Monday, August 10, 2009

Time Magazine's Lame Excuse Not to Exercise


Denis over at the Fitness Nerd wrote some good commentary on an absurd article gracing the cover of the latest issue of Time magazine. And while he's promised a major diatribe from yours truly, I'm going to let him have the stage for a while as I calm down and regain my wits.

Time Magazine's Lame Excuse Not to Exercise

I'm not sure if there's a paragraph in John Cloud's article that I don't take issue with. The number of counter points that I could make off the top of my head to his hypothesis (that you don't need to exercise) could fill a book. But what I want to know, more than anything else, is how an article making such physiological inaccuracies like "converting fat to muscle" has made the cover of Time? Have times gotten so tough that they no longer employ editors and fact checkers?

13 comments:

Kelly said...

seems maybe they were influenced by Rush's article.

Steve Edwards said...

funny, i was thinking Rush was going to run with this tomorrow. we'll see.

Reedster said...

I was thinking like Steve. I assume that Rush will love it and will use it to support his absurd claims.

On a related note I had drinks with a couple of Rush fans recently and they were shocked that I found him laughable. One said, "He's an inspiration. He went blind and he never stopped working." I didn't want to get too into it, but I did respond that he had said that our health care costs are due to people exercising and risk taking. Thankfully we got on a different tangent so it didn't get too ugly.

Unknown said...

That is utterly absurd. What are they trying to do to America with this article??? Ugggh.

Elhanan Greig said...

I'm fat and even I don't agree with this article.

Anonymous said...

Dude, Rush didn't go blind. He went deaf.

-Josh

bob banks said...

I was gonna bring up the 'deaf not blind' thing too.

In defense of this brilliant cover story (I wasn't even aware that 'Time' existed anymore?), if his premise is that one does not need to exercise to lose weight, that's pretty obvious. Don't eat anything=lose weight. He's right.

Steve Edwards said...

Correct indeed, but that wouldn't be a cover story. His argument, similar to that ditz from the NY Times last year, was that you might as well not exercise and lack of it has nothing to do with our current obesity epidemic.
Given some very simple stats:

Kids get between 20-25% less exercise than they did in the 70s

Nearly 30% of our kids are fat, up to 42% in some demographics

Fat kids are 99% more likely to be fat adults

this seems unlikely before you even take into consideration his inane opinion on the subject.

Reedster said...

Deaf, Blind, don't mean shit. Repo man gets in his car any time of day.

Reedster said...

Yea, well I'm not surprised that the stupid Rush fan got it wrong. But how in the hell do you two guys know that?

Brad Schoenfeld, CSCS said...

Well said, Steve. This type of over-the-top journalistic sensationalism is intended solely to be controversial and thus sell magazines. The problem is that it is full of faulty science and, in some cases, downright wrong information. Worse, it sends the absolutely wrong message to the general public. I've posted a research-based response on my blog, www.workout911.com. Spread the word...

Thanks,

Brad

Anonymous said...

Common knowledge, dude. You know who Miley Cyrus is right? You need to renew your subscription to People.

-J

louie a said...

Pick up that issue again and check the spine. Maybe they're marking magazines these days by genre as they do paperbacks. If so, I'm guessing this one would read "Fiction."