Ultimate Fitness
eBook - ePub

Ultimate Fitness

The Quest for Truth about Exercise and Health

  1. 317 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Ultimate Fitness

The Quest for Truth about Exercise and Health

About this book

"[An] accessible, informative and personal memoir about fitness" from the New York Times –bestselling author and science reporter ( USA Today ).

Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About Exercise and Health is Gina Kolata's compelling journey into the world of American physical fitness over the past thirty years. It is a funny, eye-opening, brow-sweating investigation into the fads, fictions, and science of fitness training.

From the early days of jogging, championed by Jim Fixx—who later died of a heart attack—to weight lifting, cycling, aerobics, and Spinning, Kolata questions such popular notions as the "fat-burning zone" and "spot reducing," the effects of food on performance, how much exercise helps build fitness, and the difference between exercise to help the heart and exercise to change the body. She explains the science of physical fitness and the objective evidence behind commonly accepted prescriptions. Along the way she profiles researchers and mavericks who have challenged conventional wisdom, marketed their inventions, and sometimes bucked criticism only to back down from their original claims.

Ultimate Fitness spotlights the machines and machinations of the fitness industry, and cuts through the marketing and hype not only to assess what is healthy, but also to understand what our obsession with staying healthy says about American culture today.

"An appealing hybrid: authoritative reporting enhanced with snatches of autobiography, both related in a clear, easygoing style." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"A welcome antidote to most fitness books." — The Baltimore Sun

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Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. one - LESS IS MORE, OR IS IT?
  4. two - HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
  5. three - HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
  6. four - MAXIMUM HEART RATES AND FAT-BURNING ZONES
  7. five - TRAINING LORE
  8. six - THE ATHLETE’S WORLD
  9. seven - MOUNT EVEREST
  10. eight - IS THERE A RUNNER’S HIGH?
  11. nine - SCULPTING THE BODY BEAUTIFUL
  12. ten - THE FITNESS BUSINESS
  13. epilogue: - THE TRUTH ABOUT EXERCISE
  14. ALSO BY GINA KOLATA
  15. NOTES
  16. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  17. INDEX
  18. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  19. Copyright Page