Diana Nyad Blew It
Anyone remember Diana Nyad? Once upon a time, she was a world-class athlete, and – in 1979 – swam 102.5 miles from Bimini to Florida. In subsequent years, she also worked as a sportscaster/journalist, author and speaker. She’s an incredibly accomplished woman.
She’s also one of the founders of “Brava Body” a training site offering exercise DVDs and custom workouts. In this capacity, she and her partner, Bonnie Stoll, appeared on “Good Morning America” to promote their “Holiday Remedy” – a program designed to “trim those holiday pounds.”
So what’s the problem?
In the video (click the above link to view it on the GMA site), Nyad talked viewers through the first few exercises in the program (which Bonnie Stoll and the GMA interviewer demonstrated). To be honest, I thought they looked pretty tame, and wouldn’t do much of anything to “rev the metabolism” as she claimed. But even worse, in the process of discussing the merits of the program, she lent credence to one of the oldest, “zombie lies” about women’s exercise in existence:
“So anyway, the idea again is no heavy muscles, we’re not building gigantic muscles, we’re just gonna rev the metabolism over the holidays…”
Diana Nyad was an elite athlete – she HAS to know how bogus the “big ‘n bulky” myth is. Yet, instead of dismissing it as physiological nonsense, she reinforced it in the process of reassuring her female viewers. WTF???
Yeah, I know it’s GMA, for heaven’s sakes, and Ms. Nyad’s now a businesswoman promoting workout DVDs, but I still found this depressing. She was in a great position to deflate this BS for thousands of women, and she simply blew it.
January 2, 2010
Diana Nyad Blew It – http://blog.ultimatefatburner.com/2010/0…
January 3, 2010
Big muscles for women probably wont sell. It looks like she took the low road on this.
Instead of actually promoting something that would help, she went the sales pitch way and made it easy. An easy workout is easy to sell.
She definately “blew it”.