Pregnant Woman Claims Gym Asked Her To Leave Because Of Her Baby Bump

Planet Fitness

A pregnant woman working out at a Planet Fitness gym claims that she was asked to leave because her “belly was hanging out.”

Melissa Mantor, who is 18 weeks pregnant, said she was mid-workout Monday evening when an employee came up to her and told her she had to leave the Sam Rittenberg gym location.

“I was on the treadmill for about 10 minutes before I was approached by a girl who came up to me telling me that she is going to have to ask me to leave,” Mantor said to WCIV. “I was very confused by this and thought I may have heard her wrong. She told me again that I am not able to continue my workout until I change my clothes because I am in violation of their dress code.”

Exposed midriffs are not mention in the Planet Fitness Corporate Dress Code that does ban “string tank tops” which Mantor was wearing at the time.

Mantor explained that she has several of the same tank top in various colors that she wears to the gym all the time and that gym staff have never had a problem with them. In her membership file, she is wearing a gray tank top for her photo taken at the gym.

“I was very confused. She continued telling that my belly was hanging out and I need to get it covered up,” Mantor explained to WCIV. “I told her at that time ‘Of course my belly is hanging out, I am pregnant.’ She handed me a very large t-shirt while telling me that what I was wearing was inappropriate and in violation of their dress code.”

Mantor admits that the tank top does ride up when she moves around while working out but it was never a problem at the gym before.

Pregnant Woman Claims Gym Asked Her To Leave Because Of Her Baby Bump « CBS Charlotte

Is Sitting For Long Hours At Work The New Smoking?

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The average worker spends over five hours and 40 minutes sitting at their job every day and a new study says it’s bad for your health, with some claiming the long-term effects of sitting can be as bad as smoking.

Dr. Michael Jensen, from the Mayo Clinic, joined KDKA Radio’s Larry Richert and John Shumway to talk about a study he and his colleagues conducted.

To find out whether the test subjects in the study were sitting or not, Dr. Jensen says one of his colleagues, Dr. James Levine, invented underwear that can “tell whether you’re sitting, standing, or lying down essentially every half second of the day.”

With the data they gathered and studied, they came to the conclusion that people need to move around more. Dr. Jensen says they found, “that people who are overweight tend to spend a lot more time sitting then people who have not gained weight.”

Dr. Jensen says that a trip to the gym for 30 minutes or an hour may not be enough to combat all the time spent sitting.

“It’s not going to prevent risk for disease and weight gain if that’s all you do is go to the gym for 30 minutes or an hour and spend all of the rest of your day sitting.”

According to Dr. Jensen, “sitting is independently associated with greater risk of dying of heart disease [and] diabetes, even when you try to account for exercise.”

What is the solution to this? Dr. Jensen and his colleagues say that standing at work at least part of the time has positive health benefits.

Is Sitting For Long Hours At Work The New Smoking? « CBS Pittsburgh

Falling soda sales: Not a trend, but a fundamental shift

falling soda sales

Soft-drink sales have been declining for nine straight years. This is much more than a trend — it’s a fundamental shift in consumer tastes that poses a major problem for soda makers, no matter how diversified their product portfolios might be.

The latest numbers are astonishing, but not surprising. Sales of soda fell 3% by volume in 2013, to the lowest levels since 1995, according to a report from Beverage Digest issued on Monday. That would be a big drop no matter what, but it’s also more than double 2012’s decline. People are moving away from soda at an accelerating rate.

At this point, companies like Coca-Cola KO 0.34% and Pepsico PEP 1.01% must be judged not on what they’re doing to save their flagship brands, but on how well they’re managing those brands’ decline. Of course that’s not easy for companies that are named for those very brands, so they’re still going nuts trying to figure out how to at least staunch the losses, even as they wisely continue to invest in alternatives like energy drinks, sports drinks, and flavored water.

Among many other initiatives, Pepsico tried a new bottle design for Pepsi, and it signed Beyoncé to a $50 million endorsement deal. Coke hired clothier Marc Jacobs as its “creative director.” Sales have continued to plummet.

And the hoped-for savior of the business — diet drinks with artificial sweeteners — are no help. Up until a few years ago, sales of diet sodas were falling at about the same rate as the sugar-filled ones. Now they’re actually falling faster as consumers continue to hear about health concerns. Just yesterday, a study was released indicating that consumption of diet soda can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in older women.

Falling soda sales: Not a trend, but a fundamental shift

Does a junk food diet make you lazy? UCLA psychology study offers answer

Aaron Blaisdell

A new UCLA psychology study provides evidence that being overweight makes people tired and sedentary — not the other way around.

Life scientists led by UCLA’s Aaron Blaisdell placed 32 female rats on one of two diets for six months. The first, a standard rat’s diet, consisted of relatively unprocessed foods like ground corn and fish meal. The ingredients in the second were highly processed, of lower quality and included substantially more sugar — a proxy for a junk food diet.

