Do you say you haven’t got time for exercise? Well, could you manage around 20 minutes a week? If so, you can make a major contribution to your health, fitness and longevity. That’s the conclusion of scientists who have been investigating High Intensity Training (HIT). In fact, HIT goes back to the work of Arthur Jones in the 1970s (and even to the work of the long-ignored Dr Gustav Zander in the late 19^th century) but the latest discoveries set a whole new standard. Provided you’re not in the fifth of the population who are ‘non-responders’ then, according to Jamie Timmons, professor of ageing biology at Birmingham University, you can get by with just three minutes of HIT a week (plus a little gentle exercise to warm up first).

Usually it’s all done on an exercise bike but the principle can be adapted for other activities. The regime is two minutes of gentle exercise to warm up followed by 20 seconds as fast as you can go, followed by another two minutes of gentle exercise and another 20 seconds and finally a third bout. Do that three times a week and that’s it. Four-fifths of people see worthwhile improvements in their insulin sensitivity (reducing the likelihood of diabetes) as well as their aerobic fitness and for the 15 per cent who are ‘super-responders’ the improvements are substantial.

But what interests me especially is the impact on happiness. It’s well established that exercise improves the level of several ‘happy chemicals’ in the blood but, as I reported in my book How To Be Happier, it’s always been thought the exercise needed to be vigorous and fairly prolonged. I’m going to give this new HIT protocol a try and I’ll let you know how I get on.

One of the big stories of the week is that eating red meat shortens life. Researchers led by An Pan at the Harvard School of Public Health studied data on 121,000 doctors and nurses covering a period of up to 22 years. It turns out that a daily serving of red meat increases the risk of dying from cancer by 13 per cent and of dying from heart disease by 19.5 per cent. The critical level seems to be 42 grams of red meat a day – below that you’re okay, the further you are above it the more dangerous it gets. And processed red meat (hamburgers and sausages, for example) turns out to be worse than unprocessed.

If you’d bought my book Help Yourself To Live Longer (Teach Yourself, 2010) you already would have known this. I pointed to studies which suggested that eating meat less than once a week improved life expectancy by three to four years.

Fat has a lot to do with it. So do nitrosamines. But there is another element. Other research suggests that a low protein diet promotes longevity. No one really knows exactly how much protein a human being requires but a widely accepted figure is 0.75g per kg of body weight per day. Meat is obviously high in protein. One good steak provides roughly double that amount. On the other hand, a vegan would struggle to reach it.

So if you want to live longer, become a vegan. There’s more. You’ll no longer be responsible for the suffering and death of farm animals. That should make you feel both relieved and happy.

How happy is it possible to be? I’m wondering, because the Office for National Statistics has just published the results of its preliminary survey into happiness in Britain. The key question was, ‘Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?’ On a scale of zero to ten, around three-quarters of Brits rated themselves a seven or higher. And just over a third actually rated their day a nine or a perfect ten.

Only 12 per cent scored themselves a five or lower, which is bad news for sales of my books How To Be Happier and Transform Your Life With NLP.

Nevertheless, I’m very pleased for all those people – if their scores paint a true picture.

But I don’t believe they do.

As a writer on happiness it might be a good idea for me to lie and say I’m a permanent 10 myself. But I’m not. The key question is this. What would 10/10 happiness feel like?

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