A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about one of the previous winners of Sweden's "The Biggest Loser" and his on-going struggle with gaining weight despite living an active life with exercise and healthy eating. After he discussed the issue with experts, the conclusion was that his problems were due to a damaged metabolic rate caused by the TV show and its practices.

That article and New York Post's rather shocking piece " 'Biggest Loser' drugged us so we'd lose weight" has drastically changed my opinion about the show to the worse, a show that seems to include elements of drug use, isolation, starvation and humiliation.

"Bob Harper was my trainer," says Joelle Gwynn, of 2008's "Couples" season. "He goes away and his assistant comes in. He's got this brown paper bag that's bundled up. He says, 'Take this drug, it'll really help you.' It was yellow and black. I was like, 'What the f- -k is this?' "

Gwynn says she took the pill, once.

"I felt jittery and hyper," she says. "I went and told the sports medicine guy. The next day, Dr. H [Dr. Rob Huizenga] gave us some lame explanation of why they got added to our regimen and that it was up to us to take them…People chastise Bill Cosby for allegedly offering meds to women, but it's acceptable to do to fat people to make them lose weight. I feel like we got raped, too."

[…]

"When I was going through the applicant process, they told me, 'You’re not fat enough,' " Mendonca [Suzanne Mendonca, Season 2] says. She was 5-foot-6 and says she weighed 229 pounds, morbidly obese by NIH standards.

"They said, 'You need to gain 40 pounds. Keep eating.' " Mendonca entered the show at 255 pounds.

I do yoga at home and all other exercise such as bodyweight workouts, step, aerobics and lifting weights as well. For me, it's perfect and currently I don't want it any other way.

With her new book "Yoga At Home: Inspiration for Creating Your Own Home Practice", former editor, writer and yoga teacher Linda Sparrowe has put together a guide to help us create our own home yoga practice, something that even a yogini like Sparrowe sometimes struggles with.

"To be completely truthful, for years home practice was a challenge for me, even as a longtime practitioner and teacher," admits Sparrowe. "How can I possibly practice if I don't have my own yoga room…if I can't commit to 90 minutes or an hour…if I can't figure out what to practice?"

For her latest book, "Yoga at Home: Inspiration for Creating Your Own Home Practice", Sparrowe sought to answer those questions by profiling the at-home routines of renowned yogis like Seane Corn, Rodney Yee, and Elena Brower.

It's part yoga guide, and part yoga voyeurism, since in a lot of cases you're looking into their living rooms.

"[Photographer Sarah Keough and I] were interested in showing how people really live and all the different ways they find moments of stillness and times for practice within their great and messy and beautiful lives," Sparrowe says.

Featured image: Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga in New York City. Photography by Sarah Keough.

Male model David Gandy has a healthy attitude towards food and exercise. Whenever I read or watch an interview with him, he seems balanced whether it's about food, exercise or life in general.

The Gentlemans Journal met up with Gandy to ask him some questions about how he stays in shape.

On Diets:

"The right amount of water, the right foods – not crappy, fatty processed foods. It's everything in moderation, you can eat too much fish or too much meat. I actually had mercury poisoning from tuna because it topped off the levels in my body and made me quite ill."

"People say to me, 'my God, you must not eat something', and then, 'good God, you're eating cake'. I probably eat more than most people think I might, but I'm actually a foodie and I eat a lot. I just stay away from processed foods – white pastas, white carbohydrates, high sugar content, saturated fat – but I can still eat so much because of that. People [unnecessarily] go to the extremities of something."

Featured image: Gandy for Marks & Spencer's Spring/Summer 2015 campaign photographed by Blair Getz Mezibov. Via agency Quadriga.

To accompany you on your running session, Paula from the blog Attitude At Rome, has put together the following playlist:

1. Two Door Cinema Club – "Sun"
2. The Whigs – "Waiting"
3. Passion Pit – "Carried Away"
4. Lucius – "Turn It Around"
5. The Avett Brothers – "Geraldine"
6. Michael Nyman – "Sacrifice"
7. Phoenix – "1901"
8. The Preatures – "Is This How You Feel?"
9. Harlem Shakes – "Sunlight"
10. The Griswolds – "Down and Out"
11. The Strokes – "Reptilia"

I made a playlist on Spotify with available tracks.

Featured image: From Le Coq Sportif's (The Athletic Rooster) retro running ad directed by production company Golden Wolf.

Huffington Post has provided us with a nice infographic and article about all the health benefits that follows a yoga practice.

The Eastern practice of yoga has become a modern-day symbol of peace, serenity and well-being in the West. More than 20 million Americans practice yoga, according to the 2012 Yoga in America study, with practitioners spending more than $10 billion a year on yoga-related products and classes.

