Strength Training Made Slightly Less Unpleasant

You know you should be doing some strength training, right? Along with your regular cardio, and stretching, and not eating triple cheeseburgers for dinner every night?

Yet strength training is one of those particularly loathed good-for-you things like broccoli or flossing your teeth. Many otherwise sensible people, women particularly, tend to plug their ears and sing "la la la I can't heeeear you" whenever the subject comes up.

Crabby hates it too, but she does it anyway. Two or three times a week, bitching the entire time.

Does Crabby need to go over the reasons for lifting weights? There's a summary here.

Just a few highlights: you can rev up your metabolism and stay leaner; keep your bones from disintegrating when you get old; relieve depression; fight various diseases; and just generally become a superhero with extraordinary powers who never ever dies. (Crabby is paraphrasing here).

Of course, the usual caveats apply about seeing your doctor first, getting help from a trainer, starting slow, etc. Crabby doesn't want you to hurt yourself or threaten her with litigation.

Here's the important thing: Keep it short and simple. As soon as you figure out what you're doing, ditch the teeny tiny weights. Find a few good exercises, use heavy enough weights, and just do One Set Apiece. (Unless you're really into it). You don't get that much more out of a 2nd or 3rd set.

Why do so many women torture themselves by doing 10 sets of 9,000 repetitions each with tiny little dumbells? I see that at the gym all the time. It takes forever, hurts, and won't do any good anyway.

Instead, choose an amount of weight that's hefty enough you can only lift it for 6-12 reps (advice varies depending on expert and body part) before you physically can't do it even one more time.

This sounds hard but it actually it's easier. The first couple of times feel "heavy," but not painful. The next few are still okay, but you realize you won't be able to do this forever. During the last couple you'll be moaning "this sucks" but then congratulations, you're done!

This isn't enough training, obviously, to turn you into a hard-core body builder. But no hard-core body builder in her right mind would come to Crabby for weight lifting advice.

And the Winner Is...

So the Webby Award winners were announced yesterday, and readers may want to check out the health winner: "That Guy." It's a site that is not only amusing, but has a public service agenda that is not at first obvious. Weirdly enough, the Defense Department had something to do with it and didn't totally f*uck it up.

After you've returned (and please do return as Crabby isn't done with you yet), Crabby wants to make an Award-related announcement of her own.

Back now? Good. So Crabby is thinking of having a Contest. Extra Special early readers of Cranky Fitness should have an advantage, she believes, so she is making a pre-announcement now so that you may start bookmarking items as you come across them. Also, because the idea may well be idiotic, Crabby wants to run it by you all first so you can talk her out of it before she embarrasses herself by making it official.

Crabby is looking for something along the lines of "Stupidest Health-Related Moments of the Recent Past." (She knows this description needs work). Readers will submit links such as: A celebrity or politician saying something totally inane about health; a respected media source giving crazy-ass advice; a government agency banning and/or endorsing something it shouldn't. Perhaps even a YouTube clip of someone endangering themselves in a particularly reckless but amusing manner. The target of our derision should be someone either prominent or arrogant--no picking on some poor schlub who is accidentally moronic.

Crabby will give this award a name like "The Crabbies" or "The Golden Claw" or something, and have the contest maybe once a month. The prizes will be monetarily worthless and probably virtual rather than physical, given postage prices and the international nature of her audience. She is thinking that Cranky Fitness might extend special promotional efforts on behalf on the winners' blogs or favorite charities.

So readers, what do you think? Dumb idea? Would you play? Any suggestions or ideas?

Just Say No to Fake Chocolate!

A Concerned and Well-Informed Reader emailed Crabby with a tip about this shocking new development in the world of tasty confections:

"Big candy and food makers such as Hershey and Nestle are lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to let them substitute vegetable oil and whey for two of chocolate's key ingredients and still call their products "chocolate.""

The San Jose Mercury News (along with other Big Newspapers that aren't as fun to link to) has the story.

What can you do to prevent this outrage? If you're a bit less lazy than Crabby, go here where candy blogger and playwright Cybele May is organizing resistance to this nefarious conspiracy.

Bigger Bouncy Breasts! And Technorati Rankings!

Note to nonbloggers: please bear with Crabby once again. More Health & Fitness news served fresh (or only slightly stale) here daily! Or at least fairly regularly.

So having entered her third week of blogging, Crabby can't help but write the obligatory "google has finally found me" post. It's just too irresistible! Old hands may yawn and scoff and skip this post, but to Crabby it is all still so New and Amusing that she must take a few moments to share her experiences.

Dawn, a witty blogger who visits here frequently and favors cream-filled apple donuts, predicted that Crabby's post on "Great Big Bouncy Breasts" might indeed catch Google's attention. (It was a post about sports bras and leotards). Dawn observed that her own post on Technorati Ratings brought her a spike in traffic.

Crabby went along with the joke, but the premise seemed unlikely. In an internet world filled with pornography, how would anyone ever end up on Crabby's poor little blog looking for breasts? There are breasts everywhere! Cranky Fitness, though it has the best of intentions, is brand new and not widely read. Of the 75 million blogs out there, it is probably number 74,999,999.

Yet she is starting to get a few google hits from people looking for Big Breasts.

How is this possible? These searchers must be on page 86,032 of their search results, compulsively clicking on each entry on every page. These poor guys (I'm assuming) would have to be absolutely insatiable in order to end up here.

Why not just buy a magazine or find a cozy porn site filled with humongous mammaries and wallow there all day? Seems much simpler. However, Crabby supposes that they must fuel their addictions with Brand New and Different Breasts every few seconds. Or something.

As a grumpy aside, Crabby is not on speaking terms with Technorati right now. She hasn't been able to log on and tech support will not get back to her. So she can't claim her blog and put it in the proper category. Also, she hates them because they don't care how well-intentioned and fussed over a blog is, they're only interested in how many people link to it. In Crabby's case, it's quite an unimpressive number. Technorati is messing with her self-esteem which makes Crabby very Crabby indeed.

Pistachios -- Who knew?

So pistachios just got the big thumbs-up from researchers at Penn State, who say they're actually quite good for you despite being tasty. (The pistachios, not the researchers, although they might be tasty too).

Crabby loves studies like these. Yay pistachios! And sure, they're still fattening, so don't crazy. (Crabby was going to say "don't go nuts" but thought the better of it. Sort of.)

Science Daily, which hopefully archives this stuff since Crabby links to it frequently, has the scoop. According to one article, apparently "a handful of pistachios may lower cholesterol and provide the antioxidants usually found in leafy green vegetables and brightly colored fruit."

And another article says that "eating pistachios may reduce your body's response to the stresses of everyday life."

Skimming further in the article, however, Crabby discovered that this valuable knowledge came at a price. The research subjects had to do stressful math calculations in their heads, as well as put their feet "in a bucket of ice water for 2.5 minutes."

Poor subjects. Hope they got paid.

But mmmm, pistachios.

Anyone have anything to share remotely related to Nuts, Antioxidants, Science, Stress, Buckets of Ice Water, Tasty Researchers, or Anything At All? Operators are standing by.