My Week With Passive Exercise: Losing Weight Without Working Out?

I think everyone can agree that exercising kind of sucks. It has its good points, to be sure — the physical after-effects are great (you can even look like a superball full of muscles if you want to). It is fun to make cool new gym friends, I have been told. I exercise because I don’t want my legs to look like a half-eaten bowl of Jell-O. I run. I do “ballet barre.” Sometimes I contemplate going to a class called “Barry’s Boot Camp.” But even I can admit that these activities are secretly horrible, that running out of breath is a bore, and that “Barry’s Boot Camp” just sounds mean and upsetting.

So what if you could get the after-effects of exercise without actually, you know, doing a spin class on a Sunday when you could be sleeping? Can you really get skinny from just laying on the floor? I am here to find out just before the summer!  Using a mixture of spa treatments and odd things I bought on Amazon, I will investigate whether one can get the effects (milk) of exercise without buying the cow (ha!).

Basically, I will do a series of things that some people call “passive exercise,” i.e. tricks and tools that promise to make you slim without actually requiring time at the gym. Are these products pipe dreams or do they really work?  I will find out.

When Sketchers Shape Up shoes were victims of a class action lawsuit  because their entire technological basis was specious (they did not cause people to tone up or lose weight as they claimed and they caused “back problems”) no one was more upset than me, aside from the President of Sketchers. I was an early adopter of those shoes and I thought they were working! I thought they were turning my Jell-O legs into real legs. I didn’t even care that they looked weird and that people looked at me weirdly when I wore them on the street. 

Thus, when I found “No Gym Required” shoes while trying to find illegal and possibly used Sketchers on the internet, I was so excited. They are also unattractive sneakers with weight-loss claims attached to them, yet instead of the Shape Up’s uneven insole-of-injury — which purportedly threw you off balance in beneficial ways — they just have weights in their insole. (And gyms have weights!  Do you see how it is no gym required?)  You are supposed to wear the shoes around to do regular activities like walking but because they are really heavy (two pounds per foot) you also “burn extra calories.” On the website, they just look like regular white sneakers with lime green accents. No one has filed a class action lawsuit against them yet!  Sign me up! 

When I finally got the shoes in the mail, I was astounded at their heaviness. The sole is so full of weight that your actual foot sits relatively high off the ground. They are like those Isabel Marant wedge sneakers except far more orthopedic looking, possibly because of the aforementioned lime green accents. I decided to wear them on a walk to get an iced coffee.

I was so incredibly tired after my walk to my local Dunkin’ Donuts, I could barely believe it. How is walking in weighted shoes so tough? I was even walking rather slowly, as is my custom. However, one trip to the store became my workout of the day, which is a real time saver. And thus, I am kind of a fan of these shoes. I really think they are working.  My whole leg burned the next day (which is consistent with NGR’s rather ambitious promise of working out every single area of the leg). My foot’s arch hurt in a slightly worrying way but I don’t care. At $59.99, they are sort of a bargain.

Pro: Makes even simple tasks difficult.

Bliss Spa, a nationwide spa chain, now offers a new treatment called the “Lean Machine.” It apparently “visibly reduces the appearance of cellulite” and comes with a little leg massager that you can take home with you. Considering I once slathered my legs with baby oil and vacuumed them with a dust-buster (for a journalism experiment that I eventually refused to do because I didn’t want to show a picture of my thighs on the internet) this sounds easy and fun! Sign me up, ok?

So, I headed over to Bliss in midtown with a song in my heart. An aesthetician brushed my body with a body brush (This is apparently what Stacy Kiebler, Betty Grable of our time, does routinely ) and then put a cream called “Fat Girl Slim” on my legs (I don’t know). Then she taught me how to use the “Lean Machine” device, which is sort of like a vacuum that sucks up your cellulite and readjusts it. After the treatment, I definitely felt like the leg that was sucked up looked slightly more taut. When I used the device at home, I was not as good at it. I kept sucking up the back of my leg in a way that was painful, kind of like a forceful pinch. Bliss recommends you use the leg massager everyday until you start noticing “visible results.” Then you can transition to using it three times a week. At $195 for the machine and 30-minute instructional treatment, the system isn’t cheap, nor entirely different from a dust-buster, but it is much easier to use.

Con: Is the back of a leg more susceptible to pain than the front of a leg?

Have you ever seen an ab belt on an infomercial and thought, “That looks amazing?” Me too. That’s why I bought the Belly Burner belt on Amazon, which maintains that you will become a “fat burning machine” just by wearing a black wrestling belt. It even shows a “Thermagraphic Test” (What is this? Can someone tell me? They do not explain it) on the back of the box. There are two pictures, both faintly of abs, that seem to have been subjected to Weather Channel-style satellite vision. The first picture is a person without the Belly Burner on. They have blue abs. The second picture is a person with the Belly Burner on. They have red abs. Did someone say “Sign me up?”  Sign me up!

