Posted on 12/26/2008 10:34:19 AM PST by FocusNexus
Being elected president forces a man to take inventory of his life, so Barack Obama has trimmed his schedule to the bare essentials.
But one habit endures: Obama has gone to the gym, for about 90 minutes a day, for at least 48 days in a row. He always has treated exercise less as recreation than requirement, but his devotion has intensified during the past few months. Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.
Once, on July 17, Obama visited a gym three times within 16 hours. Other days -- often before primary election nights -- he flew in half a dozen friends to play a few hours of pickup basketball.
On Friday, Obama rushed to the gym before boarding a plane for his 12-day stay in Hawaii. He woke up the next morning on vacation, went to a gym and exited 45 minutes later in a sweat-soaked gray shirt.
Obama still suffers from one vice -- smoking -- although he has worked hard to quit since he started the presidential campaign. He's down from three or four cigarettes each day to what he terms the occasional "slip."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Obsessive Exercise Is an Overlooked Eating Disorder
Published Thursday, May 3, 2001
Issue 119 / Volume 81
Editor, Daily Nexus:
Compulsive exercise. Many of us have heard about the staggering percentages of eating disorders among students on the UCSB campus, but do we realize that obsessive exercise is one of them? It seems to me that this strain of E.D. seems to trickle off, often going unnoticed and, like so many other aspects of E.D.s, is praised and reinforced by our culture. So you go to the gym, what’s the problem? Maybe nothing, but gyms can serve as a breeding ground for E.D.s.
Exercising can be used as a tool for health, but may also morph into a drive for thinness, a way to purge calories, a means to pacify an intense fear of fat or, ultimately, an addiction. And unlike other E.D.s, compulsive exercise is widespread among the male population. According to Dr. James M. Rippe of Tufts University School of Medicine, one of the nation’s experts on exercise, optimal exercise includes, “a diverse program that involves moderately vigorous activity and strength-training exercises, such as lifting weights.”
When is there a problem? Depression, anxiety or irritability when forced to stop exercising, extreme guilt accompanying a missed workout and giving workouts increasing priority over other activities and people can be good signs that there’s an unhealthy dependence brewing. Prevention includes scheduled rest days, allotted rehab time for injuries, mixing in low-intensity and less-distance workouts and cross-training. Try a variety of activities and choose short- and long-term goals.
Well, I guess he has to have faith in something...how pathetic.
Our first beefcake President...
But he still smokes cigarettes. All that exercise and still smoking... why bother?
Yeah, but could he run a sub-7 mile like Bush when he took office?
Bush was probably more fit than this poseur, but they make it sound like Obama is some sort of Greek God of Fitness.
Most likely explanation is exercise is his way to fight off his cigarette cravings.
LOL! Washington Compost...what tools.
maybe he’ll be like Cheney and shoot Biden in the face!
Where is the "Barf Alert"?
Four to eight years to go and already I'm tired of reading about him..
And I will get to those important things ... but first ... I'm going to go work out. Because that's important too!
[Afterward]
What a workout! I better shower! And after that, I better relax a little, and have a smoke. Yes sir, I sure do have a lot of important things to do. But I don't want to take it too fast. I've got to pace myself. Say, I bet I could have another workout at 4 PM. That would really get me pumped and ready to do some good work ... you know ... later ... this evening ... unless the kids want me to do something ...
Is he taking ‘roids? :)
Symptoms
Compulsive exercisers will often schedule their lives around exercise just as those with eating disorders schedule their lives around eating (or not eating). Other indications of compulsive exercise are:
Missing work, parties or other appointments in order to work out
Working out with an injury or while sick
Becoming unusually depressed if unable to exercise
Working out for hours at a time each day
Not taking any rest or recovery days
Striving to achieve and master ever more difficult challenges. Forgets that physical activity can be fun.
Defining self-worth in terms of performance
Justifies excessive behavior by defining self as a “special” elite athlete
it is very very unhealthy and can and most of the time does result in a panic attack, heart failure,death or other severe problems in young and older women or men
Yeah, just like his high school hoops The NYT wrote an acticle about how basketball was some sort of metaphor for BHO’s life. His teammate on the state title team says : Yes, Barry rode the pines but you could see he had game. Rode the pine at a private school in HI? What a loser.
Then there’s Saracuda, captain of the title team who hit the winning free throws on a broken ankle...
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
You pegged it. I clearly remember Bush being ridiculed for hos workout regime and yet Obama is simply praised and praised.
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