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Lots of interesting health news in the headlines this week.

Many in a proponent of Health at Every Size is familiar with the work of one Dr. Stephen Blair, an epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina and director of research at The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research. Blair is one of the leading researchers in the “fitness, not fatness” movement, which finds that irrespective of whether a person is overweight or normal weight, the risk of death and disease is much lower in those who are physically fit, than those who are unfit. What many HAES-promoters might not know is that it is Blair’s research that formed much of the basis for the new physical activity guidelines announced this month by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. According to the New York Times:

The basic recommendations — including the core guideline that Americans should get about 150 minutes of moderately intense activity per week — have not really changed from the ones announced in 1996 by the surgeon general’s office. What is different is the emphasis on the variety of activities — including daily chores — that can reap the profound health benefits of exercise.

The Times story goes on to define in greater detail the different recommendations for older folks, children and those just starting a fitness regime, as well as great suggestions on how to maximize your physical activity for optimum health.

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I was up till 4 a.m. writing a paper that was due by 8 a.m. today that should have been an otherwise easy write, but again, my too-high of personal standards and resulting procrastination meant that I got about three hours sleep last night. Hoorah for ADD medication and caffeine. My brain kind of hurts and my work inbox is beyond crazy, so all I can offer are some links to pertinent, interesting and way-to-much-brainpower-needed-to-comment reads.

Health and Wellness

Osteoporosis isn’t just for women, says a new study in this month’s International Journal of Eating Disorders. A disproportionate number of males with anorexia restricting or binge/purge subtype had osteoporosis, as well as those of older age, lower weights, and longer illness duration.

Prevention magazine writer Sarah Mahoney asks if you can be heavy and healthy. Note: heavy here is code for overweight. For those of you with a BMI above 30, the jury’s still out, according to Mahoney. Also note, the fattie in the photo has a head!

Can’t win… According to the New York Times, women who diet are more likely to gain excessive weight during pregnancy due to unhealthy and disordered dieting habits and women who eat little in pregnancy, surprisingly, more often have children who grow into fat adults. Yet another recent study found that 3-year-olds born to mothers who gained too much weight during pregnancy had increased odds of becoming overweight. Conclusion: Babies born to mothers are at risk for fatness

The nation’s first federal exercise guidelines are no sweat, with just 2 hours a week recommended for most adults. At just 17 minutes a day, you might not look like the Amish, but you’ll be healthier for it.

Fat women are constantly assumed to be underestimating their caloric intake, but a new study reveals that they’re usually dead-on in reporting fitness activities. The official scientific reasoning for this is, in short, because exercise is hard and fat women naturally want credit where credit is due.

Eight ways to save on health care even if McCain wins the election.

Arts & Culture

Queen Latifah garnered some criticism when she decided to become the new and slimmer face of Jenny Craig. Luckily, Jenny’s kept largely under wraps in this Times magazine profile of the Queen.

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia! Maureen McCormick, otherwise known as the iconic Marcia Brady, writes about her struggles with bulimia, drug addiction and depression in a new memoir, “Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice.”

Food culture geeks, come hither. It’s the food issue of the Times magazine, with discussion of all things food from how our next farmer-in-chief will affect how food is grown and eaten to Kosher wars to Vietnamese catfish. Be sure to also check out the interactive Inside the Fridge of a Foodie.

The beautiful Mariska Hargitay calls herself “full-figured” in an interview with Self magazine. As Jezebel’s Jessica insists, it’s an insult or derogatory only if you buy into the full-figured as euphemism for fat mentality.

Feminism & Politics

Newsweek’s getting some hate for showing Palin on its cover, au natural. Yes, the same conservatives that cry sexism whenever Palin is asked those pesky gotcha’ journalism stabs such as her professional (or lack thereof) background or what her position is on the issues are now saying Newsweek’s sexist because they didn’t airbrush Jane Sixpack beyond recognition. Memo to Fox News: Palin’s running for the vice-presidency, not Mrs. America.

Abortion rights are on the ballot again in South Dakota, despite voters rejecting an almost identical bill there in 2006. The new bill includes language that make it seem less harsh, but it still makes it nearly impossible for a woman to choose an abortion, even during the first trimester of pregnancy. In California, abortion opponents have put the issue of parental notification on the ballot for the third time in four years. The new bill would make it difficult for teens to obtain an abortion without parental notification, even in cases where the father or stepfather is responsible for the pregnancy.

Why Sarah Palin’s body language should worry you.

Racialicious’ Carmen pens an open letter to white voters.

What’s making the headlines in your social spheres? Post news links or comment on any of the above in the comments below.

