The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

room redecoration, I’ve been exercising regularly. I never push myself hard, but I get myself out the door several times a week. For a long time, however, I’d been thinking that I really should start strength training. Lifting weights increases muscle mass, strengthens bones, firms the core, and—I admit, most important to me—improves shape. Peoplewho work out with weights maintain more muscle and gain less fat as they age. A few times over the years, I’d halfheartedly tried lifting weights, but I’d never stuck to it; now, with my resolution to “Exercise better,” it was time to start.
    There’s a Buddhist saying that I’ve found to be uncannily true: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Just a few days after I committed to my resolution to “Exercise better,” I met a friend for coffee, and she mentioned that she’d started a great weight-training program at a gym in my neighborhood.
    “I don’t like the idea of working out with a trainer,” I objected. “I’d feel self-conscious, and it’s expensive. I want to do it on my own.”
    “Try it,” my friend urged. “I promise, you’ll love it. It’s a superefficient way to exercise. The whole workout takes only twenty minutes. Plus”—she paused dramatically—“you don’t sweat. You work out without having to shower afterward.”
    This was a major selling point. I dislike taking showers. “But,” I asked doubtfully, “how can a good workout take only twenty minutes if you’re not even sweating?”
    “You lift weights at the very outer limit of your strength. You don’t do many repetitions, and you do only one set. Believe me, it works. I love it.”
    In Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, he argues that the most effective way to judge whether a particular course of action will make you happy in the future is to ask people who are following that course of action right now if they’re happy and assume that you’ll feel the same way. According to his theory, the fact that my friend raved about this fitness routine was a pretty good indicator that I’d be enthusiastic, too. Also, I reminded myself, one of my Secrets of Adulthood was “Most decisions don’t require extensive research.”
    I made an appointment for the next day, and by the time I left, I was a convert. My trainer was terrific, and the atmosphere in the training room was much nicer than most gyms—no music, no mirrors, no crowds, no waiting. On my way out the door, I charged the maximumtwenty-four sessions on my credit card to get the discount, and within a month, I’d convinced Jamie and my mother-in-law, Judy, to start going to the same gym.
    The only disadvantage was that it was expensive. “It seems like a lot to spend for a twenty-minute workout,” I said to Jamie.
    “Would you rather get more for your money?” he asked. “We’re spending more to get a shorter workout.” Good point.
    In addition to strength training, I wanted to start walking more. The repetitive activity of walking, studies show, triggers the body’s relaxation response and so helps reduce stress; at the same time, even a quick ten-minute walk provides an immediate energy boost and improves mood—in fact, exercise is an effective way to snap out of a funk. Also, I kept reading that, as a minimum of activity for good health, people should aim to take 10,000 steps a day—a number that also reportedly keeps most people from gaining weight.
    Living in New York, I felt as if I walked miles every day. But did I? I picked up a $20 pedometer from the running store near my apartment. Once I’d been clipping it onto my belt for a week, I discovered that on days when I did a fair amount of walking—walking Eliza to school and walking to the gym, for example—I hit 10,000 easily. On days when I stayed close to home, I barely cleared 3,000.
    It was interesting to have a better sense of my daily habits. Also, the very fact of wearing a pedometer made me walk more. One of my worst qualities is my insatiable need for credit ; I always want the gold star, the recognition. One night when I was in high school, I came home late from a party and decided to surprise my mother by cleaning up our messy kitchen. She came downstairs the next morning and said, “What wonderful fairy came in the night and did all this work?” and looked so pleased. More than twenty years later, I still remember that gold star, and I still want more of them.
    This generally negative quality