If you want to be skinny, healthy and not suffer from soul-crushing loneliness, researchers say you should try living closer to where you work.
Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.
So economists who have studied commute times and how they affect us have found that we’re basically tricking ourselves into thinking we want a big backyard in the suburbs. Apparently what we really want is more free time to pursue our own happiness in an Escape From New York-esque urban hellscape.
