5 Physical Signs You’re an “Old Man” [at any age]

GENERALITIES

1] Rigidity and trembling of head

2] forward tilt of trunk

3] reduced arm swinging

4] shuffling gait with short steps

4] rigidity and trembling of extremities

Many men are literally falling apart by age 50, and it’s a Double Black Diamond downhill from there.

Everything hurts because everything is weak, particularly self-esteem.

Low self-esteem is then reinforced when people look right through them as though they don’t exist, because in a certain sense, they don’t.

With this in mind, here are 5 MORE SPECIFIC warning signs to look for – and avoid – if you don’t want to avoid stereotype:

SPECIFICS

1] man boobs [Moobs]

2] the “dad butt”

3] pregnant midsection

4] hanging flesh

5] pencil legs

The following link addresses the topic of posture:

https://www.painscience.com/articles/posture.php

~~~

SIDE NOTES

What interesting to me is how many women claim to support a “softer you.”

Of course, this comes from middle -aged matrons in average to poor physical shape, who don’t want the men in their lives to turn the backs on them to moment they do get in shape.

It’s an insecurity tactic that also doubles as a hedge against them having to hit the gym next to 20-something athletes.

People are always balancing their assets to achieve safety and security no matter what it ends up looking like.

~~~

Men my age are particularly concerned with the “SPECIFICS” column, because once they remedy these problems, everything in the first column disappears.

1] man boobs

As men age, they tend to lose testosterone and gain weight. Lower testosterone can lead to enlargement of glands in the breasts. Extra weight adds fatty tissue under the breasts. That can leave a man with bigger glandular tissue and more fat in his breasts. Fat cells make small amounts of estrogen, which can further enlarge men’s breasts.

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM

1] Lose Fat

2] Build muscle

3] Fix your posture

4] Exercise regularly

…and if all else fails, have a breast reduction. It’s called “gynecomastia” and it’s about a 90-minute outpatient procedure.

Final note: Get rid of those long, wiry hairs sprouting out randomly around the nipples. You can opt for laser hair removal available on every street corner in cities like Houston, or you can but a pair of tweezers at CVS.

“Boobilicious”

2] the dad butt

There is so much wrong with this condition I don’t even know where to start.

Suffice to say, when you get older and your butt starts looking like a hole in a 2 x 4, it’s time to start squatting.

Flat butts should be classified as a class-3 felony [at least] – in both men and women.

“Manbutteruptus in dad jeans”

3] distended midsection

Some otherwise thin older men appear to be walking around with a perfectly round “basketball” in their stomachs.

You might also notice that these same men have small arms and legs.

If it’s not a serious condition known as Cushing’s Disease [where the body over-produces cortisol], it’ poor diet, lack of resistance training, and usually, depression.

“Pooch in pouch in dad jeans”

4] hanging arm flesh

Flesh is not supposed to hang. It’s supposed to coat the muscles like house paint.

But as aging progresses, skin sags as collagen production slows, leaving your skin less elastic than in younger years.

“Hanging out loud.”

What to do about it:

a] Drink eight to ten glasses of water per day to keep your skin properly hydrated and plumped.

b] Speak with your dermatologist regarding laser skin rejuvenation.

c] Exercise regularly to strengthen your triceps.

d] Eat a healthy diet consisting of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and low fat dairy [and don’t forget the good fats].

e] Apply an over-the-counter cream containing alpha or beta hydroxy acids, vitamin C or retinoids.

“Hanging out loud.”

5] pencil legs

This is a particularly egregious condition for men of all ages, but horrendous in older men who can’t fill out a pair of slacks to save their lives.

No wonder designer labels are irrelevant. They’d be better off leaving the slacks on a coat hangar.

For the rest of you, just know that 60-70% of your total muscle mass is in your lower body.

If you don’t train your lower body, your entire body will not grow as quickly and will lack proportion.

If this is irrelevant to you, see your primary care physician for blood work to check your testosterone levels.

