by October is a special month for me because it signals another year in practice. This year it marked my 14th year at this. If you’re thinking that doesn’t seem long enough, given the amount of gray in my hair, it’s because I started doing this as a second career after teaching English first.
When I opened my practice, I was already 40. And now, I’ve been at it long enough to see kids who were coming in with their parents become patients themselves.
I’ve also seen my more adult patients, who were my age now when I met them, age into the Medicare bracket. And I can tell you the ones who are doing the best when it comes to physical health all have one thing in common:
Health and fitness is a part of their identity.
Because of my weight loss books, nearly everyone who’s lost a lot of weight and kept it off talks to me about it. Without fail, they keep it off by finding some form of exercise they like and then doing it regularly. Often, the exercise in question was something they could only tolerate, but with reps, they made it a part of their core identity.
Weight lifting, running, cycling. It’s all fair game. One guy who just came in again after several years away has taken to ultra marathons (100-mile races).
But here’s the cool part: The benefit of going from sedentary to moderately active is huge compared to going from moderately active to very active. You don’t have to devote endless hours to fitness to get the most results. But if you don’t do anything, it’s not good. Check out the graph below:
You definitely want to be on the solid line camp.
But what does it take to get there? As always, it depends on many factors, including genetics, previous levels of activity (muscle memory is a real thing I plan on writing about in the future, but a history of working out is a win), and how active you are at work.
If, for example, you take a complete couch potato who works from a computer all day and get them walking for just ten minutes three days a week, their level of fitness will grow to a degree that will keep them above the dotted line in the graph for years longer than if no changes were made.
The results are even better if you add strength training to the equation. Just a couple of sessions a week of focused weight lifting can add much life to the years of the average Medicare-aged human. You don’t have to subscribe to Olympic levels of training to get results. But you do have to start.
I recently went to the funeral of an old friend from high school. It was the first time I’d been around many of my old high school friends in years, and I wanted to shake them by their lapels and beg them to do the basics.
Not smoking and not drinking too much is not enough. You have to challenge the system. But if you do, you’ll find that the second half of your life can be as rewarding as the first.
Until next time,
Doc G
P.S. I added creatine to my “poor man’s Ozempic” because some solid research shows an increase in cognitive function, and I’m always looking to keep my edge in that regard. But this weekend, at 54 years old, I set a new personal best on the bench press, so clearly, the tried-and-true strength gains creatine is known for are coming.
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