The mind-body practice is frequently touted for its ability to reduce stress and boost well-being, but it also offers wide-ranging physical health benefits that rival other forms of exercise. While the scientific research on yoga's health benefits is still young, here's what we know so far about its potential effects on the body.

Via @bhanu_bhatnagar.

Image credit: Infographic by Jan Diehm for The Huffington Post.

Blogger Darren Rowse wrote an excellent article about improving his health by incorporating a few small daily changes such as walking more and getting started with the 5:2 diet. I can easily identify with some of the things Darren talks about: I exercise daily, and eat healthy food overall, but tend to spend too much time at home, which means I don't walk as much as I should.

It's been 3 months now since I started and I feel a whole heap better than I have in a long time.

Like I said above I'm feeling a lot more alert and productive and just... lighter.

I don't want to lose much more weight but would like to begin to work on increasing my strength and fitness going forward.

By no means is what I'm doing for everyone and nor do I see what I've done so far as anything too remarkable. In fact I'm kind of amazed how a few simple changes have had such an impact.

Elana's Pantry is a food blog that offers Paleo recipes. If you'd like to do some gluten and grain free cooking and baking, and feel that many foods contain and taste too much sugar, this is the place to go. Browsing through her recipes, I found many of them to be uncomplicated and quick to do, not to mention looking delicious. Below are a few of my favorites.

Paleo Banana Bread:

Paleo Pumpkin Cranberry Granola:

Cashew Milk:

Paleo Bread:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge:

Paleo Chai Latte:

Jason Wachob is the founder of the wellness site MindBodyGreen. Seeing Jason's entertaining presentation of how the site came to life, I realized I've just been gifted with three words, that put together can guide me every day, so that I don't miss out on the essentials. See for yourself!

This animated video contains some healthy advice for those of us who spend many hours every day sitting still, so that we can maintain a good posture and health.

Via YogaDork.

An important piece in Vogue by Mackenzie Wagoner about making precious time for yourself:

[…] I signed myself up for a ten-day mind-and-body cleanse that required me to stick to a few basic precepts: making all of my own meals, working out a few times during the prescribed period, taking one bath, and carving out ten minutes every morning and night to meditate. Simple enough, but my initial reaction to each task was, “Who has the time?” Then, upon further consideration, actually feeling frightened by how little space in my schedule I allot for basic human needs: Feeding and bathing myself, getting enough sleep, and improving my health and my heart rate. This is an even scarier realization when you take into account that I am a single woman with one job and no children—not even a house plant relies on me for life. How could I possibly be so busy?

Featured image: The Mandarin Oriental Bangkok via Condé Nast Traveller.

Via @kenchawkin.

This is the rather unconventional workout routine of genius Rick Rosner, and who, as a side note, went to high school for 10 years despite having a measured IQ of 150.

"I just go from gym to gym to gym to gym to gym," Rosner told Business Insider UK in an email.

The exercise routine sounds wacky, but Rosner insists on his unconventional regime as a way to stay motivated. The constant change of scenery means he never gets bored. Plus, he doesn't waste time waiting for equipment.

Jacques Sayagh is a homeless competitive bodybuilder, working out on the streets of Paris. I wish him well!

The music playing is "Digital Versicolor" (video link) by Glass Candy.

Via @ManFlowYoga.

It's more to exercise than the release of endorphins. Leo Widrich has written a great article about exercise and how it boost your brain at the same time. And the best part, even gentle exercise lets you reap the health benefits. I exercise daily, and reading about the scientific findings, spur me on to continue.

A recent study from Penn State university shed some light on the matter and the results are more than surprising. They found that to be more productive and happier on a given work day, it doesn’t matter so much, if you work-out regularly, if you haven’t worked out on that particular day:

"Those who had exercised during the preceding month but not on the day of testing generally did better on the memory test than those who had been sedentary, but did not perform nearly as well as those who had worked out that morning."

New York Times best-selling author Gretchen Reynolds has written a whole book about the subject matter titled "The first 20 minutes". To get the highest level of happiness and benefits for health, the key is not to become a professional athlete. On the contrary, a much smaller amount is needed to reach the level where happiness and productivity in every day life peaks:

"The first 20 minutes of moving around, if someone has been really sedentary, provide most of the health benefits. You get prolonged life, reduced disease risk — all of those things come in in the first 20 minutes of being active."

Photo credit: Cycles of Learning

I've been wanting to see the documentary "Challenging Impossibility" (2011) for a long time, and all of a sudden, it was there, visible in the search results.

"Challenging Impossibility", directed by Sanjay Rawal and Natabara Rollosson, portrays spiritual master Sri Chinmoy, who changed the perceptions of what most of us think the human body is able to achieve, when he accomplished several feats of strength after having started weightlifting at the age of 54.

