Exercising Gym Quotes

If I were to draw on a paper what gym does for me, I would make one dot and then I would erase it.

I’d gone with my usual option. I was running through long tunnels filled with demons and monsters and nightmares, because it was easier than going to the gym.

Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised.

I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space. When I asked her once why she didn't walk to the gym and do five minutes less on the treadmill, she looked at me as if I were being willfully provocative. 'Because I have a program for the treadmill,' she explained. 'It records my distance and speed, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.' It hadn't occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard.

It is not much different from a person who goes to the gym to exercise on a regular basis versus someone who sits on the couch watching television. Proper physical exercise increases your chances of health, and proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth. Laziness decreases both health and wealth.

...the gym is a kind of wildlife preserve for bodily exertion. A preserve protects species whose habitat is vanishing elsewhere, and the gym (and home gym) accommodates the survival of bodies after the abandonment of the original sites of bodily exertion.

Huge biceps are an unattractive-uneducated-underpaid man's last attempt to be seen as worthy of dating, or, sleeping with.

Before you worry about the beauty of your body, worry about the health of your body.

Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day.

The problem is that you THINK that you have to be motivated to do something, instead of just doing it and then having it done. Tip: The willingness to do things comes with action. Don’t wait until you feel like going to the gym and exercising. Start exercising right away and there’s a huge possibility that you’ll feel the desire to continue.

He who makes fun of a short and fat man’s weight is much less cruel than he who makes fun of his height.

Excuses don’t kill the fat, exercises do.

Some people who have been working out regularly for months or even years are still out of shape because the number of cheat days they have in a week exceeds six.

I run for half an hour every day because I hate it. It never gets any easier. Each day I dread going outside or to the gym, and each day I try to talk myself out of it. But I always go. I hate running, and I’ve run each day since starting the show to prove that I am stronger than my apathy. That I am stronger than the girl who gave up on life.

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

More often than not, expecting to lose weight without first losing the diet that made the weight loss necessary is like expecting a pig to be spotless after hosing it down while it was still rolling in mud.

So, instead, I give tips on how to be a professional boxer. A good diet is essential, of course, as is a daily regime of exercise. Pay attention to your footwork, it will often get you into trouble. Go down to the gym every day – every day of your life that finds you waking up capable of standing. Take every opportunity to watch a good professional fight. In fact watch as many bouts as you can, because you can even learn something from the fighters who get it wrong. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do. And don’t forget the diet and the exercise and the roadwork. Got it? Well, becoming a writer is basically exactly the same thing, except that it isn’t about boxing.

in my opinion, Pullover machines are among the most valuable exercise machines you will find in a gym.

Life is one big gym where we need to constantly workout to stay fit for this world. And indeed love here is the treadmill.

Some men’s chests are more buttlike than some women’s butts.

The fact that they might still be alive in 5, 25, or even 50 years’ time is not enough to motivate fools to look after their bodies.

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.

Oh, I just wasted two hundred dollars on a gym membership, which I didn’t use…even once. My shorts are getting shorter. Lately I’ve been looking like a slut—unintentionally of course.

She propped both elbows on the counter, cupping her smiling face in her hands. Forget whiplash, this woman had bitchlash; she’d gone from bitch to entranced so fast. “So what brings you here to our little gym?” “Exercise,” Brody responded flatly.

The art experience and the theater experience, gyms for the soul, generate heat and exercise the imagination, empathy, creative thinking, patience and tolerance. A gym for the soul is a place where personal investment is required and the return is real.

I do a squat to demonstrate. Generally I do squats with weight – lots of it – but since the most physical exercise Chloe seems accustomed to is running her mouth. I figure I’d better start at the beginning. The very beginning. “Okay?” I say, doing another since she didn’t mimic my motion the second time. She watches my movement in the mirror. “One more time,” she says. I comply, and then mutter a string of curses because Chloe Bellamy has just reached out in the middle of a busy gym and patted my ass. “Very nice,” she says, sounding surprised. “Chloe!” She shrugs. “You just got so upset when I was ogling that other guy instead of you, so I wanted to make you feel good.

There are different ways people make this place. Sweat, exercise and pain is one way. You can see them in the gyms, in the well-ordered swimming pools. You can see them jogging in the small, worn parks. Another way to make your place is TV. A bright, brash place, always well lit, full of fun and jokes that tell you when to laugh so you never miss them. World news carefully edited so that it’s not too disturbing, but disturbing enough to make you glad that you weren’t born in a foreign country. News with music to tell you who to hate, who to feel sorry for, and who laugh at.

You can start training yourself in this Stoic practice of objective representation right now by writing down a description of an upsetting or problematic event in plain language. Phrase things as accurately as possible and view them from a more philosophical perspective, with studied indifference. Once you’ve mastered this art, take it a step further by following the example of Paconius Agrippinus and look for positive opportunities. Write how you could exercise strength of character and cope wisely with the situation. Ask yourself how someone you admire might cope with the same situation or what that person might advise you to do. Treat the event like a sparring partner in the gym, giving you an opportunity to strengthen your emotional resilience and coping skills. You might want to read your script aloud and review it several times or compose several versions until you’re satisfied it’s helped you change how you feel about events.

