Cinemorphosis

Category: Health and Fitness

  • Anhedonia: The Teacher We Deserve

    Anhedonia: The Teacher We Deserve

    People are using GLP-1 drugs not just to manage their weight but to sculpt themselves into something that looks less like a person and more like a medical emergency waiting to happen. They’re chasing an aesthetic so gaunt it should come with an IV drip and a gurney. It’s the old human trick: take a good thing, drive it straight past moderation, and plunge it into the abyss.

    We’ve done it forever. In the 70s, we didn’t aim for a tasteful tan; we baked ourselves into mahogany idols so glossy and dark we made strangers gasp with envy—never mind that we were essentially slow-roasting our epidermis. We didn’t want cars; we wanted gas-guzzling behemoths that could outgrowl every engine on the boulevard, even if they drank fuel at 8 miles per gallon. Our bodybuilders juiced themselves into tragicomic animations—bulging, veiny caricatures who collapsed under the very mass they worshipped.

    We do it with art, too. A classical Spotify playlist that began as a polite nod to Haydn mutates into a 300-hour monster stuffed with every composer who ever touched a quill. Coffee? We don’t sip it; we mainline it until it tastes less like roasted beans and more like chemical punishment. And watches? We buy so many that the simple act of choosing one in the morning becomes a hostage negotiation with our own shame.

    Somewhere in this carnival of excess, a king once turned everything to gold and discovered he’d built himself a private hell. We’ve just updated the myth with better tech and worse impulse control.

    Thankfully, we also have a counter-teacher: anhedonia. That deadening of pleasure, that bleak emotional flatline, arrives like a stern therapist with a clipboard and informs us that the thrill is over and the chase was a lie. It tells us the secret we never want to hear: extremes always collapse. And only then—dragged back from the edge—we crawl toward equilibrium, toward something like balance, toward a life that feels human again.

  • Eating in the Real World, Not the Ideal One

    Eating in the Real World, Not the Ideal One

    Using Olga Khazan’s “Avoiding Ultra-Processed Foods Is Completely Unrealistic” as a central text and at least three additional credible sources, write a 1,700-word essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that the only path to health is a diet built exclusively on whole foods—and that ultra-processed foods should be treated as the villain of modern nutrition.

    In your essay, define what counts as “whole,” “processed,” and “ultra-processed,” and analyze whether these categories are as clear—or as moral—as public discourse suggests. Examine the extent to which a modern eater can realistically avoid ultra-processed foods, and whether some of these foods can coexist with a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

    Your argument should also address the larger forces shaping our dietary choices: economic constraints, systemic inequities, marketing, food deserts, the influence of GLP-1 medications, and the cultural narratives that determine which foods are celebrated and which are condemned. Include a counterargument-rebuttal section that engages opposing viewpoints in good faith, and conclude with an MLA-formatted Works Cited containing a minimum of four sources.

  • Confessions of a Mediocre Flosser

    Confessions of a Mediocre Flosser

    I’ve been getting my teeth cleaned for over fifty years, which means I’ve sat through half a century of post-cleaning sermons about proper brushing angles, gumline vigilance, and the sacred art of flossing. Every visit follows the same liturgy: I nod piously, vow to reform, perform my dental penance for about a week, and then relapse into plaque-friendly mediocrity. It’s a ritual as predictable as the changing of seasons—scrape, polish, scold, repent, repeat.

    After yesterday’s cleaning, I shared this confession with the office manager as she booked my next appointment. “Be honest,” I said. “Aren’t most of your patients professional bums who show up expecting you to do all the work? I mean, no one actually earns an A in brushing and flossing. We’re all dental delinquents with F averages, right?”

    She glanced at the waiting room, smiled the way a diplomat smiles before denying a scandal, and said, “No comment.”

    I pressed on. “So… that’s a yes.”
    Again, she said, “No comment,” which, of course, confirmed everything.

