When we age, we notice that several different things seem to “happen” as the years go by. When you think about how you can lead the best life possible for you, it is important that you are able to deal with each of these aspects of aging in the most constructive manner possible. It helps to understand what you can do to deal with each of these conditions, and what the implications are for your overall good health.

First of all, you calendar age will always be whatever it is. We all age one day every day, and one year every year, etc. This is the reality of all living things. However, by being physically healthy and vibrant, we can enjoy our lives to the fullest as we go through our lives. “Anti-aging” means keeping your body and mind in the best condition possible for as long as you can.

There are four major dimensions of aging that impact all of us. They are:
• Basic Health: bodily functions, heart and circulation, structural integrity, etc.
• Physical appearance: skin, shape, hair, etc.
• Physical viability: strength, agility, physical reserve, flexibility, balance, etc.
• Mindset: living vs existing, depression, creative life vs survival

These dimensions of your well being are all interrelated. If you maintain good general health, your appearance will be better, your mindset will be better and your overall viability will be adequate. If you are in very poor physical health, the chances are that you won’t look very good, and your mindset and physical viability will be poor.

Let’s take a look at how each of these dimensions are impacted as you age, and what you can do to enhance your chances for optimizing each of them.

There is nothing that will reverse aging. But, there are things that can be done in each of the areas where aging occurs. The object should be to build as sound and healthy a body as possible. A good strategy for building a body that is both functional and attractive is to work on all the different aspects of health to get the best result. Relying on one or two approaches to countering age related effects will yield modest or minimal results. Working on all four areas will produce the maximum benefit possible.

Basic Physical Health

Most people equate being “healthy” with having no major physical problems. As long as they can “get around” and do what they habitually do, that seems to be good enough. The problem is that in the physical world, bodies deteriorate unless they are properly maintained. Many people are simply not motivated to do the most elementary forms of proper maintenance. Thus, they are overweight, have high blood pressure, limited cardiovascular function, little physical strength and many chronic limitations.

One response is to use prescription drugs to manage the symptoms of deterioration. Medication can mask chronic pain, help lower blood pressure and/or cholesterol, stimulate heart function, etc. Unfortunately, the use of drugs to counter the effects of deteriorated basic physical health allows the person to continue living, but does not restore the lost function to the level it was before deteriorating.

It is inevitable that as we age, we are likely to need more visits to the doctor than we did as teen agers. However, many people age far more rapidly than they need to because they pay so little attention to properly caring for their basic physical health. The doctor can help you when you are sick or injured, but doctors can’t perform miracles with bodies that are totally degenerated by lack of proper care.

If you want to have a long and active “senior adult” life, it is imperative that you keep your body fat at a proper level (low), eat properly (caloric intake and nutrients), and maintain yourself through regular exercise. If you don’t do those things, the doctor can’t do much to slow the degeneration process.

Physical Appearance

As we age, our skin, hair and physical shape may change dramatically. The most common response to these changes is to buy products that will regenerate the skin, or use cosmetics to cover outward blemishes. Cosmetic surgery is often used to alter the appearance of both the face and body.

Relying exclusively on make-up and plastic surgery is a strategy that will slow degeneration, but will be relatively ineffective if used as an exclusive tactic. There are clearly a few (very few) products that can help regenerate aging skin. Cosmetic surgery can remove unwanted tissue, but do nothing to build an attractive body underneath the skin.

The greatest impact on physical appearance comes from shedding unwanted fat, and getting into good physical condition. Cosmetics can dramatically improve how you may look (until they wash off), but you don’t want to have “great skin” and a “train wreck” body. As noted, there are some cosmetic products that can help restore skin and hair, but to get the most out of them, it is essential to build the body to go with the face.

Physical Viability

One of the biggest problems in getting older is the loss of the ability to do a full range of physical activities. People become restricted in what they can lift, how far they can walk, how hard it is to breathe, climbing stairs, their overall energy levels, and so forth. Muscles become atrophied, bone structures become distorted, and life can become a constant struggle to deal with chronic pain, get from place to place, and carry on routine daily activities.

If there is one place where the doctor cannot do anything to help slow down the effects of aging, it is in the area of physical viability. Despite what many people appear to hope (believe), taking pills or supplements will do nothing to impact the essential components of physical viability:
• Physical strength
• Cardiovascular capacity
• Balance and coordination
• Flexibility
These capabilities can only be achieved through a structured program of regular exercise. Doctors can offer temporary relief from pain, but cannot provide medications that will turn someone from a physical blob to a superman.

Combined with proper diet, a regular exercise program will dramatically impact an individual’s basic physical health, as well as their appearance, and their overall physical viability. The synergistic effect of “getting in shape” cannot be over emphasized.

Mindset

The mind and the body are intimately connected. The impact of a person’s mental outlook on how rapidly they age cannot be understated. The literature on the positive and negative impacts of mindset is vast. Mental outlook is absolutely critical to having the best life you can possibly lead. This discussion alone is worth several books, but here are a few high points.

