Round 4 Week 5

Thu. Bonus: 10 X 5 Pull-Ups

Fri.: Ab Ripper + P90X Legs & Back (90%)

Have to say, adding 50 pull-ups daily is taking its toll -- in a good way. My back and arms are sore. Plain, sore. So heading into Legs and Back, replete with pull-ups, wasn't easy, but it was 100% doable. So, pretty much nailed all the moves, even with a little mouse getting up pre-6 a.m. then hanging out on the couch whilst I worked out. His comments:

"Daddy, they're going deeper than you."

"Dad, I bet if you worked out another year your muscles would be as hard as Tony's. Maybe."

Groggy: "Dad, I want to workout with you I'll... get... up... if I can..." Head back on the pillow. ;)

Reposting from a recent Beach Body email newsletter -- of course, my prescription for tacking obesity and high cholesterol can be found here. But my friends at Beach Body also have designed special programs for those not ready for the big time workouts, and I'm hoping we can get even more folks working their bods to better health and prosperity in the coming years...

Obesity Wars: A New Hope

By Steve Edwards (Nov. 08)

We at Beachbody are at war against the most formidable opponent the United States has ever faced: obesity. It's killing more people a month than our two other more high-profile combatants—terror and drugs—have killed this decade. Obesity is the Darth Vader of all the dangers we'll face in our lifetimes. Smoking once ruled our universe, but a new master has taken over the dark side. Here, in the final installment of our latest trilogy on obesity, we offer a new hope of getting the Force back on our side.

As usual, we begin in what appear to be ever-darkening times. Just last week, a report was released showing that an obese 10-year-old kid may have the arteries of a 45-year-old. Each time we offer a solution, the obesity empire rebuffs our efforts. Earlier this year, we released Shaun T's Fit Kids Club. Vader laughed as our infant mortality rate skyrocketed compared to the rest of the world.

We offered Kathy Smith's Project: YOU! Type 2 and then saw the number of people who either are pre-diabetic or are already diagnosed with type 2 diabetes skyrocket to nearly a third of our population. Earlier this month, we offered 10 solutions to the epidemic. (More at the jump.)

Last week, we're told that over half our kids are projected to be obese within a generation. Admittedly, things look bleak for the rebellion. But read on and you'll see that we don't need a Jedi to guide us in this war. The Force is very powerful. And it's controlled by us.

In the film Idiocracy, we're offered a glimpse at a possible future should we continue to follow our current patterns of regression. In the film, society has devolved into an anti-intellectual state completely controlled by corporate advertising interests. We're at a crossroads—we're watering our plants with a version of Gatorade, the only beverage we consume, and our plants will no longer grow. The corporate-controlled Food and Drug Administration's food pyramid features nothing but fast food, sports drinks, and mind-altering legal substances: alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. And while it's an over-the-top comedy, one can't wonder whether the most unbelievable thing in the movie is that it's set 500 years in the future.

At the rate we're going, we could be living—or at least eating—this way before the end of this millennium.

Case in point: the latest studies on obese children. At the American Heart Association's conference last week, two studies, done independently in different countries, showed that obese children had a "vascular age about 30 years older than their actual age."

This, of course, greatly increases their chances for heart disease. So much so, in fact, that the American Academy for Pediatrics is now recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs for some children. "As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are," said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, to the Associated Press. "This is a wake-up call."

But the wake-up call needs to ring louder. (Read the rest.)