Core Daily
One Small Change
Contributing writer Joe Kita dares to make one little, healthy change every month. Past experiments include giving up caffeine, napping daily, and stretching like it's your job.
One Small Change
6 Ways Alcohol Disrupts Performance
Sometimes we want to believe that something is good for us even when we know it’s really not. Take alcohol, for instance. All the press about how a daily nip can prevent heart disease has convinced many people that it’s beneficial overall. But as I’m learning during this month’s One Small Change experiment in which I’ve significantly reduced my alcohol intake, there’s a lot more to consider than just heart health. Athletes need to weigh the effects of alcohol on fitness and performance. And here, I’m sorry to say, the evidence is almost entirely negative.
One Small Change
A Strange Connection Between Exercise and Alcohol
Doug Pensinger / Getty Images
For this month’s One Small Change experiment, I’ve given up drinking on weekdays. But after building some momentum last week, I carried right through the weekend and have been dry now for 10 days.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll recall that I swore off caffeine for a month a while back. I’m not exaggerating when I say that was akin to having dental work done without anesthesia. My whole head hurt for days. But, surprisingly, going cold turkey on booze didn’t have any negative repercussions. In fact, I’m feeling mentally sharper and physically stronger. I’m even sleeping better.
One Small Change
Are We Drinking Too Much?
I learned two major lessons from my old man. The first was delivered at dawn more than 15 years ago when the phone rang and my mother cried, “I think Daddy died.” His alarm went off, but he never got up. Dead of a heart attack at 62. Not long after that I started exercising and eating smarter, eventually losing 35 pounds. I even started doing triathlons. Like most kids, I had ignored the bulk of my parent’s advice, but not this time. That alarm clock is still keeping me awake.
One Small Change
How to Stay Active All Day
When I started wearing a pedometer back on October 1 to gauge how active I was, I honestly thought I would blow that little gadget right off my hip. In fact, I told the clerk at the sporting-goods store that she better give me two just to be safe. Since I work out for an hour or more every day, I was justifiably smug. And then a strange (and scary) thing happened.
One Small Change
4 New Ways to Fit Physical Activity into Your Day
ColorBlind Images / Getty Images
I don’t know how true this story is but, at the risk of furthering an urban myth, I’ll pass it along because I think it’s illustrative nonetheless. Supposedly, the great British decathlete Daley Thompson, who won two Olympic gold medals and set numerous world records in the 1980s, was pitted against a four year old. Thompson had to do everything the kid did during the course of a normal day and, as it turned out, he struggled to keep up. His specialized training was no match for the kid’s naturally active lifestyle.
“It gets you thinking,” says Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., the owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California, who told me this story. “The activities of daily living just might be the ultimate workout.”
One Small Change
It’s Time to Redefine Fitness
(Bounce / Getty Images)
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’m in an exercise quandary. I work out for at least an hour daily but for the rest of the time, because I’m a writer, I’m as sedentary as the late John Updike. In fact, the pedometer I’m wearing as part of this month’s One Small Change experiment confirms this on a daily basis. After talking with fitness experts, it’s become obvious that I need to stop thinking of exercise as something to squeeze into my day and instead start making my entire day one big workout. But how does an exercise Jekyll and Hyde such as I (and maybe you?) go about doing that? Here’s the three-step plan:
One Small Change
Are You More Active Than Grandma?
Getty Images
This is amazing, sobering, embarrassing. I’ve finished triathlons, ridden centuries, run marathons and am even a newly certified yoga instructor, but according to this little device I’ve been wearing on my hip for the past week, I am, gulp, sedentary.
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"While alcohol can make you sleepy initially, it should never be used as a sedative because it disrupts your sleep cycles, especially REM. This stage is particularly important to athletes because it’s when you consolidate and commit to long-term memory what you learned during the day."
— from "6 Ways Alcohol Disrupts Performance".
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