5 Keys to Treating Depression through Exercise

By Omar Shamout

About 19 million people in the United States suffer from some form of depression ranging from mild to severe. It's hard to imagine that something as seemingly intangible as the feeling of sadness is governed by science, but it's true. Emotions, like everything else found inside our bodies, can be broken down into chemical equations. The upside of this is that you can sometimes take charge of which emotions your brain generates by altering the things you do every day. Yes, there are a number of pharmaceutical treatments for depression, but studies show that our bodies produce a natural defense that can combat this debilitating mental condition.

What are these organic wonder drugs, you ask? And how do we get them? The answer is endorphins, and you get them through exercise. These chemicals interact with receptors in our brains that send a euphoric feeling throughout the body to combat pain in all its forms. Many people have dubbed this phenomenon "runner's high."

Evolution has gifted us with an anatomy filled with a vast repository of resources that can fight many of the obstacles nature will throw at us. The key is understanding how to unlock the door and utilize all the tools we have available at our disposal. So, with some hard work and dedication, we might be able to discover the secret to one of our self-healing properties.

1. Consistency. Because depression is a chronic problem that can't be cured by an hour in the gym, sufferers must realize that it takes a strong commitment to an aerobic routine to see any improvement. Even then, endorphins alone may not be enough to aid in more severe cases. Research studies conducted by Harvard Medical School found that daily aerobic exercise over a sustained period of time can have exactly the same impact on lowering rates of depression as antidepressant drugs can have. The length of the daily workout is crucial though, as workouts of less than 15 minutes produced negligible results compared to those of 30 minutes or more. Workouts don't have to be high impact, either. Low-impact routines involving walking and light stretching are equally effective.

   Prescription drugs may work faster, but the benefits of aerobic exercise on our brain have been shown to last longer, while also improving other physical conditions such as heart health and blood pressure. You must make a long-term commitment, though, because we are talking about a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. A serious problem demands a serious solution.

2. Drugs are addictive; exercise is not. You might be tempted to take an “easier” route for self-medication. Drugs such as morphine and cocaine also trigger the release of endorphins in your system, but their addictive qualities are dangerous and deadly, not to mention illegal. Overeating can also trigger the release of endorphins, but all of these activities will only make you feel more depressed in the long term once the guilt sets in, and the cycle will only become harder to break. Recognizing any destructive personal triggers of your depression symptoms is vital to understanding how your psyche got to where it is now. Exercise is one of the few coping mechanisms that is not addictive, so embrace it as a welcome and positive addition to your life.
3. Exercise can be social. Willpower, you say? But, I'm depressed! I have no willpower! Here's where other people can come in. Exercise doesn't have to be a solitary activity, and the Mayo Clinic recommends social activities as a way to cope with symptoms of depression. Maybe try joining a group dance or yoga class, joining a pickup basketball game, or softball league. Tennis, anyone? For some people, this is the way to stop thinking of exercise as a chore. The more we turn our workout into a fun activity with friends, the easier it is to think of it not as "work" at all, but rather an "out"ing. Get it?
4. Little things add up. Just because you need to get in 30 minutes of cardio a day to improve your mood, doesn't mean you have to do it all at once. Simple things like walking or biking to work, taking the stairs, parking farther away, and the like really do add up, and count as exercise even if you don't have your cross-trainers on. If you do want to wear those shoes, but still don’t have the time for a long workout, consider trying 10-Minute Trainer^® for a game-changing blast of cardio.
5. Be honest with yourself. Understanding your limits and setting realistic expectations are crucial to establishing a routine that you can sustain over a long period of time and enjoy simultaneously. If you're not used to exercise, don't expect to run for an hour nonstop, because you won't, and will end up getting frustrated with yourself, which is exactly what you don't need! Ease into your routine by setting manageable and attainable goals, and build up your confidence. Overdoing your exercise routine will not make you twice as happy, so there's no need to harm your body while taking care of your head.

The bottom line is that exercise should be considered one part of a strategy to overcome depression and get yourself back on track, and shouldn't be considered a one-way ticket to Happytown. Changing your lifestyle is difficult, but a regular aerobic routine can give your brain the added boost it needs to conquer your destructive habits and combat negative emotions.

Can Hard Exercise Hurt Your Immune System?

By Steve Edwards

Could working out hard increase your risk of getting sick? Two recent studies have led several publications to state that intense exercise should come with a warning that it increases the risk of illness. Today, we'll take a deeper look at these claims, analyze what they mean for you, and look at a few ways to keep your immune system strong.

To someone who's been involved in athletic training his or her entire life, the studies look like a bunch of hoo-hah from the "duh" files. But for the general public, they've created quite a stir, leading many authors to pen articles warning about the dangers of hard exercise. Great, I'm thinking, just what our swelling society needs—another excuse not to exercise. Some of these articles were so craftily written, I even got a note from Tony Horton asking for my take. So obviously, the media fright club did its homework on this one.

Here's the rub. Two independent studies found that while moderate exercise boosted your immune system, intense exercise broke it down. The media spun this to challenge the notion that hard exercise is good for you, stating we should consider only recommending moderate exercise. The problem with that assessment is that to improve your fitness, you must continually stress your system, a process known as progressive overload in training circles. Over time, progressive overload leads to improvements in your immune system. Without it, your fitness will stagnate, and your immune system will regress.

This doesn't mean these studies were without merit. As your training load increases, so does the demand on your immune system, because exercise creates stress on the body. It's the classic what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger scenario. Intense exercise increases the amount of hormones your body releases. These hormones are essential for all bodily functions. During the acute phase of intense exercise, however, these hormones are busy trying to repair all the physiological breakdown your workout incurs on your body, and there isn't enough left to boost your immune system. Therefore, during times of high stress, your immune system is compromised.

The upside is that your body gets used to this process. As your body grows accustomed, less physiological breakdown occurs during the same high-intensity movements, but the hormonal releases are still active. These hormonal releases increase the body's natural defenses—your immune system. So intense exercise leads to an improved immune system, provided you survive the initial stages of your program.

And despite all the hoo-hah, it isn't hard to improve your immune system. It should seem obvious that the harder you exercise, the healthier the rest of your lifestyle should become; but that doesn't create the controversy the media covets. With this in mind, let's look at ways to boost your immune system during times of stress.

Behavioral Changes

1. Get plenty of sleep. Sleep is vital for everything you do and especially for you to recover from exercise. When you don't get enough, the first thing to fail is your ability to fight off illness. Pathogens exist in all walks of life, and fighting them off is an essential part of your well-being. A rested body is a recovered body, and when your body is strong, it's more efficient.
   
