Why Now?
Getting enough exercise is a pretty universal challenge for everyone at every stage of life, but I think I would get broad agreement that it is especially important when you get to a certain age. This is not rocket science, everyone understands that you should moderate what and how much you eat and drink and how much physical activity you get. Naturally, this is a game that gets played less in the conception and more in the execution, but there are subtleties as well. For instance, it can be hard to know exactly the things you should or should not eat. Eggs used to be very good for you because they were sources for protein, but as cholesterol came into focus, they became kryptonite to healthy people. At the risk of stating the obvious in saying that moderation is the key to everything in life, the skull and crossbones label on eggs seems to have been revised with the view that they are fine if you don’t overdo it. Nonetheless, I’m already betting that someone far more up to date than me will comment that they are either way worse or way better than I am implying, based on the latest research. Many weight loss programs have decided that making certain things inaccessible to dieters is not the path to success, since the biggest part of the battle is keeping the weight off in the real world for the long haul rather than avoiding something pernicious in the short run. As for the other side of the equation, the exercise component, there is perhaps a bit less subtlety because more is generally always better unless you really overdo it and damage yourself physically. But, the real trick comes in with sustainability, not unlike the dietary issue. If you put in place a drastic regime or one that simply does not appeal to you much, you run the risk of backsliding and gradually stepping away from the program and landing back where you started or worse.
People start and stop diets and exercise programs at all sorts of times of the year, but usually there is some motivating factor which weighs into the calculus. The most common prompt is the New Year with its related resolutions. Since these are two things we all know we should do (eat better and exercise more), I’m betting that something in the range of 85% of all New Year’s resolutions relate to some version or a combination of the two. That is a somewhat artificial bit of motivation, so I’m guessing that the success rate for that cycle of initiatives is lower than when the motivation is a bit more rational and less random. The event-driven motivation such as a wedding or some gathering of family or friends is, I’m sure, high on the list and depending on the degree of direct involvement (like being the actual bride or groom who will have to look at wedding photos of your then state of personal conviction to good health for years to come). Life changes are always good fresh-start motivators. Say you are moving or starting a new job or matriculating into some educational institution, you clearly want to make a good first impression and be all that you want to be for the new crowd you will be encountering. Once in a while a life event, such as the birth of a child or grandchild can provide the needed impetus to get healthy. The drivers focused on good health rather than good looks seem like they should be more powerful, but the human psyche is a strange enough beast that looking good may still trump feeling good or being good.
Sometimes the push that makes all the difference is a desire to change one’s life course. A divorce or rejection can cause us to decide once and for all that we are going to clean up our act and be the type of person who is desirable to others and we just hope that if that works we will be smart enough to stay the course and not fall back into our old ways only to undo the good we have done for our lifestyle and presumable happiness with the new person we have become.
One of the more sobering reasons for getting on with a healthier regime is a medical event that makes you realize your weaknesses and come face to face with your own mortality. That is clearly the scared straight path, but since most people really do know that they have been hurting themselves by ignoring sound practices, it is unclear how effective that event can be longer term. I once met a heart transplant patient who’s new heart was failing due to his falling back into his old unhealthy ways. He knew it meant that he would not be a candidate for another new heart and yet all he could do was shrug with a c’est la vie attitude. We all know what we should do, but as I said before, the devil is in the doing.
I could probably go on for quite a bit longer discussing the various ways one can fool oneself into attacking the root causes of imbalances in our physical lives. I consider myself an experienced amateur at best in that realm since I have never had a particularly good diet or exercise regime. I could conjecture why that is, but what’s the point when you are almost 70 years old. What I know is that it has been easier for me to manage as a man than it would have been had I been a woman. That’s unfair, but true. Men can get away with size better than women can. And there are many advantages to size for a man. The obvious ones are that size intimidates and that size both tends to stand out in one way and to disguise in another. The less obvious but equally valuable thing about size is that moving a larger bulk around takes more energy and burns more calories so there is a self-fulfilling benefit that allows larger people to eat more because they burn more so long as they remain somewhat mobile and do the kinds of activities that boys and men generally like to do anyway.
Where this has generally left me is that my size has been less of a constraint either on my activities or my happiness. As such, it has taken greater motivation to fix the obvious shortcomings with it. Guys tend to default to the exercise side of the equation to lose weight, but I think its fair to say that I have tended to focus far more on the intake because it was always the harder part to get hold of for me. And despite numerous and repeated programs (non-resident and resident from Pritikin to Duke), the thing that finally made the difference in my intake levels was bariatric surgery that mechanically restricted intake and gave me prosthetically what other people had been given organically for their whole lives. 120 pounds later, it was clear that fixing the exercise part of the equation remained a big challenge. Working life provides lots of excuses for not exercising, so retirement, by definition, opens you up to address the issue if you are even a little bit inclined to do so.
Without conscious effort, my retirement did just that and I dropped 30 pounds in my first year out here and I suspect it was from increased physical activity. But that stopped and left me well short of a tenable goal. the passage of time and aging catches up with you physically and you start to hurt more and become less mobile. Less mobility translates into less exercise and less exercise translates into a more challenging caloric balance for those who don’t want to calibrate their intake based on activity. That multiplier effect starts reversing itself.
One day recently I just woke up and decided to go sign up for the gym, start a twice weekly training program, swim laps and take aqua aerobics three or four times a week and go to a stretch clinic twice a week. Suddenly, I have launched a self-improvement binge focused on exercise and improved mobility. I have been asked why now?, and I have no good answer to that. There is no life event or change on the horizon. I have had no medical call of duty. I am happy and content even though a bit sore here and there. I just decided to do it. I guess sometimes, that’s enough and since it is all a good thing, no one seems inclined to challenge me on that too much. No let’s see if I can sustain it….
Update – I’ve now done three training sessions, swum laps five times and gone to Acquaaerobics once. I am on a 5-6 day/week workout schedule and feeling a bit better already.