    Righteous and vindicated, I strutted out with my little goodie bag of guilt—floss, travel toothpaste, and the latest ergonomic toothbrush engineered to fail against human laziness. I tossed it onto the passenger seat and drove home to take a nap, exhausted from an hour of scraping, moral instruction, and the eternal truth that no one—absolutely no one—flosses as much as they say they do.

  • Raising Teens in the Age of Doritos and Doom

    Raising Teens in the Age of Doritos and Doom

    In Food Intelligence, Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall deliver a bleak data point: since 2018, ultra-processed foods—UPFs, the junk with marketing degrees—account for 60 percent of the calories consumed by American adults and nearly two-thirds of what children eat. These edible Frankensteins are now being linked to depression, type 2 diabetes, and early-onset colorectal cancer.

    I have twin daughters in high school who live on donuts, chips, energy drinks, and iced coffees that taste like dessert in a cup. This is their food pyramid of joy. I tread carefully: I don’t want to sound like a puritan in a lab coat or a prophet of intestinal doom. I just want to help without becoming the household killjoy.

    But what is “helpful” when their entire social ecosystem runs on UPFs? If I had to guess, 75 percent of their peer group’s calories come from things that never met a farm or field. Processed food isn’t just addictive—it’s tribal. Sharing snacks is a social contract; refusing one is like rejecting friendship itself.

    Convincing teenagers to stop eating UPFs is about as effective as warning them about “too much screen time.” They’ll nod politely, roll their eyes invisibly, and continue scrolling while demolishing a bag of Flamin’ Hot somethings. Still, I’ll try. I’ll cite the studies, stock the fridge with hummus, guacamole, nut butters, whole-grain crackers, chickpea puffs, trail mix, and protein shakes—an arsenal of virtue they’ll likely ignore.

    Because youth isn’t about balance or moderation. It’s about belonging—through food, fashion, memes, and caffeine. Their need for connection will always outweigh my nutritional sermons. So I’ll do what I can: lay out the facts, offer alternatives, and accept that fighting pop culture is a noble but largely hopeless act of parental theater.

  • Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Why Modern Dentistry Is More Barbaric Than Ever

    Modern dentistry has gotten so bad that I’m already resentful about my 10 a.m. teeth cleaning, which is coming up in about three hours. By the time I get home from the dental clinic and swing a kettlebell, it’ll be past eleven, and I’ll be more drained from the dentist’s chair than from deadlifts. What used to be a minor inconvenience—like getting an oil change—has mutated into something I actively dread.

    About three years ago, I noticed the shift. My hygienists are top-notch: precise, cheerful, and merciless. They’ve traded their humble hand tools for futuristic contraptions that sound like dental drones and feel like punishment. Since COVID, the industry has embraced high-frequency ultrasonic and piezoelectric scalers that vibrate at tens of thousands of cycles per second—tiny jackhammers pulverizing tartar with surgical precision and medieval sadism. Add to that the air-polishing jets that blast your gums with baking soda dust, the industrial-strength suction roaring in your ear, and the chemical rinses that sting like mouthwash brewed in hell, and you’ve got yourself an ordeal.

    Once upon a time, a cleaning was almost meditative—forty minutes of harmless scraping and daydreaming under the warm hum of fluorescent lights. Now it’s an endurance sport in which I try to appear stoic, pretending the ultrasonic harpoon digging into my gumline is just “a mild tickle.” What was once a routine tune-up has become a high-tech excavation—cleaner, faster, and infinitely more barbaric.

    It’s one of those perverse cases where technological progress has made the experience worse. Dentistry has gone digital, and comfort has gone extinct. Here’s hoping I can channel this resentment into a rage-fueled kettlebell session worthy of the gods of molar misery.

  • Among the Sprout People

    Among the Sprout People

    I’ve been a bodybuilder since 1974, which means I’ve spent half a century haunting health food stores. Not the modern corporate ones with sterile aisles and soothing playlists, but the old-school mom-and-pop operations run by barefoot idealists and tense, caffeine-free librarians who smelled faintly of patchouli and moral superiority.

