Of all the things we'd like more of —time, sleep, another finger-scoop of cake icing —energy is at the top of most of our lists. For almost all of us, energy levels swirl down the day's drain as more hours pass. Slowly leaking. Until. We. Finally. Crash. Sometimes, we don't know what makes us tired, whether it's too little sleep, too little exercise, too much stress, a lack of sunlight, or just the evening news. But we do know many of the cures —and they come in the form of what you drink, eat, and pop. So here's a guide to the major myths about energy-boosters, and what you can do to make sure you have energy to spare.
Myth: Sweet snacks give you a sugar high and then a sugar crash.
If you're sluggish at 4 p.m., conventional wisdom says you're hypoglycemic. Your blood sugar's low, and a handful of M&Ms will make those levels —and you —spike and then plunge. But that line of thinking has as much truth as the Loch Ness legend, without even a grainy photograph to back it up.
"There's no evidence to support the idea that midafternoon tiredness is caused by hypoglycemia, or that healthy people feel normal fluctuations in blood sugar," says Phillip Cryer, M.D., professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "The threshold for symptoms of low blood sugar is 50 to 55 milligrams (mg) of glucose per deciliter of blood, and it's very, very rare for a healthy person to get to those levels."
Rather than being low on blood sugar, you're low on serotonin —the brain chemical that makes you feel focused, attentive, and energetic, says Judith Wurtman, Ph.D., a researcher in women's health at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Instead of the celery sticks: Bring back the carbohydrates. Carbs become glucose in your bloodstream, and as insulin goes to work on the glucose, it starts a chain of chemical events: An amino acid called tryptophan travels to the brain and converts to serotonin to keep your energy up. Dr. Wurtman goes against conventional wisdom by recommending snacks that are almost pure carbohydrate —which means the vending machine licorice or a small bag of pretzels isn't necessarily off-limits anymore.
Seven signs that you're sweating your way to max results
By Katie McDonald Neitz
Few things in life — besides chocolate and sex — provide instant gratification. But you can add exercise to that A-list if you know what to look for. These seven signs mean you're well on your way to incinerating fat and maximizing your strength and endurance. It may take a few weeks before you sport spandex at the gym, but it's possible to know within 24 hours of a workout if you're exercising smart. Just look for these telltale clues. (To prevent injury, check out "When Your Workout Isn't Working" to make sure you're feeling your exercise in all the right places.)
Sign No. 1 You feel like Rocky.
No, you're not slurring your words (that would be a bad sign) — you simply feel strong. What used to be a 30-minute treadmill death march now whizzes by, and you can do a pullup for the first time since, well, ever. Need numerical proof of improvement? Rate your level of "perceived exertion" — how challenging the workout feels — using a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means you don't have enough breath to hold a conversation, suggests Bill Sonnemaker, C.S.C.S., director of strength and conditioning at Catalyst Fitness in Kennesaw, Georgia. If you're training properly, that number should go down every few weeks. When you dip below a 5, it's time to up the intensity. Postworkout, jot it all down in an exercise log. Our pick: The New York Road Runners' 2007 Running & Fitness Log ($15, Amazon).
Too busy to stick to your 3-day-a-week routine? No sweat. When it comes to staying fit, doing a little can mean a whole lot.
By Selene Yeager
When your schedule is overloaded like a sherpa on Everest, there are days, weeks, even months when you make it to the gym as often as the paparazzi spot TomKat's offspring. But luckily, that doesn't mean you're destined to morph into Kirstie Alley before she met Jenny Craig. In fact, U.S. military studies show you can stop the skid toward mush by doing just one- to two-thirds the exercise you usually do. "Women make the mistake of thinking, 'If I can't do my full routine, why bother?'" says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts. "But just one workout a week will maintain your strength. And if you exercise at the same or greater intensity, you can keep your fitness while doing much less than usual." Just how long will this kind of bare-minimum workout keep you in decent shape? If you can devote about 20 minutes to exercise once a week, you can preserve fitness for up to 2 months — plenty of time, we hope, for whatever's clogging your schedule to ease up. Until then, here's precisely the least you need to do to keep your endurance, strength, and flexibility intact.
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Appeared in the October 2006 issue of Women's Health
So you went out for dinner with friends and ended up polishing off a fried appetizer, a mammoth entree, and a vat of tiramisu (along with a couple of cocktails). Don't panic. "Feeling guilty has never burned a single calorie, but learning from your error can save you thousands," Dr. Gullo says. Everybody slips — the key to success is to take it in stride.
