Walk or cycle?
EXERCISE IN THE MORNING OR EVENING?
Finding time to exercise often seems impossible when you lead a busy life, but if you want to get fi tter or lose weight, you need to speed up your metabolic rate and getting hot and sweaty is a good sign.
When you exercise, your metabolic rate ‘spikes’, then gradually returns to its basal (resting) level quite slowly, burning calories for several hours. Leading fitness coach Matt Roberts suggests eating breakfast, then exercising an hour or so later for 30 minutes: then your body will have had time to digest the food. The free NHS podcast Couch To 5k is a gentle way to start running. Details at www.nhs.uk/livewell
As an exercise early bird, you’re less likely to be diverted by things during the day. Sleep experts also advocate exercise earlier rather than later, as physical activity stimulates your body and can make it harder to get to sleep. But if you can’t manage this, don’t use it as an excuse to do nothing. Exercise at any time of the day is better than none at all.
ANSWER: In the morning
SPREADS OR BUTTER?
A 40g serving of butter – about a finger’s width of a 250g block – contains the whole 20g daily allowance of potentially cholesterolraising saturated fat for women, along with a rather substantial 300 calories. Ghee, used in cooking from the Indian subcontinent, is also high in saturated fat. While they are also high in calories, sunflower and olive oil contain healthier polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. If you can’t resist butter, keep it at room temperature because it’s easier to spread and you’ll use less. Or else buy a spreadable version, which contains oil to make it softer.
ANSWER: Spreads
WALK OR CYCLE?
Cycling is a great way to kill two birds with one stone: get around without the hassle of public transport, and exercise at the same time. How many calories you burn depends on how vigorously you cycle and how many hills you climb, but cycling at 10mph/16kph for 15 minutes on the flat would use about 90 calories. Walking briskly for 30 minutes would burn about 160.
The joy of walking is that you don’t need any kit, like helmets and lights. And you won’t worry about where to park your bike and whether it will be stolen or vandalised. Walkers’ minds can wander more freely: you don’t have to concentrate on fending off aggressive drivers in the way that cyclists do, and you can listen to your favourite tracks on your iPod to help you keep your speed up on the way in or to relax on the way home. iPods and bikes are not a good combination – cyclists need all their wits about them, especially in urban areas, where around 75 per cent of fatal or serious cycling accidents occur. And they can’t carry an umbrella.
ANSWER: Walk
FIZZY WATER OR STILL?
If you’ve been sitting in a stuffy office all day or running around doing chores, you may be dehydrated. This can make you feel sleepy and grumpy: our brains really need water to stay alert. But if you’re buying a bottle to go with lunch or ordering in a restaurant, and have heard stories that fizzy drinks are bad for your health, what to do?
The bubbles in a bottle of fizzy water are created by the addition of carbon dioxide. Isn’t that a nasty greenhouse gas that’s contributing to our fears about global warming? And aren’t fizzy drinks full of acid that destroys tooth enamel and rots bones?
The amount of carbon dioxide in fizzy water is negligible and unlikely to do any harm. Tooth damage is associated with the sugar and acid in sweetened soft drinks or in fruit juice, not with the bubbles. So there’s little to worry about; except, the gas has to go somewhere – your digestive system – and the way it gets out can cause embarrassing problems later, especially if you’re prone to bloating.
ANSWER: Still
SOUP OR SALAD?
They both sound healthy – and if they’re packed with veg, fruit and lean meat or fish, they can be. But watch out for salads with fatty dressings or lots of cheese, and soup loaded with cream, salt or fatty meat, like chorizo, to make it tasty, or bulked out with carbs like potatoes, pasta or rice.
Of course you wouldn’t want a steaming bowl of soup on a hot summer’s day, but in winter, soup is warming and comforting. And it can be more filling, too – recent television research showed, with ultrasound scanners, how soldiers who ate a blended soup of rice, chicken, vegetables and water, felt full for longer than those who had eaten the same ingredients as solid food, with a glass of water.
