Sex is good exercise. Not many people get enough activity of any kind during the day, and especially missing is strenuous exercise. Great sex, the kind that leaves you sweaty and exhausted, is the only natural (not contrived) human activity that works every muscle group in the body simultaneously. A single orgasm burns about 300 calories, and works your body’s core muscles. Everything leading up to it works arms, legs, abs, back, chest, plus muscles you didn’t know you had (ever been a while without great sex and been sore in places you weren’t familiar with?). Sex combines cardiovascular and strength training in a single session, and you don’t even realize how hard you’re working… let’s face it, your focus isn’t on the muscle strain.

Sex is good for the mind. Sexual exploration is about imagination, testing and trying new things, and being immersed in the now. Sex facilitates being connected with your senses of touch, smell, taste, sound, and sight without all the filters you normally put on them. If you want, sex can be a path to clear the mind or a doorway to generating new ideas and expanding your creative self.

Sex is good for the emotional heart. Emotional connection requires lowering your guard and being vulnerable. When you do that, you experience emotions that are normally locked up out of protection or defense. Sex naturally takes you there. It puts you in touch with your true self. The endorphin release that goes with sex, and especially with orgasm, turns off the little voice for a while and strengthens confidence and security. Exploring fantasies and trying new things is a pathway to enhanced awareness and connection with the primal experience. The work you put in before and after sex to communicate your wants, needs, desires, fantasies, concerns, and motivations with your partner strengthens your relationship. Sex reinforces trust and establishes bonds in ways that other activities or just plain willpower can’t.

Sex is good for spiritual growth. Sex is similar to meditation in that it gives a context to clear the mind of all the junk you’re carrying around. When you choose to let go of that junk a little, when you open up to your partner’s experience and let your partner in to yours, you feel a newfound connection and freedom that enlightens and enlivens your experience. Sharing such a primal human experience with another involved individual frees the mind to just be for a while. A growing connection with yourself and with your partner deepens your love for life in general.

Want the growth sex has to offer? Don’t just ‘have sex’… sex is not a spectator sport, it’s a contact sport, a participatory act. The healthiest, most beneficial results come from immersing yourself in the experience. For each component above that you include, you get that set of benefits. When you include all of them, the overall results are much greater than the sum of the parts.

Open your heart. Open your mind. Open your spirit. And have fun!

Bonus

On a related and entertaining note, here’s 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about orgasm:

In the news

• What is ’sex’, anyway? Americans aren’t explicit when defining sex
• Some ideas to get you started? Picturing sex: Kinsey explores what turns us on
• Really, I don’t bite: Vaginas with teeth — and other sexual myths

Quote for the week

Sex is the one thing you cannot really swindle; and it is the centre of the worst swindling of all, emotional swindling…. Sex lashes out against counterfeit emotion, and is ruthless, devastating against false love. – D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Sexy thoughts,
Jeff

Being active means doing anything that keeps the whole body in motion. You need to be active daily. Get outside and walk. Stand instead of sitting. Move your body.

• Activity increases your energy levels: Simply moving your body around increases bloodflow throughout the body, which increases oxygen flow to muscles and tissues everywhere. More oxygen means healthier muscles, organs, and nervous system. More oxygen means more energy through the day.
• Activity decreases stress: More oxygen means a healthier mind, and one great side-effect is thinking more clearly, which results in completing tasks more effectively. Less stress. Plus, many activities bring you to nature or increase social interaction: these are stress-relievers as well.
• Activity boosts the immune system: Movement of any kind helps pump the lymphatic nodes, which circulate white blood cells and other immune-system components to where they are needed. If you don’t move, the lymph system can’t function; it takes activity to make them work.
• Activity aids digestion: As long as you are up and around and moving, the digestive system is better able to do it’s job. When you sit or lie down, you get clogged and blocked: you have to work harder to digest a meal, and some parts of the system come to a complete halt.
• Activity helps you look younger: Better oxygen flow and toxin removal means healthier skin. Wrinkles go away. Saggy bits tone. You look healthier, happier, and sexier.