2. Avoid outside stress. During times of intense training, it's wise to do your best to avoid as much outside distraction as possible. I try to schedule my hardest training phases during when I don't have a lot of commitments. When I have a big travel schedule or a massive workload on the horizon, I try scaling back my exercise accordingly.
   
3. Wash your hands. A very simple act that's highly effective when it comes to keeping you healthy. You don't need fancy antibacterial soap. Any simple soap will do. Just wash your hands often because most of the things you touch, especially in public, are covered in germs. To make this easier, you can buy waterless hand sanitizers, which were popularized by travelers in countries where the water was unsafe.
   
4. Avoid enclosed spaces for long periods of time. This one's tough, since most of us work or go to school in enclosed spaces. But just because you're forced into a space doesn't mean there's nothing you can do about it. We could all benefit from taking more breaks. Our bodies and our minds will perform better if we give them a break every hour or so. This is why classes tend to be about an hour long. Moving outside of your enclosed space helps you recharge with clean air, sunshine, and vitamin D.
   
5. Don't skip your recovery periods. There's a reason INSANITY^® and P90X^® have recovery weeks built into their schedules. Intense training should only be done in short cycles. One of the most common ways people get sick or injured is by trying to prolong the amount of time during which they Bring It. As good as it feels to keep pushing yourself to your limit, you have a breaking point.
   

Diet Changes

Following a healthy diet enhances each behavioral change mentioned and everything else you do in life. Staying hydrated, in particular, is also very important for your immune system. Supplementing during times of high stress, and when you're forced to stay in an enclosed place for long periods of time (like in an airplane), has been shown to reduce your chances of getting sick. But these are all obvious things, right?

What's less obvious is that many natural foods and herbs have been shown to improve the immune system. None of these are "proven" medical remedies, but they all have a long history of anecdotal lore that probably has some relevant meaning, even if the American Medical Association hasn't blessed them in the same way it has pseudoephedrine. Whether they work or not, all these foods have healthy benefits to supplement your diet, so file them under the "why not" category. With that disclaimer, here are 10 foods that may boost your immune system.

1. Garlic. From staving off vampires to having antiviral and antibacterial properties, garlic has been a wonder food of holistic medicine for as long as we've been writing about it. Just eat it in its natural form—there's a reason you've never seen anyone defend themselves against Dracula with garlic salt.
   
2. Citrus fruits. They're not just for scurvy anymore. Citrus fruits are all high in vitamin C—the vitamin most commonly associated with a strong immune system.
   
3. Echinacea. Another one long on lore but short on science, its anecdotal history in antiviral medicine shouldn't be discounted. However, this herb is best used only in times of severe stress.
   
4. Berries. These fruits contain exceedingly high amounts of antioxidants, which are directly responsible for fighting off would-be illnesses.
   
5. Zinc. Not a real food, but with the popularity of zinc lozenges, who would know? There's good science behind zinc supplementation, but again, it's a high-stress supplement only. Don't make sucking on these a part of your daily diet.
   
6. Oysters. For those who want to take their zinc naturally, nothing beats oysters. And to think that all this time we've only thought of them as aphrodisiacs.
   
7. Shiitake mushrooms. Long used in Japan for their antibacterial and antiviral qualities, they're now common ingredients in haute cuisine.
   
8. Yogurt. One of the few foods that's been a cornerstone of an entire region's diet, as it was for most everyone living between Eastern Europe and Central Asia for about 4,000 years. The bacteria in yogurt helps us digest other foods better, as well as helping us fight off many dangerous bacteria.
   
9. Carrots. High glycemic index be damned. There's no negative research—and plenty of positive research—associated with eating carrots. They're exceptionally high in beta-carotene, and in a study on children's school attendance, beta-carotene was found to improve cognitive function and attendance in the participants.
   
10. Astragalus Root. Another popular herb used in traditional Chinese medicine that's picking up steam under the scrutiny of Western science. Unfortunately, the only downside is that it's not yet found its place in haute cuisine—although it can be found in Beachbody's Herbal Immune Boost and Shakeology.

Does Exercise Matter for Weight Loss?

By Steve Edwards

I'm sure by now many of you have seen the recent cover of TIME magazine stating that exercise doesn't matter for weight loss. As you might imagine, we at Beachbody are a little incredulous at this premise. After all, we have reports from thousands of individuals who've used exercise to dramatically change their bodies. Could we be the ones who are mistaken? Could all of those transformations have happened from dietary change alone? Today, let's take an analytical look at how we lose weight.

This article is going to deviate from our usual approach. As a person who has spent most of his life altering human physiques, I'm going to deconstruct the TIME article from top to bottom and try to make some sense out of what seems like a very unlikely premise. Let's begin with the tagline:

" . . . because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more—and eat more junk food, like doughnuts—after going to the gym."

Could it be true? After all, exercise not only makes you want to eat more, but it requires that your body consume more calories to recover from a breakdown of body tissue. What's unclear at this point is where the "junk food, like doughnuts" came from. My experience with Beachbody customers (and others over the last 25 years) is exactly the opposite; exercise actually leads to better eating habits because a body in tune with its needs craves healthier foods. But this is the tag line of an article that's going to circulate worldwide. Certainly, the author is about to present some compelling evidence for his argument. John Cloud proceeds to inform us:

"One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life."

His personal example of how exercise has not helped him lose weight seems to have left him rather bitter. "I have exercised like this—obsessively, a bit grimly—for years," he states. "But recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this?" To me, it revived memories of Gina Kolata's best-selling drivel from last year blaming the obesity epidemic on our genes, where her entire argument was based around her brother training for a marathon and losing only 3 pounds. But certainly, the cover story of TIME wasn't going to be based on one man's personal weight loss odyssey.

If only Cloud and Kolata were members of the Message Boards, we could have told them how to break plateaus using a simple periodizational approach. Of course, this may have hurt their bank accounts, but at least they'd be less disenfranchised with the fitness industry, as well as a lot healthier.

But I digress. Next, Cloud states:

"Still, as one major study—the Minnesota Heart Survey—found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47% of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%."

