Fit Over Fifty - 5 Fast Facts
There’s an old saying that goes something like this:
“When is the best time to plant a fruit tree?”
“30 years ago.”
“When is the second best time to plan a fruit tree?”
“Today.”
The same holds true for fitness. Yes, the best time to get and stay fit is when you’re young, but the second best time to get fit is today.
If you’re over 50, you may have heard (or experienced) that getting fit, losing fat, building muscle is harder when you’re older. That’s partially true, but not for the reasons you might think. Here are 5 fast facts that might help you navigate your fitness.
1. Habits are formed over years. If you’re not fit today, it’s due to the past 10 or 20 years of your life, not what you did or didn’t do yesterday. Your eating habits, your activity habits, your mental and emotional habits – all formed over many years. So, when you begin to change those habits, you’re sometimes pulling yourself out of a very deep rut. So, it can take longer to change those habits. Here’s the good news about that. The longer you work at slowly changing habits, the more ingrained they become. So, if you were to be able to magically lose 30 pounds of fat, you would still be carrying around all the habits that got you there. So, begin the journey and appreciate that it will take time. That’s actually the power of slow.
2. Things take longer. Be patient. As in #1, habits may take longer to make or to break. But other things may take more time as well. When you were 18, if you tweaked your knee, you probably iced it a few times and were back to your old self in a couple of days. As you age, it can take longer to heal, so give it time. You may be frustrated in this case that you have to recuperate longer, but that gives you time to focus on stretching or balance or workouts that avoid the injured or tweaked area. You can still make progress (in most cases) by continuing to do the things you can do while healing or resting. Even a strenuous workout might require an extra day or two of rest afterward. Listen to your body, it won’t lie.
3. Use the power of your mind. When you’re young, you often are anxious to make progress, hit milestones, achieve awards, or just get accolades. With time and maturity, we often come to appreciate the achievement for itself. If you can do 3 more push ups this week than you could last week, you probably feel pretty good. If you want to make further progress, you focus. You use your mind to hone your objectives, your desires, and your outcomes and then work your way toward those goals. The power of the mind to focus is extraordinary and it’s a skill that typically improves with age. Use your secret weapon in your fitness program.
4. It’s never too late. It truly is never too late to start. There is ample research and data to support the notion that anything you do to improve your fitness at any age helps in your overall health. If you’re 70 and out of shape, not too late to start. 90 and frail? Not too late. 50 and flabby? Not too late. The key is to get started and keep going, regardless of the ups and downs.
5. Find a friend to help. There are thousands of articles that talk about the power of social connections and fitness. That’s true, but what is also true is that there are different kinds of friends for different needs…not that your life need be compartmentalized, but let’s face it, sometimes the friend with whom you can share your deepest fears and hopes is the same person who invites you over for cake with ice cream…..So, you might need to find a fitness buddy. If you can’t find one easily, hire a personal trainer, join a gym, take a class at the Y, do something that will create opportunities to find a fitness friend who shares your goals and can be your support system along the way. We all need a cheering section from time to time and studies prove without a doubt that our personal cheerleaders are often the difference between success and failure (hint: failure is simply defined here as giving up; everything else counts as success….).