Exercise is more than just being active. To count as exercise you must get the heartrate up and work muscles beyond their normal levels. Exercise comes in many forms: going to the gym, performing manual labor, hiking, doing housework, or even having sex. You should be strenuously active about three or four times a week minimum: if you work up a sweat and maintain it for about 30 minutes, it counts.

Why exercise?

• Exercise multiplies the benefits of activity: Exercise gives you everything activity does, but in much larger amounts.
• Exercise builds muscle: Having the strength to complete tasks without discomfort is just, well, more fun.
• Exercise keeps you warmer: More muscles means more heat production, which means you don’t get cold under the covers. Fat can insulate, but without muscle producing heat, all the insulation in the world won’t help.
• Exercise makes you feel good: Exercise releases endorphins, which are the body’s natural drug You actually get high, in a totally natural way. You feel less pain and discomfort, and you get a happiness boost. And stress goes down as well.
• Exercise increases your metabolic rate: The more muscle you have, and the better shape those muscles are in, the more calories you burn even when you’re not active. This is the body’s natural mechanism to stay thin. This doesn’t mean you can eat as much of anything as you want, but it does mean that you can get away with extra helpings or treats and still keep a sexy figure.

Get active, and get exercising. Clear away your excuses and get going!

In the news

• This will make it harder to teach personal responsibility: 15 Percent of U.S. Teens Think They’ll Die Young
• Why are some so fascinated by the people who rise to the top? The Psychology of Celebrity Worship
• Just in case the pain alone isn’t enough to keep you from riding: Elite cyclists ‘risk infertility’

Quote for the week

Health is the vital principle of bliss, and exercise, of health. – James Thomson

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

Who is your biggest enemy? If you look at who is most likely to kill you, the answer is, well, you. Yep, we are our own worst enemies. Most people will die as a result of choices they themselves make. And I’m not talking about driving drunk or skydiving… I’m talking about the day-to-day choices they make in their behavioral and dietary habits.

This week, I’ll simply point you to a well written summary breaking down, statistically, what kills Americans. Enjoy!

Resources:

• The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

In the news

• Ohhh, where do I get some? ‘Good’ baby fat keeps adults slim
• How about the effects of self-imposed stress created by worrying about measuring every little thing? How Much Fish to Eat While Pregnant?
• Noooo, really?!? Kids Who Lack Self-Control May Be Prone to Weight Gain

Quote for the week

What does not kill me makes me stronger. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

I don’t wear a heartrate monitor, so how do I know what my pulse is? How do I find the right zone, accounting for age, for health, for conditioning?

Actually, it’s really easy. My body tells me: my breathing gives me everything I need to know. I’ll share my running process, but it’s the same for climbing steep hills, going up stairs, or walking fast around town. It’s the same for riding a bike or swimming or any other endurance activity.

Starting from rest, I just begin to walk at a comfortable pace. I walk about ten minutes both to warm up my body and to calibrate my own monitoring. The starting pace will be slow (for me) for a minute or so, stretching out my legs within a couple minutes to a moderate walk just to get the blood diverted to my legs. The pace is in the recovery zone… no sweating, easy to breathe. At this point I begin a five-count breathing pattern: inhalation takes two steps and exhalation takes three.

After a total of around seven to ten minutes, I’m ready to run. I’m about to transition between recovery mode and aerobic mode, and for the transition my only goal is to not enter the anaerobic zone. So my first 30 seconds or so is a slow jog.

The key is that I continue the breathing pattern I established. For a moderate or fast walk on level ground, it’s comfortable to breathe deeply at that pace. When I start to run, it’s a little uncomfortable after about half a minute and then becomes comfortable again. This tells me I haven’t gone too far.