First of all, a positive mindset can have a huge impact on overall health, physical appearance, and the capacity to build physical viability. Being positive need not mean being unrealistic, but it does provide a strong support for doing the things that are good for a person’s health, and avoiding the things that are bad.

Conversely, a negative mindset can be very corrosive when it comes to building a healthy body. Negativity can prevent people from taking the steps needed to build their health. It can also lead to depression, despair and social isolation. All of these things have a big negative effect on building a physically viable body.

The positive synergy between a “can do” mindset building a more viable and attractive body is huge. I’m not talking about false beliefs about possible outcomes. The key is that a positive mindset promotes enthusiasm, focus and discipline. All of these are essential to succeed in doing something that requires work and determination. A positive mindset is also essential to seeing life as an opportunity to grow and thrive, not merely survive.

There are literally reams of material that can help you transform your mindset so that it supports a joy of living rather than merely surviving. Keeping a positive attitude is one of the biggest single things that will help you make the most of your senior years. I have several resources listed on this site. You can click on the tab and check them out.

Conclusion

From the very brief discussion of the four aspects of aging, it should be evident that if you are serious about developing a program to maximize your chances of thriving during your adult senior years, you need to focus attention on all four areas discussed above. Most people tend to focus on one or two at most, usually appearance or medications for basic physical health. You will obtain the greatest effect if you recognize that all four are critical to your long term success.

If you take good care of all aspects of your body’s health and you will be rewarded many times over. As singer Jody Messina says “you only get one ride around the sun”. Let’s make the most of it.

Get Going

You can get rolling on having a better life, and beginning the practices that will help you be the very best you can be by checking out the book A Guide to Getting Younger After 60. In that volume, you will find a treasure trove of information you need to get yourself going in the right direction. Check the tab on this page, and find out more about how you can create a great body and the life that goes with it.

Enjoy the Journey!

Richard

Most weight loss programs start by putting you on a very restricted diet. To drop “weight” you stay on the calorie restricted diet until you have reached your “goal weight”. In this article I want to suggest a different way for you to lose fat, and get in good physical condition. Most importantly, this approach may be far more effective in helping you keep the fat off once you have reached your goal.

First of all, when we talk about “weght loss” we mean “FAT loss”. The goal of any nutrition and training program is to reduce the amount of body fat. Simply dropping “weight” is not a very good indicator of much since: 1) it is easy to burn off muscle; and 2) simply reducing your weight may be a good idea, but you need to have a healthy body mass to be able to look good and do what you want.

Most “weight loss” programs begin by introducing a very restricted diet, and a few will have you do some exercise. A few programs begin with extreme calorie restriction and have you avoid any physical training for a month or so. In both cases, you will lose “weight”, but a huge portion of it will be muscle. This approach can undercut your long term success in a couple of ways.

First, your muscle requires a lot more calories to sustain than your fat. If you add muscular body weight your base metabolism will go up to support the added muscle. If you lose muscle mass, you will need far fewer calories to support your body than if you had the same weight in muscle.

Second, to lose fat, you have to increase your activity level. This means physical training. Less muscle on your body means you can’t train as hard as you could if you had more muscle. Thus, your fat loss is slowed because you can’t train very hard.

You should be aware that any program involving caloric restriction will result in the loss of some muscle mass. Any competitive body builder, wrestler or athlete who competes in weight divisions will tell you this. The trick is to minimize the loss of muscle mass while you are burning fat.

The “new” approach to losing fat that I’m going to suggest to you essentially of reverses the conventional approach to “weight loss”. What I suggest you consider, particularly if you have been well conditoned in the past, is to begin your fat loss program by building your muscular body weight first. After you have built up your strength, you can begin to restrict your calories in order to burn off the fat. The advantage of this is:

1) You will have a strong muscular system that will allow you to train much with much more intensity than if you start out in a relatively weak condition.

2) You will build muscle mass that will burn more calories than a comperable amount of fat.

3) You will develop some disciplene doing physical training. You will begin to value your fitness, and introducing calorie restriction into your program may be easier as a consequence.

In short, the “new approach” to fat loss is to begin by emphasizing weight training and build up your muscle mass. When you start training, you should eliminate the “junk” portion of your diet (particularly sugar), but at the beginning, you will not focus on dramatically reducing your calories. Your first task is to build strength and flexibility. When you have been on a strength building program for two to three months, you can then begin cutting your calories.

When you build muscle, you may find that your scale weight acatully goes up….even though your size goes down. Muscle is much more compact than fat, and you will often be shocked to find that it may look like you dropped 20 pounds when your actual “weight loss” may be 5 pounds. The message is that you should be much more concerned with your percentage of body fat than simply focused on your “weight”.

If you want to find a solid weight training program to begin your strength training, I suggest that you check out my book A Guide to Getting Younger After 60. I have included six months of weight training work outs in this book that you can use to build up your muscle, and begin getting in excellent physical shape. Check the tab at the top of this page.