If they’re on the floor, you know why you don’t care.

For those with normal “T” levels, perform the following compound leg exercises at least once a week:

1] squats

2] leg presses

3] deadlifts

If you can’t even imagine yourself doing any of these, find a good personal trainer who will show you 50 different ways to achieve the same results.

Intense [and consistent] leg training is one of the true “secrets” to a muscular [and proportionate] upper body!

While I’m pretty sure there’s someone for everyone, I’m not entirely sure…

Lou Ferrigno – 2 Months Before His 64th Birthday!

This is what I’m talkin’ about.

Born November 9, 1951, Lou Ferrigno decided today to share his physical on social media to the amazement of all – just 2 months shy of his 64th birthday!

Congratulations, Lou!

2 Exercises and 1 Diet that CAUSE AGING!

According to findings cited in the following article – and backed up by lots of clinical research – the following exercises and dietary practice are guaranteed age-enhancers.

http://www.maxworkouts.com/lp/3-worst-exercises-that-cause-aging-p1/?e=1

1] Steady State Cardio

Cardio is great for heart health, but hardly the answer to weight-loss and fat-loss. As the article points out, “doing long frequent cardio sessions will break down your muscles and increase the production of free radicals. These free radicals damage the cells in your body and accelerate aging.”

2] Low-Fat Diets

“Science has proven that fat is not the cause of weight gain or heart disease. In fact, since the introduction of the fat-free diet, the world has gotten more fat and sick than it has ever been before.”

If you’re following a low-fat diet, you’re depriving your body of the nutrients it needs to slow aging and keep your youth.

Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are known as the “good fats” because they are good for your heart, your cholesterol, and your overall health.

Monounsaturated fat	Polyunsaturated fat
Olive oil Canola oil Sunflower oil Peanut oil Sesame oil Avocados Olives Nuts (almonds, peanuts, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews) Peanut butter	Soybean oil Corn oil Safflower oil Walnuts Sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds Flaxseed Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines) Soymilk Tofu

3] Yoga

Yoga improves inner consciousness, mind-body connection and spiritual health or whatever. But it’s not an effective form of exercise as it “lacks the necessary components to stimulate your body to build lean muscle, burn fat and most importantly… trigger your youth-enhancing hormones to help slow aging. Yoga can improve your flexibility and calm your mind, but it will NOT stimulate your “youth” hormones, according to findings.

Personally, I like yoga pants and the practices’ emphasis on long lean limbs and tight round butts.

To many, this is plenty enough.

But if youth is what you’re after, I have some alternative recommendations that have worked extremely well for me:

1] Circuit Training Workouts using free-weights and body weight.

I know that when I start my 1 hour workout, I’m in for a ball buster. I get my head focused, take a deep breath and go in. I rarely sit down, opting instead to “walk it off” between sets, which are separated by more than 30 seconds, occasionally 45 if I’m really winded. We move from cables to free weights to body weight exercises in rapid succession to keep my heart rate up and my body charged. While this is NOT the best way to put on mass and maximum strength, it is the very best way to burn calories, shed body fat and keep my heart strong. For strength and mass, we do 2 days a week of mass and strength training, focusing 1 day on upper body and the 2nd, lower. At this age, that’s a lot, as it takes several days to recover from each of them.

2. Cardio: High Intensity Interval Training [HIIT]

On the days in between I do High Intensity Interval Training [HIIT], which involves continually switching between low and high intensity ‘intervals’ between 30 and 60 seconds in length. We usually start with rope work for 30 second intervals then super set it with box jumps. Then we’ll do treadmill sprints followed by ladder work. This goes on for an hour where the focus is on driving my heart rate to 90% of maximum, and then dropping it back down to baseline as quickly as possible. The idea is strengthen cardiovascular strength and endurance to a point where the body is capable of dropping heart rate from, say, 155 BPM to 118BPM in under a minute.

Comments

Performing the workouts above also condition the body to handle maximum loads on strength training days, when lots of rest is required between sets.

However, if your only interest is in either just building mass – or running marathons – you can forget about what I just said.

No Road-Map for the Middle Aged Outlier

When you’re 20, everyone has an answer.

When you’re 3 times that, no one has the vaguest idea.

~~~

Generally speaking, life is like a TV show.

You start out with a murder, followed by an investigation, followed by a conclusion, where the bad guy is caught and justice is served.

For our purposes here, let’s focus our attention on the investigation, where we try and figure out which direction to turn in the absence of solid leads.

If you’re in that 55-64 demographic, you know exactly what I mean.

It’s a weird place [think Devil’s Crossroads] where the pavement hits the dirt and you’re on your own.

Every decision feels like a skate over thin ice because everything matters 10 times more than it did when youth was like a high-density shock absorber.

EXAMPLES

1] You can eat this, but probably not that.

2] You can exercise, but not so hard that you stroke out.

3] You may need a mini-aspirin every day for life insurance, but it may also give you bleeding ulcers.

4] You should probably take mountains of vitamins, but nobody has any idea whether or not it’s necessary with a disciplined diet.

But what constitutes a ‘disciplined diet’ when your body is constantly under assault from everything that came before?

~~~

When I have a physical, the doctor tells me I’m fine.

What he doesn’t tell me is that I am fine for my age.

He may intimate that my blood work looks like that of someone half my age, but this doesn’t give me license to act like it.

TRANSLATION: “Keep doing what you’re doing, and be happy you’re not facing hip and shoulder replacements, herniated discs or arthritis like most people your age…”

That’s a tough pill to swallow, but everything’s relative.

Almost everything I do I not supposed to be doing, but because it hasn’t killed me, I keep doing it.

With this in mind, here are 3 life tenets I live by.

They’ve helped guide me through thick and thin and I’m still here to tell the tale:

1] “To Thine Own Self Be True…”

Yea, Shakespeare got it right.

So did Aristotle…“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.”

The first thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that burying things you feel strongly about is toxic.

You have to believe in yourself and be willing to place yourself in the line of fire for your convictions.

If no one ever did this, there would be little great art, music or literature, to name just three.

Life is not a popularity contest. It’s about standing for something, and not abandoning it when the blow-back begins.

This is what tests the meddle of a person’s life.

It elicits respect from all people who know that taking strong positions on anything is tough, particularly as a species that seeks safety and security above all else.

Tough decisions are the bane of every winner.

2] Athletics are not just for the young.

You think you’re too old to throw a Frisbee, swim 1000 yards in a pool, or perform a box jump?

If so, you probably are.

For everyone else, it’s open season.

Just because you’re no longer 20 doesn’t mean you can’t workout, and, in many cases, dust people half your age.

Life does not come with a manual that tell us what we can and can’t do at certain stages of life.

We do.

Going back to #1, if you don’t have the fire in your belly to take a stand for yourself, life will stand on top of you.

Take what your body will give you, and when it won’t give another inch, find another approach to the same challenge.

There are always work-a rounds.

If one joint is inflamed, find another way to perform an exercise that doesn’t hurt so that it can recover.

This is all academic. But so many older guys I know throw up the white flag.

The moment they do this, life takes twice its toll over the same course of time.

That’s also academic.

You get back what you put in.

3] Be good to the people close to you.

The people who stand by you are the ones you owe your life to.

They deserve your support and your love.

Going back to what I said about human beings seeking safety and security, just know that the entire world can be against you and those closest are enough to withstand the fire.

All we really need in life are people we can count on, who love us, and who have our backs when things get really tough.

