Quotes from Chris Crowley

Remember, aerobic exercise saves your life; strength training makes it worth living.

optimism. Lean, fit, happy, optimistic, energetic, brimming with vim and vigor: these

Warm up, of course; that never changes. Then up to 60–65 percent of your max for five or ten minutes. Then crank it up to 70–75 percent and hold at that level for five or ten minutes. Feel your way. That's intense enough for your high-endurance work in the early stages and maybe forever. Then back down for recovery at 60–65 percent.

It goes on and on. Studies showing that the lonely are twice as likely to have ulcers. Studies showing that unmarried men are two or even three times as likely to die of heart attacks as their married brethren. One of the great questions, it turns out is: Does your wife show you her love? If the answer is yes, you're in much better shape. So tell your partner you love her. Ask her to give you a pat, and you give her one. You both need it. You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Harry's Sixth Rule. Harry's Sixth Rule reads, in its entirety: Care. Care

Harry's Seventh Rule: Connect and commit.

Understandably, our Darwinian bodies and primitive brains are not going to catch up with this astonishing state of affairs. We live, in this new safety, in this new time of plenty, like drunken sailors freshly delivered from terrible peril.

research has shown that we have a remarkable ability to think and feel our way into happier or more depressed states, regardless of external reality, and you can train yourself to live in either an optimistic or a pessimistic frame of mind regardless of your external circumstances.

Your body reads idleness as a sign that you are starving to death as slowly as possible, no matter how much you eat. Exercise

Bill Fabrocini in The Younger Next Year Exercise Book or Thinner This Year.

You need to reconnect directly to your physical brain. You've shut it in the closet long enough. After days at the office, nights in front of the TV, this miracle machine is waiting for you to take it out for a spin. To not do this is a dangerous waste. Because there is also a dark side; there is also decay. Life is energy. That's all that matters to nature. For 3,500 million years, life has walked a

So how do we keep ourselves from decaying? By changing the signals we send to our bodies. The keys to overriding the decay code are daily exercise, emotional commitment, reasonable nutrition, and a real engagement with living. But it starts with exercise.

You're a grown-up, right? Then don't be a dope. The gadgets, or the weights, do not do the work. You do. Okay, go to a decent gym and hire the nicest, smartest man or woman you can find.

The muscle cells in your thigh are completely replaced, one at a time, day and night, about every four months. Brand-new muscles, three times a year. The solid leg you've stood on so securely since childhood is mostly new since last summer. Your blood cells are replaced every three months, your platelets every ten days, your bones every couple of years. Your taste buds

Biologists now believe that most cells in your body are designed to fall apart after relatively short life spans, partly to let you adapt to new circumstances and partly because older cells tend to get cancer, making immortal cells not such a great idea.

Remember, without your input, your body will constantly misinterpret the signals of today's world. It will trigger the "default to decay" setting. You'll start to deteriorate, to die

The price of fitness is eternal vigilance, and the greatest spur to diligence is the daily log.

Aerobic exercise is primarily about your muscles' ability to endure. Strength training is primarily about your muscles' ability to deliver power, which, surprisingly, has as much to do with a special form of neural coordination as actual strength. That's a critical point. Strength training causes muscle growth, and that's important, but it's the hidden increase in coordination that changes your physical life. This is not eye-hand coordination;

Biologically, there is no such thing as retirement, or even aging. There is only growth or decay. And your body looks to you to choose between them.

We used it every winter, and in every time of drought or famine. We survived by getting depressed. Not clinically depressed, or Prozac depressed, but survival depressed, as in let's slow down the metabolism, build up the fat stores, withdraw, turn inward, hibernate, cut everything back to bare minimum. Shut down and survive by letting all but the most critical systems atrophy and decay. In fact, all chronic stress works the same way.