Entries for August 2009

A new environment, different hours, nearly limitless food choices: No wonder 25 percent of college freshmen gain at least 5 percent of their body weight (10 to 15 pounds) in their very first semester of school, according to a study published this year. But a fresh start—a new school, job, schedule, or whatever—can actually shake up your eating and exercise routine for better instead of worse. Here are five tips for using a change of scene to help you get fit rather than fatter:

* Embrace a fresh start. It's always easier to set new habits than to change old ones. Research suggests that when you eat or drink the same thing at the same time of day, in the same mood, or in the same place, you set up a series of cues that will bring on a craving whenever you're in that situation. In a new environment, though, some of the cues to your old behaviors are no longer present. For example, in a new job, you won't have the same work buddy asking if you want to walk down to the corner deli for a 3 o'clock snack. A clean slate is a great opportunity to erase some of the less helpful old cues.

This season, hamstring injuries have benched at least four members of the New York Mets, the team whose ups and (more numerous) downs made me care about baseball for the first time in my life. Then it got personal: my boyfriend started hobbling after one of our outdoor workouts, having suffered his own mild hamstring pull.

What is this injury, anyway? And what makes everyone from pro athletes to weekend warriors susceptible to it?

"They want to know about the abs and the arms," says 42-year-old swimmer Dara Torres, the five-time Olympian—most recently last summer in Beijing, where she won three silver medals. She's talking about being a role model for those who aspire to athletic success over the age of 35 (which counts as "older" in the world of elite sports); she took up that mantle during the run-up to the Olympics and still holds it a year later. As her profile rose, people clamored to know her secrets. They want to know about how she trains, what she eats, how she managed to compete in last week's world championships against people less than half her age—and, yes, how she has that body after giving birth to a child.

The answer to that last question: strength-training, mostly using her own body weight, and focusing particularly on her core stomach, back, and pelvic muscles. But she reminds people that it's her job to perform at a certain level, which means keeping her body in stellar condition. More important than inspiring people to get similarly ripped abs is motivating them to push beyond self-imposed limits based on a notion of what's age-appropriate, whether in the arena of exercise and sports or in life. "Don't put an age limit on your dreams," says Torres, who is working on a fitness book, which will be out next year, and is promoting BP's younger for longer campaign.