Due to domain restrictions, you have to watch the full documentary here.

Watch the trailer:

Featured image: Poster via Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga.

I have been practicing yoga close to three years now, and my practice has for the most time been Power Yoga. I practice from home, and will probably some time in the future seek out a teacher.

Almost on a daily basis, I step on the mat and use one of three yoga sessions from "Bryan Kest´s Power Yoga Series". To this day, I still deepen my yoga practice by doing this series.

Bryan Kest:

If I can do yoga, anyone can do it. If you'd seen my very first attempt at yoga compared to what I'm able to do now, you wouldn't need any convincing. And yes, the practice is very physical.

If someone stumble upon this post and start benefiting from the practice of yoga, you've made my day. But be cautious, it's very addictive, just writing about this makes me wanna get up and do some asanas.

Here are the Power Yoga videos (YouTube) I'm using:

• Energize - Beginner Level
• Tone - Intermediate Level
• Sweat - Advanced Level

For the time being, I haven't any membership at Power Yoga Online, but I did try out the service for a month a year ago, and since then, much work seem to have been added to the site with many classes to choose from. Worth noting, it's no hassle to cancel your membership.

Image credit: Images from Bryan's blog.

Here is a list of seven things you can do to start incorporating daily exercise into your life. Doing small things like this, I think, is one key to start living a more healthy life, and later a more formal exercise routine might follow as a result.

Featured image: Group of obese women undergoing slimming course in a courtyard in New York, 1926. Unknown photographer (source). Found via PASiNGA.

I´m about to get on the mat and do an hour long yoga session. It´s late in the evening, but due to recent changes in my daily routine, exercise early morning or day might not always be possible.

I´ve been thinkning that exercise this late isn´t so beneficial, but luckily this science report came my way today and proved me wrong. The report published in Sleep Medicine gives that exercise before bedtime can result in better sleep:

Against expectations and general recommendations for sleep hygiene, high self-perceived exercise exertion before bedtime was associated with better sleep patterns in a sample of healthy young adults. Further studies should also focus on elderly adults and adults suffering from insomnia.

[…]

Greater exercise exertion was associated with higher sleep efficiency, shortened sleep onset latency, fewer awakenings and shorter duration of awakenings after sleep onset, less light sleep and more deep sleep.

[…]

Among a sample of healthy young adults, self-perceived exercise exertion and objectively assessed sleep were positively associated. The present pattern of results puts into question both scientific and lay opinion that increased exercise exertion in the evening should be avoided immediately prior to bedtime.

Featured image: Woman exercising with dumbells, 1920s. Copyright by Bettmann/CORBIS. Found via vintage everyday.

Via @mikeolpin.

Recently I´ve started to notice guided groups of cyclists in Gothenburg and our town´s project with bike rentals seems to be growing. Initiatives such as the one in France will surely be followed by many more:

It's a good day to be French: The country has officially launched a six-month experiment in paying people who bike to work. Twenty companies and institutions have signed on to pay their staff the equivalent of about 34 cents per kilometer biked to work.

A few other countries have beat France to the cyclist-friendly punch, namely the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Britain. Some schemes involve tax breaks, while others assist with buying bicycles. The United States has yet to shell out to bike commuters, but at least in Los Angeles another commuting innovation is chugging away: the bike train. That's a group of cyclists who ride to work in groups of about five to 10, complete with a "conductor" who meets each biker at their door and makes sure they get to work safely.

The French experiment aims more for an environmental and fitness impact, hoping to get cars off the street and boost people's health—after all, only about 2.4 percent of the workforce currently gets to their job on bike. If officials see results, France is likely to expand the scheme.

Featured image by Pranav Babu Photography.

Meet Nick who replaced the drugs with a runners high:

Rock bottom is when you've lost everything, including a place to call home. When his addiction to drugs became too much, Nick hit bottom hard. The change he desperately needed was Back On My Feet, a non-profit that uses running as a tool of empowerment for those experiencing homelessness. By exercising with other people with similar struggles, Nick (and others like him) gained confidence and self worth: two vital ingredients for a life of independence, employment, and most importantly, happiness.

Related reading

• Former Drug Addict Finds Solace in Triathlons
• Exercise: Alternative reward for those battling addiction

I find these findings to be true in my own life. With vigorous exercise you can ward off the flu according to new data from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:

Findings suggest that 100 cases of flu per 1,000 people could be prevented just by stepping up exercise.

However, moderate exercise appears to have little effect on rates of flu-like illness which means the intensity is all important, say researchers.

In the UK people are advised to do 150 minutes of moderate activity such as gardening, dancing or brisk walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise including playing sport, running or aerobics every week. Three out of four Britons fail to achieve this.

Picture via karmajello.com.