October 2001
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CALM ENERGY: Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg |
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"Our moods are closely related to how much
sleep we had, how healthy we are, when and what we last ate, and what
kind of exercise we had lately," Robert Thayer contends in this
book. A professor of psychology at California State University, Long
Beach, Thayer has a long-standing interest in self-regulation of mood. He explores posits an interactive relationship
between eating too much, and sleeping and exercising too little. People often eat not because they're hungry, he
says, but to relieve tension and boredom, and to boost their mood.
Eating food you don't need piles on pounds. Emotional eating, he suggests,
is a key contributor to our national epidemic of obesity. More than
half of all American adults--97 million people--weigh at least 20
percent more than their ideal weight. In various studies, Thayer has asked healthy volunteers,
often students in his psychology classes, as well as people reporting
stresses such as a divorce, job loss, or illness, to rate their energy
and tension hourly over the day, for several consecutive days. His
findings parallel those from sleep laboratory studies of daily cycles
of alertness and sleepiness. Healthy people typically rate their energy level
lowest right after awakening. Their energy rises in the morning, reaching
its high point at noon. It then declines in the afternoon, with a
small peak in early evening, and then falls again until bedtime. Morning
people reach their energy peaks early in the day, and evening people
later on. Most people also report their tension is lowest
on awakening. It rises through the day, peaking between 3 p.m. and
7 p.m., and again in the two hours before bedtime. To counteract this
tense-tiredness, Thayer says, many people succumb to the most expedient
means: food. Even people who stick to a diet earlier in the
day often lose their resolve in the evening. Some develop a night-eating
syndrome, consuming half their daily food intake, or even more, at
night. Some awaken from sleep to binge, often reporting that they
don't even remember eating the next morning, but see evidence of their
behavior in the kitchen or bedroom. According to Thayer, researchers
have identified stress and evening tension as contributors to night-eating
syndrome. Thayer's solution: tune into to your daily mood
pattern. Anticipate your daily peaks of tension and tiredness, and
plan to forestall them with exercise, not food. Stand up, stretch,
and take a brisk walk, if possible, he says. These tactics can induce
a positive, productive state Thayer calls "calm energy."
If you are sleepy, take a 15- to 30 minute nap. Thayer also highlights the benefits of sufficient sleep. The immediate effect of sleep starvation, he notes, is negative mood. For those who'd prefer to get by on less sleep, Thayer suggests a good role model: Albert Einstein, he reports, claimed he needed 10 hours of sleep each night to do his best work. |
Copyright (c) 2001
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