Sunday Morning Is All About Fitness, The Diet Industry, Obesity

Sunday Morning on CBS dedicated its entire show to discuss health matters.

They talked with Duke Fitness Center where it costs around $8,000 dollars for a one month stay. Also featured were Mo'Nique and Valerie Bertinelli among others.

Here is a list of some of the segments:

A Parisian Food Fight

Big Questions

Physique Helps Mo'Nique Strike It Big

Food For Thought

The Axis of Food Evil: Fat, Sugar and Salt

The Skinny on Sumo

Here's a video from a feature that focused on Colorado, the thinnest state in the US.


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Capital F

I was over at my grandmother's on Sunday and my grandmother was in a foul mood with a capital F. She talked for two hours non-stop which got me to wondering how many calories does one burn while talking. I can't really go into what g'ma said because it's really not suitable for print.

According to The Daily Plate, one can burn about 121 calories per hour talking. So, grandma burned about 242 calories.

Any activity that can be done while sitting will expend slightly more energy than if you do it while reclining. For instance, talking on the phone while sitting will increase the body's energy requirements by 1 MET (a multiple of the body's resting metabolism). You can expend even more energy by adding simple activities using your arms or legs.

In addition to burning calories, I hope that g'ma was also able to find relief via venting.

So, what's a grandchild to do while she's listening to her g'ma vent? She peruses g'ma's latest Jet which had Mo'Nique and her husband on the front cover. Now, I didn't ignore g'ma. Even the most fit take a break and g'ma did pause to reload.

I figured that the article would talk about Mo'Nique's role in the movie Precious as well as her recent weight loss since I had already gleaned this information from an Oprah episode. What I didn't know was that Mo'Nique and her husband have an open relationship. If you want the details, go straight to page 39 in the June 8th edition of Jet.

I raised an eyebrow but I also laughed. Check out what Mo'Nique had to say about her recent weight loss:

I am not at all trying to be a skinny woman. I could never be that because
my head is too big. I can't do it. Right now I'm 224 lbs. I'm trying to to get
down to an even 200 pounds. By American standards that is still considered
obese. But for me, that's a healthy Mo'Nique.

Mo'Nique And Precious

Saw Mo'Nique on Oprah last week. It was a memorable show for a couple of reasons. I'm hardly ever home early enough to see Oprah and I enjoyed the comedians who were featured. George Lopez and Dane Cook were on the show as well.

Mo'Nique, a plus-sized woman who exudes confidence, talked about how her husband gently brought up the topic of weight. He told her that 262 was too much. Mo'Nique says that she almost immediately started working out.

The comedienne also stars in Precious, a film based on the novel by Sapphire. More than 10 years after reading Push, the book still resonates with me. The main character faces many issues but at the forefront of my mind is the size of Precious:

But I'm big, five feet nine-ten, I weigh over two hundred pounds. Kids is scared of me.

And I've always remembered the part of about the arms:

If Precious was fat, there was no word to describe her mother, who took up half the couch, whose arms seemed like huge animals.

The passage in which Precious compares herself to a vampire and talks about how, in many respects, she doesn't exist in the larger picture is also memorable.

Sapphire is also known for Wild Thing, a controversial poem about the rape of the woman who became known as The Central Park Jogger.

Central Park Jogger Still Running 20 Years Later

I can't wait to see Precious and I hear that Mo'Nique really represents in the film.

The Queen of Comedy