So I can speed up. I run a little faster, lengthening my stride. With each step I continue the five-count. If breathing is still comfortable after another 30 seconds, I speed up more. Breathe. Speed up. Breathe.

Pretty soon I hit the pace where breathing on a five count is adequate but feels a little strained. I back off just a hair, and that’s my pace for the moment. After 30 seconds or so, I speed up a little bit again and see what happens. I back off when I need to, I speed up when I can. As long as I can still breathe on the five count, I am in my aerobic zone.

So what happens when I get to a hill? If I keep the same pace, I know I will go anaerobic, so I slow down preemptively. Once I’m running up the hill, I begin the same test-adjust strategy. If it becomes too hard to run up on the five count for a couple steps, it’s not a big deal, but if my breathing becomes labored while I’m heading up, I slow down. I may even drop out of the run and walk fast until it’s less steep. Remember, my goal is to stay aerobic. If I can walk and still be in my aerobic zone, great! Once the ground levels off, then I start running again.

Here’s the real beauty: it works as long as I’m continuing to exercise. Time doesn’t matter. Climate doesn’t matter. Whether I run for 15 minutes or two hours, the basic strategy of running as fast as I can while breathing on a five count keeps me in a sustainable zone. After an hour my pace may have slowed a bit, but I’m not exceeding my ability to keep going indefinitely. If it’s humid and my body can’t shed heat, the added labor to my breathing is an immediate indicator… I just slow a bit and keep monitoring. If I’m at high altitude, I still find the right pace very quickly to be able to run as long as I want. If I’m dehydrated or tired or sick… my breathing alone tells me what pace I can handle and get the workout I want.

In fact, I never even know what my heartrate is. The fact is, it doesn’t matter. People monitor their heartrate to target a zone… the heartrate is just the indicator. I have a different indicator, and it’s with me always, without any fancy gear.

You don’t need a heartrate monitor, you just need to pay attention to your breath. It tells you everything you need to know to pace yourself.

In the news

• So if I dream I’m naked at work…? Across All Cultures, Dreams Affect Behavior
• Um, hello! It’s called ’self-fulfilling prophecy’: Views on Old Age May Become Reality Later
• The statistic in the second paragraph surprises me: Nothing to spit at: Your saliva reveals a lot

Quote for the week

I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. – Buzz Aldrin

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

I have experienced and therefore believe that the body functions best with a light breakfast of a couple servings of fruit, followed a bit later by a medium-sized breakfast. For the rest of the day, meals should be small and consistent: a vegetable, a small sandwich, a small bowl of pasta, nuts, grains… grazing, as it were.

By eating this way, I have more energy. When I eat a few big meals, I get very tired, groggy, and unable to concentrate. When I eat several small snacks instead, I am more vibrant, energetic, and clear in my thinking.

By eating this way, I eat less. When I eat a few big meals, I sit and eat in a focused way, and by the time I feel full I’ve gone passed having had enough. When I eat several small snacks instead, I consume a little bit while doing something else, which naturally paces me, so I feel full when I get to the point of having had enough and I don’t eat as much total as a result.

By eating this way, I feel happier. When I eat a few big meals, my mood swings around the clock; the closer to mealtime, the more expectant and demanding my mood, and after a meal I am uncomfortable and sometimes upset. When I eat several small snacks instead, I have peace of mind and the energy to perform, and happiness flows more easily; also, I more fully appreciate the food for the nourishment it gives me and am grateful, which leads to inner harmony.

There is a zen saying: “When you are hungry, eat.” Eat when you are hungry, but only as much as you are hungry for. When you are no longer hungry, stop eating.

In the news

• Yeah, but you probably wouldn’t notice or care: Marijuana testicular cancer link
• Attitude is everything: Psychopaths’ ‘early release con’
• Uh, that’s not the point of taking multivitamins: Multivitamins no cancer, heart help, study says

Quote for the week

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us. – Hermann Hesse

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff