Healthy Living

A wiry guy scampers up a smooth wall to the top of a building, then takes a flying leap to another roof, launches off the edge and at the last possible moment gracefully grabs onto a window ledge, drops down twenty feet onto a Dumpster, does a back tuck off the side and lands on the grass in a perfect crouch.No, I’m not talking about Spiderman. The guy I’m talking about, the guy I’m training to be, is doing Parkour.

For the third year, Emory cardiologist Laurence Sperling helped U.S. News & World Report rate the country’s top diets. Sperling joined a panel of 20 experts to evaluate 29 diets from Atkins to Zone. Fortunately for Sperling, medical director of Emory's Center for Heart Disease Prevention, he didn’t have to actually try all the diets.

When the Asthma and Allergy Foundation released its annual Spring Allergy Capitals list, metro area allergy sufferers threw their discarded tissues in disgust. Atlanta ranked No. 72 on the list. (Up from No. 73 last year.)

There are plenty of annoying gym-goers who get my eyes rolling. Gail P. Jones is a bit more enlightened than I am. The Decatur-based certified trainer ignores the annoyances and saves her side-eye for the ones who are just doing things wrong. She shares her Top 10 List of Things People Do Wrong at the Gym:

In an effort to catch up on a book deadline, I took last week “off.” In other words, I traded my office at work for my home office and seven days of round-the-clock archive research and writing.

I was standing in front of a stranger in my underwear and had one question: “What if I open my mouth and eat it?”Angela gave me a quizzical smile, perhaps wondering if she’d misheard me because of the Hoover-like hum of her spray-tan pump and the fans buzzing on the back wall.I was at RAW Organic Bronzing Studio in Inman Park, a salon — founded by a cancer survivor — that offers a 100% natural spray tan.

Been thinking about doing a run for charity, but can't decide which one? There's a race Valentine's weekend that's only a "mile-ish" long and that starts and ends at a pub. It's hardly an athletic commitment, but there's just one catch. You have to run it in your skivvies.

More kids in the U.S. are "severely obese" and Georgia has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the country.

Once in a while, I find myself running—occasionally from someone, or as part of an annual St. Patrick's day pub run, but more often late at night to sober up—with alcohol in my system.

Feeling cocky because you ran the Peachtree yesterday? Hosting America's largest 10k might have something to do with the fact that we're in the top half of America's best places for exercise.