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Back when life was less complicated, staying healthy was as easy as having enough sense not to drink 15 beers at a frat party. But right about now (even if you haven’t hit 30 yet), age is beginning its long, slow shrivel. Even your measly six-pack a week is starting to hang around your middle region like mashed potatoes. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you realize you’ve got to make an effort to stay in shape and start paying attention to staying alive. But you’re still as lazy as you ever were. So Maxim searched the medical journals and tracked down the experts to smoke out the best health and fitness tips we could find, keeping this edict in mind: Maximum results for minimum pain in the ass. Now pass the tacos.

Destructive behavior = good health! Cigarettes No one knows what exactly causes Alzheimer's disease, but the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published research that says smoking cigarettes could delay its onset. "I concur!" said Dr. Marlboro, when reached for comment. Fat-assy-ness Just stay around 25 pounds overweight, says the Journal of the American Medical Association, and you'll have a decreased risk of Parkinson's disease. See? Our "nutritional reserves" may help us in a pinch, so quit poking at our love handles. Beer New research shows that the folate found in beer improves cardiovascular function. Drinking one brewski a day could very well reduce blood clotting and the buildup of bad triglycerides and LDL cholesterol in your veins. Sadly, the key word there is one. Fast food Take two Big Macs and call us in the morning. Researchers in Australia have found that eating foods packed with fat and sugar helps reduce anxiety levels. Next we're going to find out that ice cream can cure our UTI! The fastest ways to get better at every sport (without failing a urine test) Kevin Durant Seattle's rookie phenom on shaking a schoolyard defender: I use my pivot foot and take a step back before exploding ahead. The only time I consider using a ball fake is if my opponent is bigger than me, because that buys me some time. Keep going to the basket, but every now and then shoot a jumper to mix it up. It makes your defender have to guard you. I do a left-to-right crossover and head straight for the basket. My long wingspan helps me get around my opponent when I'm close to the hoop. Matt Holliday The Rockies RBI generator wants you to take home that softball trophy: Keep your eye on the ball through your swing and try to hit line drives at the pitcher. Use the middle of the field as much as possible. When things aren't going well, that's when I'm thinking about my mechanics or where my hands are. If you think about your mechanics, you're thinking about the wrong things. If you're seeing more than one ball, you're probably not going to do too well. You can get hit in the face with a fly ball, and nobody wants to be that guy. Dwight Freeney The Indianapolis Colts DE on squishing flag football QBs: When the ball is snapped I envision myself getting shot out of a cannon. Bigger guys you want to take down low because it's easier to trip them up. Smaller guys you want to pretty much take up high because your momentum will bring them down. Sometimes you make a big hit and almost knock yourself out. It's kind of what we're programmed to do. Definitely play flag football before touch. Touch football is for eight-year-olds. Bernard Hopkins The light-heavy-weight champion on delivering beat-downs: Try to get the other guy to make mistakes by using basic punches to open up his body. Attack and retreat. Create a blueprint of how to diffuse your opponent. I can convince you to fight my fight and you won't even know you're doing it. It's the art of war. Footwork is underappreciated. Your feet get you closer to your target than your hands do. Get used to working through pain in training. It takes time. This isn't karate where guys are banging on your six-pack with a bat. Zach Johnson Last year's Masters winner helps you take down the Judge Smails in your life: Most amateurs swing out of their shoes trying to hit the ball too far. Don't worry about that and work on better rhythm and a smooth transition at the top of your swing. You'd probably benefit from hitting a three-wood more often than the driver. It has more loft, and it is much easier to hit. If you have an annoying group behind you and there's no room for them to play through just buy them a beer, give them a copy of Maxim, and tell them to chill. According to the authors of Keep Your Brain Alive, brushing your teeth with your nondominant hand flushes your brain with neurotrophin, which causes your dendrites to grow. Juice your brain!

1. Ten-Minute Fitness—No Sweat.
   No time to get to the gym for three hours of lung- searing training? No problem. You can stay healthy by accumulating as little as 30 minutes of exercise a day in three 10-minute bouts, three days a week, according to the American College of Sports Medicine’s 1998 position on cardiorespiratory fitness. “You don’t even have to break a sweat,” says Glenn A. Gaesser, Ph.D., an associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia.
   
   Some easy ways to sneak in those 10-minute sets of exercise:
   • Park your car in the lot spot farthest from your office and walk briskly, or get off the subway or bus a few stops before your usual one.
   • Have sex.
   • Climb the stairs of your building at lunchtime.
   • Have sex.
   • Go to a nightclub, skip the beer, find a babe, and dance.
   • Have sex. This time not with yourself.
   
   
2. Do Nothing; Burn Calories All Day.
   Muscle is up to 25 times more metabolically active than fat. In other words, while body fat just sits there taking up space like your portly uncle Mel (burning a maximum of two calories a day), a pound of muscle burns 35 to 50 calories a day just existing. This may not seem like a huge difference, but say you add four pounds of lean muscle to your frame. That’s as much as 200 extra calories burned off daily. Think of this as nearly three beers a day. Or, if you’re trying to drop some lard, a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories; gaining muscle mass will help you peel off pounds.
   