At least he used "at least say," because other studies don't back this up. In fact, numerous studies published this decade show that children exercise somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent less than they did in the 1970s, while only eating approximately 3 percent more calories. Statistics tell us that childhood obesity rates are over 30 percent nationwide, and over 40 percent in some demographics. Obese children are 99 percent more likely to wind up as obese adults than non-obese children. In fact, we don't need statistics to tell us this at all. We just need to be observant. The absence of children playing in the streets, the empty bike racks at schools, the prevalence of video games, and the increase in things to watch on TV should make it easy to draw this conclusion sans further input. Using this background, Cloud gets down to the nitty-gritty:

'"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,' says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher."

This seems like a pretty bold statement. The physiological response by the body to exercise is to increase its metabolism. All other things being equal, this leads to weight loss, and there is no scientific evidence to refute it. The only scenario when it would not help is one where an individual consumed more calories than they burned off. But not only would they have to exceed the actual caloric burn of the exercise, they'd have to eat beyond the additional physiological changes the body makes to recover from exercise. And while it feels as though we're getting to the point of the article, caloric consumption in Cloud's view is always only weighed against calories burned during exercise. Furthermore, this premise dismisses the findings of at least three long-term studies done between 1997 and 2008 that show exercise is extremely important for maintaining a goal weight after weight loss.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cloud goes on to tell us:

"Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons: People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases—those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses."

So he's advocating exercise, apparently, just not for weight loss. Odd, when two of the diseases listed above are directly related to obesity. Regardless, this dubious setup allows Cloud to drop his bomb, which is based on spotty science and conjecture:

"That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder."

For scientific evidence, Cloud uses a study out of Louisiana State University [LSU] that showed women on an exercise program didn't lose much more weight than a group who wasn't on an exercise program when their diets weren't monitored. Of course, the women on an exercise program still lost more weight; it just wasn't very significant. But without factoring in diet, it's hard to say what went on within this group. Surely, the dietary component of a weight loss program is important, but stating that exercise is making weight loss harder seems like a stretch, especially when citing a study where the group that exercised still lost more weight. This extrapolation was summed up well in Denis Faye's blog The Real Fitness Nerd:

"Claiming that exercise isn't effective because people use it as an excuse to otherwise misbehave is like claiming a medication isn't effective because patients don't follow the directions properly."

The conjecture continues, as Cloud continues mentioning cravings for various junk foods whenever the topic of exercise comes up. For example:

"In 2007 the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines stating that 'to lose weight . . . 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity may be necessary.' That's 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week, a level that not only is unrealistic for those of us trying to keep or find a job but also could easily produce, on the basis of Church's data, ravenous compensatory eating."

But physical activity is defined as any type of movement that increases your heart rate over time, so he's using the American College of Sports Medicine's guidelines for undefined exercise, making a jump to suggest this should happen at intensities that cause us to pig out, assuming those exist in the first place. This is in contrast to studies that show compensatory eating happens more regularly among sedentary groups. Regardless, it's virtually impossible to prove that moving our bodies more will make us "ravenous," especially when Cloud's still only referencing the LSU study.

His next leap of illogic jumps the shark:

"If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza."

Cloud provides no rationale for this. Maybe he would opt for pizza, as we can only assume. But no evidence is presented as to why someone would do this other than a paper published in Psychological Bulletin in 2000 that claims self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. How he came to the conclusion that this would lead someone to eat pizza as a post-workout snack is anyone's guess because, unfortunately, he doesn't attempt to explain it. It's just his opinion.

Next, he attempts to make his point using some science:

"Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle—a major achievement—you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that."

Cloud's flippant dismissal at the end of this paragraph could be taken as self-mockery because no one can convert fat to muscle. The physiological process does not exist. You can lose fat (atrophy) and gain muscle (hypertrophy), but you can't convert one type of body tissue into another. Furthermore, the Columbia research has not been proven conclusive. Brad Schoenfeld, in an in-depth review of the TIME article on his blog Workout 911, cites two studies showing far greater differences in metabolic properties.

"In a study done at Tufts University, Campbell and colleagues reported an increase in lean body weight of 3.1 pounds after 12 weeks of strength training increased resting metabolic rate by approximately 6.8%. This translated into an additional 105 calories burned per day. Do the math, and that equates to approximately 35 calories burned for each pound of added muscle. A study by Pratley and colleagues came to a similar conclusion on the topic. A similar four month strength training protocol resulted in a gain of 3.5 pounds of lean muscle. Metabolic rate showed a resulting 7.7% increase, correlating to a metabolic-heightening effect of muscle of approximately 34 calories."

Cloud does manage to quote a lot of credentialed people, but he does so in a way where he either uses their quotes out of context or he interprets them in a way that's just plain wrong. For example, let's use his analysis of why running could be worse for weight loss than "sitting on the sofa knitting."

"Some of us can will ourselves to overcome our basic psychology, but most of us won't be very successful. 'The most powerful determinant of your dietary intake is your energy expenditure,' says Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. 'If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more.'"

True, you will be hungry and might eat more. What he leaves out is that not only can you eat more, but at some point, you need to eat more to lose weight. At Beachbody, this is one of the most difficult principles we have to teach our customers. At the beginning of an exercise-induced weight loss program, we restrict calories. As a person's body composition changes, so does that person's need for caloric consumption. It's not uncommon for our customers to double the amount of food they need to eat to keep their weight loss moving once they get into good shape. This simple physiological fact renders Cloud's argument moot.

And not only do individual caloric needs change, but so do nutrient needs. In my experience, the need for more nutrient-dense foods seems to create cravings for healthier foods that are nutrient dense. And since these foods tend to be less calorically dense (because they are often plant based and contain fiber), the most common scenario among our customer base is that people become less hungry over time because they're eating foods which keep them full longer.

Cloud follows this with an about-face, making a point that if people moved more, they could exercise less. Ignoring the fact that all movement is considered some form of exercise, Cloud uses some studies that showed kids who got less recess time spent more personal time exercising, and thus stayed on par with their weight loss, than those who got more recess—not exactly a damnation of exercise.

Then he actually champions exercise with the following statement:

"In addition to enhancing heart health and helping prevent disease, exercise improves your mental health and cognitive ability. A study published in June in the journal Neurology found that older people who exercise at least once a week are 30% more likely to maintain cognitive function than those who exercise less. Another study, released by the University of Alberta a few weeks ago, found that people with chronic back pain who exercise four days a week have 36% less disability than those who exercise only two or three days a week."

This seems like a strong testament from an article that began as anti-exercise. He further drives home the need to exercise with the following paragraph:

"But there's some confusion about whether it is exercise—sweaty, exhausting, hunger-producing bursts of activity done exclusively to benefit our health—that leads to all these benefits or something far simpler: Regularly moving during our waking hours. We all need to move more—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says our leisure-time physical activity (including things like golfing, gardening and walking) has decreased since the late 1980s, right around the time the gym boom really exploded. But do we need to stress our bodies at the gym?"

