Hearty congratulations are in order, America: we as a nation have plateaued at a healthy 33% adult obesity rate. The fight on fat is won, pretty much! How are we as a nation celebrating?

Infomercial experts have spent decades educating you, the consumer, on the benefits of "exercise." Now, scientists are jumping on the "exercise" bandwagon. Could "exercise" be good for you? What role does cereal play? And, will leaving your couch kill you?

In the same way in which 98% of Americans ply their "Modern Warfare" online rather than joining the Army, we also refuse to work out without the warm, glowing distraction of a video game.

You know what else is bullshit, besides juice cleanses? The idea that wearing some ugly Reeboks with a curvy sole will give you an Ass of Steel. Bullshit. Also, cookie diets? Bullshit.

Looks like this little resistance cable snafu turned an ordinary weight room work out into an impromptu yoga session.

So you overdid it with the Thanksgiving smörgåsbord and are eager to squeeze in some extra gym time. But first, check out today's fail and learn why you shouldn't be too eager to jump on a treadmill.

Dolph Lundgren shares the secrets of keeping his body a knock out in his very own exercise video.

It's hard to choose who to pity here: the traumatized fish? Or the emasculated German teenager, caught on video as he cries out for mommy's help?

If you drink, smoke, or do drugs and you have fitness-obsessed friends who occasionally give you a hard time for your vices, you may want to print out this story from National Geographic, just so you have it handy the next time you run into them while you're on your way to a bar and they're headed to the gym. According to new research in the August issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, "Hardcore runners who can't bear to skip a workout may be hooked in a way that's similar to heroin addiction." And it can be fatal, too! [National Geographic]

Ready to start the week off on a down note? Yes?! Well, consider this: all of that time and money you invest in gym memberships and personal trainers may actually be useless in regards to losing weight/staying slim!

You try to eat healthy whenever you can, you go the gym every chance you get, and yet you still feel like you're not doing enough to stay fit. Relax! You're fine! According to a new study published in the American Medical Journal—and despite the constant patter of dieting and exercise advice—"physical activity and healthy eating rates are down, while obesity is up." Consider this a fine excuse to skip the gym this evening, if you'd like one. [NYDN]

The quickest way to land a book deal? Become besties with Gwyneth Paltrow, obviously! A month after Gwynnie's bikini waxer inked a deal with Penguin Books. Now comes word that Tracy Anderson, the personal trainer Paltrow shares with Madonna, has landed a six-figure deal of her own with Grand Central Publishing. So if you can't afford the $900 a month membership fees to Tracy's gym, or even the $200 workout sessions she's offering at a depressing Midtown hotel, you'll be able to take advantage of her wisdom in a slim, paperback volume. Best of all, you won't need to exercise your body or your brain doing it.

In these dark times, we'll take good news from wherever we can, let alone spectacular news like this. Basically, any guilt you were harboring about not having been to the gym since the beginning of the new year you can replace with smugness, because scientists now say that exercise isn't going to make you thin. In fact, it might even make you fat! "Your appetite goes up when you start to exercise," according to one physiologist. "Your body is telling you it needs more calories, so you eat more."

Apparently Linda Wells, Jane Rosenthal, Rosanna Scotto, and Caryn Zucker—the wife of NBC chief Jeff Zucker—all work out together at Soul Cycle on the Upper West Side. ("Our classes are candlelit so you can't look around at everybody even if you wanted to," says Wells.) Glam, new agey ladies who get together weekly to sweat a bit and swap a few stories from the front-lines of fashion and media? When you see this form the basis of a new NBC sitcom, now you know where the idea came from. [NYO]

Ever looked at ads for exercise devices that promise to morph your body into that of a teenage Korean gymnast on steroids and been vaguely tempted, notwithstanding the fact that the before and after pictures feature a "results not typical" disclosure in 3-point font? Especially since the transformation is always touted as fast and involving a very minimal time commitment? Well, exercise physiologist Carl Foster has come to save you from yourself.

A stalker emails: "Alec Baldwin came into Equinox on Broadway and 91st this morning trying to get into my spinning class at the last minute. He was denied because the class was full and lifted weights instead. Didn't have much of an attitude and was pleasant to the other people working out around him." Also:

These may be sad times economically, but there's encouraging news on the sexual equality front: At last, men are suffering from the same kind of crippling vanity as women, as evidenced by sales of men's fitness mags, gym attendance, and levels of manorexia and "muscle dysmorphia syndrome." Responsible, of course, are advertisers, and their increased use of "undressed male models" in ads. But we're sure the internet should somehow take credit too. [Times UK]

Television has misled us yet again: Apparently, you shouldn't hire a personal trainer based on his rippling physique and because you intend to have an affair with him to get back at your cheating husband. Or those shouldn't be the sole criteria, at least. [Newsweek]

In one of those patented "prove any thesis with the right selection of quotes" pieces, Page Six mag would like to remind you that the economic downtown is not just bad for your bank balance, it's also bad for your waistline. You see, regular personal training sessions and expensive memberships to pilates studios were preventing many New Yorkers from turning into big fat tubs of lard, but tighter budgeting is putting the squeeze on such luxuries. Darren Spedale, for example, is an investment banker whose bonus (please have a Kleenex at the ready) has been cut by 20%, so he can only pay for the basic membership at Equinox. The ignominy! At least some people have their priorities straight, like a 31-year-old freelance copywriter who lives in Brooklyn, who's planning to put her personal training sessions on a credit card. "I think being fat is probably worse than ­being in debt," she says, neatly symbolizing our fair city's manifesto.

When extremely important news breaks at any hour of the day or night, we here at Gawker receive a BREAKING NEWS ALERT from the web liaison at the New York Post. They are a paper packed with pavement-pounding journalists that never sleep, and they want to ensure that we, the internet nerds, are able to communicate important news items to you, the other internet nerds, in a timely fashion. So we have to apologize for any loss in civic informed-ness that you may incur because of our lateness in bringing you this story, which the Post urgently emailed to us just as it was filed late last night. But better late than never, we're excited to tell you: "GYM MACHINE HURLS LARGE WOMAN." Three (3) Post reporters managed to track the down the details of this occurence: