I'm Paul Muldoon, a poet who over the past several years has had the good fortune to record hours of conversations with one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sir Paul McCartney. The result is our new

podcast McCartney A Life in Lyrics. Listen to McCartney A Life in L lyrics on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip is to exercise with a purpose.

Lots of people want to exercise more in the new year, but when exercise makes sense in your life,

you'll be far more likely to stick with it.

Like many people, I've laughed at the widely circulated photo of escalators leading into a gym.

Now I know this is partly about accessibility which I am a really big fan of,

but I also imagine that there are people who take those escalators

just to log 40 minutes on the stair climbing machines. Exercise can seem so removed from normal life.

And so, when we get busy, it's an easy thing to cut.

Contrast this with our ancestors who didn't have the option to cut exercise out of their lives.

They had to walk places and cut wood and plant crops and ring clothes without the benefit of modern labor-saving machinery.

People these days whose jobs involve physical labor,

likewise don't need to make time to hit the gym to stay fit.

Now most of us aren't going to turn our jobs into the physical equivalent of being

lumberjacks, but we might find ways to exercise more purposefully and thus increase the chances that we stick with it.

Not because we have found new fonts of willpower, but because it makes sense.

For instance, you know who walks briskly for 30 minutes each day?

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