Cookie monsters! Fewer french fries! Cancer exercise! Lo-carb crapola! Dumb dieters! Daniel Baldwin's workout! Grip strength! Dip belts! Inspirational marathoners! And a NYSC dance instructor must be rehired at once! It's your Thursday Fitness Watch, where we watch fitness—feverishly!

  • America's voracious appetite (for self-delusion) is forcing manufacturers of those "100 calorie" "Snak paks" or "snak paxxx" to push the calorie count of some of these paks all the way up to 150. What is even the point, then? Just eat four instead of six, I guess.
  • Surprisingly, the USA is buying fewer french fries! Half a billion pounds less since 2007. Some cite "The introduction of dollar menus, effects of the recession and end of supersizing," although of course the real reason is that we're now spending our fry money on fried Twinkies, now. More creamy.
  • One inspiring cancer patient has used exercise as a springboard for recovery. Doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would fit your... sedate lifestyle, though.
  • Low carb diets? Fuck that shit.
  • You can now buy special water with added electrons. Related: a new study finds that dieters are stupid. Hey, let me see your wallet for a sec.
  • "Kettlebells work for Daniel Baldwin, but are they right for you?" Will Daniel Baldwin's star ever stop shining?
  • Want to improve your grip strength? You can play with all these baby toys like a baby, or you can get real and get the CAPTAINS OF CRUSH grippers. But the best grip exercise of all is one-handed off-the-side-of-a-bridge hangs.
  • Here's how to make your own dip belt at home. No idea why you'd want to but you must be pretty bored already to have read this far, so.
  • Rudrani Devi was shot three times by terrorists in Mumbai in 2008. Her leg was shattered. This week, she ran the Boston Marathon. So what's your excuse? Mine is that I hate running.
  • A loyal Fitness Watch reader informs us of a grass-roots uproar among New York Sports Club members after the gym chain fired popular dance-fitness instructor (and choreographer) Calvin Wiley. Calvin Wiley's former students are outraged! They've started a petition and they're calling the club managers and they're contacting the CEO and generally doing anything they can think of to get Calvin rehired. We do not have firsthand knowledge of this "dance-fitness" phenomenon, but we hereby lend our hearty support to Calvin Wiley and his students. Rehire Calvin at once! As long as Calvin Wiley is working, all of the people dancing like this will stay in one place, away from the deadlift area. Come on.

[Image via Shutterstock]