Nurture those relationships and you’ll never lose a dime to nature even if it kills you.

~~~

I’ll leave you with this:

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-let-go-of-the-need-for-approval-to-start-thriving/

14 Foods to Kick to the Curb [along with the tire around your waist]

Occasionally I run across a health-related article that’s both accurate and easy-to-read.

The following is from Men’s Fitness and covers the generalities without killing you with fine print.

The only problem is that you’ll have to sit through a ton of ads every 2 minutes to complete it, so I’ll save you the aggravation:

http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-eat/14-foods-to-kick-out-of-the-kitchen-forever

~~~

Most Boomers I know stopped eating most of the following foods because they are hypochondriacs like me, and therefore, spend an inordinate amount of time balancing health with destiny.

They read, they get annual physicals, and go to the gym regularly like other normal middle-aged people who live in large urban settings.

No wonder urbanites who occasionally visit a WalMart for a last minute gift for a 6-year-old post “people” pictures to Pinterest of creatures who could well be descendants of another species.

Okay, for the list:

1] White or “multi-grain” bread

When I was a kid growing up in New Orleans, french bread was a staple.

We’d toast it with butter and call it a meal.

Of course, were were kids and pretty much immune to anything we ate, unless the only thing we ate was crap, in which case we were also screwed.

These days, life is not as forgiving.

Everything we consume comes with ten times the impact.

For example, white bread contains zero while grains for cardiovascular protection, and spike blood sugar levels. [see white rice].

Leave it on the shelf or get a leather bound insulin container with your initials embossed on it.

2] Ready-to-eat breakfast cereal

“Healthy” is a term manufacturers use to sell products.

Understand that 4 grams of sugar on a label equates to 1 teaspoon of added sugar in reality.

It’s up to you to read.

3] Fat free pretsels

Pretzels are full of basically nothing, so consuming an entire bag in a single sitting is not uncommon.

Try 49 pistachios, instead.

They’re packed with nutrients, so eating 49 of them equates to half the bag of pretzels.

Of course, if you can limit yourself to a few pretzels, no harm no foul.

But good luck with that.

4] White rice

Stripped of nutrients, fiber and antioxidants, white rice does nothing but spike blood sugar and insulin, leading to fat storage.

There is no upside for white rice unless you’re about to perform wind sprints on an empty stomach.

5] Generic peanut butter

If it’s not absolutely, positively natural, there are usually trans fats in peanut butter.

Even if the label says ‘zero trans fats,’ if it’s fully hydrogenated, there can still be 0.5 grams of trans fats.

Try the natural alternative.

It’s more expensive, but far less expensive in long-term medical bills.

6] Trail mix

Who doesn’t grab a bag of trail mix before hitting the road or airways?

It looks like the healthiest snack on the planet.

It isn’t, particularly if it has chunks of chocolate and dried fruit, which are sky-high in sugar.

A better alternative is to make it yourself, and store it for your next outing.

7] Canned corn

What the hell is canned corn?

I remember eating it as a kid, but like I said, “as a kid.”

No sane adult eats canned corn because they know it has enough starch to choke a pig.

Try green beans if you have to eat something out of a can.

8] Plain pasta sauce in a jar

The great thing about canned pasta sauce is that it usually has lots of prostate-healthy lycopene.

But it also has enough salt to drive your blood pressure through the roof.

Marinara sauce is a better choice.

9] White pasta

Like anything else you est that’s white, it’s stripped of everything, including fiber and bran.

Try whole-wheat pasta, quinoa, black or brown rice and whole grain couscous.

10] Canned soup

Think 800 grams of sodium and this should put an end to the discussion.

Try a low-sodium alternative.

11] Traditional beef jerky

Pretty much any food product you buy in a convenience store is guaranteed to kill you prematurely.

It’s cheap, over-processed and bereft of any nutritional value.

Your best bet is to fork over the money and buy healthy beef jerky at 10 times the price, but 1000 times the nutritional benefits.

12] Cereal bars

A 4-oz cereal bar can contain up to 30g of sugar.

Try hearty bars with ingredients you can clearly see.

13] Powdered coffee creamer

If you use coffee creamer, I’m sorry.