Life is healthy, but lifestyle makes it unhealthy.

Take the admission to the gym to avoid the admission to the hospital.

Your body is the most complete and miraculous piece of gym equipment you’ll ever need.

Not only a man without hand is handicapped but also a man without health.

Not making fun of fat people is good for their self-esteem but bad for their health.

We become fat by overeating, not by not exercising.

I was all about resurrecting the lost art of the midrange jumper, but then one day I was shooting free throws—just standing at the foul line at the North Central gym shooting from a rack of balls. All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing. “I started thinking about little kids putting a cylindrical peg through a circular hole, and how they do it over and over again for months when they figure it out, and how basketball was basically just a slightly more aerobic version of that same exercise.

When people who have taken a positive step toward meeting a goal—for example, exercising, studying, or saving money—are asked, “How much progress do you feel you have made on your goal?” they are more likely to then do something that conflicts with that goal, like skip the gym the next day, hang out with friends instead of studying, or buy something expensive.

We’re cracking the code on how to keep people at the gym,” Lazarus told me. “People want to visit places that satisfy their social needs. Getting people to exercise in groups makes it more likely they’ll stick with a workout. You can change the health of the nation this way.

If you are a member of a gym then it is worth checking whether they allow chalk to be used on pull-up bars and the other equipment. If they don’t, I would consider changing gyms, as they obviously care more about the state of their floors or bars than of your strength and fitness goals.

We hated the gym. We loved it. We escaped to it. We avoided it. We had complicated relationships with our bodies, while at the same time insisting that we loved them unconditionally. We were sure we had better, more important things to do than worry about them, but the slender yoga bodies of moms in Lululemon at school pickup taunted us. Their figures hinted at wheatgrass shots, tennis clubs, and vagina steaming treatments. We found them aspirational. So we sweated on the elliptical and lifted ten-pound weights, inching closer to the bodies we told ourselves we were too evolved to want.

Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids—all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine—it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order.

To any woman out there who is fed up with trying the same thing over and over, I offer this suggestion. Instead of getting back on the treadmill “one more time,” try this. Alter your diet so that you eat no grain-based carbohydrate: no flour, no sugar, no bread, no pasta, and no high-fructose corn syrup. Then go to the gym and perform a workout of leg press, pull down, chest press, row and overhead press. Lift slowly and smoothly but with as much effort as possible. Go to complete fatigue, or as close to it as you can tolerate. Work out once, or at most, twice a week. Make sure your workouts last no longer than 20 minutes. Then sit back and watch what happens. —Doug McGuff, MD

Technically, the better McDonald’s does, the better Virgin Active’s chances of acquiring a new client.

Exercise daily to keep an active life.

Students would be assessed on effort rather than skill. You didn't have to be a natural athlete to do well in gym.

Gym is a sacred place which makes your life feel worth existing by putting effort of care into the home of your soul called body!

Or give your child a piggyback during leg exercises, or even your girlfriend or your wife (though not both at the same time—that could be trouble).

Stay healthy so that you can use your wealth to buy pleasures and not painkillers.

Fitness should be the passion, fitness should be the fashion.

A healthy body owns a healthy mind.

Some people would fall in or out of love with you if you lose or gain a few kilos.

The only bad exercise is the one you skipped.

Being a healthy broke person was better than being an unhealthy broke person. Besides, he needed to think. And to be honest, most of what he did at the gym was more like thinking than exercising.

~In motivating people, YOU've got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example - and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved~

If only the physical aspects of hatha yoga are used, it is called ghatastha yoga (ghata means “physical effort”). Modern expressions like “fitness yoga” and “power yoga” that flourish within gym classes are within the same category, even if they do not derive from the original exercises’ rhythm and succession. In many instances “power yoga” has a positive effect on physical health; but if there is no aim to ease the mind, to gain self-insight and control of your thoughts, and to experience the divine within you and within the universe, the deeper meaning of yoga and - possibly life - is lost.

Strenuous exercise can retrain your body’s reaction to stressors. Exposing yourself to predictable, incremental physical stressors in the gym or the playing field increases your capacity to be calm and clear-headed in stressful real-world situations.

I no longer believe that character formation is mostly an individual task, or is achieved on a person-by-person basis. I no longer believe that character building is like going to the gym: You do your exercises and you build up your honesty, courage, integrity, and grit. I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you. Character is a good thing to have, and there’s a lot to be learned on the road to character. But there’s a better thing to have—moral joy. And that serenity arrives as you come closer to embodying perfect love. Furthermore, I no longer believe that the cultural and moral structures of our society are fine, and all we have to do is fix ourselves individually. Over the past few years, as a result of personal, national, and global events, I have become radicalized. I now think the rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self—individual success, self-fulfillment, individual freedom, self-actualization—is a catastrophe. I now think that living a good life requires a much vaster transformation. It’s not enough to work on your own weaknesses. The whole cultural paradigm has to shift from the mindset of hyper-individualism to the relational mindset of the second mountain.