    Those stores had a bouquet unlike any other—a humid cloud of brewer’s yeast, carob dust, desiccated liver tablets, toasted wheat germ, and stale bran, all marinated in tea tree oil and valerian root. Mix it together and you got the unmistakable scent of loneliness and intestinal distress.

    The shelves sagged with mimeographed books from obscure presses, all preaching salvation through sprouts, tofu, and lentils. Reading them, you understood the subtext: renounce pleasure, annoy everyone, and either die alone or join a small cult where everyone smells faintly of alfalfa and martyrdom.

    In the back corner sat the “Alternative Reading” section—dog-eared manifestos about conspiracies, telepathy, UFOs, and energy vortices. These weren’t health stores; they were secular monasteries for the over-enlightened and under-medicated.

    Most shoppers weren’t buying vitamins—they were buying deliverance. They came searching for answers: to their chronic bloating, their failed relationships, their career detours, their lingering sense that the world had been designed without them in mind. They were pilgrims in pursuit of absolutes, desperate to turn meaninglessness into a smoothie.

    I often tried to avoid eye contact. The vibes were heavy, like wet hemp. They looked at me—broad shoulders, protein powder in hand—and saw a defector. In their eyes, I wasn’t a fellow seeker; I was a pragmatic muscle robot looking for more bioavailable amino acids. They, meanwhile, communed with chlorophyll and cosmic vibrations.

    In that ecosystem, I was the natural enemy: a bodybuilder. My very existence refuted their gospel. My muscles were proof of a material world they’d spent decades trying to transcend through spirulina and good intentions.

    These days, I skip the incense and buy my protein online. It’s efficient, impersonal, and utterly free of judgment—mine or theirs. They can keep chasing transcendence through powdered algae; I’ll settle for FedEx and 160 grams of protein a day. Somewhere, they’re still sniffing valerian root and waiting for the universe to text them back.

  • Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Five nights ago, I dreamed I was trapped at a houseboat party. The decks heaved with music and laughter; people swayed, bottles clinked, lights shimmered across the water. Somewhere between the bass thump and the spray of cheap champagne, I decided it was time to save everyone. I climbed onto a railing and began lecturing on the virtues of a high-protein diet.

    The crowd ignored me. The more I shouted about the glory of amino acids, the louder the DJ turned the volume. My words scattered across the lake like crumbs for fish. I tried compromise—lowering the daily requirement from 200 grams to 120—but no one cared. Eventually, hoarse and defeated, I realized I’d become a mad prophet of whey protein, screaming into the void. When I woke, I asked myself the obvious question: Had I gone overboard on my protein obsession?

    That question lingered until this morning, when I read Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s Food Intelligence: Protein, the “Only True Nutrient.” They argue that our worship of protein is centuries old. In 1853, a Parisian newspaper mocked vegetarians as gaunt weaklings too frail to walk out of a restaurant unaided. A hundred years later, Arnold’s gospel of 250 grams a day turned protein into a civic duty for gym rats. Now, with Google searches and supplement sales hitting record highs—an industry worth $28 billion—protein has become both religion and racket. Everyone preaching its holiness seems to be selling tubs of it.

    Protein has always been marketed as a competitive edge: animal protein supposedly bestows power, plant protein supposedly punishes you with mediocrity. Yet Belluz and Hall dismantle this myth. Plant eaters, they write, can easily get all essential amino acids from a diverse diet—no powders, no “meat extract,” no panic required.

    Even more humbling, they admit that no one actually knows the optimal daily dose. Our bodies, they say, have a built-in governor called “protein leverage,” which drives us to crave roughly what we need. Too little protein and we lose muscle, which shortens life. Too much—especially at the expense of a balanced diet—and we hasten the same end. Somewhere between the extremes lies the sweet spot, but it’s not a round number you can print on a supplement label.