What you’re putting into your body is empty calories, fat, sugar, and salt.

This is idiotic.

Just drink it black until you can locate some actual milk.

14] Movie theater-style popcorn

It’s full of trans fats and loaded with butter.

Try air-popped popcorn and enjoy a snack filled with a healthy dose of fiber.

~~~

Look, eating healthy is not that difficult, but it can be a pain in the ass for those of you not used to reading – or caring about – labels.

Just remember, life doesn’t care about you.

You have to care about you for life will pay you back.

Radical Acceptance a Problem for Boomers [Like Me]

One of the four options you have for any problem is Radical Acceptance (Linehan, 1993). Radical acceptance is about accepting of life on life’s terms and not resisting what you cannot or choose not to change. Radical Acceptance is about saying yes to life, just as it is.

~~~

I have a personal trainer who pushes me hard. Really hard. Three days a week we train for an hour, followed by 30 minutes of “homework” [support exercises] I do on my own. If I were 25 this would be a slam-dunk. Add 3 decades to that and not so much.

The problem for me is that I still resist where I am.

Let me restate that: I resent where I am, and, therefore, I resist it.

Case in point: On Friday we were doing vertical box jumps. I say “we” because I like to grab a bunch of kids half my age to do things like this with me to gauge my abilities against people who should be able top smoke me, but often don’t. It kind of my way of figuring out where I am in the scheme of things, athletically. Anyway, I had just completed a 36” jump when they decided to raise the bard 4 inches. Okay, I thought to myself, no big deal. It’s only 4 inches. I can nail this.

Side note: Truly athletic Boomers in the range of 60 are virtually non-existent. The ones who are, “juice” [i.e., take steroids], which makes up for some of the lost time, but never enough of it. But I don’t “juice,” which means I’m working with what I was born with and carved out over time.

So, back to the box jumps.

Two 20-something athletes before me barely made the jumps, and feeling immortal [I assume], I decided it was time to set the record straight on misconceptions about older men.

I approached the box knowing that I had done several sets before it, without incident, in spite of the soreness in my hamstrings from the previous Wednesday’s leg workout. My knees weren’t tucking the way they should have, but screw it, I was going in.

I raised my hands above my head as I readied myself to force them down to my sides, propelling me upward, when I stopped.

Something wasn’t quite right. I had to get my head in this if I was going to clear the edge of the monolith in front of me.

So I took a few seconds to compose myself, breathe, and visualize the jump.

This time, I approached the box with more determination and focus, as an audience stood around to watch this eccentric older man battle reality with a vengeance.

Again, I approached the box, raised my hands, took a deep breath…and jumped.

On the way up I could feel my left hamstring tighten slightly and all hell broke loose. My right leg cleared the edge perfectly, but my left foot hit the side of the box, forcing my shin into the hard foam cover a block of wood, and forcing me forward. The entire box collapsed with me along with it. I rolled twice and then stood up like a champ with a growing hematoma [a solid swelling of clotted blood within the tissues] on my left leg the size of a grapefruit.

I received applause for the effort and follow-through, but came away with the realization that not only was I not 25, but that I was in over my head.

While I could still outperform most guys my age by a wide margin, the kids were blowing me away.

“Not in everything!” I told myself, because it was true.

But what I failed to consider was the fact that, with the proper training, many of them would leave me in the dust. I was simply better trained no matter what the age difference happened to be.

This is textbook denial.

While I do accept the fact that I am older, and thus, less able to accomplish the feats of athleticism I could decades ago, I still try, thinking that I will somehow conquer the odds and land on my feet, instead of the floor.

Some will argue that without the belief in oneself, nothing would ever be accomplished. But there is a difference between running a Fortune 500 company and doing a 40” box jump.