Anyone who’s ever gone to the gym knows that the results aren’t immediate. You don’t spend thirty minutes on the treadmill and look like a new person. But that doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t working. You’re making progress. With each exercise, each step, each movement, each action, you get a little better, a little closer. Until one day you look in the mirror and think, “Wow!” It’s the same thing with your business or your health, or your career or your relationships. Even when you don’t see anything happening, it is. Even when you’re not quite hitting the mark, you’re making progress. Until one day you look at your bank balance or your new job or your children or your new house and think, “Wow!” That’s why you have to keep going. Relentlessly.

Government didn’t say you must stop worshiping God. You must stop praying or preaching the word of God. You must stop believing in God or exercising your faith. You must stop your religion, but what is asking for is everyone should stop human contact. and should social distance themselves, because the virus spread easily in a group of people. By limiting contact, it means not going to church, Easter, clubs, Tavern, events, malls, gym ,school, work. I need you to do your part in order for me to survive.

Make exercising fun. The same old routine at the gym can be a drag. It’s good to mix it up. In addition to dancing I also enjoy hiking and swimming. And when you work out, do it someplace you find inspiring: a hike that brings you to a gorgeous view or a workout in the sand with the surf in your sight, even a small grassy spot in your backyard or a serene, uncluttered corner of your apartment. Recreational team sports also add variety to the mix: they put the focus on the fun of the game rather than the pain of the effort.

The rain is letting up, Mr. B. What do you want to do?' 'Oh, I’m gonna go fix the Weed Eater, and then, I’m gonna do dog patrol. At 97, I gotta find ways to keep moving!' He pushes himself up from the table. 'See ya later, kiddo.' Joe has decided to get fit. Every day he hops onto our stationary bike that we left sitting on the back porch. He says it helps his balance. He times himself to ensure he rides it ten minutes a day. I bring him a glass of cool water to keep him hydrated. He refuses the water. 'I’m not used to drinking water, Miss.' His exercise routine would never be approved by a local gym.

Victoria was always nagging him to eat better, drink less, and go to the gym, but then again, Pablo has long felt that she (barely) sublimates her innate fascism with exercise and diet regimens and has recently taken to attending weekly “boot camp” sessions where she probably achieves orgasms as some steroid-enraged instructor screams at her. Ana

Zero Hour grew out of Naperville District 203’s unique approach to physical education, which has gained national attention and become the model for a type of gym class that I suspect would be unrecognizable to any adult reading this. No getting nailed in dodgeball, no flunking for not showering, no living in fear of being the last kid picked. The essence of physical education in Naperville 203 is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if physical education class can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life. And probably a longer and happier life at that. What’s being taught, really, is a lifestyle.

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain - John J. Ratey, MD, with Eric Hagerman Exercise Every Day: 32 Tactics for Building the Exercise Habit (Even if you hate working out) - S.J. Scott No Gym Needed - Quick & Simple Workouts for Gals on the Go: Get a Toned Body in 30 Minutes or Less - Lise Cartwright Weight Loss Motivation Hacks: 7 Psychological Tricks That Keep You Motivated to Lose Weight - Derek Doepker Books

Exercising an unfit muscle causes soreness, which is followed by improved muscle function and increased resistance of that muscle to become sore. In that sense, soreness after exercise is good (as long as it lasts less than a week and doesn’t come back). Sore joints, on the other hand, are collateral damage (see above). Most people think that if they do an intense workout (say 90 minutes of circuit training in a gym) that they should lose weight. And indeed, if you weigh before and right after such a workout, the scale goes down because of sweating and water weight loss. However, if it makes you sore for the next few days don’t be surprised to see the scale go up. That’s because muscle soreness indicates that your muscles are temporarily inflamed, and inflammation causes fluid retention and swelling in that muscle. Once again, don’t let the scale make you crazy. Once the soreness is gone, the swelling is gone, and the scale comes back down where it’s supposed to be.

Trump was actively involved in the pageants. After Miss Universe Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan, gained considerable weight in 1996, Trump publicly excoriated her. He staged a photo op to show Machado exercising at a Manhattan gym. In front of about eighty reporters and photographers, Trump said, “When you win a beauty pageant, people don’t think you’re going to go from 118 to 160 in less than a year, and you really have an obligation to stay in a perfect physical state.” Machado called the photo op an ambush designed to humiliate her. “He had his triumphant entry,” she recalled, “and I got to feel like a hamster on a wheel for an hour. I was his first Miss Universe when he just bought the company. Unfortunately, this also meant that I experienced, firsthand, his rage and racism and all the misogyny a person can demonstrate.” Trump wrote years later that he did what he did to protect her from being fired: “God, what problems I had with this woman. First, she wins. Second, she gains fifty pounds. Third, I urge the committee not to fire her.” Trump

Exercise” includes a combination of purposeful aerobic cardio work (e.g., swimming, cycling, jogging, group exercise classes), strength training (e.g., free weights, resistance bands, gym machines, mat Pilates, lunges, squats), and routines that promote flexibility and balance (e.g., stretching, yoga). It also includes leading a physically active life throughout the day (e.g., taking the stairs instead of the elevator; avoiding prolonged sitting; going for walks during breaks; engaging in hobbies such as dancing, hiking, and gardening).