Huh? Who defined exercise as the need to "stress our bodies at the gym"? Wasn't this the same guy who had just told me that I'd be better off knitting than going for a run? It seems like the entire point of the article was for Cloud to publish an excuse so he wouldn't have to go to the gym anymore. He then proceeds to ask himself this exact question.

"This explains why exercise could make you heavier—or at least why even my wretched four hours of exercise a week aren't eliminating all my fat. It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito."

The funny thing is that over the course of the article he actually seems to have convinced himself that he should exercise, only differently. He simply became befuddled on the type of exercise that he should be doing to get rid of his belly. It's more like an article to promote periodizational exercise, even though he doesn't mention it. He admits his confusion:

"Actually, it's not clear that vigorous exercise like running carries more benefits than a moderately strenuous activity like walking while carrying groceries."

Here we would agree, as it is unclear, especially without defining the intensity of the run or the amount of weight in groceries being carried. Not to mention the duration or the way you structured your daily tasks. What's become clear to me, by this point, is that the author needs a personal trainer. But he doesn't need one who takes him through workouts; he needs one who would plan an effective program for him. Cloud sums it up:

"In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain."

Again, he has it wrong. He's admitted a need to eat better and to exercise; he simply doesn't understand the process. All his self-flagellation reminds me of the colloquial definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." What this author really needs, if he wants to lose his belly, is a Beachbody program.

References: W. Campbell, M. Crim, V. Young, and W. Evans. "Increased energy requirements and changes in body composition with resistance training in older adults." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 60: 167–175, 1994.; T.P. Ballard, C.L. Melby, H. Camus, M. Cianciulli, J. Pitts, S. Schmidt, and M.S. Hickey. "Effect of resistance exercise, with or without carbohydrate supplementation, on plasma ghrelin concentrations and postexercise hunger and food intake." Metabolism. 2009 Aug; 58 (8): 1191–9.; D.L. Ballor, et al. "Resistance weight training during caloric restriction enhances lean body weight maintenance." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1988 Jan; 47 (1): 19–25.; R.W. Bryner, et al. "Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate." Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 1999 Apr; 18 (2): 115–21.; C.C. Curioni and P.M. Lourenco. "Long term weight loss after diet and exercise: a systematic review." International Journal of Obesity (Lond). 2005 Oct; 29 (10): 1168–74.; J.E. Donnelly, et al. "Muscle hypertrophy with large-scale weight loss and resistance training. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1993 Oct; 58 (4): 561–5.; D. Faye. "Time Magazine's Lame Excuse Not To Exercise." The Real Fitness Nerd. August 10, 2009. http://thefitnessnerd.blogspot.com/2009/08/time-magazines-lame-excuse-not-to.html.; G.R. Hunter, N.M. Byrne, B. Sirikul, J.R. Fernández, P.A. Zuckerman, B.E. Darnell, and B.A. Gower. "Resistance training conserves fat-free mass and resting energy expenditure following weight loss." Obesity (Silver Spring). 2008 May; 16 (5): 1045–51.; N.A. King, M. Hopkins, P. Caudwell, R.J. Stubbs, and J.E. Blundell. "Individual variability following 12 weeks of supervised exercise: identification and characterization of compensation for exercise-induced weight loss." International Journal of Obesity (Lond). 2008 Jan; 32 (1): 177–84.; C. Martins, L.M. Morgan, S.R. Bloom, and M.D. Robertson. "Effects of exercise on gut peptides, energy intake and appetite." Journal of Endocrinology. 2007 May; 193 (2): 251–8.; W.C. Miller, D.M. Koceja, and E.J. Hamilton. "A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention." International Journal of Obesity. 1997; 21: 941–947.; R. Pratley, B. Nicklas, M. Rubin, J. Miller, A. Smith, M. Smith, B. Hurley, and A. Goldberg. "Strength training increases resting metabolic rate and norepinephrine levels in healthy 50- to 65-year-old men." Journal of Applied Physiology. Jan; 76 (1): 133–7.; A.S. Ryan, R.E. Pratley, D. Elahi, and A.P. Goldberg. "Resistive training increases fat-free mass and maintains RMR despite weight loss in postmenopausal women." Journal of Applied Physiology. 1995 Sep; 79 (3): 818–23.; B. Schoenfeld. "Is Exercise Derailing Your Efforts to Lose Weight?" Workout 911. August 12, 2009. http://workout911.com/?p=347.; X. Wang, M.F. Lyles, T. You, M.J. Berry, W.J. Rejeski, and B.J. Nicklas. "Weight regain is related to decreases in physical activity during weight loss." Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2008 Oct; 40 (10): 1781–8.

The Great Motivators: 14 Reasons to Keep Pushing Play

By Denis Faye and the Beachbody® Message Boards Community

Exercise is easy. Buy a video, pick up a weight, and you're doing it. Nutrition is easy. Buy good foods, eat them, and you're doing it. So why aren't we a world of the fit and the skinny? We'll tell ya why.

Because motivation is a killer. It's one thing to know how to eat right and exercise. It's another thing entirely to actually do it.

The trick is to find your magic button—that motivator that pushes you to blast out a P90X® Ab Ripper X session when you'd rather stay in bed, that motivator that makes you eat celery when chocolate cake is so much more delicious.

If you've found your motivator, more power to you, but for those who haven't, we asked the crew members on the Message Boards about their motivators. Answers ranged from wild to wonderful to weepy to just plain weird. If you see one that you like, grab it. It's on the house.

Here are a few of them

1. "What motivates me is the high I feel a couple hours after a really good workout. Nothing can beat that!"—JLYNNFL01

   Exercise causes your brain to release endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. A nice side effect of these little hurt-masking hormones is that they can also induce euphoria, even with moderate exercise.

2. "The thought of elastic waist bands keeps me pressing play." —Chelle Bean

   This is in no way a judgment, but the simple fact is that when you're fit, you have access to cooler clothes. And once you toss that muumuu away to make room for your skinny jeans, you won't want to go back.

3. "I motivate myself by thinking about how wonderful it will feel to be my husband's trophy wife!"—shellyv

   Although your spouse will probably love you either way, it's always nice to make him or her drool a little. Remember, being fit makes you feel good about yourself, and when partners feel good about themselves, it makes it easier to feel good about the relationship.

4. "Looking at my before pictures. If I ever start to feel like I don't want to exercise I just pull those gems out."—RyGuy

   Everyone seems to like their "after" picture so much more than their "before" picture. There was a lot of sweat and pain in the transition.

5. "Even though the ex-wife did not leave because I was not ripped, I still can't wait to take my shirt off at the pool for our son's birthday and have her see all the things she is missing out on. His birthday is in August, so I have just enough time."—Puckmaster

   Here's an old quote: "Revenge is a dish best served cold." It comes from either Afghanistan or the Klingon language. We're not sure which.

6. "Rock climbing alone isn't a key ingredient to a full life, at least not for me. Climbing with my kids, on the other hand, is another story. Spending time together, being able to keep up, starts to be even more promising. Ultimately, that is my big picture; my family, my kids, and my health are all intertwined." —Fitz62

   Being fit opens up a whole world for a parent. And technically, running around with your rugrats counts as exercise, so you get a bonus.

7. "My 2-1/2-year-old son who asks, 'Daddy are you exercising today?' And afterwards puts my shirt in the laundry basket for me. I want to be here as long as possible for my family." —Sgpratt

   Here's an even bigger motivator when it come to exercising for the sake of your family. Not only will the quality of family time improve, but also, in the long run, you'll have lots more of it.

8. "My daughter is my motivation. I do not want her to see me struggling with weight as I saw my mom."—Fufi28

   Here's the biggest motivator of all. Kids model their parents—the way they eat, the way they live their lives. If you live your life healthily and strongly, your kids will too.

9. "My favorite motivational tool is to use some P90X workouts or other exercises to create unique challenges and do them for time."—Coach Marc

   Goal-oriented people fire themselves up with, wait for it, goals. If working through 90 days of grueling exercise isn't enough for you, create mini goals during that time. Increase sets or do things faster, whatever fires you up.

10. "I make each workout an appointment . . . and I don't like missing appointments."—Blotman

    Most people like to live up to the commitments they've made. If you make a doctor's appointment, you don't miss it, do you? Well, you're just as important as your doctor, so if you make an appointment with yourself, honor it!

11. "WOWY keeps me accountable, I may not know a single soul personally, but just knowing thousands of other people are putting their health first keeps my conviction strong!"—Maii Beloved

    Of course, if you're just not willing to give yourself the respect required to keep those appointments, maybe you'll respect the thousands of people who track you when you use the WOWY® accountability system.

12. "The more you work out, the more you can eat!"—j-ro

    This one is a slippery slope, but there's some truth to it. Just keep in mind that exercise isn't a license to pig out on junk because "junk in, junk out."

13. "I enjoy seeing others' reaction when I wear a tank top. I get a kick out of them staring at the veins in my biceps."—Padstack

    It's always nice to get checked out and know that your hard work is paying off.

14. "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS"—VOLTOWN

    Well, if you don't want to do it for yourself and you don't want to do it for your family, there's nothing wrong with doing it for the ladies, we suppose, or for the men, of course. Just don't go too crazy, Voltown.

Does Exercise Matter for Weight Loss?

By Steve Edwards

I'm sure by now many of you have seen the recent cover of TIME magazine stating that exercise doesn't matter for weight loss. As you might imagine, we at Beachbody are a little incredulous at this premise. After all, we have files filled with thousands of individuals who've used exercise to dramatically change their bodies. Could we be the ones who are mistaken? Could all of those transformations have happened from dietary change alone? Today, let's take an analytical look at how we lose weight.

This article is going to deviate from our usual approach. As a person who has spent most of his life altering human physiques, I'm going to deconstruct the TIME article from top to bottom and try to make some sense out of what seems like a very unlikely premise. Let's begin with the tagline:

" . . . because exercise makes us hungry or because we want to reward ourselves, many people eat more—and eat more junk food, like doughnuts—after going to the gym."

Could it be true? After all, exercise not only makes you want to eat more, but it requires that your body consume more calories to recover from a breakdown of body tissue. What's unclear at this point is where the "junk food, like doughnuts" came from. My experience with Beachbody customers (and others over the last 25 years) is exactly the opposite; exercise actually leads to better eating habits because a body in tune with its needs craves healthier foods. But this is the tag line of an article that's going to circulate worldwide. Certainly, the author is about to present some compelling evidence for his argument. John Cloud proceeds to inform us:

"One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. it has been most of my adult life."

His personal example of how exercise has not helped him lose weight seems to have left him rather bitter. "I have exercised like this—obsessively, a bit grimly—for years," he states. "But recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this?" To me it revived memories of Gina Kolata's best-selling drivel from last year blaming the obesity epidemic on our genes, where her entire argument was based around her brother training for a marathon and losing only 3 pounds. But certainly, the cover story of TIME wasn't going to be based on one man's personal weight loss odyssey.

If only Cloud and Kolata were members of the Message Boards, we could have told them how to break plateaus using a simple periodizational approach. Of course, this may have hurt their bank accounts, but at least they'd be less disenfranchised with the fitness industry, as well as a lot healthier.

But I digress. Next, Cloud states:

"Still, as one major study—the Minnesota Heart Survey—found, more of us at least say we exercise regularly. The survey ran from 1980, when only 47% of respondents said they engaged in regular exercise, to 2000, when the figure had grown to 57%."

At least he used "at least say," because other studies don't back this up. In fact, numerous studies published this decade show that children exercise somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent less than they did in the 1970s, while only eating approximately 3 percent more calories. Statistics tell us that childhood obesity rates are over 30 percent nationwide, and over 40 percent in some demographics. Obese children are 99 percent more likely to wind up as obese adults than non-obese children. In fact, we don't need statistics to tell us this at all. We just need to be observant. The absence of children playing in the streets, the empty bike racks at schools, the prevalence of video games, and the increase in things to watch on TV should make it easy to draw this conclusion sans further input. Using this background, Cloud gets down to the nitty-gritty:

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,'" says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher."

This seems like a pretty bold statement. The physiological response by the body to exercise is to increase its metabolism. All other things being equal, this leads to weight loss, and there is no scientific evidence to rebuke it. The only scenario when it would not help is one where an individual consumed more calories than they burned off. But not only would they have to exceed the actual caloric burn of the exercise, they'd have to eat beyond the additional physiological changes the body makes to recover from exercise. And while it feels as though we're getting to the point of the article, caloric consumption in Cloud's view is always only weighed against calories burned during exercise. Furthermore, this premise dismisses the findings of at least three long-term studies done between 1997 and 2008 that show exercise is extremely important for maintaining a goal weight after weight loss.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cloud goes on to tell us:

"Today doctors encourage even their oldest patients to exercise, which is sound advice for many reasons: People who regularly exercise are at significantly lower risk for all manner of diseases—those of the heart in particular. They less often develop cancer, diabetes and many other illnesses."