   
3. Spend Less Time Lifting Weights.
   You don’t have to waste your life humping iron to build that calorie-burning muscle mass. One set of high-intensity training is just as effective as three sets, say researchers at the University of Florida’s Center for Exercise Science. In one of their studies, two groups of 25 subjects each weight-trained three days a week. One group did just one set each of the given exercises, while the other did three. At the end of 14 weeks, the two groups experienced similar improvements in strength and muscle mass. But the one-set group had better social lives.
   
   “It’s the law of diminishing returns,” says exercise physiologist Gaesser. “Sure, you’ll get something out of doing more sets, but the biggest strength gains will be seen with just one.” Do one set each of eight exercises (eight to 12 repetitions per set) that focus on the major muscle groups: arms, shoulders, back, chest, abdomen, hips, and legs. For each exercise, use a weight that’s heavy enough that you cannot do more than 12 reps without help. The bare-minimum strength workout can be done in just 20 minutes twice a week.
4. Play with Your Food.
   Here’s a no-brainer way to ensure that you’re eating right, recommended by Yvonne Bronner, Sc.D., R.D., L.D., assistant professor and registered dietitian at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health: Fill your dinner plate so half of it is made up of vegetables and fruits; a quarter is meat; and a quarter is grains, such as rice, pasta, bread, or cereal.
   
   
5. Clobber Cholesterol.
   A new study suggests that the key cholesterol-lowering ingredients in soybean foods such as tofu are compounds known as isoflavones. Researchers at Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, North Carolina, found that when they gave patients with high cholesterol a daily soy beverage containing isoflavones, low-density lipoprotein (LDL)—or “bad” cholesterol—dropped by 10 percent. A group that drank soy without isoflavones experienced no change. Two good sources of isoflavones: Take Care Beverage Powder (800-445-3350), which doesn’t taste bad mixed in O.J., and Beanuts Roasted soy nuts (800-233-3668), also available in health food stores.
   
   
6. Men in Tights Don’t Pull Muscles.
   Want better endurance without having to add wind sprints to your workout? Wear those tight-fitting Lycra athletic shorts. A study at Pennsylvania State University showed that so-called compression shorts reduce fatigue- causing vibration in the muscles, which may translate into more power and fewer strained muscles. Tip: Wear a pair of baggy nylon shorts over the tights to avoid looking like you’re auditioning for Swan Lake.
   
   
7. Rise and Shine on Four Hours of Sleep.
   Optimally you should get nine hours of sleep. So how can you make a killer presentation at 2 p.m. after a night that ended at 3 a.m.? Strategic napping. A Swedish study on napping and alertness found that when people who got only four hours of sleep took a half-hour snooze late in the morning—about 30 minutes before they needed to perform a task—they scored as well on an alertness test as they did after they had seven hours of sleep.
   
   
8. Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill.
   Raise the treadmill to at least a 10 percent incline and make sure not to lean on the handlebars. You’ll burn up to 40 percent more calories than you do when it’s flat.

9. Get the Biggest Workout Bang for the Buck.
   At about 10 bucks, “a jump rope is the best fitness investment you can make,” says Edward J. Jackowski, author of the book Hold It! You’re Exercising Wrong (Simon & Schuster, 1994). “You can burn more fat with rope jumping than with any other exercise.” Rope jumping fries 600 to 1,000 calories an hour (at 120 jumps a minute) because it works the arms as well as the legs. (By comparison, a 175-pound man will burn roughly 550 calories in an hour of jogging.) If you jump for an hour three times a week, you can burn up a pound’s worth of calories. Rope jumping also improves cardiovascular fitness, balance, and agility, and it’s easier on your knees than running. Skipping rope does take more endurance and skill than running does. But with practice—and an incremental increase in the length of time you jump every week—within a couple of months you can skip like Ali used to, though we can’t guarantee you’ll float like a butterfly or sting like a bee.
   
   
10. Take a Stand.
    Whenever you talk on the phone, get up off your butt. By standing just one extra hour over the course of the day, a 175-pound man will burn 90 more calories, according to calculations in the Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. You’ll lose nearly seven pounds in a year just by standing around. Bonus: Your voice will sound deeper and richer and will have more impact if you stand up while you’re speaking.
    
    
11. Give Creaky Knees a 10-Second Lube.
    Legs stiff after sitting all day at the job? Lube them, says Richard T. Braver, a sports podiatrist with Active Foot & Ankle Care Center in Englewood, New Jersey. The following 10-second exercise, called quad pumps, will cause the cartilage to bathe the knees in nutrients and lubricants, thus reducing stiffness, he says: Sit on the edge of a chair and extend your legs, keeping your heels on the floor. Tighten your thigh muscles for a few seconds, then release. Repeat five times.

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