Remember "aerobics," that early 80s sartorial nightmare ushered in by Jane Fonda, Olivia Newton-John and Richard Simmons? Well, it's making a comeback in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood, where local hipsters are now sweating it out in spandex, leotards and leg-warmers.

Padma Lakshmi's fitness secret: Be a freakish genetic outlier.

One would think that hard times would drive people to replace their fancy gyms with heavy logs and Super Squats, but nay! New York's busy professionals can scarcely be bothered to consider a gymnasium that is not Cirque Du Soleil-ready.

Students who score higher on physical fitness tests also reliably score higher on math and reading tests, disproving the fat kid's standard "dumb jocks are dumb" defense. Fat kids can still claim to be better at art and cooking. [NYP]

After torturing rhesus monkeys for decades with extremely low-calorie diets, scientists have finally proven that eating less can help primates (you) live longer. And the United States of America has proven that eating more kills you quick. Related: Donut Wars!!

A real thing someone wrote: "Strength Training: Could It Have Saved MJ?" From a Demerol overdose? Not likely, crazy fitness blogger. Not even Lou Ferrigno could get Michael Jackson to lift weights! Not even Super Squats could have saved him.

Last year women spent almost $50 million on worthless products that failed to get rid of cellulite. Stop the madness! Must the New York Times plaster an entire Styles page with a naked bottom to get you to listen? Yes.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly: "'Once in a while I use that machine the women use,' he says, referring to the Stairmaster." He listens to the Foo Fighters while he's on there. [WSJ]

What happens to the delicate fabric of spacetime when stories in the same Thursday New York Times Style Section flow logically into one another in a perpetual, unceasing circle? We're about to find out:

Well, well. Michelle Obama has some nice arms, and now all the ladies want some nice arms. Women of America: resist this arm fixation. Do you want to end up just as dumb as men?

Despite being total bullshit, the idea that you can "cleanse" your body with days-long juice fasts persists. If a new story is to be believed, Cleanse Mania is affecting rich women and fameballs alike.

Listen up, Mary Rambin and all other poor suckers who believe that magical herbal detoxes, fasts, or colonics will somehow "cleanse" your system of "toxins": they don't, okay. So stop buying them. Jesus.

As if nearly exposing Lisa Rinna's snickerdoodle to a horrified America wasn't enough, Richard Simmons's campaign of meal-dealing terror continues to devastate Manhattan.

Concerned about the job prospects for the already-wealthy cads who made a pile in finance jobs? Sure, we all are. There's good news, though; corporate types who suddenly find themselves unemployed have all decided, en masse, to become personal trainers. These former office-bound A-type personalities are all lining up to sell their exercise services to, uh, you know, whoever may have some disposable income left.

Illustrious Doubleday book publishing exec Julie Grau takes to the pages of Vogue this month to muse about her "definitive ab-sculpting workout": "On the floor, we pretzel our legs and torque our bodies through an array of exercises that Tanya promises will 'fry the fat off your hips' and get rid of unsightly waistband overhang." Sorry Julie, spot reduction of fat is a myth. I'm surprised you didn't know that. You can read about it in a book. [NYO]

The Times Style section wonderfully fulfills its reason for existence today—to provide the world with Purposefully Enraging Pseudotrend Stories. While the average American watches the pounds melt off their frame naturally while supping on Kool-Aid and roadkill soup, rich, recently laid-off finance workers have a more pressing worry: How will the collapse of the nation's economy affect my personal training schedule? Some are sucking it up and pressing on, regardless of the hardships:

Ladies, have a look at this ad featuring skinny supermodel Kate Moss. How does it make you feel? Wait, let me tell you how it makes you feel: it makes you hate your own body, but really want to purchase that handbag Kate Moss is advertising! What am I, psychic? No, I'm just telling you what the advertising industry has discovered in a breakthrough new study about skinny models. Women love to hate themselves and keep coming back for more, apparently! The actual, scientific study found that "ads featuring thin models made women feel worse about themselves but better about the brands featured." They make you despise your own "normal" body, and subconsciously try to correct the situation with therapy consisting of shopping. Oh, the pretty girls have all the pretty brands! A Villanova professor who ran the study ferreted out just what advertisers bank on: masochism. ""The really interesting result we're seeing across multiple studies is that these thin models make women feel bad, but they like it," he said. The advertising industry always knew you were a bad, bad girl. And in the most entertaining twist to this whole thing, the study also found that images of skinny models make women stop eating. Surprise!:

I've long wondered why the New York Times, perhaps the world's most sophisticated news-gathering operation, writes articles about fitness that would be an embarrassment to a fifth-grade PE class. Really now. Times readers were certainly grateful that the paper of record brought its unparalleled resources to bear to answer imponderables like "Does Weight Lifting Make A Better Athlete?", or "Should we stretch?" But perhaps such questions would better be left to, you know, the sense god gave a rock. I know the media wants us all fat and broke so we consume more media, but come on. Well, fuck it. I give up. Today they reveal that sweat cools you off:

Bigger, Stronger, Faster , the just-released documentary that reconsiders the terrible public image of steroids, is winning praise for its frank depiction of the pluses and minuses of 'roids. But all the honesty didn't turn out well for Christian Boeving, a fitness model who lost his endorsement contract with Muscletech when it became clear that he admitted longtime steroid use in an interview in the film. "I didn't think I would get into that much trouble, because I thought it was pretty apparent that the top people in the industry use steroids to look like we do," Boeving said. But he admitted it, so he's out. Yes, the entire muscle industry is made up of hypocrites. You'd have thought that some of Boeving's pictures, like these, might have given his totally innocent sponsors a clue:

When media personalities were asked their 2008 resolutions by WWD, defiantly cigarette-loving restauranteur Graydon Carter said without any obvious irony: "less food, more exercise." It was an unusual ambition for the Vanity Fair editor, who so wanted a restaurant within waddling distance that he opened the Waverly Inn round the corner from his Bank Street townhouse. So how is the new fitness regimen working for the magazine heavyweight? Check out the self-mocking opening sequence from Carter's monthly video introduction to the latest issue of Vanity Fair.