So he's advocating exercise, apparently, just not for weight loss. Odd, when two of the diseases listed above are directly related to obesity. Regardless, this dubious setup allows Cloud to drop his bomb, which is based on spotty science and conjecture:

"That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder."

For scientific evidence, Cloud uses a study out of Louisiana State University [LSU] that showed women on an exercise program didn't lose much more weight than a group who wasn't on an exercise program when their diets weren't monitored. Of course, the women on an exercise program still lost more weight; it just wasn't very significant. But without factoring in diet, it's hard to say what went on within this group. Surely, the dietary component of a weight loss program is important, but stating that exercise is making weight loss harder seems like a stretch, especially when citing a study where the group that exercised still lost more weight. This extrapolation was summed up well in Denis Faye's blog The Real Fitness Nerd:

"Claiming that exercise isn't effective because people use it as an excuse to otherwise misbehave is like claiming a medication isn't effective because patients don't follow the directions properly."

The conjecture continues, as Cloud continues mentioning cravings for various junk foods whenever the topic of exercise comes up. For example:

"In 2007 the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines stating that 'to lose weight . . . 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity may be necessary.' That's 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week, a level that not only is unrealistic for those of us trying to keep or find a job but also could easily produce, on the basis of Church's data, ravenous compensatory eating."

But physical activity is defined as any type of movement that increases your heart rate over time, so he's using the American College of Sports Medicine's guidelines for undefined exercise, making a jump to suggest this should happen at intensities that cause us to pig out, assuming those exist in the first place. This is in contrast to studies that show compensatory eating happens more regularly among sedentary groups. Regardless, it's virtually impossible to prove that moving our bodies more will make us "ravenous," especially when Cloud's still only referencing the LSU study.

His next leap of illogic jumps the shark:

"If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza."

Cloud provides no rationale for this. Maybe he would opt for pizza, as we can only assume. But no evidence is presented as to why someone would do this other than a paper published in Psychological Bulletin in 2000 that claims self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. How he came to the conclusion that this would lead someone to eat pizza as a post-workout snack is anyone's guess because, unfortunately, he doesn't attempt to explain it. It's just his opinion.

Next, he attempts to make his point using some science:

"Yes, although the muscle-fat relationship is often misunderstood. According to calculations published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle—a major achievement—you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that."

Cloud's flippant dismissal at the end of this paragraph could be taken as self-mockery because no one can convert fat to muscle. The physiological process does not exist. You can lose fat (atrophy) and gain muscle (hypertrophy), but you can't convert one type of body tissue into another. Furthermore, the Columbia research has not been proven conclusive. Brad Schoenfeld, in an in-depth review of the TIME article on his blog Workout 911, cites two studies showing far greater differences in metabolic properties.

"In a study done at Tufts University, Campbell and colleagues reported an increase in lean body weight of 3.1 pounds after 12 weeks of strength training increased resting metabolic rate by approximately 6.8%. This translated into an additional 105 calories burned per day. Do the math, and that equates to approximately 35 calories burned for each pound of added muscle. A study by Pratley and colleagues came to a similar conclusion on the topic. A similar four month strength training protocol resulted in a gain of 3.5 pounds of lean muscle. Metabolic rate showed a resulting 7.7% increase, correlating to a metabolic-heightening effect of muscle of approximately 34 calories."

Cloud does manage to quote a lot of credentialed people, but he does so in a way where he either uses their quotes out of context or he interprets them in a way that's just plain wrong. For example, let's use his analysis of why running could be worse for weight loss than "sitting on the sofa knitting."

"Some of us can will ourselves to overcome our basic psychology, but most of us won't be very successful. 'The most powerful determinant of your dietary intake is your energy expenditure,' says Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard's Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity. 'If you're more physically active, you're going to get hungry and eat more.'"

True, you will be hungry and might eat more. What he leaves out is that not only can you eat more, but at some point, you need to eat more to lose weight. At Beachbody, this is one of the most difficult principles we have to teach our customers. At the beginning of an exercise-induced weight loss program, we restrict calories. As a person's body composition changes, so does that person's need for caloric consumption. It's not uncommon for our customers to double the amount of food they need to eat to keep their weight loss moving once they get into good shape. This simple physiological fact renders Cloud's argument moot.

And not only do individual caloric needs change, but so do nutrient needs. In my experience, the need for more nutrient-dense foods seems to create cravings for healthier foods that are nutrient dense. And since these foods tend to be less calorically dense (because they are often plant based and contain fiber), the most common scenario among our customer base is that people become less hungry over time because they're eating foods which keep them full longer.

Cloud follows this with an about-face, making a point that if people moved more, they could exercise less. Ignoring the fact that all movement is considered some form of exercise, Cloud uses some studies that showed kids who got less recess time spent more personal time exercising, and thus stayed on par with their weight loss, than those who got more recess—not exactly a damnation of exercise.

Then he actually champions exercise with the following statement:

"In addition to enhancing heart health and helping prevent disease, exercise improves your mental health and cognitive ability. A study published in June in the journal Neurology found that older people who exercise at least once a week are 30% more likely to maintain cognitive function than those who exercise less. Another study, released by the University of Alberta a few weeks ago, found that people with chronic back pain who exercise four days a week have 36% less disability than those who exercise only two or three days a week."

This seems like a strong testament from an article that began as anti-exercise. He further drives home the need to exercise with the following paragraph:

"But there's some confusion about whether it is exercise—sweaty, exhausting, hunger-producing bursts of activity done exclusively to benefit our health—that leads to all these benefits or something far simpler: Regularly moving during our waking hours. We all need to move more—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says our leisure-time physical activity (including things like golfing, gardening and walking) has decreased since the late 1980s, right around the time the gym boom really exploded. But do we need to stress our bodies at the gym?"

Huh? Who defined exercise as the need to "stress our bodies at the gym"? Wasn't this the same guy who had just told me that I'd be better off knitting than going for a run? It seems like the entire point of the article was for Cloud to publish an excuse so he wouldn't have to go to the gym anymore. He then proceeds to ask himself this exact question.