Yea, I like the irony in that, too.

~~~

Here is reality for me in a few bullet points. If I don’t practice radical acceptance on a daily basis, I’ll end up in a mental institution.

Here we go:

1] Age.

Unless you’ve been here, walking a planet for damn near 60 years is an existential nightmare.

You have to get past the fact that time is not a figment of your imagination, so no matter how much you deny it, it keeps marching with or without you.

2] Skin, teeth, hair and nails.

Suffice to say, just looking at a high school photograph of yourself next to a recent photo-op at a gala is enough to trigger a 911 call.

Get a grip. It happens to all of us, and no one likes it.

3] Energy, recovery and fitness.

You’re no longer a kid no matter how much testosterone pellets you have imbedded in your butt.

This means that your physical condition is subject to the passage of time – no matter what the quacks who prescribe the aforementioned testosterone tell you.

4] Your children are younger than you are.

This one is particularly difficult for many because, on a certain level, they feel like children themselves.

But radical acceptance teaches us that no matter how strong one’s delusions happen to be, reality doesn’t give a damn about fantasy – and in this context – neither do your kids.

5] Sex.

You may have noticed that your sex life is – let’s just say – different than it used to be.

There are workarounds, of course.

ED meds will soon be stacked next to aspirin bottles at CVS, and medical science has a quick fix for everything else.

But the intense desire to copulate like a wild animal is now a more subtle compulsion that encourages us to think before we act.

This is an adaptation that helps preserve wealth in the middle years when faltering egos are most susceptible to the exploits of gold diggers.

~~~

If you need more, fill them in for yourself.

I’m not that masochistic.

Harmful Drinking Patterns are Common in Affluent Older Adults

According to the online journal BMJ Open, “active, affluent people over age 50 in the U.K. appear to be at greater risk for harmful drinking behaviors than their less successful peers…”

http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/07/27/harmful-drinking-patterns-common-in-affluent-older-people/87360.html

The full extract here:

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/7/e007684.full?sid=989311e3-556b-4eb3-9c81-e705b3169fe6

“…a 10-year study of alcohol use transitions among men aged between 50 and 65 in the USA reported that the different trajectories of risk were associated with age, education, smoking, binge drinking, depression, pain and self-reported health.”

The defined risk of harmful drinking following the guidelines set out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

NICE has defined the following levels of risk of harmful drinking:

Lower risk drinking: ≤21 units per week (adult men) or ≤14 units per week (adult women).

Increasing-risk drinking: 22≤50 units per week (adult men) or 15≤35 units per week (adult women).

Higher risk drinking: >50 alcohol units per week (adult men) or >35 units per week (adult women).

Note: One alcohol unit is measured as 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol. This equals one 25ml single measure of whiskey (ABV 40%), or a third of a pint of beer (ABV 5-6%) or half a standard (175ml) glass of red wine (ABV 12%).

~~~

1] Time

Most of the men I know drink more because they have more time to play.

They don’t have to get up every day at 4 am to work in the coal mines, or sit behind a desk and look alert at an office farm.

Time is at their disposal.

2] Money

The great thing ab0ut money is that you can buy a lot of things without thinking much about it.

Liquor comes to mind.

Add time to money and you have lots of exotic vacations where people drink at all hours of the day and night, including room service at 2 am.

3] Active Social Lives

Affluent older men attend galas, cocktail parties, and cultural events of all kinds where alcohol is served.

During the cultural season we could be talking about 4 or 5 events during the course of any given week.

4] Boredom

What the hell else are you going to do at night when you don’t have any particular time you have to go to bed?

A glass of wine or two over Law and Order sounds logical to me.

5] Depression

Existential pain is a bitch and one way to fight it is to drown your sorrows in another depressive.

It sells itself.

I could go on with this, but you get the picture.

Clear and Present Signs of Exercise Addiction in Older Men [and women]

I know a few older men [and women] who would rather die than miss a workout.

This is because missing a workout is worse than death.

http://breakingmuscle.com/sports-psychology/are-you-addicted-to-exercise-the-tell-tale-signs

~~~

There are quite a few exercise-addicted older men with whom I share a gym acquaintance.

