Fit at 57, and I hope to be “Younger Next Year”

The authors of the “Younger Next Year” books offer two life paths for those in their 50s and 60’s and beyond. “Chart 1” and “Chart 2” here represent those two different paths.

The first is how life goes without exercise. The forces of aging contribute to a steady decline until death. The second chart represents life with a sensible path of exercise. The reasons for this are becoming medically clearer: when you exercise, your muscles generate a particular growth hormone that “tidies up” your whole body. It fights and even reverses the forces of decay that tend to lead to what we think of as a typical path to old age.

The program they recommend involves about 45 minutes of exercise a day, six days a week. That may be daunting, but as with anything, it’s more important to start, without overdoing it. You may not be able to go out and walk for an hour. Maybe even doing that would cripple you for the next week. If that’s the case, if your first sixty minutes comes in the form of six daily 10-minute walks, that’s fine.

Here is why you should get started:

… let us have a candid moment. We are deadly serious. The stakes here— the potential changes in the rest of your life— are enormous. Think about the following numbers for a minute: … over 50 percent of all illness and injuries in the last third of your life can be eliminated by changing your lifestyle in the way we suggest. Not delayed until you’re a little older. Eliminated! Along with all the misery, expense and lost joy that goes with being seriously sick or badly hurt. You may want to think about that for a minute. You may also want to think about the fact that 70 percent of premature death is lifestyle-related. “Premature” means before you’re deep in your eighties.

Crowley, Chris; Lodge, Henry S. Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond (pp. 7-8). Workman Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

Even more important, for me, is [the fact] that some 70 percent of the “normal” decay associated with aging— the weakness, the sore joints, the lousy balance, the feeling crappy— 70 percent of that horror can be forestalled almost until the end [of your life]. That is a huge difference. I had some interludes of normal aging in my life, when my joints hurt so much that regular walking was painful and I looked for the cutout in the curb so I wouldn’t have to step up three inches to get on the sidewalk. Think about that. Think about being so puny that you have to rock just a little to get out of a normal armchair. That stuff happens. It will happen to you. It really, really will. And it doesn’t have to.

Crowley, Chris; Lodge, Henry S. Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond (p. 8). Workman Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

This book goes into great detail about the emerging science to show how all of this works. I highly recommend it.