The Checkup: Study Shows How to Get Fit in Less Time

• If you spend hours each week at the gym, listen up: A new study found that by swapping interval training for endurance training, you can cut your gym time by a third—and still see the same results. The trick? Doing three sessions of high-intensity interval training, totaling 90 minutes a week. The study found that these kinds of workouts—in which you do short bursts of super explosive exercise, mixed with recovery periods—has the same health and fitness pay-offs as five hours of traditional endurance exercise, like jogging on the treadmill. And the two kinds of interval training the researchers found to be effective involved stationery bikes, which means they’re low-impact, too—win-win. Check out the study here, and peruse our archive of interval workouts for ideas on how to get started.

• School vending machines might be getting a makeover, if the USDA has anything to say about it. The government agency proposed new rules Friday, which would eliminate high-fat, high-sugar items (buh-bye, potato chips and M&Ms) and replace them with foods that have either fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, whole grains, or high-protein sources as their main ingredients. HealthDay has more.

• You know, I’ve always suspected that calorie counts on nutrition labels are kind of FUBAR—and unfortunately, it looks like I might be right. Jezebel reports on several new studies which found that those calorie labels are likely just guesstimates of actual calorie content, rather than hard-and-fast numbers. The reason, researchers say, is that those calorie counts are based on an antiquated calculation that doesn’t take a lot of factors (i.e. processing, fiber content, etc.) into account. Which means? Calorie counts could be off by as much as 50 percent in some cases. Sigh. Read more here.

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