"This explains why exercise could make you heavier—or at least why even my wretched four hours of exercise a week aren't eliminating all my fat. It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito."

The funny thing is that over the course of the article he actually seems to have convinced himself that he should exercise, only differently. He simply became befuddled on the type of exercise that he should be doing to get rid of his belly. It's more like an article to promote periodizational exercise, even though he doesn't mention it. He admits his confusion:

"Actually, it's not clear that vigorous exercise like running carries more benefits than a moderately strenuous activity like walking while carrying groceries."

Here we would agree, as it is unclear, especially without defining the intensity of the run or the amount of weight in groceries being carried. Not to mention the duration or the way you structured your daily tasks. What's become clear to me, by this point, is that the author needs a personal trainer. But he doesn't need one who takes him through workouts; he needs one who would plan an effective program for him. Cloud sums it up:

"In short, it's what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight. You should exercise to improve your health, but be warned: fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain."

Again, he has it wrong. He's admitted a need to eat better and to exercise; he just simply doesn't understand the process. All his self-flagellation reminds me of the colloquial definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." What this author really needs, if he wants to lose his belly, is a Beachbody program.

References: W. Campbell, M. Crim, V. Young, and W. Evans. "Increased energy requirements and changes in body composition with resistance training in older adults." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 60: 167–175, 1994.; T.P. Ballard, C.L. Melby, H. Camus, M. Cianciulli, J. Pitts, S. Schmidt, and M.S. Hickey. "Effect of resistance exercise, with or without carbohydrate supplementation, on plasma ghrelin concentrations and postexercise hunger and food intake." Metabolism. 2009 Aug; 58 (8): 1191–9.; D.L. Ballor, et al. "Resistance weight training during caloric restriction enhances lean body weight maintenance." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1988 Jan; 47 (1): 19–25.; R.W. Bryner, et al. "Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate." Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 1999 Apr; 18 (2): 115–21.; C.C. Curioni and P.M. Lourenco. "Long term weight loss after diet and exercise: a systematic review." International Journal of Obesity (Lond). 2005 Oct; 29 (10): 1168–74.; J.E. Donnelly, et al. "Muscle hypertrophy with large-scale weight loss and resistance training. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1993 Oct; 58 (4): 561–5.; D. Faye. "Time Magazines Lame Excuse Not To Exercise." The Real Fitness Nerd. August 10, 2009. http://thefitnessnerd.blogspot.com/2009/08/time-magazines-lame-excuse-not-to.html.; G.R. Hunter, N.M. Byrne, B. Sirikul, J.R. Fernández, P.A. Zuckerman, B.E. Darnell, and B.A. Gower. "Resistance training conserves fat-free mass and resting energy expenditure following weight loss." Obesity (Silver Spring). 2008 May; 16 (5): 1045–51.; N.A. King, M. Hopkins, P. Caudwell, R.J. Stubbs, and J.E. Blundell. "Individual variability following 12 weeks of supervised exercise: identification and characterization of compensation for exercise-induced weight loss." International Journal of Obesity (Lond). 2008 Jan; 32 (1): 177–84.; C. Martins, L.M. Morgan, S.R. Bloom, and M.D. Robertson. "Effects of exercise on gut peptides, energy intake and appetite." Journal of Endocrinology. 2007 May; 193 (2): 251–8.; W.C. Miller, D.M. Koceja, and E.J. Hamilton. "A meta-analysis of the past 25 years of weight loss research using diet, exercise or diet plus exercise intervention." International Journal of Obesity. 1997; 21: 941–947.; R. Pratley, B. Nicklas, M. Rubin, J. Miller, A. Smith, M. Smith, B. Hurley, and A. Goldberg. "Strength training increases resting metabolic rate and norepinephrine levels in healthy 50- to 65-year-old men." Journal of Applied Physiology. Jan; 76 (1): 133–7.; A.S. Ryan, R.E. Pratley, D. Elahi, and A.P. Goldberg. "Resistive training increases fat-free mass and maintains RMR despite weight loss in postmenopausal women." Journal of Applied Physiology. 1995 Sep; 79 (3): 818–23.; B. Schoenfeld. "Is Exercise Derailing Your Efforts to Lose Weight?" Workout 911. August 12, 2009. http://workout911.com/?p=347.; X. Wang, M.F. Lyles, T. You, M.J. Berry, W.J. Rejeski, and B.J. Nicklas. "Weight regain is related to decreases in physical activity during weight loss." Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2008 Oct; 40 (10): 1781–8.

Diet, Exercise, and Your Kids' Grades

There's a lot more you can do for your kids' education than lock them in bulletproof SUVs and wait in smog-choked lines of other SUVs to drop them at the steps of their schools. Teaching proper eating habits and providing time for exercise will do more for your children's potential to excel than any other thing that you, as a parent, can do.

Unfortunately, you may not get support from your school in these matters. Lack of funding and programs such as the ill-named "No Child Left Behind" are making it more and more difficult for your kids to eat well and exercise properly at school, thus making your parenting decisions more vital than ever before.

Exercise. A growing body needs to exercise to develop properly. There's no science to dispute this, yet schools have begun to cut PE classes to minimal levels. Lack of exercise not only makes it harder for children to concentrate on classwork during the day but it is a leading cause in the childhood obesity epidemic that's sweeping the nation. "Over the last 25 years, caloric intake in toddlers and young kids has gone up three or four percent, but the level of physical activity has dropped nearly 20 percent to 25 percent," says Ken Reed, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Physical Education.

When I was in school, I had five recess periods, and my memories are of swarms of kids charging all over our exercise fields. In a survey of parents, I found that most kids have three or less periods of PE these days. Plus, it's becoming increasingly rare to walk to school, something that provided me and most of my classmates hours of random muscle-building, calorie-burning activity 5 days per week.

While there are plenty of studies that show the connection between physical fitness and academic performance, it's still a challenge for school administrators who feel they must focus on academics. One researcher, Dr. John Ratey of Harvard, does brain research on physical fitness and calls physical activity "Miracle-Gro for the brain." Despite this, it's still an uphill battle.

"The situation isn't good and it's getting worse," says Reed. "Physical activity levels have dropped dramatically in the last 25 years and we believe there's a direct link there to childhood obesity, as well as a dramatic increase in type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol levels in children. PE cuts are primarily due to budget problems in schools. Also, the focus is on the educational assessment test that almost every state has due to No Child Left Behind and other factors. The assessment test has become the scorecard for administrators and teachers. The focus is on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Parents are also picking up on the state assessment scores as their scorecards on how their school's doing, so they put more pressure on schools to focus on those academic areas. Something's got to give, and it's usually PE, music, and art classes." Beachbody® and Shaun T also knew they had to respond to this dire situation of cuts and lack of exercise through the creation of Shaun T's Fit Kids™ Club.