Regardless of a patient's true motives to get out of bed, I always applaud on the inside. That's what physical therapy is all about. To get them out of bed. To coax them down to the rehab gym. To do their strengthening exercises. To buy into the program. All in order to prepare them for the day they will eventually walk again. But I downplay my enthusiasm at a soldier's pain-tinged request for fear he'll figure out that's what I've been trying to get him to do and rebel. It's always better to make it seem like it is their idea all along.

Let us add also that the urban pub has been fiercely undermined by the gym. Instead of heading straight to the pub after work, an increasing number of pleasure-hating lunatics appear to enjoy going to the gym, where instead of quaffing foaming pints of nut-brown ale in convivial company they run alone on treadmills while watching MTV on giant screens to distract them from their agony. If you really want to exercise, then why not find a pub that is a one-mile walk from the office or home? That way, you ' ll walk two miles every day and have a good time.

I is wanting the whole school to give three cheers for Sophie because she is so brave and is saving the life of our fine arithmatic teacher, Mr Figgins, who was unfortunately pushed off the bridge into the river by our gym-teacher, Miss Amelia Upscotch. So three cheers for Sophie!” And the whole school is then cheering like mad and shouting bravo well done, and, for ever after that, even when you is getting your sums all gungswizzled and muggled up, Mr Figgins is always giving you ten out of ten and writing Good Work Sophie in your exercise book. Then you is waking up.’ ‘I like that dream,’ Sophie said.

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.

On 13th December 1988 Brynmor John MP died from ME/CFS. His experience of the illness was all too familiar: ‘Though there is only a slight gradient from our house to the main road, it could have been the North face of the Eiger. I just could not get up it’. He found himself unable to dress; the slightest exertion exhausted him and it took days to regain his strength. He was irritated by the profusion of psychiatric comment and was trying to ensure better understanding of ME/CFS (Perspectives, Summer 1991:28‐30). Brynmor John suddenly collapsed and died as he was leaving the House of Commons gym after having been advised to exercise back to fitness.

Recovery" is everything you do outside the gym to take care of yourself: eating, sleeping, stretching, managing stress. Another oversight of the "workout"-based type of exercise is that it does not teach us to care at all about this stuff. If you're like me, you might have even been conditioned to believe, for instance, that eating a nice big meal after a workout would be "wasting the workout." In reality, the *opposite* is true: if you don't eat enough, you are only setting yourself up for an unfair and unnecessary amount of soreness. And this is true of all recovery dimensions: if you don't sleep, or if you don't manage your stress, you will be miserable trying to build muscle.

Those are the reflections you should recur to morning and night. Start with things that are least valuable and most liable to be lost – things such as a jug or a glass – and proceed to apply the same ideas to clothes, pets, livestock, property; then to yourself, your body, the body’s parts, your children, your siblings and your wife. [112] Look on every side and mentally discard them. Purify your thoughts, in case of an attachment or devotion to something that doesn’t belong to you and will hurt to have wrenched away. [113] And as you exercise daily, as you do at the gym, do not say that you are philosophizing (admittedly a pretentious claim), but that you are a slave presenting your emancipator;14 because this is genuine freedom that you cultivate.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

KNEE SURGERY I’D FIRST HURT MY KNEES IN FALLUJAH WHEN THE WALL FELL on me. Cortisone shots helped for a while, but the pain kept coming back and getting worse. The docs told me I needed to have my legs operated on, but doing that would have meant I would have to take time off and miss the war. So I kept putting it off. I settled into a routine where I’d go to the doc, get a shot, go back to work. The time between shots became shorter and shorter. It got down to every two months, then every month. I made it through Ramadi, but just barely. My knees started locking and it was difficult to get down the stairs. I no longer had a choice, so, soon after I got home in 2007, I went under the knife. The surgeons cut my tendons to relieve pressure so my kneecaps would slide back over. They had to shave down my kneecaps because I had worn grooves in them. They injected synthetic cartilage material and shaved the meniscus. Somewhere along the way they also repaired an ACL. I was like a racing car, being repaired from the ground up. When they were done, they sent me to see Jason, a physical therapist who specializes in working with SEALs. He’d been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 9/11, he decided to devote himself to helping the country. He chose to do that by working with the military. He took a massive pay cut to help put us back together. I DIDN’T KNOW ALL THAT THE FIRST DAY WE MET. ALL I WANTED to hear was how long it was going to take to rehab. He gave me a pensive look. “This surgery—civilians need a year to get back,” he said finally. “Football players, they’re out eight months. SEALs—it’s hard to say. You hate being out of action and will punish yourselves to get back.” He finally predicted six months. I think we did it in five. But I thought I would surely die along the way. JASON PUT ME INTO A MACHINE THAT WOULD STRETCH MY knee. Every day I had to see how much further I could adjust it. I would sweat up a storm as it bent my knee. I finally got it to ninety degrees. “That’s outstanding,” he told me. “Now get more.” “More?” “More!” He also had a machine that sent a shock to my muscle through electrodes. Depending on the muscle, I would have to stretch and point my toes up and down. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is clearly a form of torture that should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, even for use on SEALs. Naturally, Jason kept upping the voltage. But the worst of all was the simplest: the exercise. I had to do more, more, more. I remember calling Taya many times and telling her I was sure I was going to puke if not die before the day was out. She seemed sympathetic but, come to think of it in retrospect, she and Jason may have been in on it together. There was a stretch where Jason had me doing crazy amounts of ab exercises and other things to my core muscles. “Do you understand it’s my knees that were operated on?” I asked him one day when I thought I’d reached my limit. He just laughed. He had a scientific explanation about how everything in the body depends on strong core muscles, but I think he just liked kicking my ass around the gym. I swear I heard a bullwhip crack over my head any time I started to slack. I always thought the best shape I was ever in was straight out of BUD/S. But I was in far better shape after spending five months with him. Not only were my knees okay, the rest of me was in top condition. When I came back to my platoon, they all asked if I had been taking steroids.