To bounce back after a binge, the most important thing to remember is that all the effort you put into eating right before your little lapse was not in vain. "No one ever got heavy from one slipup. It's when you let it become a chain that you get in trouble," Dr. Gullo says. So instead of declaring that you blew your diet and cramming your face full of every high-calorie treat you see until nightfall (since you'll just wait and start fresh tomorrow), begin eating healthfully again with your very next meal — or snack.
And no matter what, don't step on the scale at the end of the day. "Weighing yourself after overindulging isn't healthy or helpful," Dr. Kearney-Cooke says. Depending on your salt intake or where you are in your menstrual cycle, your weight can fluctuate several pounds. Instead of trying to assess the damage every time a stray cookie slips between your lips, pick one day each week for your weigh-ins and stick to it.
To battle the bulge, get your brain on your side.
By Megan McNamara
womenshealthmag.com
You already know the secret *to weight loss: Eat fewer calories than you burn and you'll be zipping up those size 4 jeans in no time. So why aren't we all as svelte as Heidi Klum? Because lasting weight loss has little to do with crunching numbers. "In focusing on calories in and calories out, the field of nutrition has ignored the most critical variable: behavioral and cognitive changes," says Stephen Gullo, Ph.D., a weight-loss expert in New York City.
In other words, if you don't want to fall headfirst off the diet wagon the next time Mom rips into your new haircut, you have to retrain your brain. "To deal with unhealthy eating behaviors, we must challenge the thoughts, feelings, and cues that have been built up over a lifetime," says Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., the Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Not to get too Freudian, but many doctors and weight-loss experts say that permanently altering your waistline means permanently altering your relationship with food.
Katie Couric's digitally slimmed-down photo didn't surprise Rosie O'Donnell, who says she's been there, done that.
In her online blog, O'Donnell, who joins ABC's The View on Tuesday, writes (in her signature haiku-like style): "they retouched katie .../ yea....and/ they airbrush everyone/ in everything we see on tv or in print/ EVERYTHING."
O'Donnell, 44, writes that when she was in the 1996 movie Beautiful Girls with Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman, "i saw the poster and said aloud/ 'i didn't know courteney cox was in this film'/ it wasn't courteney – it was me."
She writes that she called her agent, laughing; her agent called studio chief Harvey Weinstein, who, O'Donnell says, replied, "so what – she should thank me – she looks a lot better."
O'Donnell also says she was digitally trimmed in the new publicity shot for The View, in which she appears with co-hosts Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Joy Behar and Barbara Walters. She writes:
look at the amount of white space
between my arm and body
barbara and elisabeth seem to vanish
there in my underarm thinnest
yes i say
photoshop
Why men care more about their hair than their shoes -- and other dirt about guys and their getups.
By Joe Queenan
Not long ago I drove 4,700 miles across the United States on an epic voyage of self-discovery. Somewhere around Knoxville, Tennessee, I started to notice that men looked a lot more presentable than they had in times past. (The women, as usual, looked just fine.) Whether it was the junior executive in Philly, the frat boy in Charlotte, North Carolina, the hipster in Washington, or the good ol' boy in Augusta, Georgia, men were clearly putting in more time getting their hair just right and fussing with their beards and mustaches. They were devoting unprecedented amounts of time and energy to getting the total package working. I had set out on my trip expecting everyone to look like they'd just fallen out of bed. But in this I was very much mistaken.
Faddish Behavior In reporting that men are devoting more time and effort to getting themselves ready to meet the world each morning, I am not talking about metrosexuality. Metrosexuality, we now all agree, was a scam concocted in London a few years ago by evil marketers hell-bent on persuading men to get rid of their body hair and wear more smelly cologne. It was a fad that enjoyed a mercifully brief moment until everyone realized it was idiotic. Then it evaporated. It evaporated because men in Baltimore and Kansas City didn't really want to look like gallery owners, script boys, or cutting-edge baristas from Los Angeles and Copenhagen; they wanted to look like men from Baltimore and Kansas City. The fact that guys today care a whole lot more about their bodies, their hair, their clothes, and their overall look than they did a generation ago is a question of sexuality, not metro-sexuality.
The fountain of youth has yet to be found, bottled, and sold for $3.99 at Whole Foods. But that doesn't mean the secret to living a long, healthy life can't be bought at the supermarket. "By eating right, you maximize the probability that you won't develop conditions like diabetes or Alzheimer's," says James Joseph, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Beyond choosing the best foods, new and intriguing evidence shows that eating less — less than you probably think — can reduce the toll time takes on your body.
We pored over the latest research on how food affects your life span and found seven no-fail food rules. Follow them — plus the detailed eating plan we created — and you'll have the best possible chance of blowing out 100 candles on your birthday cake. Not to mention keeping your much older self out of the rocker and on the dance floor, yoga mat, mountain bike — or wherever else you want to be.
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