Dear Amy ran a question last week from a reader concerned about an overweight 12-year-old relative with unhealthy eating habits. The well-intentioned relative cited concerns about a family history of diabetes and wanted to address the issue without harming the girl’s self-esteem. I agreed with Paul in that I thought Amy’s advice was, for the most part, constructive: She encouraged the letter-writer to introduce the girl to activities she might enjoy and emphasized that the girl’s self-esteem to be partially determined by the ways in which she’s treated by people like the letter-writer. That Amy dropped the proverbial ball by recommending The Biggest Loser as a positive example of how “fulfilling it is to get control of your health through diet and exercise” is an indication of how no one, even highly-paid advice columnists, is perfect.

Another reader responded to Concerned Relative in yesterday’s Ask Amy column. She writes:

Dear Amy: I’m responding to “Concerned Relative,” who has a young overweight relative. As a 40-year-old woman who has always been overweight, I am very familiar with this issue. I believe the best thing this relative can do for an overweight child (besides being supportive and loving) is to think of some activities that the girl will love, and get her into them.

Case in point: I always loved horses, and I truly feel that had I been given a chance to ride, I might have turned out differently.* Exercise was never made fun for me, and the few things I wanted to do that were physical were denied me due to issues of proximity or cost.

To this day, I wonder what might have been had I gotten the opportunity to discover new parts of myself. This person might be able to offer something this girl has always wanted to do but can’t afford or her parents can’t or won’t do for her.

––Overweight Too

I’ve never been a sports kind of person, but as a sophomore in high school, I wanted to join the school tennis team. The team had few players, so virtually anyone who tried out was guaranteed a spot on the team. When I told my mom, however, she replied that I was too fat to join the team and that I should lose weight before I even thought of trying out. I’m sure my mother was not so critically blunt in her language, but nearly 15 years later, this is the overarching message I remember taking from the exchange. I can only now wonder why it never occurred to her that perhaps playing an organized sport might lead to weight loss. Perhaps she was worried that I’d feel ostracized in a short tennis skirt or wouldn’t be able to keep up with the other, more fit players. Who knows. What I do know is that I never did lose weight (in high school) and I never joined the tennis team.

A few years ago I bought a couple of used tennis racquets from a sporting store for my sister and I. Neither of us knew how to keep score (what’s up with love, anyway?) or how to even play, really, but we both had fun lobbing the ball over the net and dashing across the court in often vain attempts to volley it back. I’ve since retired my used tennis racquet to Goodwill and bought a flashy new one a couple summers ago that I usually keep stashed away in my trunk for the impromptu game. I still play today although its increasingly harder to find partners, much less partners who are willing to retrieve my overzealous serves. I even considered taking a community beginner’s tennis class earlier this summer, but a late graduate class schedule conflicted with it. And I used to play against the old reliable wall at the university racquetball courts until I dropped down to part-time and lost my rec club membership. Still, I have yet to find anything quite as therapeutic as directing all your stress and anxiety into that little lime-green ball.

I often wonder how my perceptions of exercise and self-confidence would have been different had I joined the school team. Would I have made more friends? Would I have better managed my weight? Would I have developed more self-confidence? Would I have seen fitness as more than state-mandated child abuse? The what-ifs abound… How about you? Was there ever an activity you wanted to do, but were dissuaded from because of your weight or other reasons? How would you be different today had you been allowed to indulge your real interests?

* While weight is a factor with some horses, many ranches offer horseback riding without any weight requirements. Other factors are equally important. According to one horse riding instructor, “a heavy person who is athletic is easier for a horse to carry then a lighter person who flops around and does not work with the horse.”

In July, I asked readers for their questions on Health at Every Size to be answered by a registered dietitian who promotes the practice. The original dietitian became unavailable, so I asked fellow ASDAH member Deb Kauffmann to step in. Deborah is a registered dietitian and a licensed dietitian/nutritionist currently in private practice in Baltimore, Maryland. She has provided HAES nutrition counseling for disordered eating to adults and teens, as well as children and their families, since 1990, and is one of the pioneers of the non-diet approach to weight management in the Baltimore area. In addition to nutrition counseling, Deborah offers Largely Positive, a free support group for adults of size promoting how to be happy and healthy at your natural weight.

