The title’s a bit of a tease, but it’s far from yellow journalism. You’ll see that soon enough - if you maintain the proper perspective.

To insure that happens, here’s what I’ll ask of you. It’s something that could also help your mental health.

Think about somebody who can really get your goat. Maybe that guy at work who thinks he knows it all - and never knows when to shut up.

Whom you pick really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you now think about yourself at a time when you were really young and bad feelings could easily overwhelm you.

When I was five or so, for example, I was with about 15 older kids and we were picking teams to play football. One of the captains I really liked and looked up to.

He picked me - but made fun of the size of my ears while doing so. He tugged on my earlobe and shouted out, “I’ll take the guy who’s earrrisistible.” Even the kids who hadn’t been picked yet laughed.

Now it’s time for you to remember something similar from your childhood. What was said or done really doesn’t matter, only that it stung enough that you still can recall it.

You know what else really matters?

That the somebody who caused that sting was stung at least one time similarly for sure. Come to terms with that and any ill feelings you still have towards him should go out the door.

And empathy should enter. Compassion and forgiveness might even just follow.

How’s that for a kumbaya moment?

But no, we’re not about to lock arms and sing uplifting spiritual songs.

View those mental gymnastics you just performed as a needed prelude so that what comes next gets your utmost attention - without getting your goat. Because if you don’t take what comes next with a good dose of Zen and you like to work out hard, it could be a real goat-getter.

It’s a study that suggests vigorous exercise may not really be good for weight loss. Worse, it could even lead to weight gain.

But before we discuss that study, we’ll enlist the help of Dr. Gabe Mirkin to review some of the good vigorous exercise can do.

Mirkin’s the author of several books on sports medicine, nutrition, and health - as well as the creator of the mnemonic acronym RICE to remember how to treat sprained muscles. In “All Exercise is Good, and Vigorous Exercise is Better,” an article you can access via the Search Box at RoadBikeRider.com, he cites an analysis published in 2021 by JAMA Internal Medicine of more than 400,000 participants that found “the greater the proportion of vigorous exercise to total exercise, the less likely a person was to die from a heart attack, die from cancer, or die from any cause during the 10 study years.”

And to hammer home his article is aptly named, Mirkin mentions four more studies. One shows vigorous exercise to be more effective than casual exercise in preventing heart disease.

Another asserts it has the same effect on diabetes, while a third determines it does more to promote fitness and oxygen processing than moderate exercise. The fourth finds vigorous exercise more effective than moderate exercise at preventing weight gain.

But the finding of the fourth is what a study published in Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise about a month ago calls into question. In fact, it suggests the opposite.

The researchers came to that conclusion after they took male mice and broke them into three groups. One group was not allowed to exercise, while the other two others did so for 30 minutes on an exercise wheel, but at different degrees of intensity.

One group was forced to keep the effort moderate. The other had no choice but to run vigorously.

The next day, only the mice that had exercised vigorously weighed more than before “despite no observed changes in food intake.” Now before you say, “No way,” here’s a possible one.

That the vigorous exercise induced a “reduction in subsequent” non-exercise physical activity and body temperature in the mice by altering the production of corticosterone, a hormone that functions in mice pretty close to the way cortisol does in humans.

And cortisol does a great deal in your body, affecting virtually every organ in some way. For example, it affects blood sugar levels and how your body metabolizes fats, proteins, and carbohydrates - both of which can influence weight loss or weight gain.

So am I about to suggest you stop doing vigorous exercise as the result of one study? No way. I’m the guy, lest you forget, who’s not content unless his two longest morning bike rides each week are vigorous enough that they transform the nicety of an afternoon nap into a necessity.

But I do agree wholeheartedly with a crucial point the study’s lead researcher Takashi Matsui, PhD, makes in an interview with Medical News Today. That not only do exercisers naturally develop ways to reduce energy expenditure during exercise, but they also “tend to compensate for the energy expenditure of exercise by reducing energy use in other activities.

Therefore, it’s crucial to recognize the beneficial effects of maintaining an active lifestyle beyond just exercise.”