There are so many diets to choose from, exercises to try, and different people saying conflicting things about what is best.
For years, I have experimented with different diets and exercises to try to find the best one. And the truth is, there isn’t one. Diet and exercise are highly personal. You can read more about this here.
But there is one strategy that is universal: Time-restricted eating.
As readers, we believed Robert M. Pirsig could see the Buddha in a well-maintained carburetor. We wanted to see it, too, and we wanted to work as he did.Photograph from Alamy
Every writer I know has memories they return to in their work over and over again. There is rarely much logic to the choices, nor do such memories tend to align with the sorts of significant events that traditionally make up the time line of one’s life.
My point of fixation, one that’s appeared a few times in my writing, occurred during a solo cross-country road trip I took at the age of nineteen. I was driving to Seattle, where I knew nobody, and was planning to stop for the night in Billings, Montana. It was already late, and I had been keeping myself awake with a non-stop chain of cigarettes and vending-machine coffee I’d dutifully bought at every rest stop along the way. I had a pile of books on tape on the passenger’s seat.
About an hour outside of Billings, I put in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which, coincidentally, starts out on a road trip to Montana. The first line—“I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning”—had a hypnotic effect on me. I blew through Billings that night, and for the next six hours I listened to Robert M. Pirsig’s barely fictional meditation on fatherhood, Chautauquas, Zen, tools, and the idea that quality—the main conceptual preoccupation of Pirsig’s life—lay in the repetition of right actions.
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…
Drink eight glasses of water a day. Coffee will make you dehydrated. Drinking extra water can help you lose weight.
You’ve probably heard these claims about water and hydration before. But are they true?
To set the record straight, Life Kit talks to Tamara Hew-Butler, associate professor of exercise and sports science at Wayne State University; Mindy Millard-Stafford, director of the Exercise Physiology Laboratory at Georgia Tech; and Yuki Oka, a professor of biology at Caltech who specializes in thirst.
They explain the science of hydration and bust 5 common myths about water.
The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is often credited with saying that “Paradise is a library.” He must not have meant a downtown public library, circa 8 p.m. Such places, like most communal spheres, can be a challenge to oversee.
Some people treat them like a sort of roomless hotel, sleeping in chairs and bathing in restrooms. I used to watch a man who looked like the famous woodcut of Blackbeard the Pirate ride the escalator of my three-story library up, down, up, down. For hours. Carrying a duffel bag. He never bothered anyone, so our security officers left him alone. (Can’t say the same for the lady of the evening who was meeting clients in the stairwell.)
Then there are the questions from believers in Qanon. Election deniers. Sovereign citizens. The woman who ranted about the “news” that the World Health Organization was going to “force a vote to allow them to take over the U.S. and force a lockdown like China.” (If WHO had that kind of power, why bother with a vote?)
The man who asked me how he and a few of his buddies could get into the governor’s office to “remove him” over pandemic closures. (Would that all insurrectionists did such thorough research!) Declinism is the feeling that everything is getting harder, scarier, and weirder, and a lot of people seem to have it.
Work in a library, I want to tell them, and you’ll learn what weird is.
It’s already a well-known fact that green tea is one potent drink. Sipping some green tea can help to soothe inflammation, calm joint pain, and offer up a wealth of free radical fighting antioxidants. But research into just how many health benefits green tea offers continues – and now, experts suggest that it may be a nutritional tool you can turn to for head-to-toe wellness.
Get a mug of green tea ready; here’s the latest on how this drink may be able to improve your heart health, your gut health, and other key aspects of well-being.
Green tea’s anti-inflammatory properties are far-reaching when it comes to overall health and wellness
In 2019, researchers at The Ohio State University found that there may be a potential benefit to green tea that goes well beyond inflammation. In their work, they uncovered a potential association between lower obesity and fewer health risks in mice, and they also saw improved gut health.
In 2014, two psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, launched an online course with a lofty goal: teaching students how to be happy, through both science and practice, in just eight weeks.
No big deal, right?
The amazing thing: It seemed to work. Thousands of students took the Science of Happiness course (which is still free to audit on edX, a provider of open online courses) and learned about the science of connection, compassion, gratitude and mindfulness. Perhaps more importantly, they also completed a series of simple activities that research suggests increase happiness.
Those who fully participated saw their positive feelings increase each week. They reported feeling less sadness, stress, loneliness, anger and fear, while at the same time experiencing more amusement, enthusiasm and affection, as well as a greater sense of community. During the course, students’ happiness and life satisfaction increased by about 5%. And that boost remained even four months after the course ended (though it’s difficult to fully untangle that result; it could’ve been from doing the activities, the students’ new understanding of the psychology of happiness, or something totally different).
