Camp Biche

There is only one way to get and stay in shape:  meaningful exercise combined with eating fewer yet, more nutritional calories.

For over forty years, the public has been subjected to the pernicious myth that there are such things as "miracle" exercise equipment and diets that provide quick and easy solutions to weight loss. Yet, despite all the marketing hype, high tech equipment, and new-fangled diet foods, the majority of us keep getting fatter; because we willingly ignore the reality that we must break a sweat to get and stay in shape.

Now we have the latest incarnation of exercise snake oil, stability shoes.

The New York Times reports on Reebok's blockbuster EasyTone walking shoe. Reebok claims that this model will firm up your legs and rear end because of it's special destabilizing design.  I guess it mimics normal walking where you have to remain balanced in order to move forward and remain upright :)

Reebok claims that the EasyTone works so well that "your boobs will be jealous." Nice Reebok!  I'm always railing about the way in which marketers set us up to be mentally at war with our bodies and Reebok blazes new marketing territory with this diabolic ad campaign, brilliantly pitting our body parts in war against our other body parts. Most women can't stand their boobs to begin with, hence the explosion of breast implants; now we're informed that our pitiful boobs are so insecure that they feel threatened by the impending improvement of our derrieres. 

The Times points out that Reebok bases its claims for its miraculous EasyTone shoe on a grand total of five women who were monitored while testing the shoe.  I'll repeat:  five women were tested wearing the shoe.

Supposedly, if you wear the EasyTone shoe while walking to the fudge store, your butt and legs will tone up faster and become more shapely than if you had simply hobbled down the street in the boots that Jane Fonda wore in Barbarella.

Sadly, for those looking for the easy route to the Nirvana of steel buns, EasyTone's basic design premise is based on flawed assumptions:

The EasyTone is the brainchild of Mr. McInnis, a former NASA engineer, who said he was interested in the stability balls used in gym workouts and wanted to translate the technology to a shoe. In particular, he was intrigued by the Bosu ball, a small half-sphere that exercisers stand on during workouts as a way to engage leg and core muscles better.

      (snip)

But it remains to be seen whether such effects will make a difference over time. In a July 2008 study of instability boards and balls, Canadian researchers found that among experienced exercisers, moderate instability balls like the Bosu had little effect on muscle activation.

You don't need special shoes to firm up your butt.  You just need to walk, walk briskly, walk often.  In fact, you don't even need shoes. 

The new craze among serious runners is barefoot running. Runners are discovering that the more expensive and supposedly "high tech" the shoe, the more injuries it causes.  Now that runners don't buy their hype, athletic shoe companies are looking for the next new, blockbuster footwear product . . . and the company that can make the most boobs jealous, wins!