    That answer frustrated me. I like numbers. I like goals. “More” has always felt safer than “enough.” Reading their chapter, I remembered the summer of 1978, when I was sixteen and backstage with Mr. Universe Mike Mentzer before his posing exhibition set to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I asked how much protein he ate. “About a hundred grams,” he said, barely looking up from his shake. I was stunned. Arnold had taught us to eat at least 250.

    “Why not more?” I asked. Mentzer shrugged. “It’ll just make you fat.” Then, with equal candor, he mentioned his steroid stack—Deca-Durabolin included. Even then I could tell: genetics, not shakes, were the true miracle. At five-foot-eight and 225 pounds, he was carved from marble, but it was marble under pressure. He died of heart failure at 49, just five miles from where I live.

    Now I’m 64, taking in 180 grams a day and wondering if I’ve turned protein into a creed. I’m strong for my age but heavier than I’d like. Maybe the excess that built my muscle also built my burden. That houseboat dream feels less like absurdity and more like warning. It’s time to stop shouting about protein and start listening—to appetite, to reason, and maybe to the quiet voice reminding me that balance, not bulking, is the real art form.

  • Shame as Entertainment: The Myth of Moral Fitness in The Biggest Loser (college essay prompt)

    Shame as Entertainment: The Myth of Moral Fitness in The Biggest Loser (college essay prompt)

    With 70 percent of Americans now overweight or obese, it’s no wonder the nation is obsessed with weight loss. That obsession fuels a vast industry of diets, influencers, and reality shows, none more infamous than The Biggest Loser. The series, which became the subject of the three-part docuseries Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, reveals how television turned the suffering of overweight people into prime-time entertainment. Contestants were pushed, shamed, and humiliated under the guise of “motivation.” The so-called fitness experts preached self-discipline, grit, and moral purity, but what they really offered was a cocktail of cruelty and pseudoscience disguised as inspiration.

    Essay Assignment (1,700 words)
    In this essay, analyze how the abuse documented in Fit for TV exposes the deeper myths behind weight loss culture. Drawing on Fit for TV, Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s essay “It’s Not You. It’s the Food,” and Rebecca Johns’s “A Diet Writer’s Regrets,” develop an argument that answers this question:

    What is intrinsically abusive about the gospel of self-discipline in weight loss, and how does this ideology blind us to the systemic causes of obesity while offering a hollow sense of meaning through influencers and their heroic panaceas?

    Your essay must include a counterargument and rebuttal section and a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least three sources.

  • Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    Why Willpower Can’t Save You from the Snack Aisle

    After hearing something thoughtful interviews with journalist Julia Belluz and scientist Kevin Hall about their new book Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us and KCRW food expert Evan Kleinman praise the book, I broke down and decided to see if the authors had any new insights into the exploration of what I call humans’ mismanagement of eating. The book begins on a promising note: The authors observe that in the animal kingdom, we are hard-wired with “food intelligence,” a natural-born instinct to regulate the quantity of what we eat and to target foods that our body craves for optimal nutrition. Our instinctive connection with food went haywire in the twentieth century: “Many of us started to eat too much, and the wrong things, even when we didn’t want to. Obesity rates began rising, first in rich, Western, industrialized countries such as the United States, then elsewhere.” Between 1980 and today, the obesity rate has doubled in several countries. Seventy percent of American adults and a third of U.S. children are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes kills over half a million Americans a year. Obesity-related health costs are in the trillions.

    One of the major reasons for this breakdown in our instinctive hardwiring to naturally eat well is our disconnection from food: how it’s grown, produced, and cooked. We are now addicted to factory-produced fat, sugar, and salt. 

    Shaming and the gospel of self-discipline doesn’t help even though, as the authors point out, the wellness industry points an accusatory finger at our own moral shortcomings (lack of willpower, gluttony, and sloth) for our failures at weight management. The diet industries, the authors claim, are asking the wrong questions when they ask what is the best diet and how people can lose weight. For example, there are influencers who say low-carb is the best, but the authors show studies that contradict that claim. Low-carb diets are no better than low-fat ones in the long-term. The authors argue that championing the so-called ultimate diet is not the right question. Instead, the more helpful question is this: “Why do we eat what we eat?” Their obsession with answering this question is what propelled them to write the book. 

