along with it and they judge how others eat,” Jill says.

Despite seemingly healthy diets, orthorexics are often malnourished and borderline on obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Hull Institute is now treating about a half a dozen orthorexics.

Whoa! Hold the phone. SIX people have this? In a country where almost half the people are overweight, Jill has her panties in a knot over SIX people who eat TOO HEALTHY and get a little judgmental????  Seriously?!?!

Jill Brown says it is possible to eat a healthy diet but when a person becomes obsessed with it and spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about, it may be time to get help.

Yes, thank you, Jill and all you fabulous folks at the Hull Institute. Finally, an excuse to give up healthy eating altogether. Or at least an excuse not to think about.  Or blog about it.  Whatever.

Now that I’m all stressed out, I’m going to eat some lunch.  Perhaps a baby food and Ascaris Worm smoothie.