an individual task, or is achieved on a person-by-person basis. I no longer believe that character building is like going to the gym: You do your exercises and you build up your honesty, courage, integrity, and grit. I now think good character is a by-product of giving yourself away. You love things that are worthy of love. You surrender to a community or cause, make promises to other people, build a thick jungle of loving attachments, lose yourself in the daily act of serving others as they lose themselves in the daily acts of serving you. Character is a good thing to have, and there’s a lot to be learned on the road to character. But there’s a better thing to have—moral joy. And that serenity arrives as you come closer to embodying perfect love. Furthermore, I no longer believe that the cultural and moral structures of our society are fine, and all we have to do is fix ourselves individually. Over the past few years, as a result of personal, national, and global events, I have become radicalized. I now think the rampant individualism of our current culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self—individual success, self-fulfillment, individual freedom, self-actualization—is a catastrophe. I now think that living a good life requires a much vaster transformation. It’s not enough to work on your own weaknesses. The whole cultural paradigm has to shift from the mindset of hyper-individualism to the relational mindset of the second mountain.

5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

In 2000, for instance, two statisticians were hired by the YMCA—one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations—to use the powers of data-driven fortune-telling to make the world a healthier place. The YMCA has more than 2,600 branches in the United States, most of them gyms and community centers. About a decade ago, the organization’s leaders began worrying about how to stay competitive. They asked a social scientist and a mathematician—Bill Lazarus and Dean Abbott—for help. The two men gathered data from more than 150,000 YMCA member satisfaction surveys that had been collected over the years and started looking for patterns. At that point, the accepted wisdom among YMCA executives was that people wanted fancy exercise equipment and sparkling, modern facilities. The YMCA had spent millions of dollars building weight rooms and yoga studios. When the surveys were analyzed, however, it turned out that while a facility’s attractiveness and the availability of workout machines might have caused people to join in the first place, what got them to stay was something else. Retention, the data said, was driven by emotional factors, such as whether employees knew members’ names or said hello when they walked in. People, it turns out, often go to the gym looking for a human connection, not a treadmill. If a member made a friend at the YMCA, they were much more likely to show up for workout sessions. In other words, people who join the YMCA have certain social habits. If the YMCA satisfied them, members were happy. So if the YMCA wanted to encourage people to exercise, it needed to take advantage of patterns that already existed, and teach employees to remember visitors’ names.

GET MOVING People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit. People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it. But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.

With the mistaken premise that my stay-at-home work and his accomplished career required equal emotional energy, I couldn’t understand where he got the vigor to worry about his ego being rejected or his sex drive being ignored. For me, it was all hands on deck, between our kids and our house and our work. Sex, passion, romance, I thought, could certainly wait. And maybe some part of me reasoned that when I had suffered a loss, he had been too busy to support me. So what could he possibly ask of me now? But now, in the fresh mental air of my momspringa, I start to understand the kind of neglect John must have felt when I fell asleep in one of the kids’ beds every night or stopped kissing him hello and instead threw a preschooler into his arms the minute he walked in the door. At the moment I’m walking in his shoes: my children are cared for by someone else, my days are spent in rich mental exercise, I get plenty of sleep, and I go to the gym every day. In other words, I have the emotional energy to think about desire and how good it feels to be wanted. Yes, John had clean pressed shirts without having to ask, and yes, we had family dinners together that looked perfect and tasted as good, and yes, he never had to be on call when Joe started getting bullied for the first time or when Cori’s tampon leaked at a diving tournament. Yet while I was bending over backward to meet his children’s every need, his own were going ignored. And was it the chicken or the egg that started that ball rolling? If he had, only once, driven the carpool in my place, would I have suddenly wanted to greet him at the door in Saran Wrap? Or was I so incredibly consumed with the worry-work of motherhood that no contribution from him would have made me look up from my kids? I don’t know. I only know that in this month, when I have gotten time with friends, time for myself, positive attention from men, and yep, a couple of nice new bras, parts of me that were asleep for far too long are starting to wake up. I am seeing my children with a new, longer lens and seeing how grown up they are, how capable. I am seeing John as the lonely, troubled man he was when he walked out on us and understanding, for the first time, what part I played in that. I am seeing Talia’s lifestyle choices—singlehood, careerism, passionate pursuits—as less outrageous and more reasonable than ever before. And most startling of all, I am seeing myself looking down the barrel of another six years of single parenting, martyrdom, and self-neglect and feeling very, very conflicted.

