As I was coming out of the College cafeteria last week, I ran into a former student. I love seeing students, so we stopped to chat. He was always in fabulous shape, so as we chatted, he noted I was only drinking a smoothie. As we talked about health and his work as a personal trainer, my age came up. He was stunned to hear that I was 47, though I was in my early 30s at best. So, I told him my story about my transition to better health that began in my early 40s.
I was an average athlete as a teen, but didn’t really have good health habits into my 20s. I didn’t go crazy, but I certainly was becoming a Coca-Cola addict, and was never afraid of another slice of pizza. Of course during my own College days, I was very active in life, playing basketball and other sports. I got married at 25, entered seminary and started coaching swimming. Through that time, I was probably edging up to about 200 pounds, but I didn’t look too bad. Then, in 1993, my work shifted to a church stint for 3 years where the weight started to gain. By the time I started working at Valencia in 2002, I was probably weighing about 215.
I turned 40 in 2004, and it was about that time that I found myself breathing heavily while climbing one flight of stairs to teach a class. My parents have not always been in good shape, and with my age, I had a sudden epiphany that if I wanted to avoid the situation my parents were in, I had to start now. As I wrote in my book Success for Life: 77 Hardest Questions College Students Ask I knew that weighing about 225 was not good for me, especially at about 30-35% body fat. So, I came home that day and took action:
My wife had been on Weight Watchers and I decided to join her. Under their teaching, I began to learn some of these basic principles. I made some serious changes to achieve my goals. The most important was that I stopped drinking Coke. Typically, I could consume about one 2 liter of Coke in a day. To stay on the program, I had to make a change. So, I started drinking more water, juices and Diet Coke. While some may argue that the Diet Coke is not much better for me, it certainly cut down on my sugar intake. By late 2005 (about a year later), I had lost over 35 pounds down to 185.
That’s right–I lost about 35-40 pounds. And you can too. How, you ask? Well, there are many simple plans and many complicated plans involving a lot of different advice. I know it’s challenging, but let me simplify for you. Change what you eat. Eat less generally, especially junky foods (candies, fast foods, sugary drinks, alcoholic drinks, etc…). Do something every day that makes your heart work to make your metabolism increase.
Don’t like that simple list? How about this:
- Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life. Don’t think of it as exercise. Think of it as sending a constant ‘grow’ message…as telling your body to get stronger, more limber, functionally younger, in the only language your body understands. Do it because it’s the only thing that works.
- Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life. Hard aerobics, working up a good sweat, is our favorite exercise rhythm because [it] brings out our youngest and best biology: strong, fast, energetic, and optimistic all day long. Tell your body it’s springtime.
- Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life. Generally, we aren’t aware of nerve decay as we get older, but it’s the main reason our joints wear out, our muscles get sloppy, and our ability to be physically alert and powerful begins to fade. And it is reversible with strength training.
- Spend less than you make. Time to quit playing and come inside. Come inside your income. Try to do it early. As with smoking, you can recover. It takes time and earlier is better, but do it.
- Quit eating crap! Never go on a diet again. The only way to lose weight is to embark on a program of steady, vigorous exercise, avoiding the worst foods (french fries, almost all fast food, processed snacks with names that end with the letter “O”), and eating less of everything.
- Care. There have to be people and causes you care about. Doesn’t seem to matter much what the causes are. They don’t have to be important to society or make money, as long as they’re important to you.
- Connect and commit. There is a terrible temptation, in our 60s and 70s, to close up shop and narrow our lives. In most cases, retirement already does that, and it’s tempting to just go along with the program, get narrower and narrower. Well, don’t. It’s killing us. We have to exercise our social, pack-animal gifts as vigorously as we exercise our bodies. That means adding friends, doing more stuff, getting out there, and being involved.
You’ll note of course that 4, 6, and 7 aren’t exactly about physical health, but they do relate. Look, I write more here about working out. You can read more of my story in my book. You can access the same resources I used: Weight Watchers, Body for Life, Five Factor Diet. You could go hard core with something like P90X. Or you can keep it simple like Harry’s rules above. But do it.
I write here all the time about the things that I believe will help you live well. I tell my students that my #1 goal is to help them succeed, and so it is here. What I write to you is to help you. Most of the time, I write about philosophical and spiritual truths, but there is also the need for each of us to simply be more healthy. You won’t succeed if you aren’t living well with poor health.
Almost a decade later, I still weigh between 185-190. My body fat is about 17-22%. I could and probably should push to reduce that back down to where it was at my best in 2008 (around 13-15%). But I walk a lot, still do various kinds of simple work including some yoga, simple cardio and some resistance work. I don’t lose my breath climbing stairs.
Like I said, my student couldn’t believe my age. Now, looking young is something in my genes—my dad always looked about a decade younger than he was, but I know that so much of how I look is about attitude. Spending the past decade getting into good shape has helped my attitude, and that helps me continue to look and feel young.
I know you can do it too!