Thanksgiving has come and gone, but you can earn extra credits at Healthy Lifestyle U. if you keep on feeding that gratitude.

Why? Because happiness researchers (yep, these are real, paying jobs) report the same result, over and over again: Expressing your gratitude on a regular basis has many positive benefits, including better health, healthier relationships and thunderbolts of creativity.

What? It doesn't cure baldness? The research continues. It's actually called the "science of gratitude." I thank you in advance for reading more about its positive impact on your well-being.

HOW TO GET STARTED. How or when you give thanks is, of course, up to you. Once you decide to do it, make it part of your practice. You can express gratitude with regular entries in a journal. You can give thanks anytime: before or after a meal; first thing in the morning or just before going to bed; with or without bending knees, clasping hands or imagining a supreme being with golden hair on a jeweled throne (and I don't mean Donald Trump).

JUST DO IT. Some people — we call them saints — find the time to write letters of gratitude to people on a regular basis. A quick text or a heart-shaped emoticon won't cut it. We're talking an actual letter, handwritten, that arrives in the mail in an envelope, with a stamp.

You know from personal experience that there is a great shared pleasure in thanking someone face to face for packing up your groceries or putting a plate of delicious food in front of you. You just say thank you. It makes a difference.

BUT HOW? How do you develop a lifelong attitude of gratitude? To quote the omniscient Nike ad man: Just do it! It's the doing of it — over time — that eventually makes it a habit, one that packs a double wallop of well-being; it makes both the giver and the receiver feel great.

SAY WHAT? How does expressing gratitude make you happier? At the cellular level (it's real science, remember), your thoughts trigger biological responses of all kinds. It's why guys think about baseball statistics during sex. When you think and say "Thank you," your body is flooded with the neurochemical equivalent of Snickers bars.

It's also true that you shape your reality by what you focus your mind on. If you spend your day thinking about mistakes you made in the past or crippling fears for the future, it's very easy to forget all the joy and beauty and good things in your life.

For many, that's the challenge of this election.

IS BEING IN THE MOMENT A SCAM? Ruth Whippman thinks it is. In a Nov. 27 New York Times op-ed piece called "Actually, Let's Not Be in the Moment," she writes:

"The advice to be more mindful often contains a hefty scoop of moralizing smugness, like a stern teacher scolding us for failing to concentrate in class.

"The implication is that by neglecting to live in the moment we are ungrateful and unspontaneous, we are wasting our lives, and therefore if we are unhappy, we really have ourselves to blame.

"It is, of course, easier and cheaper to blame the individual for thinking the wrong thoughts than it is to tackle the thorny causes of his unhappiness. So we give inner-city schoolchildren mindfulness classes rather than engage with education inequality, and instruct exhausted office workers in mindful breathing rather than giving them paid vacations or better health care benefits."

Whippman sets it up as an either-or situation, but it's really not. Now is the time to do both. Of course we need to tackle the underlying reasons for unhappiness in this country — the income gap, the joblessness, the hopelessness, the inadequate and expensive medical care, the deteriorating schools, the toxic drugs, foods and beverages advertised and sold to innocent consumers who then suffer the consequences.

But backtracking from the huge benefits of being in the moment, of feeling calm and expressing gratitude, makes no sense. Mindfulness prepares us to be vigilant. It declutters our minds. All of us are grateful for something in our life — our family, our friends, our freedom — and if that's the beginning of common ground as we work to alleviate the suffering around us, then we will be stronger together.

ENERGY EXPRESS-O! REALLY?

"Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it." — Jane Wagner

Marilynn Preston — healthy lifestyle expert, well being coach and Emmy-winning producer — is the creator of Energy Express, the longest-running syndicated fitness column in the country. She has a website, marilynnpreston.com, and welcomes reader questions, which can be sent to [email protected]. She also produces EnExTV, a digital reincarnation of her award-winning TV series about sports, fitness and adventure, for kids of all ages, at youtube.com/EnExTV and facebook.com/EnExTV. To find out more about Preston and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.