久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

  Home>News Center>Life
         
 

Fitness and fatness may be closer than we think
(That's Guangzhou)
Updated: 2004-06-08 10:14

Sometimes language fails us. I learnt this week that there is no word in Chinese for the noise a cat makes when it's happy. What does this tell us - that Chinese cats don't purr? It reminds me of the story about Eskimos having no word for "toothache" because the bacteria that cause dental pain can't survive in the cold.

Language is after all a reflection of culture. And it's not just a question of missing words - individual words are often umbrellas for a whole range of meanings.

Of course, this linguistic phenomenon is by no means limited to Chinese. Take the English word "fit" - only three letters long and yet packed with nuance. You'd probably describe a marathon runner as being fit, for example, and yet athletes apparently catch more colds than your average coach potato. Then there's the vernacular fit, meaning "attractive", which leads us to the curious idea that a pretty girl who gets out of breath on the stairs is both fit and unfit at the same time.

But let's not get bogged down in the philosophy of language - after all, this isn't a mug's guide to Wittgenstein. It's just that my "fit" fascination is personal and long-standing, and goes right back to my tender teenage years.

It all started with my old swimming coach, whose real surname is lost in the chlorinated mists of time but whose popular moniker, Miss F, most certainly is not. The F, in case you're wondering, stood for Fat. But that was almost being generous. This lady was more than fat - she was an absolute whale. Her legs, I remember noting at the time, were thicker than my adolescent torso. Frightening.

She shared another characteristic with whales, however, in that she was able to swim at extraordinary speeds for hours on end without getting tired. When Miss F was in the pool, students and teachers stopped in their tracks and gazed open-mouthed. It was nothing to do with her size. It was the sheer beauty of her freestyle. She was a phenomenon.

So, maybe Miss F was actually Miss Fit, and not Miss Fat at all. Regardless, some of her colleagues questioned whether she was a good role model for the students. Despite her undisputed prowess in the pool, she was by any normal standard grotesquely rotund. If you had measured her Body Mass Index she would definitely have registered as overweight, if not obese. And being overweight is unhealthy, right?

While not all cultures and periods of history would agree (ever tried to find a skinny woman in a Titian painting?), our twenty-first century logic goes like this:

"Fat is what happens when you don't take care of yourself. It comes from eating bad food - fatty food - and lack of exercise. It makes you more susceptible to heart attacks and diabetes, cancer and osteoporosis. Keep slim and you'll live longer. If you are overweight, diet down to the appropriate BMI for your height. And if you can't shed those extra pounds yourself, the miracles of modern medicine may be able do your lazy, oversized backside's job for it."

It's a simple message. If we are thin already, we can smile smugly and feel reassured. If we are fat, we ought to channel our energies into the business of losing weight.

The only problem is that the accepted wisdom could be completely cuckoo.

Being fat - contrary to what the world's media claim on a daily basis - turns out not to be so bad for us after all. Slim people, even people of "normal" dimensions, die younger than people who naturally sport a few extra pounds around the middle. Apologies to anyone who has spent years of their life atop the bathroom scales, or spent chunks of their salary on dieting classes. But the news is: you have been wasting your time and will probably die younger than you would have if you'd let your weight settle at its natural level.

At least, so says the largest ever study of weight and illness, just published in the US. In a report that reassessed data from two decades of weight-related research involving 600,000 people, scientists discovered that people classed as "overweight" and even "obese" according to the BMI system tend to live longer and healthier lives than people in the "normal" bracket. And they live much longer than those classed as "thin".

It turns out that it's much worse to be a couple of pounds underweight than several dozen pounds overweight. Of course, good food and exercise are crucial to health and longevity - nobody is denying that. It makes sense to eat decent, healthy food and get a reasonable amount of exercise. But, as Miss F taught me a long time ago, people can do that and stay chubby. The difference is that we now know they are healthier for it.

The real killer, it emerges, is the crash diet. Shed more than about 10 pounds at a go by dieting and you are not just ridding yourself of love handles. You're knocking years off too.

All this reminds me of Woody Allen's film Sleeper about a health food storeowner who is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 200 years in the future to discover that banana cream pie and chocolate are actually good for you.

He wasn't far off. Who knows, perhaps in 200 years fit and fat will be spelt the same.

 
  Today's Top News     Top Life News
 

Summer grain output to rise after years

 

   
 

7 million commit to honesty in college exam

 

   
 

Ample room for fiscal policy manoeuvring

 

   
 

N. Korea to increase nuke deterrent

 

   
 

Al Qaeda warns of attacks on western airlines

 

   
 

Minister urges assent to market status

 

   
  Fitness and fatness may be closer than we think
   
  Justin confesses to brief fling with Janet
   
  Bund to gain a new face
   
  Programme changes destiny of the under privileged
   
  Daniel Radcliffe, a little bit 'Harry'
   
  Inscription for Buddha's footprint found
   
 
  Go to Another Section  
 
 
  Story Tools  
   
  Feature  
  Beckham signs Gillette deal  
Advertisement
         
主站蜘蛛池模板: 一级特黄国产高清毛片97看片 | 亚洲国产欧美在线成人aaaa | 精品成人毛片一区二区视 | 日韩欧美高清在线 | 极品美女写真菠萝蜜视频 | 午夜宅男在线永久免费观看网 | 加勒比一本大道香蕉在线视频 | 国产小网站 | 91精品国产乱码久久久久久 | 成年女人在线视频 | 亚洲一区二区三区免费 | 91香蕉视频成人 | 国产成人精品自拍 | 亚洲欧美性视频 | 在线观看国产精品一区 | 国产女人毛片 | 国产免费一级高清淫曰本片 | 国产日韩欧美一区二区三区在线 | 国产自约视频 | 亚洲最大情网站在线观看 | 美女被爆免费视频软件 | 亚欧色视频在线观看免费 | 国产a级特黄的片子视频 | 手机看片在线精品观看 | 性刺激免费视频观看在线观看 | 中文字幕二区三区 | 欧美成a| 国产精品一区二区三区高清在线 | 一级一黄在线观看视频免费 | 亚洲精品自产拍在线观看 | 亚洲欧美日本人成在线观看 | 免费观看的毛片手机视频 | 亚洲精彩视频在线观看 | 欧美一级性 | 国产日本三级 | 看成年女人免费午夜视频 | 久久a 热6| 一区二区三区不卡在线 | 色偷偷亚洲偷自拍 | 亚洲成人第一 | 国产粉嫩高中生无套第一次 |