Ode to Joy

Aerobic exercise is better than any antidepressant medicine. The cost is just time. And the payoff is several hours (all evening if you exercise right after work and happen to have a day job) of endorphins being shot throughout your body in gay profusion.

It's a physical ode to joy I try to give myself six days a week. The Younger Next Year doctor says the greatest payoff for the least investment is six days a week, an hour a day. I am for four days of aerobics and two days of weights.

I'm also smart enough, finally, to not think always, if an hour works great, more would be better. Not always so. There is a point of diminishing returns.

I can maintain the six-day-a-week, an-hour-a-day schedule without burnout. But I do need a day of rest. I take that on Sundays.

Aerobics can be addictive. Yet no matter how much I want to get out there, how sunny and beautiful the day, how much my body yearns for physical activity, I try to take a slug day and recuperate. That discipline of "not doing" will better ensure me future joy.