ULTIMATE FITNESS:
The Quest for Truth about Exercise and Health
By Gina Kolata
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24, 292 pp
Reviewed by ELIZABETH BENNETT
"Exercise is my obsession," Gina Kolata acknowledges upfront in a book that examines the myths and misconceptions of a multimillion dollar business filled with hucksters and marketers.
Kolata, a New York Times science writer, started running years ago to control her weight. She has also tried cycling, working out on exercise machines in health clubs, high- and low-impact aerobics classes, weightlifting and even "Spinning" - intensive indoor workouts on a stationary bike. But she's admittedly a skeptic "conditioned by long years of science reporting. From what . . . I have seen of the exercise field, the tiny pearls of good science are buried in mountains of junk." Kolata decided to write this book after she and her husband signed up for an arduous, four-hour Spinning event called Mount Everest.
The event involved 11 weeks of hard training on a Spinning bike with the resistance turned up, simulating a climb, in addition to weightlifting routines at least twice a week. Kolata was exhilarated by the experience and wrote about it in the Times in a story that got so much response she was prompted to research the whole field of exercise and health. What she discovered: The fitness business has few bounds. It's not regulated by the FDA, like the pharmaceutical industry, which can't make unsubstantiated claims. The result is a never-ending parade of fitness products and programs, with those selling them being "the sole authorities on their effectiveness."
She also discovered that much of the accepted wisdom about exercise is false. Spot-reducing, for instance - working your inner thighs in hopes of slimming them - is "futile." And while weight training makes bone-breaking falls less likely, she reports that there's no real evidence that lifting weights staves off osteoporosis.
Personal trainers also come under her careful scrutiny. Using her daughter's experience as a starting point, Kolata found that money is the most important element in getting certified and that actual training for working with clients is almost nonexistent. Her book also covers other important aspects of the fitness craze, including maximum heart rates, fat-burning zones, runner's high and steroids. She delves into the history of fitness, beginning with the Greeks and Romans who believed exercise was everyone's obligation to preserve health. She continues up through Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the Dallas cardiologist who started the modern fitness movement with his 1968 book, Aerobics, and provides sketches of many innovative people in the field, including Jack LaLanne, the exercise guru who at age 86 still starts every day with an hour of weightlifting.
Kolata also writes about her own longtime efforts to stay fit.
Along with more and more people, she's currently following LaLanne's example and discovering the benefits of weightlifting. Women can have the same percentage gains as men, she reports, getting "25-100 percent stronger in three to six months," but their muscles grow no larger. "Gradually, weightlifting changed the way I look," she writes (since first starting her program in 1996). "The alteration was not dramatic, but I loved it. My back became broader, which makes my hips look smaller; my arms and legs are firmer and more shapely. I never grew big muscles, but they are defined; you can see their outlines. I feel different, too, more confident of my body's strength and of my ability to do almost any movement in daily life with little effort."
Despite all the myths and misconceptions about exercise and fitness, Kolata's book may inspire skeptics to reconsider the benefits of getting - and staying - in shape. "Exercise makes me feel exhilarated and strong, it makes me feel focused," she concludes. "I understand what Jack LaLanne was getting at when he told me . . . "If you can't afford a half-hour two or three times a week to take care of your body, you've got to be sick.' "
- Elizabeth Bennett is a freelance writer in Houston.