A series of 36 blogs that will change how you think about your body and your health and how YOU age.
Become a Lifelong Learner
Because I have ventured onto this path of Health, Wellness, Fitness, Nutrition and Agelessness, I came to realize that I had to become a lifelong learner and so must you. It is a never-ending journey of discovery that we are on, and it is the process and not the destination.
On our path to optimal health, we will explore the misunderstood concepts of aging, diet, mental health, lifestyle choices, exercise and diet. As we look at these, you will be able to make personalized choices on how to nourish and strengthen your body that are adaptable, sustainable and appropriate to your ever changing stage of life.
Our focus will be on healthy aging, and how we benefit from nutritious whole foods in combination with enjoyable, sustainable, physical activities. With these, we will incorporate healthy mental acuity, mindfulness and a calmness of mind. We will look at lifestyle choices that can be easily incorporated into our lives.
The end result is that we will be healthier, stronger and more engaged in our lives. The point is the journey, not the destination.
You can be your own teacher for your entire life. You need to know where to get accurate information, and you need to know when you are being sold a load of baloney. One source of information is the Internet. It is very fast and easily accessible, but it is filled with a great deal of false information. Always keep in mind how reliable the data is when you are taking advice. Just because someone is wearing a white coat or looks to be in perfect physical health doesn’t mean they are a reliable source… and that includes me; always be skeptical… become a student and not a follower.
The goal here is to find a way to live our lives with the most health, longevity, happiness and freedom to make our own educated choices. My belief is that there is no need to maintain weight by dieting, severe calorie restriction or deprivation. There is no need to be counting the minutes in our workout program just to get it out of the way for the day because exercise is moving to live, food and nutrition should be chosen with joy and enthusiasm and work for you, not what works for someone else. What typically does not work for most are strict, rigid weight loss programs, very controlled exercise routines that simple wear on us and aren’t very sustainable. Processed foods, drugs, pills and substitutes for real food is a growing problem; one that we will talk about more as we move further along.
Diet for me is a way of eating as opposed to a way to lose weight. I will focus on healthy, fresh whole foods as a style of nutrition. Our physical activity should be enjoyable, fun and the by-product should be exercise. Well thought out activities also make us stronger and healthier and enable us to live a longer healthier life… they need to be enjoyable. Weight loss and physical fitness should be a by-product of enjoying healthy, nutritious whole foods while engaging in activities that we enjoy doing.
A few rules as we get started:
Make small changes in our diet and exercise… if we want to get to a new place, we must do it slowly.
Moderation, moderation, moderation. Our bodies are designed to come back to a neutral position… it’s called homeostasis, staying the same. Our bodies do not like extremes in weight loss, weight gain, overtraining and so forth.
Everyone is different. What works for one may not work for another, and this applies to everything. So in the end, we must make up our own minds about health, nutrition, fitness and lifestyle. There are some parameters that we can follow which I will guide you , but in the end, the choice is yours.
Over the next 4 months, we will talk about Aging – how and why we age, and Nutrition – whole foods and not just a diet. We are going to find joy in good healthy food and find a way for you to eat healthy for a lifetime. With exercise, we will focus on moving to live and not the work part of a workout. Getting fit should be enjoying the process and looking forward to getting in some movement for that day, whatever that is for you.
We will discuss lifestyle, you, your body and your environment so you can make healthy choices for a long productive life. Remember the Latin phrase “mens sana in corpore sano”, the desire for a sound mind in a sound body.
