We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
If you do, you are statistically almost certain to fail in an exercise program. If serious about it, you will begin today. Of course, January is when gyms make all their money and when they are busiest. By March, they have collected all those fees and are right back to their usual daily volume of people.
As they say, "Someday" is not one of the seven days of the week.
I want to say a few words about exercise goals because it only makes sense to define, or re-define, exercise goals. I don't mean specific goals, like being able to bench press 300 lbs, or to run 10 miles at a 7.5 mph pace. I mean general goals. Your goals will determine your program.
For examples:
- Specific goals, like the two I mentioned above, require very specific training approaches designed by experts.
- Weight loss: Forget exercise. Eat right and body fat will melt away. Some cardio might help prime the pump, but not necessary.
- Psychological goals. Any form of daily exertion (not walking) is excellent for mental attitude.
- Body-building. This requires a specific sort of program to look buff. Focus a lot on isolated muscles. It's not functional so much as an aesthetic. I think it's silly, but to each his or her own.
- Strength training. This entails 4 days/week of heavy weights, powerlifts, with some accessory weight exercises.
- General conditioning for out of shape people. This is the bread and butter of professional trainers, and in some ways the most rewarding for them because these people, if dedicated, can make the most dramatic progress because they have so far to go. I have seen schlubby people make remarkable changes in one or two years. Including grandmas.
- "Functional fitness". This is the goal for most people aged 30-80, and why Crossfit is so popular. This is about building or even just maintaining strength, agility, balance, power, appearance, endurance, speed, athleticism, etc. for a vigorous life. All that is a lot to ask for, which is why we feel it takes 6-7 hours/week. It won't make you a marathoner or an impressive lifter, but should make you ready for anything life offers - especially sports and recreation.
The Maggie's Fitness For Life (where is that TM thing?) is for Functional Fitness. We sometimes have good ideas for conditioning, but once basic conditioning is achieved (ie fat control, ability to participate in exercise classes, ability to jog a mile, basic hand weights and cables) is where our ideas come into play. Calisthenics, Heavy weights, HIIT and Endurance Cardio.
Whatever "anti-aging" is, it sounds good to me. So fit those things into your program. What we feel is important, at least to us, is "Fitness for Life" which means Strength, Endurance, and Athleticism. So, without neglecting your telomeres, it's good to get balanced fitness so as to be as fully in life as possible.
No exercise can extend your life to any important degree (for life extension, try not being heavy, and getting full medical check-ups every few years) but a balanced fitness program can keep you active as long as you do not do too much road running. That destroys joints and cripples many people.
“Extraordinary...This book is Zimmer at his best: obliterating misconceptions about science with gentle prose. He brings the reader on his journey of discovery as he visits laboratory after laboratory, peering at mutant mosquitoes and talking to scientists about traces of Neanderthal ancestry within his own genome. Any fan of his previous books or his journalism will appreciate this work. But so, too, will parents wishing to understand the magnitude of the legacy they’re bequeathing to their children, people who want to grasp their history through genetic ancestry testing and those seeking a fuller context for the discussions about race and genetics so prevalent today.”
I suspect this is correct, and has to do with the intensity of the demand on the heart. Many things are thrown into the "cardio" category which use the heart, of course, but make no constructive demands on it. Walking, hiking, speed walking, swimming, and jogging are like that.
HIIT exercises, on the other hand, do stress the heart because of the intensity of all kinds of sprints. 30-60 second maximum sprints of any form are good stressors. So is moving heavy weights. Heavy, not light weights. Sets of deadlifts reaching up to 70% of your max is a serious stressor on the heart. When you finish each set, you feel it in your heart. And you feel a bit dizzy from that stress.
What true cardiac training does is to stress the heart to the point that it is forced to build its muscle and to grow new arteries. Those new arteries can save your life when others get blocked up with gunk. If your breath can keep up with your exertion, it's not real cardiac training: it is endurance training.
What most people term "cardio" is endurance maintenance and endurance training. These are important in life, but have little or no heart consequences for the otherwise healthy.
