Anorexia Nervosa: Explanation, Signs, and Symptoms
The term anorexia nervosa comes from the Greek word for "lack of appetite" and a Latin word implying a nervous origin. It is a major emotional eating disorder and is characterized by three main criteria:
- Significant self-induced starvation, or near-starvation
- An extreme desire for thinness or being extremely afraid of becoming fat
- The presence of medical signs and symptoms resulting from starvation
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What is Imagery and How is it Used in Sports, Athletics (and Strength Training)
Imagery is simply the process of "picturing things". In other words it involves forming an image in your mind. However, when we speak of imagery in sports and strength training it is important to know that an image does not have to be confined to a visual picture in the mind but is better thought of as any mental representation or reproduction of sensations or perceptions. The term visualization is sometimes used to describe imagery relying only on the visual sense but imagery should be thought of as using all of the senses to create or re-create an experience in your mind. Vision and kinesthetic sense are however the most important aspects.
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Food Compensation: Do Exercise Ads Change Food Intake?
Past research has shown that promotional messages such as food advertising influence food consumption. However, what has gone largely unexplored is the effect of exercise advertising on food intake. This study experimentally tested the effects of exposure to exercise commercials on food intake at a lunch meal as compared to the effects of control commercials.
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Five Tips for a Better Strength Training Workout
I don't usually make lists such as this. Not because I think there is something wrong with it it's just not my preference. However, this is a recap of some of the information that we have here as much as it is a list of tips for a better strength training session.
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All Important Attitudes: How They Affect our Fitness and Strength Training Pursuits
Blogs and magazine articles abound that are aimed at at changing people's attitudes about fitness. I particularly notice those that concern attitudes towards strength training. Just recently I complained about the "selling of strength training" and much of my writing concerns strength training "propoganda" as I call it.
More often or not, however, it's not propaganda. In fact it's nothing new at all. "Strength training is good for you," is about as special as it gets. And perhaps a list of benefits that you can find on 500 other similar sites.
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Guilt and Exercise Don't Mix
I just read a blog post in which someone talked about a 30 day gym goal. I won't link to it or embarrass the person I'll just talk about the very typical thought process that was at work.
Basically this person "guilted" himself into going to the gym. He didn't express any compulsion to be active or to exercise at all. He simply felt that he "had better make the gym a habit" because "they" say it is important.
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Fitness and Strength Training: It's A Process
I am in the process of transferring some old posts from the old "GUStrength's Blog" to here. This post was written in August 2009 and like many of the posts over there was never really seen. I think it is a good one and worth having more visibility, but I'll let you be the judge. It concerns a subject that we often discuss here at GUS, which comes down to the question of being a "task oriented" or "outcome oriented" person. This has been mentioned in numerous forum discussions and articles, so we must think it is a fairly important distinction. Here, I am trying to clear up just why that is.
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The Rudy Effect: How Goals are Really Reached
Sometimes I get myself so busy with writing about how to strength train, getting all down and dirty with the technical stuff, that I forget something very important. The same thing with dispensing advice.
You see, something that I sometimes forget but that is always in the back of my brain is a sad fact: The majority of people who find my articles or ask my advice will not be training a year from now. Or even a few months from now. In fact it is quite likely that one of my articles is the first and last thing they will ever read about strength training or any other kind of "fitness pursuit". And the same is true of anyone who does what I do.
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Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome
When Hans Selye was experimenting on rats by inflicting stress them either by injecting them with hormones or chemicals, making surgical incisions or exposing them to extreme temperatures, he noticed that the rats were all displaying the same group of symptoms. At first he believed that he had discovered a new hormone1; however, several years of further testing by injecting the rats with other substances, such as formaldehyde, revealed the same results. Even exposure to cold, cutting their spinal cords and forced exercise produced the same effects. The effects occurred in a predictable sequence that is now known as the General Adaptation Syndrome2 (GAS).
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Fitness: All Encompassing Means Paralyzing?
So in the last post I presented the talk by Dr. Barry Schwartz regarding “The Paradox of Choice”. Also of late I have been speaking about having specific goals in our training and making specific choices about the direction our training should take.
If you read my piece on the concept of fitness you’ll see that I don’t think much of the word. Yes, I use it on occasion for brevity or convenience but depending on your perspective it’s either to vague or too all-encompassing.
Continue Reading » Fitness: All Encompassing Means Paralyzing?
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