Appendix
Educating Yourself
I
t pays to educate yourself, whether you’re thinking about buying a stair-
climber or you want to exercise with your kids. You’ll have more confi-
dence and more fun with your workouts if you read about fitness in magazines
or on the Internet, and you can keep abreast of the latest exercise techniques,
workout gadgets, and nutrition controversies. And you can get inspirational
tips from folks who overcame their inertia. Of course, you also can get com-
pletely confused. Use this appendix to educate yourself.Sifting Through Scientific Research
It seems as though every day in the news you hear about some new study
that seems to contradict the one you heard the month before. First, chromium
picolinate helps build muscle and burn fat; then, it’s a complete waste of
money. One day you hear that one set of weight-training exercises builds as
much strength as the traditional three; then you hear that three sets are
actually better than one. How do you find out the truth?First, realize that there may not be a truth right now. It often takes decades for
the scientific community to reach a consensus. That “startling new report” you
hear about on TV may simply be one minuscule piece in a gigantic puzzle — one
scientist’s best guess. But because of the way news is generated and reported,
you may not get the full picture. Scientists sometimes overstate their findings
because they want media attention or grant money. In the same way, stories
are sometimes inaccurate because an expert passes along erroneous infor-
mation. When reviewing studies done by scientists, journalists may hype
ambiguous results because they need a big story. Or they may get the facts
wrong because they had only two hours to decipher a 20-page study full of
phrases like “deuterium oxide concentration was measured by using a fixed-
filter single-beam infrared spectrophotometer.” Finally, when the news media
hypes a story as “controversial,” the facts get a little lost.