HARD WORK: Aspire Health & Fitness personal trainer Louise Dumee with Annemarie Quill, Will Johnston, of The Hits Bay of Plenty, and trainer Ben Spenceley.PHOTO/FILE
It's official. Drinking wine is as good as a gym workout.
According to a study by the esteemed boffins at the University of Alberta in Canada, the health benefits from resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, are similar to those we get from working out: improved physical performance, better heart function and increased muscle strength, NZME reported.
The study's lead researcher says the findings could help those who aren't able to exercise.
"I think resveratrol could help patient populations who want to exercise but are physically incapable," Jason Dyck told the Huffington Post.
"Resveratrol could mimic exercise for them or improve the benefits of the modest amount of exercise that they can do."
Hallelujah!
I would have fist-pumped the air when reading this but my arm has not been working well this week.
Even if I had wanted to drink a large glass of wine I would have had trouble lifting the glass to my mouth.
And when I shuffled over to show my colleague in the newsroom this new research she asked me why was I limping.
I had a gym workout this week with my personal trainer which used every single muscle in my body. The next day I was definitely feeling it.
When I had told her I wanted to lose fat from my thighs, I did not realise that, post-workout, I would be in so much pain that lowering myself into a sitting position was excruciating.
As for standing up again, well put it this way, I am not owning up to how the toilet roll holder almost got ripped off the wall in the office toilets.
So when I read the Canadian research on wine I immediately emailed it to Aspire Health and Sports in Bethlehem.
For the past 12 weeks radio announcer Will Johnston, from The Hits Bay of Plenty, and I have been completing a challenge with two trainers from Aspire - Louise Dumee and Ben Spenceley.
My trainer, Louise, has a hard job with me as I have been slack for a few weeks with school holidays and a week of events.
Excuses, excuses. I deserved my tough workout this week.
I knew Louise would take no prisoners the first time I met her. She asked me what time would suit for our weekly meetings.
"Mornings are good for me," I said
"Me too," she replied, "How does 5am Monday sound?"
"Great," I replied, trying to act as though that was perfectly normal.
The mum of two rises every day to train at 4am. She is an endurance athlete who represented New Zealand at the 2015 ITU World Triathlon Grand Final last month in Chicago. A highly impressive achievement for any athlete but in Dumee's case especially creditable. Last year she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.
On our first workout I arrived bleary-eyed (I slept in my gym clothes the night before). When we finished she suggested ways that would prevent me feeling muscle pain the following day: a plunge in the gym's ice cold plunge pool, or a "quick swim in the sea".
I avoid swimming in the sea on even the hottest summer days, fearing sharks and jellyfish. I certainly wasn't going to hit the beach in the pitch black at 6am.
As for plunging in the cold plunge pool, even if Sonny Bill was in there I would still hesitate. (Only for a few minutes.)
But over the weeks, Louise and I have come to understand each other. The inspiring thing is her passion about helping people achieve their goals, no matter what level of fitness they are.
Whatever research we cling to, or fad diets we follow, there is no getting away from the fact that to be the happiest and healthiest version of yourself, as nutritionist Claire Turnbull put it in our recent indulge Speaker Collective, you do have to exercise and eat healthily.
I liked that Claire spoke about healthy eating as a lifetime lifestyle choice, not a fad.
She said diets that involve a lot of deprivation, such as a strict Paleo diet, are too extreme. As she put it, when we find ourselves obsessing over whether a lentil salad is healthy or not, there is something very wrong.
Similarly, whatever this research says, it is highly unlikely that drinking a bottle of pinot noir a night is going to get us beach fit. On the contrary it is likely to affect our health negatively in the long term.
With all the hype about exercise and healthy eating we should really know what is good for us.
Despite this, people make unhealthy choices sometimes or give the gym a miss. Occasional slips make us human. But prolonged unhealthy eating and lack of exercise is a lethal combination.
Obesity is expected to overtake tobacco as the leading preventable risk to health in New Zealand within the next 12 months. New Zealand's obesity statistics are alarming. Ten per cent of children and 30 per cent of adults are obese. New Zealand has the third-highest rate of adult obesity in the developed world.
We should be taking responsibility but we are not.
Which is why I welcome Health Minister Jonathan Coleman's health targets announced this month to tackle obesity. The plan has been criticised for not going far enough with soft drink or sugar taxes.
Although Coleman's plan is good, in the sense the Government is doing something, arguments for the benefits of a sugar tax are convincing.
If obesity is set to overtake tobacco as our country's number one health issue, it makes sense to adopt some methods that have been successful in curbing tobacco use - such as taxes and bans, coupled with a change in culture that has taken smoking from something cool to something on a social acceptance scale one notch below leprosy.
It will be challenge to move sugar into the same category culturally - it is going to be a hard job for the marketing Mad Men to make chocolate unattractive, but taxing sugar would be a good start.
As for exercise, maybe the Government needs some advice from Louise. Despite the 5am starts, the muscles screaming in pain and the dreaded kettle bells, I find myself strangely missing exercise if I don't go, and for the first time in my life, enjoying the gym.
Not that I am nearing my goal yet. My fellow challenger Will Johnston has been much more dedicated. I have emailed him the research on red wine in the hope he takes it up. It will be a tortoise and hare ending. It is a marathon, not a sprint.
It is not over until this fat lady is singing.