I don’t know how you do it? (be active and not hurt…in the mid to late 40’s and beyond)
Recently, a very close friend of mine wrote to me “I don’t wanna be on my feet for many hours, I don’t know how you do it….I was on my feet for about four hours and I was hurting.”
Here was my reply “If I have to be honest in how I do it? I just don’t get the pain that other people seem to get (no arthritis and no back or knee pains). I try to eat a good diet-Mediterranean mostly - I don’t love meat but eat it in small amounts but I love cheese and seafood (and I take supplements; I love extra virgin olive oil on my daily pasta and/or salad)- these days I eat mostly Starbucks and Olive Garden food but I eat 90% of my weight in grams of protein most days. I weigh 110 pounds. I keep active. I do yoga (it kind of helps aligns my body better along with resistance training). I drink socially. I walk about 12,000 steps on average (as low as 8,000 on non-work days and 23,000 on really busy work days). This isn’t genetic. Everyone in my family has or has had arthritis or pains from mid to late 40’s on.”
Let’s break this down:
I eat a Mediterranean Diet (mostly). About 80% of the time, I eat a Mediterranean style diet. What this means is that almost every day, I eat a diet that is mostly balanced. I eat small-medium amounts of pasta (favoring tomato based sauces and extra virgin olive oil). I eat vegetables (usually a salad) most days. I often add shrimp or chicken along side the pasta and salad and I’m not afraid to eat cheese and eggs (I don’t care about the cholesterol content). However, because I do not know how to cook, most of these foods are coming from Starbucks and Olive Garden. Almost every day, for early lunch before I work, I eat a spinach feta and egg white wrap from Starbucks along with an espresso drink (in the summer it was a grande iced caramel macchiato with soy milk, but now in the fall it’s a tall pumpkin spice latte with a double shot of espresso and soy milk plus the whipped cream and the cinnamon spice topping on top). For dinner, I generally eat ¼ - ½ of a create your own pasta with meat sauce from Olive Garden along with half of a salad (but I do not eat the croutons and the dressing, instead I top it with a good quality extra virgin olive oil and spices - one day it might be Old Bay seasoning, another day curry, and yet another day some turmeric and black or white pepper, or maybe some red pepper flakes). I often add 1.5 hard boiled eggs or cooked frozen shrimp on top, sometimes feta, blue cheese or Spanish blanco cheese. My “dessert” often tends to be a protein bar or protein popcorn. Depending on the day, if I have spin class or yoga, I will have 1.5 hard boiled eggs and some carbohydrates (like ¼ left over pasta with extra virgin olive oil or a slice of Dave’s Killer Bread, toasted and topped with hummus and extra virgin olive oil). If I do not have an active activity, I might have the 1.5 hard boiled eggs, a few macadamia nuts, some unsalted pistachios and maybe a few berries (because I pick up the Starbucks sandwich and espresso drink not too much later). I always have supplements with breakfast (a drink and half of my vitamins - I have the other half with dinner; this is because some vitamins are water soluable).
I weigh 110 pounds on average. At 5 feet tall even, this is roughly 21.5 BMI and 24% body fat (I’m a woman, this is perfectly normal). I maintain this average weight by tracking my calories and macros on a calorie tracker app. (I use MyNetDiary)
I do 3-50-60 minute (vinyasa) yoga sessions most weeks and 1-45 minute spin class per week. Why I chose these classes: yoga helps with balance, alignment, building muscle (but body weight resistance), and some cardio. As we age, we need to maintain good balance and muscle (plus bone density). If we don’t, there is more chance of falling (and if we have brittle bones, it’s hard to recover from a fracture or broken bones). It is better to be preventative (in my opinion). The spin class is mostly cardio (this is good for the heart - another muscle that may not get “exercise” otherwise), but there is a 5 minute session of resistance exercise using lighter hand weights (but more reps). Personally, I chose activities that I really enjoy (so it does not feel as much like exercise, since I really enjoy it). I tried a bunch of different studio classes at my gym before I realized which ones I truly enjoyed. The best way to keep on doing exercise is to find the ones you really, really like despite that it’s a form of exercise.
I drink Socially. There was a time in my life that I was drinking way more than that. The problem with that is that it wasn’t just a habit, I was using it as a coping mechanism. It was doing this: 1. adding way more calories than my body needed and therefore converted into extra weight, 2. prevented my body from truly getting any nutrition that was eaten along with the alcohol (because my body/liver was focused on processing the alcohol instead of processing the nutrition from any food; plus alcohol is effectively pure carbohydrates and you can count on the fact I was not exercising when I was drinking-I was drinking and crying, at least internally). 3. Have you exercised much after drinking?? I sure didn’t. That’s a double whammy - extra calories and you aren’t burning it off. However, drinking socially can help make you more social and take the edge off of being nervous about talking about certain things, which can be good for your relationships (but careful, not too much). I think a good benchmark is 1-2 drinks per each session and that is it.
I walk about 12,000 steps on average. True that maybe I am able to do this because I’m not in pain, but I think this is a circular thing. Do not wait until you are in pain to decide that you need to be active and walk these steps. I feel that walking these steps will help me to keep on doing so.
Research has definitely supported that the environment (meaning lifestyle) has a lot more impact over genetics does with outcomes. Definitely you can see this with twins who have very different habits. Those habits make a huge difference.
Oh, one more thing!! Do all of this and take care of your skin. Protect it from the sun with a broad spectrum SPF (mineral is better than chemical), hydrate with moisturizer as an external source and drink enough water as an internal source of hydration. This will help you to retain a more youthful appearance as well as the above to feel more youthful!! (I’m now 48 and most people are shocked to hear that I have a kid who is older than 9 or 10, because they think I’m about 15+ years younger than I actually am).