After just three months, the researchers observed a significant difference in the amount of weight the rats had gained, with the 16 on the junk food diet having become noticeably fatter.

“One diet led to obesity, the other didn’t,” said Blaisdell, a professor of psychology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science and a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute.

The experiments the researchers performed, Blaisdell said, also suggest that fatigue may result from a junk food diet.

As part of the study, the rats were given a task in which they were required to press a lever to receive a food or water reward. The rats on the junk food diet demonstrated impaired performance, taking substantially longer breaks than the lean rats before returning to the task. In a 30-minute session, the overweight rats took breaks that were nearly twice as long as the lean ones.

Does a junk food diet make you lazy? UCLA psychology study offers answer | UCLA

Arizona Diamondbacks running out of supersized corn dogs

Arizona Diamondbacks D-bat

Sales of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ $25 corn dog have been so brisk that the team’s concessionaires can’t wait for a week-long road trip that starts Friday so that they can prep enough to be ready for the team’s April 11-13 homestand against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Diamondbacks are selling the D-Bat — an 18-inch corn dog stuffed with cheddar cheese, jalapenos and bacon and served with fries — for $25.

The 18-inch corn dog, called the D-Bat, is stuffed with cheddar cheese, jalapenos and bacon and is served with a side of fries.

The corn dog became a social media star when the team announced the item two weeks ago. Team president and CEO Derrick Hall said at the time that he didn’t have any expectations, but Hall told ESPN.com on Wednesday that the item has been so successful, the team needs some catch-up time.

“We sold 300 on the first night,” Hall said. “And we only sold 100 last night because we ran out. We can’t make them fast enough. We have 100 ready for tonight and we’ll have 100 ready for tomorrow. And then when the team goes on the road, we’ll get to work to make more.”

On opening night, some fans waited nearly an hour to be able to buy a D-Bat, and Hall said that if sales remain as brisk as they are, the team will have to extend the sale of the corn dog beyond the two concession areas that are selling it now.

Supersized concession items by major league teams have garnered a lot of attention in the past couple of weeks. The Texas Rangers unveiled the “Choomongous,” two feet of Asian-spiced beef on a bun for $26, and the Chicago White Sox announced plans to sell a 3-pound, 12-scoop sundae in a full-size batting helmet for $17.

 
Fat Thanks to Rob K. for the tip!

Arizona Diamondbacks running out of supersized corn dogs – ESPN

Diet drinks linked with heart disease, death

diet soda

Women who drink the most diet sodas may also be more likely to develop heart disease and even to die, according to a new study published Saturday.

Researchers found women who drank two or more diet drinks a day were 30 percent more likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular “event,” and 50 percent more likely to die, than women who rarely touch such drinks.

The findings, being presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, don’t suggest that the drinks themselves are killers. But women who toss back too many diet sodas may be trying to make up for unhealthy habits, experts say.

“Our study suggests an association between higher diet drink consumption and mortality,” said Dr. Ankur Vyas, a cardiovascular disease expert at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinic, who led the study.

Diet drinks linked with heart disease, death

Falling soda sales: not a trend, but a fundamental shift

soda

Soft-drink sales have been declining for nine straight years. This is much more than a trend — it’s a fundamental shift in consumer tastes that poses a major problem for soda makers, no matter how diversified their product portfolios might be.

The latest numbers are astonishing, but not surprising. Sales of soda fell 3% by volume in 2013, to the lowest levels since 1995, according to a report from Beverage Digest issued on Monday. That would be a big drop no matter what, but it’s also more than double 2012’s decline. People are moving away from soda at an accelerating rate.

At this point, companies like Coca-Cola KO and Pepsico PEP must be judged not on what they’re doing to save their flagship brands, but on how well they’re managing those brands’ decline. Of course that’s not easy for companies that are named for those very brands, so they’re still going nuts trying to figure out how to at least staunch the losses, even as they wisely continue to invest in alternatives like energy drinks, sports drinks, and flavored water.

Among many other initiatives, Pepsico tried a new bottle design for Pepsi, and it signed Beyoncé to a $50 million endorsement deal. Coke hired clothier Marc Jacobs as its “creative director.” Sales have continued to plummet.

And the hoped-for savior of the business — diet drinks with artificial sweeteners — are no help. Up until a few years ago, sales of diet sodas were falling at about the same rate as the sugar-filled ones. Now they’re actually falling faster as consumers continue to hear about health concerns. Just yesterday, a study was released indicating that consumption of diet soda can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in older women.

But health concerns are not the only problem. If they were, it would seem unlikely that energy drinks, sports beverages, coffee-based beverages, and flavored waters would be taking up the slack. But they are. That’s a further indication that what’s doing soda in is the proliferation of choices in the beverage aisle, especially those aimed at young people, an increasing number of whom think of Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, and Pepsi — Beyoncé notwithstanding — as the stuff their grandparents drank in the olden days.

Falling soda sales: not a trend, but a fundamental shift – Fortune Features