Regardless of how busy you are, it’s important to set aside a few hours for exercise. If you don’t give yourself that luxury, you will fall into the trap of being too tired to work out. This lack of energy is actually caused by lack of exercise. It’s a perpetual cycle that many people fall into, but the only way to get out of it is to start moving. You may feel that adding a few workouts to your schedule is selfish because you’re leaving your kids at home or in the gym childcare center. Your laundry might go unfolded, or your dishes may stay dirty for an extra hour that evening. Maybe on workout nights, you serve leftovers rather than a meal from scratch. I promise this is not a big deal to anyone but you. Going to the gym is not selfish. Taking that extra time during your week to nurture your body improves your quality of life. There is a huge difference between exercise obsession and healthy exercise. Three hours per week is a far cry from obsession. To be healthy, you should exercise at least three hours per week.

If talking about the bureaucracy takes the place of talking about sports, getting involved with the bureaucracy takes the place of exercise. Every French man and woman is engaged in a constant entanglement with one ministry of another, and I have come to realize that these entanglements are what take the place of going to a gym where people actually work out. Three or four days a week you're given something to do that is time-consuming, takes you out of yourself, is mildly painful, forces you into close proximity with strangers, and ends, usually, with a surprising rush of exhilaration: 'Hey, I did it.' Every French ministry is, like a Nautilus machine, thoughtfully designed to provide maximum possible resistance to your efforts, only to give way just at the moment of total mental failure. Parisians emerge from the government buildings on the île de la Cité feeling just the way New Yorkers do after a good workout: aching and exhausted and on top of the world.

Important Personal Development Tips For Everyone Many people may appear to have it all together, but the exterior only shows just what is visible. Inside may still need development. If you are lacking confidence, self-assurance, self-discipline, willpower, and/or happiness, keep reading. This article focuses on tips to heighten your personal development and help you achieve a greater self-worth. You are about to be well on our way to a greater, more satisfied self. Learning a new skill is a great way to stretch yourself and improve the quality of your character. What's more, perfecting a hobby, technical skill or artistic form may be challenging at first, but if you master it, you will gain a sense of accomplishment, purpose and enjoyment. What's more, you add to your pool of leisure activities and make yourself a more rounded human being. A great self help tip is to try stopping yourself whenever you're thinking negative thoughts. We all have the ability to rewire our thinking patterns. By stopping yourself when you think a negative thought, you'll be more aware of your thoughts and you'll find yourself feeling much better. Personal development is hard work, so remember to recharge your personal battery. Take time to be with yourself. Exercising is an excellent way to clear your mind of the stress of day to day life, and allows you to practice self-discipline. You'll feel better about yourself and build greater endurance to get through your day! Exercising regularly is important. Regular exercise not only gets your body healthy and strong but it can also boost your self confidence. People who work out feel a sense of accomplishment afterward and thus tend to be happier afterward. Working out does not mean that you have to work out for hours in the gym. It is as easy as taking a walk. Treatment Prepare yourself for the inevitable day when someone chooses to bully you or try to put you down. There is a good chance that you certainly do not deserve this kind of treatment, but it happens to everyone. Think about how you could respond to their jabs in a rational, polite, and reasonable way that will avoid conflict but will let that person know that he or she is out of line. This will help you to rise above the hurt that always accompanies this type of negative interaction. Feeling better already? Great! Remember, even though you may appear to have it all together does not mean that you truly do. The tips previously mentioned in this article focus on helping you personally develop your inner self. Once you reach that high level of personal development, you will feel like a new person! For more detail visit opustreatment.com

Working out with a bad partner sucks. It drains your energy and motivation and can even cause you to lose enthusiasm for working out altogether. On the other hand, working out with a good partner can go far in keeping you on track and making progress. He helps keep you accountable and wanting to show up every day, and having a spot on certain exercises helps push you for another rep and encourages you to move up in weight as you should. These things can make a big difference as time goes on. Those workouts, additional reps, and progressions in weight that wouldn’t have happened if you were solo add up to real gains. So, I recommend that you find someone to work out with before you start, and the two of you should agree to the following code. 1. I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can’t avoid missing one, I’ll let my partner know as soon as I know. 2. I won’t let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can’t be rescheduled, and I will insist that he comes and trains. In the case where there’s a valid excuse, if at all possible, I’ll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in. 3. I will come to the gym to train—not to chat. When we’re in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we’re always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently. 4. I will train hard to set a good example for my partner. 5. I will push my partner to do more than he thinks he can. It’s my job to motivate him to do more weight and more reps than he believes possible. 6. I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment him on his gains.

