Social Workout

The Hamptons

Yogalebrity Alert in Amagansett

Erika Halweil of Mandala Yoga in Amagansett teaches a popular yoga class that has started shutting people out because they run out of space -- now that it's peak bikini season. (Get there early or suffer mat rage). It's really just the first half of the Ashtanga primary series, but the fashionable ladies of the East End can't get enough. Last weekend, students included Joni of Joni's, of Montauk healthy wrap fame, and yogalebrity Christy Turlington, sweating, but still looking better than anyone else will ever look in their life. Erika adjusted Christy a few extra times, but wouldn't you?

Scientific

On Stress and Belly Fat

Writer and runner Haruki Murakami has a great line in his book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: Walking behind a beautiful young fat woman, the narrator speculates, "There must be as many paths of human fat, as there are ways of human death."

Well, some Wake Forest researchers have found an exception to Murakami's rule: The searchers fed monkeys an "average American diet," and the monkeys got fat. Shocker! But here's the wrinkle: The researchers also found that if the monkeys ate American food and experienced prolonged stress, they got fat in a particular, common way. They developed belly fat. 

That's bad news because belly fat is linked to heart disease in monkeys and in humans.  People with larger waistlines -- over 40 inches in men, and over 35 inches in women -- are at significantly higher risk for all sorts of trouble: Diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, among others.

Yet another reason to manage your stress: Lose the belly, and nurture your own, natural, even literary, fat profile.

B.O.W.C. Updates

Tee Minus Ten Days, And Counting

Attention dear B.O.W.C.s: You are two thirds of the way home. 20 days down, ten to go (or 240 hours, or 14,400 minutes.) Metaphorically speaking, if the Challenge was a work week, you've made it to Friday evening. Nothing but the weekend in front of you!

From the Editor

B.O.W.C. By the Numbers

Day 14 of B.O.W.C. (and 28 of SocialWorkout.com!) and we thought it time to break down the Challenge numbers to date, answer some questions, and generally offer massive encouragement.

We will refer you to adjacent graph, and make several salient points: Two weeks in, and of the nearly 300 challengees at our virtual start line April 1st, we are left with roughly 100 still in the hunt. The few, the proud, the achey.... Despite malicious rumors to the contrary, we are not yet half way through the Challenge. There are 18 shopping days to go. Thus, if you've logged just eight workouts to date, you're still mathematically in the running to hit the Big 26.