The Best of Times

So, on Sunday,there was this fantastic article in the Star Tribune about how there is an ideal time for eating, sleeping, and exercising.

Uhm....

duh?

But in the printed version, they have lovely full-page, color article with a circadian clock showing just what you should be doing every hour of the day, including getting up at 6am, eating breakfast at 6:30, exercising at 7:30...then you go to work. then you eat at noon AND exercise (it's amazing how much a single person is supposed to get done), then you take a nap at 1pm, then you continue working, and exercise again at 3pm and then eat dinner at 7pm (long time between meals, I think), then you stop eating at 8 (a whole hour of feasting, I guess) and then you finally go to sleep at 11.

Now...a couple of issues I see with fantastic article:

1. Who has the time to exercise three times a day!?!  I mean, seriously!  You obviously don't have a real job or a family to take care of.

2.  There is such a thing as eating and exercising too close together.  It's the whole idea that you'll get a cramp while swimming if you eat before you swim.  Well, swimming is just an intensive aerobic exercise- the same is true of ANY exercise.  You should wait at least 20 minutes after you eat before you exercise so that you finish your digesting properly (or it goes straight to fat) and you correctly exercise your muscles.  Your body can't digest and exercise at the same time.  So it WILL store that meal you just ate as fat.

So...you pretty much are doing yourself no good at that point.

3. Take a nap at 1pm.
I want to ask the writer:  does YOUR boss let you take a nap at 1pm?  Because sleep studies have shown that unless you can get at least 15 minutes in for a nap, you're brain chemistry is worse off then if you didn't even try.

4. My final large comment is about the amount of sleep- is it shocking to anyone that 7-9 hours of sleep is a good amount for adults to get?  Do you want to know the average amount of sleep a working parent gets:  4-5 hours.  But I guess this article is really aimed at old farts who have nothing to do or college students who are likewise unemployed and bored.

As for the rest of us, I think that if you manage to get one session of exercise and one good night sleep of at least 5 hours, you're probably doing better than average.