Working With Baby Boomers

I often hear people say, “I just don’t have the time to exercise” or “I don’t want to spend the money.” Well, what fits into your budget and busy schedule better, exercising one hour/day, or feeling tired and unenergitic  24 hours/day?

The fact is, you’re going to spend the money at some point either in a gym or in a nursing home. There are two major reasons you end up in a nursing home:

1. You can no longer bend at the waist and rotate at the same time (which makes taking care of yourself  impossible) or
2. You fall and injure or break your hip.

We’ve lowered the bar so much that gardening is considered adequate exercise.

Exercise is not a cure all drug, but it does help to improve and maintain your mobility and overall health over time. And with insurance companies what they are today, you’ll get 6-7 weeks out of rehab before they send you on your merry way, whether you’re ready or not.

Diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure are all preventable diseases. You control the quality of the rest of your life.

Here are some suggestions for looking and feeling better:

Ditch the low fat diets. They rarely work. If you’re changing your diet and not losing weight, you’re not changing your diet.

Avoid Corn. Corn is a grain, not a vegetable. Keep the majority of your diet lean proteins and greens.

Portion Control. Overweight people eat too much. Period. If you’re not going to change your diet, don’t expect things to change.

Do exercises on one leg. We can only walk and run with one leg at a time. Try doing something on one leg. How easy is it? This is where most people slip and fall (enter injured or broken hip)

Lift weights. It’s the No. 1 way to get in shape. It raises metabolism (your body’s ability to burn calories).

Strength training also helps to develop better posture, which in turn makes you taller, and appear thinner. Strength training using functional movements helps you to move in all planes, not just forward, which is vital because as we all know, you don’t just walk in a straight line all day, which brings me to my next point:

Don’t run long distance, period. Running is exercise moving forward only.  Besides that, 60 percent of all people who run get hurt. In the 70s when the running craze started, so did physical therapy. Think about it, if you’re 50 or over, how many physical therapists did you know growing up?

So there’s some advice on looking and feeling better. Hopefully you’ll give it some thought and begin the process of taking control of the rest of your life.