Thinking Ahead

It’s a brand new semester, a new year and a new decade. It feels good. I’ve always been a big fan of January. That’s when all of the magazines come out with resolutions to health and prosperity. It just feels like a new chapter. This year kind of feels like a new book. This year I turn 49. That means I can start counting down 365 days until I turn 50. Granted, I’m getting a little head start--my birthday is on March 23—but I have a lot to start working on. My goal is to be the healthiest, happiest 50 year old I can be. For starters that means being in great physical condition.

This is going to be a challenge for me because I’ve never developed the kinds of behavior that puts my physical well-being ahead of everything else. The first 25 years or so I got free pass. I’ve been blessed with good health. The last 23 years or so haven’t been so bad either, just little by little I’ve lost my upper body strength and somewhere along the way running became hard. This might have something to do with working at a desk and commuting two hours a day. I keep fantasizing about getting up even earlier then I do now, but that’s just not been happening for me. I’ve been really busy and when I am not busy I’m really tired. I’ve been really busy for the last 23 years. Ironically, much of what has occupied my time has been devoted to improving the quality of life of older people in one way or another.

I work at a research university in a school devoted to the study of aging—for the last 23 years. That means I’m exposed to cutting edge research on how to prevent diseases and the decline associated with old age. The last few years I’ve started to cringe a little when I see statistics related to morbidity and belly fat and lack of physical activity. I’ve somehow avoided getting diabetes (that I am genetically predisposed to) but I always sense it is lurking around the corner. I haven’t had a physical exam in the last 4 years, but when I did all my lab work was outstanding. But I’ve also gained 40 pounds in the last 4 years and I haven’t been at my ideal weight since having my second child in 1992.

Right now, I’m just dealing with the weight issue . Later on I’ll deal with the supplements, exercise, meditation and the three million other things I know I should be doing to ensure that the next 50 years are healthy and happy years. This blog is intended to chronicle behavior change- day-by-day. I am doing this to help motivate myself and hopefully motivate other people like me. I don’t think that people that don’t exercise are lazy, especially people who work full time and then go home to be a mommy or a daddy. It’s really hard to do everything we need to do in one day. I don’t have time to write a long blog entry and I don’t think anyone has the time to read one. But if this can serve as encouragement to busy people that need to reinvest in themselves, then it is time well spent. I plan on this being the longest blog entry I make. I won’t tell you what food I consumed or what exercises I did, but how each day I changed my behavior.

I came across a statistic while doing some research on a talk I was giving on healthy aging---every seven seconds in America someone turns 50. Next year that includes me. I started thinking about all the things I know about healthy aging and all of the things I don’t do. I needed the motivation, for lack of better words, to get my head in the game. I know I have the knowledge and the desire but without making significant changes in my behavior, my 50^th birthday will come in 2011 and I’ll be in just a little worse shape then I am now.

I have neglected myself for 23 years, I can take one year of my life and make my health a priority. After all the world might end in 2012 and I want to be fit enough to see it through.