It could be argued that I myself am an exercise addict to the extent that I train 6 days a week for 1 hour, sometimes 2, rather than 5 or 6!, which is not uncommon to many.

Most of the men in question are single – always single – principally because there is no room for anything – or anyone – else.

Even pets.

Exercise releases endorphins and the hormone Serotonin, which one tends to get used to – or addicted to – as the case may be.

Eventually the highs take over one’s life and everything else becomes meaningless.

Just ask anyone at AA what it feels like not to have drugs at their disposal.

~~~

John [not his real name] is 58 years of age and prides himself on his ability to run 5 miles before hitting the gym, where he performs hand stand push-ups and double-under jumping jacks to the amazement of everyone around him.

In this sense, he’s his own circus act.

His thin, muscular frame, and gymnastic abilities, earn him the respect and admiration of his peers, which is all he needs to side-step existential pain.

For a little while he can forget about his aging wife, his kids, his financial obligations.

In essence, he becomes someone else.

But eventually he has to go back to the “other” reality.

For some the transition is seamless.

For others, it’s like that classic Twilight Zone episode where the old woman lives through television re-runs of herself as a beautiful young actress, imagining that nothing has changed.

A married man with a family doesn’t have that luxury.

Now visualize a single man with time on his hands, and exercise addiction become a full-blown psychosis.

No wonder I see the same anorexics, bulimics and exercise addicts appear at my gym day after day, year after year; until one day they show up on crutches after a hip replacement – or just disappear altogether.

When people inquire as to their whereabouts, the refrain is always the same:

“They died doing what they loved.”

I guess one could say the same of heroin addicts.

Every addict has an excuse for dying, though they don’t couch it that way.

In the end, there is a razor thin line between exceptional fitness and clinical addiction.

ARE YOU AN EXERCISE ADDICT?

Seven factors are assessed and it’s something for you fitness junkies to consider:

Tolerance: Do you need more and more to achieve the same effects?

Withdrawal: Do you experience increased agitation, fatigue, and tension if you don’t exercise?

Intention Effect: Do you exercise for longer than intended on most trips to the gym?

Lack of Control: Do you have difficulty scaling back the duration and intensity of exercise?

TimeSpent: Do you spend huge amounts of time on fitness related activities?

Reduction of Other Pursuits: Is exercising too much affecting other parts of your life? (social, work, relationships)?

Continuance Despite Injury: Do you train even when you are injured?

Final Notes:

It’s been my experience that all exercise addicts my age would answer yes to all of the above.

Adding fuel to the fire, they “supplement” their fitness regimes with testosterone injections, HGH and anabolic steroids when the effects of aging begin to present.

This helps perpetuate the cycle long after nature fails them.

But longevity isn’t the name of the game in this world.

Escape is.

~~~

A few highlights from the article that all of us who have, at one time or another, crossed the line into exercise addiction know well:

1] We are often sick, injured or depressed.

2] We define our happiness by our bodies and level of fitness.

3] Our relationships suffer [or don’t exist at all]

4] We train like pros, but aren’t [so why?]

Training in proper measure is one of life’s most rewarding [and sensible] choices.

It’s not easy, and it does require major adjustments in lifestyle habits, but it must be balanced against everything else in life.

From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that if you don’t keep an eye on BALANCE, your life will get smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s just you and a bunch of codependent addicts enabling the cycle of addiction as the world passes you by.

Then again, if you can afford to run down the clock without having to worry about friends, family, spouses [or even a dog], we’ll all just do what we always do, which is use you as examples of what exercise addiction looks like, and why therapy is a better alternative.

Two-Marriage Rule the “Natural” Course Among a Certain Demographic

Today’s testimonial is going to infuriate a lot of people, but what I’m about to tell you is the absolute truth.

