The joke at our house (at least I think it’s funny) is that when the latest “O” arrives, I exclaim with mock surprise, “Oh, look! Oprah’s on the cover.”
This morning, the February 2010 issue showed up on the kitchen table. I was waiting for the coffee to finish, I didn’t feel like going out in the rain to fetch the Sunday paper, so I started thumbing through. Here’s what I learned:
Thursday looked like it was going to be yet another day that I would shortchange myself on working out. I’d been in the latter stages of a book deadline crisis for the past three weeks, my every moment occupied with writing or fretting over why I wasn’t writing. My ability to get out for a ride, to take a long run, to go for a night hike or to hit the climbing wall had suffered. Driving back from a meeting in Durham I felt the pull of the deadline yanking me away from yet another workout. I was cranky.
Another reason to exercise: It’s good for your brain. That’s hardly a revelation. Anyone who exercises knows, for instance, that even a short 30-minute workout can boost your mood for the rest of the day. But just how extensive the relationship is between exercise and your brain may come as a surprise. That relationship is the subject of “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman, $24.99, Little, Brown and Company. In addition to being a mood enhancer, the book explores how exercise can among other things, relieve stress, diffuse anxiety, help you focus, regulate hormones and grow brain cells. (The book isn’t new; it’s been out nearly two years. It’s just new to GGNC.) Haven’t gotten a copy yet; I will and will report periodically on what I learn. You can reviews in August 2008 issue of Psychiatric Services, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, and at Blogcrtics.org.
Yesterday, we chatted with dietician Kara Mitchell about the importance of knowing your Resting Metabolic Rate, the number of calories your body needs to carry on such basic functions as breathing, pumping blood, growing new cells. Go below that number and your body will think it’s in trouble, switch into survival mode and burn fewer calories to perform such tasks.
So it’s, what, day 13 of the New Year — And I haven’t lost a pound despite the fact I’ve been starving myself!!!
That, says Kara Mitchell, a dietician and director of the Fitness Program at the Duke Health and Fitness Center in Durham, may well be your problem. “The biggest mis-conception for weight loss is that the more you deprive yourself, the more weight you lose. But that does not help you lose body weight.”