Diet. Fast Food Nation and Super Size MeThen there's your child's diet to consider, which most likely won't be improved at school. According to statistics cited in Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation, the worst-quality food goes to fast food restaurants, schools, and pets, in that order—a pretty scary thought when we consider that fast food restaurants and the school cafeteria make up a large percentage of what is forming the dietary pattern of our future generations.

It's easy to see the food/performance relationship among school kids. One example is Appleton Central Alternative High School in Appleton, Wisconsin; the school implemented a health food program in 1997 and saw a dramatic increase in student performance. By removing soda and candy machines and changing the cafeteria fare from the standard burgers, fries, etc., to salads, veggies, whole-grain breads, fresh water, and healthy recipes, they saw grades go up, truancies go down, and disciplinary matters nearly vanish.

Kids at Lunch"I don't want to say better than ever, because it's always worked," said Dean of Students Greg Bretthauer recently, "but we've made minor revisions, based on experience, to improve it. We've incorporated flaxseed and focused on the omega content of foods. Made fresh water even more available. We have monthly fruit smoothie days, and have really worked to incorporate more education about eating away from school—trying to get students to follow through at home. We've found that diet does play a major role in increasing the ability [of students] to concentrate."

Adds teacher Mary Bruyette, "If you've been guzzling Mountain Dew and eating chips and you're flying all over the place, I don't think you're going to pick up a whole lot in class. Now I don't have to deal with daily discipline issues; that just isn't a factor here." While there's little doubt that better food will increase scholastic performance, there's also little chance it's going to happen on a wide scale anytime soon. "Our district is so strapped for cash that all they can look at is the bottom line," states Reed Bartlett, a teacher in the Riverside, California, school district. So we get cheap, low-quality food, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Weird science. It probably doesn't help that there's always a study out there for someone to fall back on and say things like, "See, it doesn't matter what the kids eat." Case in point: The infamous "sugar study" that came to the conclusion that diet played little to no role in children's behavior.

Kids in ClassSince I can say, with 100 percent certainty, that I've never had a client who wasn't affected by what they ate, I'm pretty sure not many people will disagree with me that food can alter the way you feel, which can alter your behavior. Yet, according to Steven Pliszka, MD, professor of psychiatry at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, "The biggest myth of all is that food has any connection to behavior." Say what?

And there's more where that came from. Wesley Burks, MD, professor and chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center states, "There haven't been any good scientific studies that show that there is an adverse effect on a child or adult's behavior chronically with the ingestion of foods." Perhaps not, but there's at least one school with thousands of real-world examples of diet playing a major role on behavior. In fact, the Appleton school tried an experiment where they served nothing but sugar-laced foods, caffeinated beverages, foods prepared with palm oils, etc., like "normal school kids get" and it had a significant effect. According to Bretthauer, "They ran around like hyped-up squirrels, felt sick, couldn't seem to concentrate. 'Pleeease,' they said. 'Don't have another one.'"

Scary science. Your kids are likely to live less time than you, which is one of the most alarming statistics I've seen recently, if not in my life. And that's the big-picture stuff. On a smaller scale, we see studies on the negative effects of many things associated with the daily lives of children.

Kids on a SlideKids are drawn to bright colors, so marketers love to change the way food looks—just look at any chain restaurant's kid menu for examples. Yet eating foods with artificial colors and preservatives can cause negative behavior changes in children, according to a study published in the Archives of Diseases in Childhood. And that's just one. In a review of two dozen scientific studies, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) contends that food dyes and certain foods can adversely affect children's behavior. In a 32-page report titled "Diet, ADHD, and Behavior," CSPI charges that federal agencies, professional organizations, and the food industry ignore the growing evidence that diet affects behavior.

And with researchers out there like Mina Dulcan, MD, head of child and adolescent psychiatry at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, it's hard to argue. She states, "The bottom line is that too much artificial food stuff isn't good for you, but I don't think you can believe that it's going to hurt your child's behavior or learning very much." Yet, in order for her statement to make sense, we would have to conclude that nothing you eat makes any difference in how your body responds. We know this to be false, making this statement—from a prominently credentialed professional—unequivocal nonsense.

It makes a lot more sense to listen to Reed, who states, "The country's decline in fitness levels, of adults and children, is negatively impacting productivity. This generation of kids is the first in 100 years to have a lower life expectancy than their parents. Fitness levels, as well as health issues like diabetes and high blood pressure, are much worse trend-wise than we've ever seen with teenagers and young children. The economic cost just in terms of health care costs is going to be dramatic. Then, when you factor in the loss in productivity, it's really going to be dramatic for our country if it's not turned around." What can you do?

Plenty. This isn't a red tape or lawmaker's issue. While those are factors, you are still the primary influence on your child's health. For one, make sure they have plenty of opportunities to exercise. The upside to the decline of PE is the availability of affordable extracurricular sporting activities. While your doctor may tell you that you can exist on 30 minutes of exercise three times per week, that ain't going to cut if for a healthy child. They need exercise and movement, and a lot of it.

Get 'em out there. "Even with the diets kids are getting in schools, if the kids were more active, they'd be better off," says Reed. But you're also a major contributor to your child's diet, which begins at home. If your school won't provide healthy meals, go on strike and utilize a lunch box. And remember that schools, both public and private, respond to public demand. As do politicians. Just because school menus are dismal and schools are cutting out PE and losing their funding doesn't mean this is the way of the future. If enough people demand that it changes, then it will.

Also, lobby government agencies and politicians. We live in a democracy. Take advantage of your rights.

"The Department of Health and Human Services should withdraw its printed and Internet documents that largely dismiss the effect of food ingredients on behavior. For starters, the FDA should halt distribution of a pamphlet on food additives that it co-published with an industry group, the International Food Information Council," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of CSPI. "It's high time that the government—as well as doctors—provided the public with accurate information that might help many children."

The solution is for each one of us to keep trying. One person can—and always has—made a difference. Because one turns into two, which turns into three, and pretty soon you have an army on your side demanding change—take the Message Boards as an example of how unity can positively affect health and fitness. "If we could just get the soccer mom phenomenon working on physical education, we could rally parents and that would be a great advantage," says Reed.