When I finally receive the Belly Burner in the U.S. mail, I realize it is just a gigantic neoprene belt. It is literally for someone with a 50-inch waist or more! But no matter, I put it on (it has adjustable Velcro), strapped on “No Gym Required” shoes, and headed down to the Container Store with my mom, who was visiting (you are supposed to wear the belt while doing physical activity, such as walking, and what is a better destination than the Container Store, where we could actually lift innumerable organizational tubs?). As soon as I stepped outside, I started sweating profusely all around my midsection. It was nearly 90 degrees outside. According to the Belly Burner box, the belt is creating a “sauna” around your waist that is “melting inches off.” You could also see the belt bulkily peaking out of my clothes. It made me look like I had a severe case of scoliosis. After twenty minutes of torture, and before I even arrived at the Container Store, I took the belt off. If you like sweating in a specific area, for $19.99, this is probably a good deal. Even if the science behind it makes little-to-no sense.

Pro: It does create a sauna around your waist.

The $98 dollar Seaweed Wrap at Dorit Baxter, a spa in New York City, promises to “minimize fat and water weight while toning and tightening” all while a person just lays on a table. It sounds so much easier than Bikram Yoga. Sign me up, please!

When I arrived for my hour-long treatment, I was ushered into a darkened room and directed to lay on a table. There I was massaged in slimming oil, slathered in seaweed (which was apparently from France) and wrapped up in a space blanket (and several more blankets for that matter) like a burrito. Then they left me to sweat into the seaweed. It was actually very pleasant up until the burrito part which was extremely warm (although I suppose that is the point). After twenty minutes or so inside the burrito, I was instructed to take a shower and wash off the seaweed. All that sweating did seem to pay off!  My arms, especially, looked more defined.

So what have I learned? All exercise, including passive exercise, is hard work. You still have to carve time out of your day to do it, and isn’t that the worst part about exercise? Plus you have to sweat so much to get anything done. There is no free lunch, it turns out.

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Losing Fashion, Finding God: The Ex-Models Who Go Evangelical

Nicole Weider never did make it big as model. She hated schlepping all over Los Angeles, where she moved from her hometown of Salem, Oregon. Her Elite Model Management agent made her quit the high-school team because her legs were too muscular. The other aspiring models seemed catty and rude, and she wasn’t landing many jobs. The work she did get made her miserable: A shoot for Maxim as one of its “hometown hotties” made her feel “humiliated.” A dream job as a stand-in for Adriana Lima at a Victoria’s Secret shoot was disillusioning: The women, Weider’s idols, were shockingly skinny, and yet the photographer’s assistant bragged to her about retouching Gisele Bündchen’s thighs on site. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is so false,’” she recalled recently. “After that I was like, ‘Wow, I have to share this news with everyone!”

And share she has. A large, devoted audience of young evangelical women now visit her popular site Project Inspired, where she describes herself as a successful model and actress who “ditched her former life.” Though she wasn’t raised in a religious home, she found God at 23 when a friend brought her to a talk by former Miss USA contestant Sheri Rose Shepherd, a popular evangelical speaker and author, and gave her a copy of The Purpose Driven Life. She went to community college and then launched a career similar to Shepherd’s, as a writer and inspirational figure. She got a PR boost last year by launching a campaign against Cosmopolitan magazine that was enthusiastically covered by the Christian press: “This magazine has the devil written all over it,” she wrote online. “He wants to kill and destroy young girls' hearts and minds and Cosmopolitan is just a vessel for that.” Her site now earns about 100,000 visits a month and she just sold a book to a “well-known Christian publisher.”

Weider is just one of a runway’s worth of women who are making a second career for themselves in religious communities by speaking out against the evils of the fashion industry. These women boast different levels of industry success, but many describe a crystallizing moment of abject horror at the fashion world’s vices, which they may or may not have dabbled in. Most of them struggled with eating disorders or depression, and now preach a message of modesty and self-esteem. And they do so while keeping a traditionally feminine look: They’re all slim, almost all of them have long hair, they wear plenty of makeup and jewelry, and they choose stylish, if not fashion-forward, clothing. As a slice of Christian culture’s much-discussed “modesty movement,” they represent modesty at its sexiest and most successful. Many of them are getting far more attention as ex-models than they ever got as professional posers.