    The authors explain the problem of calories-in, calories-out as a surefire model for weight loss. The model is complicated and eventually sabotaged by the way the body reacts when we reduce calories. The metabolism slows down, we burn fewer calories doing the same exercise than we did initially, and our hunger signals rebel and scream “Eat more!” Contrary to the cheery claims of the wellness industry, eating less and exercising more usually fails within a year. 

    A more promising approach to weight management is avoiding ultra-processed foods. The more of these foods we eat, the less we are able to regulate our appetite, resulting in “a calorie glut” and weight-gain hell. But becoming food literature, replacing processed foods with whole foods, and learning to enjoy this exchange requires time and resources, which are lacking in many. Convenience and cost drive many Americans to processed food. Therefore, “the root causes” of obesity are structural. In the words of the authors: “It was never about us as individuals. Our food environment is wrecking us.” Our food environment is rewriting our brains to make us consume a calorie glut. Therefore, the food environment is making us overweight, sick, and unhappy. It is killing us. 

    Don’t consult Food Intelligence for the simple call to eat like your great-grandmother did. Even that sentiment is based on myth, the authors point out. Your great-grandmother may have spent endless hours in the kitchen exhausted while struggling “with hunger and nutrient shortfalls.” 

    One of the book’s objectives is to show how “old, unproven ideas and outdated policies continue to guide our current thinking and approaches to food.” They make it clear early on that they won’t be pushing this or that diet or even promoting “clean eating.”  If you’re looking for food puritanism, then look elsewhere. Kevin Hall admits to eating ultra-processed food and Julia Belluz admits to eating too much sugar. This book is not so much about rigid prescriptions as much as helping you change from a mindless eater to an intelligent one.   

  • How Not To Turn Into a Pillar of Salt in the Internet Age

    How Not To Turn Into a Pillar of Salt in the Internet Age

    Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation didn’t teach me anything comforting. It confirmed what I already suspected: addiction isn’t a habit; it’s a ravenous creature with a bottomless stomach. The more you feed it, the louder it howls. It storm-raids your mental vaults, looting the energy you need for your work, your relationships, and your sense of self. And your family feels the theft—spiritually, emotionally, domestically. Addiction doesn’t just eat you; it nibbles at everyone near you.

    Even with self-awareness, even with a clear understanding of triggers and a sincere desire for freedom, you don’t get a clean fight. The casino is rigged. Modern dopamine doesn’t drip from a bottle or a needle—it streams through fiber-optic cable. Our phones and laptops, the same devices we use to create, to earn, and to connect, also serve as the slot machines we keep in our pockets. The house never closes, and the drinks are free.

    Lembke tells us to avoid triggers, but what do you do when your trigger is baked into your professional life, disguised as “productivity” and “connection”? Avoidance becomes theater. You can only tiptoe around the swamp for so long before some lonely hour arrives, and curiosity knocks like an old vice with freshly polished shoes. A hit of self-pity, a twitch of boredom, a flicker of FOMO—and suddenly you’re back in the feed trough, gulping pixels like syrup. The crash comes fast: shame, exhaustion, vows of purity. Then the next impulse, the next relapse, the same ancient ritual. Lot’s wife didn’t want to look back; she simply couldn’t resist. Neither can we, sometimes. Salt is surprisingly modern.

    So the task becomes stark: learn to live in this world without turning yourself into a monument of regret. Train your gaze forward. Build the strength to resist that backward glance. The modern life mission isn’t to slay the demon—he regenerates too easily. It’s to starve him, inch by inch, while protecting the scarce, bright energy that makes you human.

    Becoming a human being is a high-stakes game. Learning to live a life in which you don’t become a pillar of salt is one of life’s chief endeavors.