There is a taboo in the psychology world, to ask a therapist what their cure rate is. Though the therapist knows what the person means in asking, and could give an answer, they typically dislike the question, because it is a way of measuring the psychologist on something that depends ultimately on their patients. To add to that the therapist doesn’t typically see a struggle in their patient’s life not being a struggle, but that a person gets better at not letting it get to them. I would say that our experience in life will always be in reference to our weaknesses, but that isn’t a bad thing. Our weaknesses plague us until we decide to really face them, and then they become strengths as we change them. I think it is a matter of maturing, and not curing in psychopathology, we’re naïve not broken. Alcoholism for instance, once it is overcome, the person doesn’t forget all the intricacies of the cost-benefit of alcohol once they become sober. They still know exactly what problems alcohol seemed to solve, and when faced with those problems, they cannot completely exclude it as a possible remedy. Why? For example, I personally don’t drink alcohol, but I know many people who see it as a normal part of their life, and have set what they feel are appropriate bounds for its use. It is a lot easier for me, who has not experienced any benefits, but knows several disadvantages, to not see alcohol as worth it. However, similarly in my life, fully knowing both the advantages of things like soda, fast food, sleeping in, not exercising and whatever else, in the cost benefit analysis, they sometimes still win. Every asset has associated risks, and when making a decision, while trying to optimize value, we are not picking between correct or incorrect, or right or wrong, but cost vs benefit in safe bet vs the risky bet. Whether I can study or write better while drinking a caffeinated soda has yielded inconsistent results, but sometimes the gamble seems worth it, however drinking a soda before going to the gym has yielded consistently negative results. This is the process of maturity, and the only way to help someone mature faster, is to help them remember and process the data they have already gathered or are currently gathering. One thing that slows down this process is false information. Many cases of grave disability due to psychopathology are caused because of the burden of an overwhelming amount of counterproductive information, and limited resources of productive information.

And a good morning to you, Richard,” the Middle Easterner replied, in slightly accented English. “Are you finished with your exercise already?” The man nodded. “Yeah, just a quick run today. Probably head to the gym after work. Mind if I stretch while we chat?

In retrospect, all of Blake’s arguments seem no more useful or important than watching an athlete exercise in a gym, but at the time they can be fascinating.

Vegetables. Fruits. Nuts. Seeds. Meats. Eggs. Fish. That

Eat less and eat healthy so that you can eat forever.

10 Best Weight Loss Exercises The best exercises to lose weight in the gym are aerobics, for example: 1. Hiit Training The hit workout burns about 400 calories per hour and consists of a set of high intensity workouts that eliminate localized fat in just 30 minutes per day in a faster and fun way. The exercises are performed intensively to raise your heart rate a lot and so it is more suitable for those who already practice some kind of physical activity, although there are beginner hit exercises, but they consist of a series of exercises 'easier'. 2. Cross fit Training Cross fit training is also quite intense and burns about 700 calories per hour, however, this type of workout is quite different from the bodybuilding workout that people are more accustomed to seeing in gyms. Different weights are used, ropes, tires and often the exercises are performed, outside the gym, outdoors. 3. Dance Classes Dancing is a great way to strengthen muscles and burn some calories, 1 hour of ballroom dancing burns approximately 300 calories, and the person still increases flexibility and has fun, having a greater contact with other students. In this type of activity besides cardio respiratory benefits, and to lose weight, it is still possible to promote socialization. The university is a very lively type of dance, where you can burn about 400 calories per hour, in a fun way. In the buzz you can burn up to 800 kcal per hour. 5. Muay Thai Muay Thai is a type of intense martial art, where you can burn about 700 calories per hour. The workouts are very intense and also strengthen the muscles, as well as help increase self-esteem and self-defense. 6. Spinning The spinning classes are done in different intensities, but always on top of a bicycle, in a classroom with at least 5 bikes. The classes are very intense and promote the burning of about 600 calories per hour, and still strengthens the legs very much, being great to burn the fat of the legs and strengthen the thighs. 7. Swimming A swimming lesson can burn up to 400 calories per hour as long as the student does not slow down and keeps moving. Although the strokes are not too strong to reach the other side of the pool faster, it takes a constant effort, with few stops. When the goal is to lose weight, one should not only reach the other side of the pool, it is necessary to maintain a constant and strong rhythm, that is, one can cross the swimming pool crawl and turn back, for example, as a form of 'rest' . 8. Hydrogeology Water aerobics is also great for slimming, but to burn about 500 calories per hour you should always keep moving, enough to keep your breath away. As the water relaxes the tendency is to slow down, but if you want to lose weight, the ideal is to be in a group with this same purpose, because doing exercises at a pace for the elderly to stay healthy may not be enough to burn fat. 9. Race The workouts are excellent to burn fat, being possible to burn about 600 to 700 calories per hour, provided that a good pace is respected, without pauses, and with an effort able to leave the person breathless, unable to talk during the race . You can start at a slower pace, on the treadmill or outdoors, but each week you must increase the intensity to achieve better goals. Here's how to start running to lose weight. 10. Body pump Body pump classes are a great way to burn fat because it burns about 500 calories per hour. This is a class made with weights and step, which strengthens the muscles, working the main muscle groups. These are some examples of exercises that help you to lose weight fast, but that should be performed under professional guidance, to be performed correctly and to avoid injuries to muscles and joints.

