This Week in Health & Fitness: Weight-Loss Lessons From Elephants

Welcome back to “This Week in Health & Fitness,” Under Armour Connected Fitness’ biweekly series in which our editorial team curates the biggest stories, trends and goings-on around the world that will help you on your quest to live a healthy lifestyle. Let’s get back to it…

Even Elephants Track Weight

The UACF community is 194 million strong, but none of you are pachyderms. (We think.) But even elephants are getting in on weight loss via fitness tracking. Read and listen to this piece from NPR about an initiative across 40 American zoos that employs data to help animals live healthier lives — including Shaunzi, an Asian elephant at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo who is now a svelte 6,000 pounds. We hope she’s logging her apples and carrots on MyFitnessPal.

What is “Healthy-ish”?

Eating clean has gotten extraordinarily complicated. That’s the inspiration behind a backlash movement, dubbed “healthy-ish,” on how to maintain a wholesome lifestyle mixed with a good dose of moderation. Read about it in this Atlantic piece.

Motivation by Reverse Psychology

We’ve spend an awful lot of time pumping you up with New Year’s resolution motivation here on our UACF blogs. But this interesting Deadspin piece takes the opposite tactic: daring you to fail. Tough love.

Gaining Weight Is OK, Too

A better self-image doesn’t always mean weight loss. Arianna Dantone caused a sensation on social media with the hashtag #GainingWeightIsCool, empowering hundreds of people to share their stories on positive weight gain.

A New Idea for Running Safety

Introducing Albedo100 Reflective Spray, a revolutionary product that makes your clothes glow in the dark. Originally invented to prevent reindeer from meeting untimely fates along highways in Finland, the Swedish startup that developed it hopes it will help prevent some of the tens of thousands of runners and cyclists who are killed every year in winter traffic accidents.

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Are You Ninja-Tough?

Tough Mudder races are all the rage lately, and the success of TV’s “American Ninja Warrior” reinforces that people love to watch each other put themselves through grueling physical tests to prove their toughness. This Hartford Courant piece encapsulates it all.

How Much Do You Hate the Treadmill?

Maybe not as much as this high school cross-country runner in North Carolina, who preferred to shovel snow — as much as 8 inches deep — off an entire track lane just so he could keep training. “I’m not going to let the snow be an excuse not to go run today,” he told The Washington Post.

Ding Dong: Better as a Pet’s Name Than in Your Stomach

That’s up for debate, but we here at the UACF office had way too much fun with these “Official Hostess Power Rankings” by Lucky Peach. The deliciousness of a forbidden treat is apparently inversely proportional to how well its name is better suited for your Pomeranian. We think we’re reading this right…

You Like Us! You Really Like Us!

We’re not ones to toot our own horn, but we do love helping folks. That’s why we were delighted to learn our UACF suite of apps – MyFitnessPal, MapMyRun, UA Record and Endomondo — were among the most-liked fitness apps in a recent study of consumer sentiment. Then we found out Laguna Beach and The Hills star Lauren Conrad loves us, too. This week just got more perfect.

You’re Never Too Old to Do Something Awesome

And finally, to warm your heart this winter, check out this video about twin 80-year-old sisters who recently hiked the entire Appalachian Trail together. Their secret? A glass of wine every night. Consider us all ridiculously motivated.

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