As women in the United States and across the industrialized world get fatter, most Japanese women are getting skinnier. Still, many view themselves as overweight. The trend is most pronounced among women in their 20s. A quarter-century ago, they were twice as likely to be thin as overweight; now they are four times more likely to be thin.

Social pressure — women looking critically at other women — is the most important reason female skinniness is ascendant in Japan. “Japanese women are outstandingly tense and critical of each other,” said researcher Hisako Watanabe, who has spent 34 years treating women with eating disorders. “There is a pervasive habit among women to monitor each other with a serious sharp eye to see what kind of slimness they have.”

Public health experts say that younger Japanese women, as a group, have probably become too skinny for their own good. Restricted calorie consumption is slowing down their metabolisms, the average birth weight of their babies is declining, and their risk of death in case of serious illness is rising.

“I would advise these women to eat when they are hungry,” said Satoshi Sasaki, a professor of preventive epidemiology at the University of Tokyo School of Public Health. “They should be satisfied with a normal body.”

Preliminary data suggest that taking the weight loss drug sibutramine (aka Meridia in the US or Reductil in the UK) may increase a patient’s risk of adverse cardiovascular events such as heart attack and/or stroke, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

After reviewing the study, the FDA asked the manufacturer to add a warning to the label. The manufacturer, Knoll Pharmaceutical Company, has agreed to add the warning.

She writes:

All you pregnant ladies out there: we’re learning each and every day how and why training during your pregnancy is so good for you AND your baby (NOTE: this information comes from one of the most prominent pregnancy and exercise researchers, Dr James Clapp III, who has studied many pregnant competitive Olympic athletes):

• you accumulate less body fat
• you have a positive sense of well-being and vigor when you might tend to be pessimistic, depressed or lethargic
• you have a reduced incidence of upper respiratory tract infections (colds, sinusitis, etc)
• you’ll tend to have an easier, shorter and less complicated labour
• you can actually IMPROVE your fitness level and physical performance (I can attest to that!)
• your baby has developed an improved tolerance to stress and as such, can handle the stress of labour much better than a baby of a sedentary woman (i.e., fewer drops in heart rate with each contraction)
• your baby has less body fat, but is still able to maintain it’s body temperature
• your baby will most likely be more mature at birth, meaning, they respond readily to environmental cues and will self-quiet themselves if disturbed when napping
• your baby will also be a better sleeper (less likely to wake easily)
• your baby will probably perform better on standardized intelligence tests as they advance in age
• your baby will grow to be a less-fat adult (which is great news in our society of excess overweightness)

If you missed Cassandra’s excellent podcast on training and pregnancy (and other woman-related issues), see here.

In 2008 more food was grown than ever before in history. In 2008 more people were obese than ever before in history. In 2008 more profit was made by food companies than ever before in history. And in 2008 more people went hungry than ever before in history.

Hunger is not a global production problem. It is a global justice problem.

A thoughtful post from Slow Food USA on the disparity between how much food we can produce and how much food actually gets to people (and how much of the food we produce is actually good, nourishing food).

I’ll be in Valencia, CA next week (Jan 25) for Ninja Camp. Anyone interested in a training workshop? If so, leave a comment or email me at mistresskrista [at] stumptuous [dot] com.

I’ll also be in Seattle in late October, so if there’s anyone there who thinks a workshop would be cool, lemme know and we can try to organize something.

Podcast with Cassandra Forsythe

Book review

If there’s a woman in your life who’s considering weight training (or a man in your life who trains women), The New Rules of Lifting for Women is an excellent introduction to the field of women and weight training.

NROL is written by a kickass trifecta of three major names in the business.

Lou Schuler is a well-known fitness journalist who has written several books, including The New Rules of Lifting, The Book of Muscle, and The Home Workout Bible. He’s been a contributor to Men’s Fitness and Men’s Health, serving as the fitness director of the latter for several years.

Cassandra Forsythe is emerging as one of the most authoritative voices in women’s nutrition and training. She’s a Registered Dietitian who holds a PhD in Kinesiology, an MSc in Human Nutrition and Metabolism and a BSc in Nutrition and Food Science. Her main research interests are low-carbohydrate nutrition, dietary fatty acids, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, weight-loss, female-specific nutrition and training, and the female athlete triad. Her other book is Women’s Health Perfect Body Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss and Workout Plan to Drop Stubborn Pounds and Get Fit for Life

(She’s also, by the way, pregnant. We explore her insights on being an unusual combination — a serious female athlete, Dr. Nutrition, and pregnant — in the podcast.)

Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the best-known strength coaches in the biz. He’s a former Taekwon-do international champion who now works as a strength and conditioning coach with a wide variety of clientele, including several Olympic and national level athletes, five World Champions and professionals in a multitude of sports including boxing, martial arts, soccer, ice skating, football, fencing, triathlon, rugby, bodybuilding, dance and fitness competition.

