Learn the Lingo: Health and Fitness Slang

Finding myself on the wrong side of 30, it’s tough to keep up with the vernacular of today’s young health and fitness enthusiasts. From legitimate health or medical conditions to trendy lexicon and pejorative slang, here is a partial list of terms you may have read, overheard or use yourself.

Dietary Philosophies

Retox: Popularized by celebrity’s biggest health nut, Madonna, this plan is a salmon-heavy nutrition plan combined with a cardio-intensive gym regime. The aim is to take years off her looks.

Nutritionism: An ideology that maintains that the value of food is in its nutrients and not in the food itself. See here for more

Low Carb Taliban: Insulin is to blame for weight gain – end of story. Any carb you eat whether a pop tart or an apple will make you fat. Eat only meat and veggies to be healthy and you are a bad person if you eat grains.

Vegan Taliban: Meat is to blame for every health problem. Oh and dairy too. The China Study is the only thing you’ll ever have to read to be informed of diet.

Flexitarian: Mostly vegetarian who occasionally eats fish and poultry (a flexible vegetarian).

Orexias

Orthorexia: An unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. The word comes from Greek orthos (correct) plus orexis (appetite). In their search for dietary purity, orthorexics may become so restrictive about what they eat (for example, avoiding fatty foods, those containing preservatives, those with salt or sugar) that eventually they become as dangerously thin as an anorexic.

Brideorexia: When a bride-to-be goes out of her way to look thin for her wedding.

Athletica Nervosa: (Body Dysmorphia) A mental disorder where an individual is excessively concerned and preoccupied with an imagined or minor defect in their appearance. The preoccupation causes them significant psychological distress.

Gym and Exercise-related

Gym Rat: A guy who spends every spare moment in the gym. See also: Gym head, meat head, gymbot or my personal favorite, Gym Me Buff It

Gym Kryptonite: Easy-on-the-eyes female that distracts men from getting anything done in the gym. See also; gym rat, gym monkey,

Gym Widow: Someone who’s significant other has gone on a health kick and spends all of their time at the gym.

Yogatude: Holier-than-thou attitude seen in serious yoga students who are more flexible and vaguely spiritual than everyone else. Includes a disdain for meat, leather, and inexpensive sweat pants or yoga mats.

Cardio Bunny: Females who perform at least an hour on the treadmill, elliptical, bike, stairclimber or rower (or any combination thereof) and then call it a day.

Pies: 45lbs. plates. See also: “big wheels”or “papa bears”

Jacked: Well-defined or muscular. See also: Yoked, Swole, Ripped, Chiseled, shredded, cut, gunny.

Toned: A word that should never be used unless you are talking about blood vessels. Still, it is often used by lay public and misinformed trainers worldwide to denote muscular definition. (okay, there’s some personal opinion on that one!)

Vitamin S: Anabolic steroids. See also: Juice, gym candy.

What other lingo have you heard or use yourself? Do you see any of the above on a regular basis? Are you one of the above?

Source: Some definitions obtained from Urban Dictionary.