Our Maggie'sFitness for Life program (heavy powerlifts, endurance cardio, HIIT cardio, calisthenics) incorporates all fitness aspects: Muscle and Bone strength, Endurance, True cardio, and Athleticism. We are convinced that's a balanced program for vigor for all ages.
Not only that, but we now know that dietary fat appears to have minimal to no correlation with cardiovascular disease in normal people. We do know that being even mildly overweight is a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease (along with breast cancer, arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc etc.).
Addendum: If you are working on body-building with heavy weights 4 days/wk (few if any of our readers are doing that), you need to eat a lot of everything you can get your hands on just to maintain your weight, and even more to build muscle mass.
The moving parts of our skeleton operate as levers, powered by skeletal muscles. Levers are nifty mechanisms which make force application more efficient. Using a crowbar is easier than grunting a boulder out of the dirt.
Any form of exercise can be made more interesting by thinking about the sort of lever action applied in single-joint exercises (like bicep curls or calf raises) or the multiple lever actions applied in complex, multi-joint movements like squats or running.
If you are fortunate enough to use the services of a professional trainer, that trainer will not be focusing on your muscles. He or she will focus on the mechanics of your movement(s) - proper lever use - to make your motion or activity as safe and effective as possible. That's why a trainer will make frequent corrections to your technique: Palms out (or in), wider stance (or narrower), head up (or down), chest up (or down) etc.
Even if you are not a fitness person, everybody knows that there is a right and wrong way to pick up something heavy, or to get out of a chair. It's all leverage.
I have only heard Scott Adams discuss "talent stacks" in reference to himself or to Donald Trump. (By the way, he is not a Trump supporter, just an admirer of his skills.)
Adams' point, if you have not heard him, is that there can only be one Tiger Woods who possesses a single world-beating talent, but you can move towards your hopes and dreams quite well if you have a good-sized talent stack of "pretty good" talents and abilities.
By "talents," he seems to mean mainly natural gifts like social skills and social instincts, IQ, appearance, curiosity, comfort with novelty and adventure, adaptability, interpersonal style, sense of humor, athleticism and physical grace, observational skills, communicative skills, and so forth, as they are matched and combined with acquired skills.
We also noted that Adams does not discuss flaws. Sadly, we can be blessed with a decent talent stack but be cursed with a few unfortunate or even one fatal flaw which act as anchors on our lives. People have deficit stacks too, but they are not fun to talk about.
In the fitness post yesterday, we mentioned getting up from a chair. Indeed, for a variety of reasons (arthritis, poor posture, overweight, lack of strength or mobility) this can become difficult for some.
Another common, basic maneuver which can become difficult without fitness is getting up from the floor without assistance. If you need to sit on the floor to do a task, or to read a book to a grandkid, you do not want to get up like a cripple.
There is a thing called "complicated grief," but I feel all grief is complicated. I do not believe that grief ever heals.
I think griefs scab over, but it doesn't often take much to knock off the scab. A long-term incapacitating depression after a loss is another matter, but I do not even think that a lengthy mourning is pathological. There is a lot of pain in life. It's part of the deal.
That's the title of this post, but I do not mean to restrict this little discussion to the workplace. The issue is that, wherever men and women congregate regularly, "chemical" attractions occur commonly.
These of course range from very mild to intense. It is difficult for people to focus on what they intend to do when there is a powerful attraction to a nice person of the opposite sex who is in regular proximity and contact. I have had people say to me "Is there anything you can do to help me get rid of this crush on so and so? It's messing up my workout/job/tennis game, etc."
A colleague and I were talking about this recently, and he (jokingly) suggested that people in that situation should just jump into bed together and eliminate the romantic/sexual tension and eliminate the mystery. "Get it over with. It's just biology." And of course their are rules about these things in the workplace.
In my view, such things are not necessarily a sign that a person is in a lousy relationship. Could be, but humans are designed to experience these things.
If a close friend confesses to you that some guy or gal at work or somewhere else is driving them nuts with desire, what would you say to them? Would you say"Grow up!"?
In one way or another, most books are about human nature. This one is now a best-seller: 
A non-technical book about heredity.