This large, rigorously conducted cluster RCT in 10-year-old children supports the notion that there is still inadequate evidence to conclude that increased physical activity in school enhances academic achievement in all children. Still, combining physical activity and learning seems a viable model to stimulate learning in those academically weakest schoolchildren.

The theme of the article is to question how the researcher's body is involved both in creating accesses to, and in interpreting, material from qualitative research interviews. The researcher's body is understood from a phenomenological perspective and regarded both as an access and as a limitation to the acquisition of knowledge. The article uses a concrete interview with an aerobic instructor, Edith, as means of illuminating this theme. It is attempted to discern connections between the context for the interview, how the material is created socially and textually and how the researcher utilizes information from own body in the interpretation of the material. The analysis illustrates what insights on a research process can involve, and shows some of the challenges inherent in an open and critical attitude in terms of the self and the other as embodied subjects. It is brought forward how the two parallel processes, both the interview and training, rest upon implicit conditions into which the article acquires greater insight. The article's contribution of knowledge is to illustrate how the researcher can follow up and interpret states noticed in her own body. This can be made explicit and put into a meaningful context through discussion, analysis and reflection. K E Y W O R D S : experience, fitness, interview, lived body, method, phenomenology A RT I C L E 267 Q R The lived body as experience and perspective: methodological challenges Qualitative Research

The high cultural valuation of youthfulness and fitness in the mass media and more generally in western consumer society is the contextual frame for this study. It examines older people's attitudes towards their own ageing and towards people who are older or frailer than themselves. Participant observation was conducted of the attitudes, actions and interactions of the users of a senior centre in Norway. The users held two sets of attitudes that led to quite different activities and actions at the centre. On the one hand, they saw the centre as helping them ' thrive ', which was associated with involvement in the community and participation in the structured daily activities to promote the senses of belonging and being useful. On the other hand, some perceived the centre and particularly the other users as ' threats' -as reminding them that they were getting old and increasingly vulnerable to sickness and disability. To some, the centre was for old people with disabilities, and they used subtle strategies to distance themselves from this group. Some users' attitudes and behaviour were in tension : they wished to participate in the valued activities but also to distance themselves from frailer users, while not denying their own ageing. The distancing strategies and behaviour amounted to age discrimination in interpersonal relations and interactions at the centre. This behaviour accepts rather than challenges the cultural valuation of youthfulness and the negative representation of old age.

Weight loss surgery is commonly regarded as improving individuals' health and social life, and resulting in a happier and more active life for those defined as “morbidly obese.” However, some researchers have started to doubt whether these positive outcomes apply to everyone and this article explores this doubt further. More specifically, we focus on the experiences of women whose life situation became worse after weight loss surgery. The material draws on qualitative interviews of five Norwegian women undergoing the irreversible gastric bypass procedure. Our findings illustrate that the women lived seemingly “normal” lives prior to the surgery with few signs of illness. Worries about future illness as well as social stigma because of their body shape motivated them to undergo weight loss surgery. After the surgery, however, their situation was profoundly changed and their lives were dramatically restricted. Chronic pain, loss of energy, as well as feelings of shame and failure for having these problems not only limited their social lives but it also made them less physically active. In addition, they had difficulties taking care of their children, and functioning satisfactorily at work. Accordingly, the women gradually felt more “disabled,” regarding themselves as “outsiders” whose problems needed to be kept private. The results highlight some “subtle” consequences of weight loss surgery, particularly the shame and stigma experienced by those whose lives became dramatically worse. Living in a society where negative impacts of weight loss surgery are more or less neglected in research as well as in the public debate the women seemed to suffer in silence. Their problems were clearly present and felt in the body but not talked about and shared with others.