As a legal professional, Ashley Butts maintains a strong attention to detail. Her keen eye and ability to highlight important information have proved useful when reviewing legal drafts and documents, writing memos and preparing for summations and hearings. In addition to exercising her mind, Ashley Butts likes to stay physically fit through regular exercise. This includes going on runs, playing softball and visiting the gym. When she's not working on her personal health, you can find Ashley Butts relaxing.

We sometimes have to exercise to want to exercise.

For example, our knives deliver the performance of those fancy knives at a fraction of the cost—and we’ll deliver them right to your door! Pro tip: this is also a perfect place to insert the belief statement you created in the previous section (e.g., “At the Cerebral Knife Company, we believe that every home cook deserves affordable, professional-grade knives”). Here’s another example of an infomercial narrative for a piece of home exercise equipment: Hey, do you want to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life? Well, the best way to do that is to go to the gym five times a week and work out for two hours each time. But gym memberships are expensive—and who has that kind of time? What you need is our awesome, cost-effective home exercise machine. Or how about an infomercial narrative for some kind of fruit and vegetable juicer: Eating too many processed foods is destroying your health. The solution is to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and juices. The problem is that typical juicers are too large, time-consuming to use, expensive, hard to clean, and kill too many of your food’s helpful nutrients. Our awesome, compact, easy-to-clean, and affordable juice machine is what you need! From a classical sales perspective, this messaging and pitch formula is so effective because at each stage your audience is taking small, incremental steps toward your solution. These steps are rooted in both universal truths and emotion. While the approach starts with tension to garner the buyer’s interest, the story unfolds naturally with no big leaps of faith required.

It is not much different from a person who goes to the gym to exercise on a regular basis versus someone who sits on the couch watching television. Proper physical exercise increases your chances for health, and proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth.

Libraries and bookshops are gyms for mental exercises.

WEEK 1: MONDAY: 3 X 20 seconds of each exercise: - Squats - Plank - Jumping Jacks * Rest 10 seconds between exercises and 30 seconds between sets.

It’s a perspective on story that may also shed light on why you and I and everyone else spend a couple of hours each day concocting tales that we rarely remember and more rarely share. By day I mean night, and the tales are those we produce during REM sleep. Well over a century since Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, there is still no consensus on why we dream. I read Freud’s book for a junior-year high school class called Hygiene (yes, that’s really what it was called), a somewhat bizarre requirement taught by the school’s gym teachers and sports coaches that focused on first aid and common standards of cleanliness. Lacking material to fill an entire semester, the class was padded by mandatory student presentations on topics deemed loosely relevant. I chose sleep and dreams and probably took it all too seriously, reading Freud and spending after-school hours combing through research literature. The wow moment for me, and for the class too, was the work of Michel Jouvet, who in the late 1950s explored the dream world of cats.32 By impairing part of the cat brain (the locus coeruleus, if you like that sort of thing), Jouvet removed a neural block that ordinarily prevents dream thoughts from stimulating bodily action, resulting in sleeping cats who crouched and arched and hissed and pawed, presumably reacting to imaginary predators and prey. If you didn’t know the animals were asleep, you might think they were practicing a feline kata. More recently, studies on rats using more refined neurological probes have shown that their brain patterns when dreaming so closely match those recorded when awake and learning a new maze that researchers can track the progress of the dreaming rat mind as it retraces its earlier steps.33 When cats and rats dream it surely seems they’re rehearsing behaviors relevant to survival. Our common ancestor with cats and rodents lived some seventy or eighty million years ago, so extrapolating a speculative conclusion across species separated by tens of thousands of millennia comes with ample warning labels. But one can imagine that our language-infused minds may produce dreams for a similar purpose: to provide cognitive and emotional workouts that enhance knowledge and exercise intuition—nocturnal sessions on the flight simulator of story. Perhaps that is why in a typical life span we each spend a solid seven years with eyes closed, body mostly paralyzed, consuming our self-authored tales.34 Intrinsically, though, storytelling is not a solitary medium. Storytelling is our most powerful means for inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential to our survival and our dominance. This offers a related design rationale for coding story into the human behavioral repertoire—for identifying, that is, the adaptive utility of our storytelling instinct.

Imagine you’re invited to a celebratory dinner. The chef’s talent is legendary, and the invitation says that this particular dinner is going to be a feast of monumental proportions. Bring your appetite, you’re told—come hungry. How would you do it? You might try to eat less over the course of the day—maybe even skip lunch, or breakfast and lunch. You might go to the gym for a particularly vigorous workout, or go for a longer run or swim than usual, to work up an appetite. You might even decide to walk to the dinner, rather than drive, for the same reason. Now let’s think about this for a moment. The instructions that we’re constantly being given to lose weight—eat less (decrease the calories we take in) and exercise more (increase the calories we expend)—are the very same things we’ll do if our purpose is to make ourselves hungry, to build up an appetite, to eat more.

You know those elliptical machines in hotel gyms that tell you you’ve burned about five thousand calories after ten minutes of sweatless exercise?

Whether we take the stairs, jog, or go to the gym, we need to override ancient, powerful instincts to avoid unnecessary physical activity, and it should hardly be surprising that most of us—hunter-gatherers included—naturally avoid exercise.