Grow Old, Stay Young
This seems like a riddle! How do you manage to grow old, yet stay young? Like any riddle the answer is clever, but simple. Don’t just believe all what you’ve read about ageing and the myths about being over 50 years and heading for oblivion. While getting older is inevitable, it does not mean that you’ll end up forgetfully hobbling about, feeling forgotten and alone. Quite the opposite!
Choose the other, better option where you are in your 70s or 80s and still doing the things you love to do. Look around. There are people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who are still biking, hiking, dancing, inventing, teaching, and having some of the best days of their lives because they didn’t believe what they read about getting older. Instead of meeting the expectation of becoming less, they decided to create the expectation of becoming more. They continue to learn and live life to its fullest and don’t have any plans of stopping soon. Their goal, and your goal, should be to live that riddle—grow old and yet stay young.
Update Your Thinking
To start, it’s definitely in your interest to update your views on ageing, body maintenance, and health in your over 50’s years. Not because you’re getting older, but because research shows how much of what we’ve been taught, even as recently as five to ten years ago, is wrong. (Several top-selling infomercial products come to mind, and you might even have the books and DVDs still in your home.) That means how you approach fitness needs to change, too.
Let’s think about how you’ve exercised up until now:
- Are you someone who doesn’t like to exercise and thinks, “I don’t want (or need) to lose weight, so I don’t really need to exercise.”?
- Are you an occasional exerciser who says, “I only need to lose a little bit of weight, so I’ll just do a little bit of exercise.”?
- Are you someone who feels like you need to lose a lot of weight, and you’re frozen in fear and dread because that means “a lot of exercise!”?
In all of these situations, exercise equals weight loss, but that’s not where we’re headed. Exercise classes may lead to weight loss, but it’s about so much more than that, especially as we get older. In fact, many of us are not at a healthy or unhealthy weight based on the amount of exercise we get (or don’t get). For instance, you can probably think of someone who is very active, yet significantly overweight. Or, you may know people who are at a healthy weight, but don’t attend exercise classes at all (which, as you’ll see, doesn’t make them “lucky”).
The truth is, particularly for seniors over 50 years, exercise, especially exercise classes, is important for many different health outcomes, and those other outcomes become more important as we get older. Of course, weight loss or weight management is one of the benefits, but quite possibly nowhere near the most important. But before you abandon reading on … let’s get real about our modern understanding of exercise because these factors can dramatically
improve your quality of life in so many ways including your ability to finally drop those unwanted kilos.
Exercise is the smartest investment you can make
Invest today for the rewards you earn tomorrow and beyond. Pay attention! Nursing homes, beds, and wheelchairs are filled with reasonably “healthy” people who are just too weak to care for their basic needs. Yet their strength was something always within their control. We need to be emphasizing the physical investments we should be depositing every day as much as the financial … especially when we’re still in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. Compound financial interest works much the same way as compounding fitness interest.
Earlier is always better, and it’s never too late to start. The health and fitness investments you make in your 40s, 50s, and 60s are deposits you’ll cash in on your 70s and 80s and even in your 90s.
The good news is it’s never too late and you are always in total control of you. Even better news, you don’t have to go it alone. At Renewed after 50, our goal is to become your reliable training partner for life and support you in your journey to stay healthy and fit. Remember: grow old, but stay young.
Investing in your health and wellbeing in your 50’s will not only yield the benefits of avoiding the old-age stereotype, it will also allow you to age gracefully. And the benefits of ageing gracefully go way beyond your physical health and strength – they extend to your social, mental and overall psyche and will become a source of pride that will be visible to all those around you – your family, children and grandchildren, and your friends.