Read the questions and Deborah’s answers after the jump…

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Fall has officially descended on Southwestern Ohio, casting a golden light on leafy canopies primed to erupt in bursts of crimson, amber and yellow. I find myself savoring those few hours of precious daylight between the close of workday and an all-too-early sunset. I pulled a muscle in my leg last week from an impromptu rollerblade ride inspired by the season, so I’ve been taking it easy the past few days. At my urging, my husband bought his first bike in 20 years and we loaded up both of our bikes for an evening ride yesterday. There’s a nice park near our home with a 2-mile track that winds around a nature preserve and alongside the Little Miami River. I am fortunate that Brandon shares my my love of the great outdoors and understands my occasional Thoreau-like need to commune with nature. My graduate seminar officially starts next Tuesday, so we’re enjoying a mini-three-day weekend vacation this weekend. Where, we have yet to decide, but it has to have good hiking and maybe some bike trails.

In the summer and fall, I’d much rather exercise outdoors than waste away the hours alone on a stairclimber to nowhere in an air-conditioned gym. But the downside of fall is that it’s usually oh-so-excruciatingly brief in duration and all-too short on daylight hours. Luckily, I have Gilad to keep me company in those dusky hours. I bought my very first workout DVD ever a few weeks ago. I’d been following along to Gilad Janklowicz’s half-hour show on FitTV and still felt sore a week later. So, I bought his Fitness Express 2-DVD set, which includes about 15 targeted workouts all under 10 minutes. Inexpensive light weights are involved in most workouts, but you can substitute with soup cans or juice jugs and I didn’t find it difficult in keeping up with the cast at all. I never thought I’d find myself gushing about a fitness DVD, especially one led by a kind of bitchy Israeli with biceps larger than my thighs, but Gilad’s routines are really, really effective. He targets muscles in ways I’ve never before considered and it works. Plus, he rarely mentions weight-loss throughout the tapes, and instead, emphasizes how much stronger his workouts will make you feel. I also recently bought a tube with 5-pound attached handles. Who needs an expensive gym when you have your own body to use as resistance?

WebMD has 10 great tips for fall fitness here. On a budget? Check out these wallet-friendly fall fitness tips here. MSNBC also has a review out on some of the latest fitness contraptions to hit the market.

Does the change in seasons affect what kind of activities you do? How? What are some of your favorite fall fitness activities?

I’m not the class kind of gym-goer and besides, my company gym doesn’t offer any classes even if I were the kind to join a roomful of women attempting to become human pretzels. I’m also about as rhythmic as, say, Frankenstein on fire, so I tend to stay away from step and aerobic classes that rely on one having some innate sense of hand-and-arm coordination. But in the past couple weeks, I’d discovered FitTV and I’m now doing all kinds of fun class kind of workout in the privacy and comfort of my own living room with only my cats to give me strange looks as I attempt to shake it Bhangra Masala-style.

The commercials on FitTV are marked by weight-loss products, but surprisingly, the shows aren’t. I’ve become a fan of All Star Workout, Namaste Yoga, Shimmy and Body Sculpt with Gilad, and most of the talk on these shows centers on feeling stronger and healthier, not weight-loss. And while many of the “extras” on the shows are thin, of course, Cathe Friedrich’s show features a 200-pound or so woman with a solid midsection and muscular legs who not only keeps up effortlessly, but never loses her pasted-on smile. For me, exercise not only has to be fun, it has to be diverse so I don’t get bored and FitTV offers everything from pilates to belly dancing to Indian dance moves to a weight lifting/yoga hybrid.

What are your favorite workout DVDs or fitness personalities? Or, what are your favorite kinds of workouts in general?

As if scarily-thin teenage supermodels and aging celebrities who drink regularly from the Fountain of (Botox) Youth aren’t enough to impose unrealistic expectations for women, now we have a new “physical ideal” to strive for.

Meet Dara Torres.

The 41-year-old Olympic swimmer and mother of a 2-year-old toddler was recently featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. That is, her and all six of her phenomenally-ripped and sharply cut abs showing absolutely no hint of stretch marks or a post-pregnancy pooch. In addition to being the oldest female swimmer in the history of the Olympic games, the New York Times’ Rings blog reports that Torres is now also being “held up as a physical ideal for mothers, women at or approaching middle age, and just women in general.”

Are you kidding me?

The magazine’s coverage of Torres notes that to achieve her world class performance, Torres employs three coaches (head, sprint and strength), two stretchers, two massage therapists, a chiropractor, and a nanny — at the cost of at least $100,000 a year. The daughter of a doctor, Torres led a privileged childhood life — her childhood home had 10 bathrooms. Her current husband is an Israeli surgeon and she receives considerable funding and financial advantages from her sponsorships from Toyota and Speedo; money she has earned from modeling, TV work and motivational speaking; and a private sponsor for training expenses. For Torres, working out is literally a full-time job and she has the battle scars to prove it. She’s had surgery on her knees, elbows, shoulders, hands and fingers. She is, as her own father describes, not a type-A personality, but rather a “type A + +,” which helps to explain why, while attending the University of Florida in the mid-1980s, Torres earned 28 N.C.A.A. all-American swimming awards — the maximum number during a college career — but she was also bulimic.