Why? The blended food was bulkier so it couldn’t pass through the stomach as quickly.
ANSWER: Soup
BLAME OTHERS OR MOVE ON?
When something goes wrong it’s natural to get annoyed. But should you point the finger or keep quiet? When you blame others you’re making yourself the injured party and setting yourself up as their victim. If a shared desk, for example, is untidy, and you blame the colleague you share it with, you’re putting them in a position to upset you and giving them power in the relationship. Then you might blame yourself for ‘letting’ them do this to you. But blaming yourself is also a total waste of time.
Nina Grunfeld suggests that if you feel bad about something, forgive yourself and get on with your life. Ask yourself what you can learn from having done it ‘wrong’. Perhaps to feel more in control of a situation such as the untidy desk, you could suggest a weekly tidy-up session when you sort out the mess together.
ANSWER: Move on
MAKE ONE LIST OR SEVERAL?
Lists certainly help busy (and scatty or forgetful) people to plan and prioritise. But should you make one long list or several for different tasks? Time management expert David Allen suggests that you keep a master list with things on it like ‘book holiday’, ‘take car for service’, and that under those headings you list the steps needed to fi nish each task. The trouble with several lists, is that they are harder to keep track of. If you find making lists useful, then do it in the way that works best for you – ie, as a genuine aid to getting things done on time. As a compulsive list-maker, I’d suggest a compromise: start a new to-do list every week, and highlight what’s top priority or make a note of which day it must be done by. You can carry over any unfinished jobs to the next week’s fresh list.
ANSWER: Make one list
KEEP FOCUSED OR DAYDREAM?
If you’ve ever said ‘My brain hurts’ when you’ve been concentrating on the same challenging task for a long time, it’s not far from the truth. Neuroscientists like Jonah Lehrer think the rational decision-making part of the brain becomes depleted if it’s overused; ‘switching off’ and daydreaming help to mingle thoughts and ideas from different parts of the brain so that we think more creatively. It’s why we often have a ‘Eureka!’ moment while staring mindlessly out of the window or doing the dishes. Just don’t do it all day.
ANSWER: Daydream
USE BY OR BEST BEFORE?
The ‘best before’ label is there to show shoppers the date by which food is no longer at its best (although it’s still safe to eat). The ‘use by’ label is there to show shoppers the date by which the food becomes unsafe to eat (it tends to appear more on fresh food). While this is the official line, according to the FSA (Food Standards Agency) only 25 per cent of people take any notice. Most of us tend to use our eyes and noses to check food is OK – if it’s mouldy or smelly, it probably goes in the bin. This is definitely not advice, however, merely a personal observation.
ANSWER: Use by
WINE OR GIN & TONIC?
Most of us know the government’s guidelines on the amounts of alcohol we should drink: in the UK the RDA of alcohol for women is two to three units daily, and for men three to four. But how fattening our favourite tipples are is not so clear.
The number of calories in a drink depends on how much alcohol it contains, which varies according to its strength, whether it’s wine, a spirit or beer. To keep within the recommended daily alcohol and calorie amounts, you have to do some maths: one unit of alcohol contains 56 calories. A small glass of red, white or rosé wine (175ml) is about two units, equalling about 110 calories. A measure of gin (25ml) with calorie-free mixer is one unit – 56 calories. Gin contains fewer congeners (substances produced during fermentation that give some alcoholic drinks a darker colour and are thought to contribute to hangovers) than red wine.
The alcohol and calories in beer, wine and cider can vary between 1.7 units and about 100 calories for a 330ml bottle of premium lager or beer, to three units (about 170 calories) per pint of regular cider. In drinks with added sugar or cream, like alcopops and some liqueurs, the calories soar.
ANSWER: Gin & tonic
Latte Or Cappuccino?: 125 Decisions That Will Change Your Life, by Hilly Janes (Michael O’Mara Books, £9.99).