There’s cycle three America’s Next Top Model contestant Leah Darrow, who was raised Catholic but drifted away from religion until experiencing a dramatic vision of God during a lingerie photo shoot; she now speaks to Catholic audiences on topics like “how to live out your faith with your everyday fashions.” There’s Jennifer Strickland, who walked the runway for Armani in Milan in the mid-nineties; after a suicide attempt at the height of her success, she met people handing out Bibles in a Munich park. She currently lectures to tens of thousands of women and girls each year at conferences and churches all over the country, with her next book Beautiful Lies warning women not to let “men, mirrors, and magazines” define them. (“You had to be anorexic to be an Armani runway model,” she told me. “I don’t see any other option.”) Pat Robertson’s talk show The 700 Club has featured at least six models and ex-models in recent years, including Britt Koth, who appeared on MTV’s Miami-based modeling reality show 8th & Ocean.

Most famous, at least in recent months, is 23-year-old Kylie Bisutti, who made headlines with her decision to give up lingerie modeling and move to a small town in Montana with her new husband. Bisutti wore a cross necklace on the Today show last month, where she told Savannah Guthrie, “I’m just thankful that God changed my heart earlier on, rather than being five or ten years down the road.” Victoria’s Secret accused Bisutti of exaggerating her affiliation with the brand, pointing out that she won an online amateur contest and only worked with the brand twice. Her book title, I’m No Angel: From Victoria's Secret Model to Role Model, suggests otherwise.

Rachel Lee Carter, now 38, stands out from this group because she still works regularly as a model. Carter is represented by Wilhelmina in New York, and has appeared in print ads for Revlon, Tommy Hilfiger, W hotels, and Reebok. After moving to New York in the mid-nineties, her new job nearly crushed her faith. She moved upstate to attend a Bible college, lost weight “naturally,” and felt called back to modeling. “The Lord was saying, ‘Go back, but go on my terms,’” she recalls. “Unbelievably, I worked more than I could have ever imagined.” But she declines plenty of work, too: “No alcohol advertisements, no cigarettes, nothing provocative, no lingerie or anything see-through, or anything homosexual in nature,” she told me. “In the book of Daniel, it says in the first chapter that Daniel ‘purposed in his heart’ not to defile his body. That’s the cornerstone of my work in this industry.” Detailed standards may make modeling tougher, but they don’t rule out success: Devout Jehovah’s Witness Coco Rocha, who told DuJour last year that “faith is everything,” won’t do nudity or lingerie, or hold a cigarette for a shoot.

Carter has continued to work steadily ever since, picking up a Mrs. North Carolina sash along the way. (Her “platform” was modesty, and she wore a one-piece in the swimsuit competition.) She maintains the website Modeling-Christ.com, wrote a 2011 book aimed at teen girls, and frequently speaks to large groups of women and young people, with fees around $3,000 per appearance. She says she would like to see the industry aggressively combat eating disorders, employ more plus-size models, and label photos that have been retouched, “so people would know no one’s perfect.”

If those ideas sound familiar, that’s because there’s real overlap between these Christian models’ causes and the kind of body-positive pop feminism prevalent in the broader culture. Weider’s site features a Jane-worthy “Me Without Makeup” section, and Carter’s anti-Photoshop crusade sounds like something you could find praised on Jezebel. Strickland emphasizes the Dove-like message that “real beauty has imperfections and flaws.”

“The language they use is really a feminist language, a straight-up feminist ‘my body, my choice’ language,” says Christine J. Gardner, an associate professor of communications at evangelical Wheaton College, who wrote a 2011 book about the rhetoric of evangelical abstinence campaigns. Not that modesty advocates use the f-word, of course. But Gardner sees power as the essential message of these movements: In a sex-saturated society, withholding sex and sexiness preserves that control instead of relinquishing it to men. As she puts it, “Modesty is the new sex.”

Why the profusion of ex-models on the modesty circuit? Gardner sees it as a classic conversion narrative, akin to the best-selling sixties memoir The Cross and the Switchblade, about a New York City gang member turned evangelical Christian: “For those stories to ring true, to be both coherent and dramatic, you have to have the storyteller be able to say, ‘I was part of this other life, but now I found Christ,’” Gardner says. A gorgeous woman who claims to have given up the charm, fame, and riches of the fashion industry for her faith is a more powerful spokesperson than a dumpy hausfrau badgering you to put a sweater over that skimpy sundress.

In spreading this message, many of these former models have found their greatest prestige as outsiders speaking truth to glamour. If they’ve found the thing modeling may have failed to provide them — an audience — why go back to the world of catty agents and degrading casting calls, not to mention risk violating their own values? Weider dipped her toe back in the industry again last year, but after going to ten commercial auditions and not getting any jobs, she decided that was the end. “As soon as I left the audition, I felt bad about myself,” she said. “This is not inspiring at all.”

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