And yet this is what American women should aspire to become? Don’t get me wrong: Dara Torres is a mind-blowingly incredible athlete and she’s even more amazing considering her age and motherhood. I am both awed and inspired by her accomplishments and wish her the gold. But there’s a reason why the Olympic Games are the most prestigious event in the world for most of the sports involved: The Olympics, like the beauty myth, is achievable by only a select few. While it’s one thing to admire Torres’ athletic feats and use her as inspiration to achieve great things in your own life, Dara Torres should not be held up as the “physical ideal” for mothers, middle-aged women or any woman. The average woman does not have the financial advantages as Torres; the luxury of being able to dedicate the bulk of her waking hours to working out and training; and only a few share in Torres’ unique personality trait and genetic body type that make the sport a good fit for her. Plus, while Torres might appear to be the epitome of good health, numerous sports injuries and a (past) eating disorder suggest otherwise.

New York Times blogger Tara Parker Pope presents an alternative “physical ideal” for women: 80-year-old Estelle Parsons, who regularly lifts weights, swims and bikes. A better and more realistic example, perhaps, but I say, why must we have a physical ideal at all? As Naomi Wolf writes,

“We do not need to change our bodies, we need to change the rules… You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all. The woman wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to truly see her.”

Setting a woman like Dara Torres and the kind of physique only Michelangelo could sculpt as the new “physical ideal” for women only sets an impossibly high bar to reach even higher. The tragedy is that women never stop trying to grasp what they can never reach.

The international Olympic Games is a time to celebrate individual and team accomplishments with nationalistic fervor. We marvel at the incredible strength, dedication and perseverance of athletes who perform seemingly superhuman feats with aplomb — like those featured here and here. What’s not often discussed are those cases of (primarily female) athletes for whom the desire to excel extends far beyond a gold medal and the cover of a Wheaties box. With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games nearly upon us, it’s a good time to discuss issues of eating disorder behaviors amongst athletes, or as some have come to call it, ‘anorexia athletica.’

The British Times Online featured a story this week on the issue with a focus on British athlete Allie Outram, who recently published Running on Empty. The memoir recounts Outram’s struggles with anorexia and bulimia and how her eating disorder and intense training regimens nearly killed her. This book, of course, is not to be confused with ED-Bites blogger Carrie Arnold’s eating disorder memoir of the same name. The former Olympic long distance runner developed anorexia in her teens. She spent two years in an inpatient hospital eating disorders unit but later developed bulimia while in recovery. And according to Outram, she isn’t alone in her struggles. In fact, she says, the athletic community and the nature of sports not only helped to conceal and legitimize her disorder, it also encouraged it:

“At one World Cross Country Championship I can confidently say that, of six of us in the Great Britain junior women’s team, four had some form of eating disorder,” said Outram. “It is so common in the sport, yet no coach or team manager ever expressed concern. I was never told that I was too thin, and was never withdrawn from a race because of my weight.”

“Outside of sport, people would think I ate too little and exercised too much, but within athletics my behaviour was not only accepted but endorsed and encouraged,” she said. “There were lots of others like me so it was easy to hide.”

The article goes on to cite a study published last year in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise journal, which revealed that almost one in five of Britain’s leading female distance runners has an eating disorder or has suffered from one in the last, compared with just one percent of the general population. In the U.S., a study published last month by researchers at the University of Denver revealed that female athletes and exercisers tend to exhibit eating disorder symptoms more often than those who don’t exercise as regularly. At least one-third of female athletes have some type of disordered eating, according to two studies of college athletes done by eating disorder experts, one in 1999 by Craig Johnson of the Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital in Tulsa and another in 2002 by Katherine Beals, now at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Beals is also the author of Disordered Eating Among Athletes, a guide book for health professionals.

Among those athletes who have spoken openly about their struggles are Charlotte Dale, a former European junior cross-country champion, and Bryony and Kathryn Frost, 24. The Frost twins were considered track medal contenders at the 2012 Olympics, but last year revealed how they survived on just a few pieces of fruit a day. Liz McColgan counts her second place finish in the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics to her low body weight and eating disorder. “I was so weak and undernourished that I didn’t have the energy to sprint for the line,” she said. Kimiko Hirai Soldati, a 2004 Olympic diver, struggled with bulimia and now speaks out to other women on eating disorders awareness. Gymnast and Olympic gold medal winner Nadia Comaneci has also come forward and admitted struggling with anorexia and bulimia, along with 1972 Olympic gold medal winner Cathy Rigby, who suffered from anorexia and bulimia for 12 years and went into cardiac arrest twice because of it. You can read about more famous men and women athletes who’ve battled eating disorders here.