Podcast with Cassandra Forsythe

Cassandra and I get chatty with it for nearly an hour. Topics covered:

• What was it like to be part of the NROL team with Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove?
• The awesomeness of
  • female muscles and strength
  • mountain biking
  • tire flipping
• Cassandra’s early background as a gymnast and lifting after a serious spinal injury
• What happens to women’s bodies when they weight train
• Training with dudes in the gym
• Challenges encountered in training more seriously, and confronting taboos about women’s weight training
• Problems in finding social support (especially from other women), and why push presses aren’t necessarily compatible with bridesmaid’s dresses
• Disordered eating and “exercise bulimia” among “ordinary” women — “healthy” and “unhealthy” approaches to exercise and food
• The female athlete triad
• The myth and pressures of “perfection” and the reality of being an “imperfect expert”
• The role of stress in women’s lives and why we need to lighten the hell up
• Pregnancy, nutrition, and weight training — including sugar cravings, boot camp, and log pressing while pregnant
• The up-and-coming areas for women’s nutrition and fitness
• What’s wrong with kids these days

As Cassandra points out, it’s unusual to have a podcast with two women weight trainers chatting so honestly about the realities of training and bodily experiences. But that’s just the kind of good stuff that Stumptuous.com is devoted to bringing to the people!

Listen online by clicking below:

Or download in MP3 format for good listenin’ on your iPod. (65 MB – yeah, it’s a biggie!) Right-click on the link, if you want to save to your hard drive first (recommended).

Book review

As I’ve mentioned, NROL is a super introduction to the field of women and weight training, and it’s solidly backed by coaching experience and scholarly evidence.

This would make a great gift for your mom, sister, girlfriend/wife, best friend, etc. — anyone who’s considering weight training but hesitant about whether women should do it. It would also make a great gift for folks who may know their way around the gym a little, but want to become more grounded in some of the fundamental principles of program design and sports nutrition.

The first section of the book provides a primer on sex-based physiology, and why women and men should train the same: with relatively heavier weights, higher intensities, and more challenge overall.

The first section debunks common myths — most notably that women will “get too big” from weight training; that certain types of training can make muscles “longer”‘; and a key point: the myth that men’s and women’s muscles are substantially different.

It explains why weight training is essential for all women, not just athletes, and how weight training improves health, leanness, athletic performance, and daily-life function.

The first section also explains much of the logic behind the training plans provided: the importance of progressive overload, which exercises to choose and why, and why not to waste your time with gender-specific “toning”. (It explains why kickbacks suck. Hooray!)

The second section provides nutrition basics such as how many calories active women need, why protein’s important, and how to supplement with post-workout recovery nutrition. It suggests meal plan and preparation techniques, and there’s no fancy weird stuff or secret/magical ingredients — just clear, basic ideas for organizing your nutrition.

The third section provides a step-by-step, carefully crafted workout program in great detail. If you follow the program closely (and you should, if you want to reap the benefits), it’ll take around 6 months to complete. The lifts are basic yet effective. There’s lots of variation to keep you learning and interested.

Total beginners might be slightly intimidated by the presence of complex exercises such as squats and deadlifts — but hey, they can just come here and get help figuring out the technique!

All in all, this is a super starter text for anyone interested in women’s weight training.

• what reality looks like — what a fit body truly is
• how a fit body stacks up against the rest of the world (hint: 20% body fat is pretty good!)
• you should celebrate your accomplishments — modest as they may seem to you

As he writes, “Here is the problem: You actually don’t have any idea of what you look like. Sometimes you feel fat and gross, sometimes you feel skinny and hot, and neither is entirely connected to reality.” This is especially true for folks who don’t spend a lot of time in the world of athletic training, because they don’t have the context nor experience to properly evaluate things like “strong” or “fit” or “lean”.

We don’t know what fit women really look like. They sure as heck don’t look like magazine cover models. (And even magazine cover models don’t look like magazine cover models, as the example of Heidi Montag illustrates.)

If you’ve achieved a certain (fairly moderate) set of goals, he writes, you’re already a rockstar and there is nothing left to fix. Keep up the great work! YEAH!

BMI measurements have shown that Canadian adults have become heavier over the past 25 years.

However, the BMI is only one indicator. The CHMS offer a variety of other measures to gain a more complete understanding of fitness levels associated with current and future risk of disease. Survey respondents underwent body composition measurements and participated in fitness tests in mobile examination centres.

Fitness levels of children and youth have declined significantly since 1981, regardless of age or sex. Fitness levels of adults have also declined, particularly among younger adults.

Among youth aged 15 to 19, the percentage whose waist circumference put them at an increased or high risk of health problems more than tripled.

Among young adults aged 20 to 39, the percentage with a waist circumference that placed them at a high risk for health problems more than quadrupled. The proportions went from 5% to 21% among men, and from 6% to 31% among women.

Roughly 3% of the adult population had high blood pressure that was undiagnosed in 2009.

Full story

From the recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) is asking medical schools about their policies on ghostwriting, specifically, the practice in which faculty agree to be named as authors of articles written primarily by health care companies. [aka Big Pharma or Big Insurance]

In letters sent to 10 prominent universities on November 18, Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, asked questions about their policies for faculty who lend their names as authors of review articles, editorials, and research articles prepared by marketing and/or medical education companies on behalf of drug and device manufacturers.

“When the article is then published, the participation of the ‘ghostwriter’ may not be revealed,” Grassley wrote. “Essentially, the companies are using the reputation of prestigious academic researchers and their institutions to promote the sale of drugs and devices.”

The senator also asked the institutions their policies toward students who commit plagiarism, noting that “some experts refer to ghostwriting as a form of plagiarism, and I understand that institutions view charges of plagiarism quite seriously.”

Mike Mitka, “Ghostwriting Questions.” JAMA. 2010;303(2):125.