Carolyn and I woke up early once again to get to the gym to work out before the sun rose. We were at the gym at 5:30am, stayed until around 6:30am. The crazy thing is that up until a few months ago I usually find myself still in bed at 5:30am. We started working out together early in the morning so that we could take better care of our health as I find that the cubicle life is not very conducive to physical fitness.

On the way to the gym, I started wondering what kinds of benefits working out actually gives you. If you could quantify this kind of thing that would be great. Like when scientists say that one cigarette takes 11 minutes off your life. But what if you knew that, on average, an hour of exercise ADDS ON "x" amount of minutes on your life? We started talking about how much time it would actually have to add on for it to be worth it. Because from an investment point of view, if an hour of exercise added less than an hour to your life then it wouldn't be worth it. Or would it?

What if an hour of exercise added only 10 minutes to the end of your life? In that case I would gain 50 minutes of life by simply spending that time how I wanted:) But it might be worth it if it meant you got to see your great-grandchild before you died or something to that effect.

Of course, this is an oversimplification of the benefits of exercise. Many other factors come into play such as quality-of-life and overall health. So bottom line: exercise and eat right. My wife told me to say that.