And the above are the lucky ones for whom recovery is still a possibility. Among those athletes struck down by an eating disorder is world class gymnast Christy Henrich, who died in 1994 at age 22 from multiple organ failure brought on by anorexia. Seven years later, German rower and 1988 Seoul Olympic eight gold medallist Bahne Rabe died at age 37 as a result of an eating disorder. And in 2003, Helen Lee, a former Middlesex county and South of England cross-country champion died at the age of 18 from pneumonia and organ failure thought to be a direct result of her long-term battle with anorexia.

I like to cycle and rollerblade for fun and I’ve really come to enjoy playing (not watching) tennis, but I have very little experiences with athleticism or team sports in general. Marching band is the closest to organized sports I’ve ever come (unless I make the roller derby team in January!), so I have no personal relevant experiences to share, only concerns. Still, during my eating disorder, I worked out at my gym at least six days a week for at least two hours a day. The staff there knew me by name and we even discussed details from our personal lives with each other. I remember once going to the gym’s massage therapist I had befriended with concerns that my blood pressure and resting heartbeat were abnormally low. She reassured me that both were “normal,” because I didn’t have so much fat to beat blood out to and through. I was later diagnosed with a heart condition brought on by anorexia. I’m sure the gym staff had to see the dark circles under my eyes, the times I had to catch myself for fear of blacking out, and my extremely rapid and very unhealthy weight loss. Instead of expressing concern, they asked me to be their Member of the Month. I felt guilty and hypocritical, but reluctantly agreed because I was unemployed at the time and needed the free month membership offered with the “honor.” My picture and personal ‘success story’ were then displayed prominently as a model for others to emulate and aspire to. It remained on the wall for another two months until I demanded they take it down.

Are you an amateur or professional athlete or know someone who is? Was/is the culture of your own athletic circles body-positive or body-negative? Weigh in with your experiences both on and off the playing field.

Health at Every Size is a rather relative health approach that can mean very different things for different people. The Association for Size Diversity and Health is an excellent resource for information about HAES, but since the paradigm is not trademarked, owned or otherwise dictated by any one group, personal questions about HAES still abound. What is Health at Every Size? Is it possible to “fail” at HAES or “not do it right?” How can one incorporate HAES in their own lives? These are all questions I see raised time and time again, both on eating disorders blogs and blogs that promote fat acceptance.

Longtime readers of The-F-Word may be familiar with the interview format I use in which I pose 10 questions for field professionals, authors and people with relevant experiences. This time, I’m switching things up a bit. Nancy Kuppersmith, a dietitian at the University of Louisville who promotes the Health at Every Size approach, has agreed to be featured in an interview here on this site. But instead of me posing the questions, I’m going to allow readers here to submit those burning questions they have about HAES to be answered by a medical professional.

So, c’mon… what do you want to know about HAES? Post your questions below and they may be included in the list I send to Nancy!

Back before I got into blogging, I was a total messageboard fanatic. I moderated a rather large graphic design community and I’ve always liked the coffeehouse nature a messageboard provides. So, I started one as part of the Grand Master Plan for this site.

The messageboard link is here: www.the-f-word.org/discuss

I get lots of emails from folks who suggest great and interesting topics for me to blog on – ideas that I don’t always have the time or energy to follow up on – and a messageboard allows you to start topics on those tidbits and get feedback from both me and others. You can discuss news and current events or chitchat off-topic. You can also share recipes, talk about your favorite books, or show off some of your more creative works of art. One of my favorite forums is The Boutique, where members are encouraged to discuss fashion trends, and also to swap clothes that don’t fit and flatter their bodies for clothes that do.

I’ve also included support forums for those with eating disorders and caregivers of people with eating disorders, along with forums to get advice on self-esteem issues and relationship problems. There are forums to discuss women’s health related issues, like pregnancy, infertility and PCOS; HAES-inspired fitness and nutrition; or to talk about mental health issues like AD/HD, Asperger’s Sydrome, Autism and self injury or physical health issues like thyroid deficiencies, diabetes, digestive disorders or physical trauma.

Please read the board rules first before introducing yourself in the Introductions forum and joining in on the conversations. And if you’re interested in becoming a moderator for the site, please send me a note at Rachel (at) the-f-word (dot org) telling me a bit about yourself and why you’re interested, along with a brief recap of your online experience with messageboards and communities. Preference will be given to those with blogs and/or other established presences elsewhere on the ‘net.