Tag Archives: weight

Ryanair Requires Flight Attendants to Lose Weight to Cut Fuel Costs

The European budget airline Ryanair is on a mission to cut fuel costs. In addition to announcing that it will now print its in flight magazine, which will also double as a menu, on thinner paper, Ryanair is also cutting the amount of ice on board and will reduce the weight of the seats and carts. These changes will save them thousands of pounds in fuel and printing costs, but that’s not all they are doing to lighten their load.

Flight attendants for Ryanair may find their jobs in jeopardy if they don’t keep their weight in check. Airline spokesman Stephen McNamara told The Telegraph: “We encourage staff to watch their weight – with the motivation of appearing in the annual Ryanair calendar.”

Sounds crazy, but some airlines do more than encourage. Thai Airways required specific BMI and waist line measurements of their flight attendants last March, and gave employees six months to drop the weight. In August 2024, the same happened to 28 Turkish Airline flight attendants who were given six months to lose weight or be faced with termination.

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Posted on April 9, 2024 by Kelly

Weigh Yourself Correctly and Learn to Love Your Scale Again

By Jason Brick

It’s natural to want to weigh in frequently while you’re on a weight loss program. The feedback can keep you motivated when you succeed, and keep you on track by warning you that you’re starting to slip.

But weighing in the wrong way can have just the opposite effect, with your body’s natural rhythms giving you frustrating and inconsistent readings.

Weigh In Once Per Week

Your body weight will fluctuate from day to day by several pounds. If you weigh in daily, those fluctuations will give you an unrealistically low weight one day and a frustratingly high weight the next. Weighing in just once a week will avoid these short-term changes and keep track of the overall trend of your body weight.

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Posted on October 15, 2024 by Health Buzz

‘My Body Gallery’ Aims to Deconstruct Body Image Insecurities in Women

In a world where the media consistently projects images of the “perfect” female body, a new site called My Body Gallery promotes a positive body image by displaying real images of real women along with their height, weight and clothing size.

“In a world full of images of how we ‘should’ look it can get difficult to tell how we DO look,” the site says. “Most women have spent so many years looking at themselves in mirrors that we can no longer see what’s really there. The My Body Gallery project’s goal is to help women objectively see what we look like and come to some acceptance that we are all beautiful.”

While the site encourages women to accept that all bodies look different no matter what your shape and size, some women are skeptical that it will have a measurable affect on how a woman views her body.

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Posted on August 23, 2024 by Maris

P90X Fitness Assessment Tracks All Areas of Health

The reason anyone starts a fitness program is to see results, and the only way to know how far you’ve come is by knowing where you started.

P90X, the popular extreme home fitness program, understands the importance of tracking all indicators of fitness.

Instead of just tracking weight or measurements, P90X has an intensive Fitness Assessment that tracks your weight, measurements, strength, flexibility and cardiovascular capacity every step of the way.

The P90X program is split into three phases, 30 days each, and at the end of each phase, you will retest to see how much your health has improved. The first test is done before the first P90X workout so you know your baseline of fitness.

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Posted on January 31, 2024 by Kelly

Tune In: Circus of Weight on The Tyra Show

UPDATE [5/2/11]: This episode of Tyra will air again on Monday, May 2.

Tune in this Wednesday, March 10 to The Tyra Show when she features her own Circus of Weight.

No. It’s not some new diet, but rather the Circus of Weight is a social experiment that uncovers the stories behind weight stereotypes.

From being called too fat, too skinny or too muscular, Tyra’s stage is filled with a panel of men and women that come in all shapes and sizes.

In an open discussion, they share their stories of body discrimination and also share their desires and fears for why they look as they do. (more…)

Posted on March 8, 2024 by heather

NWA Flight Attendants Demand Size 28 Red Dress

NWA's new flight attendant dresses, designed by Richard Tyler. Photo via Washington Post.

NWA's new flight attendant dresses, designed by Richard Tyler. Photo via Washington Post.

There has been controversy over weight issues with airline passengers in recent years. But now the issues are coming from within as employees of Northwest Airlines (now owned by Delta) are getting a bit perturbed by the uniform design approved by their employers.

Delta Airlines hired fashion designer Richard Tyler to design their flight attendants’ red dress uniforms. Tyler wanted them to “look sexy.” The problem is, some workers are complaining that they are too small.

The Northwest chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA has filed a grievance against Delta. They would like to see the company offer the red dress up to size 28. Currently, the uniform is only offered up to a size 18. (more…)

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Jason

Vitamin K Helps Fight Diabetes

kaleExperts are always finding new and interesting benefits that come with certain vitamins or minerals. This time around, it’s vitamin K and how it may help you avoid diabetes.

In a study, those subjects (older men and women) who took a vitamin K supplement for three years had lower blood levels of insulin. They also experienced an improvement with insulin resistance as compared to another group who did not take the supplement.

Here comes the catch… (more…)

Posted on June 20, 2024 by Jason

Overweight Cops May Lose Jobs

police officerIt’s tough being a cop. It may get a little tougher if the state of Ohio has its way. There’s a state rule that allows the dismissal of police officers who “consistently exceed weight limits.” Alaska and Massachusetts also have weight rules for their police force.

Six Ohio troopers were removed from duty in 2003, including one who was 71 pounds overweight.

While no officers have been fired in recent years, at least 11 have received verbal or written reprimands this year for weighing too much. Reportedly, one trooper was 48 pounds over his allowable weight, while another was 40 pounds overweight. So, apparently the protest is working, or nobody wants to enforce the rules. (more…)

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Jason

Poll: Women Care More About Weight Than Health

reese witherspoon magazine covers

Reese Witherspoon's magazine covers via NYTimes.com.

Women are bombarded with images of unrealistic, and frankly, distorted views of beauty. The New York Times recently addressed the issue of computer-enhanced glamour covers. The article examines how stars are made to look perfect, if not mannequin-esque (see the covers side by side of Reese Witherspoon), when digital artists retouch magazine photos.

“My feeling is that for years now it has taken a much too big part in how women are being visually defined today,” says photographer Peter Lindbergh.

The consequences of our plastic culture and the pressures to achieve some sort of unachievable beauty are plainly seen in a recent survey of 1,000 adult women. The poll conducted jointly by AP and iVillage revealed that the women are less concerned about their physical health than their physical appearance.

[poll id=”11″]

Take our poll, then continue reading. (more…)

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Jason

Time Spent Eating Helps Determine Weight

I’m not very good with charts. It’s one of the reasons that, when I got to calculus in college, I changed my coursework from Architecture to English. But even I can understand what this chart amounts to:

obesitychart (more…)

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Jason

Understanding Body Mass Index

There has been a lot of confusion about BMI over the years. BMI stands for Body Mass Index and is a statistical measure of the weight of a person scaled according to their height. Body Mass Index is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters.

Example for a 132 pound, 5’4″ female:
59.87 kg / 2.640625 m = BMI 22.7

bmi

According to the BMI chart, 18.5 or less is considered underweight, 18.5 to 24.9 is normal weight, 25.0 to 29.9 is overweight, and 30.0 and greater is considered obese. (more…)

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Matt