In my world, it is commonplace for young men to marry and procreate with their college sweethearts, before divorcing them once the kids are grown, money’s in the bank, and younger women are coming out of the woodwork.

This is where the Two-Marriage Rule comes into play.

~~~

When a man reaches a certain age – and level of achievement – he expects payback.

The translation of “payback” goes something like this:

Scenario One:

“I’ve done it all: Married out of college, had kids, made money…and now what? My kids are gone, I’m semi-retired and what I’m sleeping next to looks nothing like the woman I married. But I don’t want to leave my wife because I still love her, in spite of the fact that I’m not exactly thrilled about the sex. She’s also beginning to make me feel old and irrelevant. What I need is a mistress in order to keep my marriage in tact. Then I’ll have everything.”

Scenario Two:

“I’m leaving my wife for a beautiful young woman I met at an art opening, who makes me feel the way I did when I met my current wife back at Georgetown.”

~~~

In both scenarios, the theme is the same: The man wants what he once had in order to feel the way he once felt.

Neither scenario is exclusive to men, by the way.

Women often have affairs because their own physical and emotional needs are not being met, which brings me to the question of why is everyone so damn bored?

~~~

From the perspective of older men, the reasons are academic:

1] An age-appropriate wife of 50-something is not the same as an age-appropriate wife of 20-something.

In the former, the man begins to visualize tombstones.

In the former, he gets a new lease on life with 1000 times the cash.

From the perspective of older women, the reasons are more complex:

1] While age-appropriate mates in their 50’s don’t trigger existential meltdowns the way they do in men, they do trigger boredom when men begin to take their wives for granted.

SOLUTION

The Two-Marriage Rule

For men who marry and procreate out of college, there should be an agreement between the couple that after 25 or 30 years together, the marriage is null and void.

The couple can then decide to either renew it or walk away without financial consequence, enabling the man to live with a younger woman in relative comfort for the balance of his life [and vice-verse].

SUMMARY

Life kinda’ sucks where marriage is concerned.

No one can be everything to everyone all the time, particularly after enough of it has passed.

People get bored, and because most of us are entitled, we expect more.

On the other hand, there are couples who are willing to age gracefully, allowing time to exact its pound of flesh without a fight.

Their expectations are more balanced, and their lives a linear trajectory that reads like a novel – beginning, middle…end.

Of course, I don’t personally know any of these people, but I’m told they exist.

FINAL NOTE

While older men derive vitality from beautiful young women, older women experience precisely the opposite in the company of young men.

However, women are far better at acceptance, which they encourage in one another through their uncanny ability to bond with other women.

If men were better at this both genders would experience the same longevity, with a slight advantage to men who find young women who aren’t gold-diggers.

I’ll leave you with this article from the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10980731/What-do-young-women-see-in-much-older-men.html

The Top Ten Health Concerns of Baby Boomers

Scripps.org has published the top ten health concerns of baby boomers; concerns that will come as no surprise to anyone.

https://www.scripps.org/news_items/4623-top-10-health-concerns-of-baby-boomers

1[ Type 2 diabetes

2] Cardiovascular disease

3] Cancer

4] Depression

5] Eye problems

6] Alzheimer’s disease

7] Arthritis and Joint replacement

8] Osteoporosis

9] Flu/pneumonia

10] “Sandwich generation” stress

~~~

Okay, so now that we know what we already knew, let’s take a closer look at each of these with a more critical eye [eye problems, notwithstanding]:

1] Type 2 diabetes

From Mayo Clinic:

Researchers don’t fully understand why some people develop type 2 diabetes and others don’t. It’s clear, however, that certain factors increase the risk, including:

a] Weight. Being overweight is a primary risk factor for type 2 diabetes. The more fatty tissue you have, the more resistant your cells become to insulin. However, you don’t have to be overweight to develop type 2 diabetes.

b] Fat distribution. If your body stores fat primarily in your abdomen, your risk of type 2 diabetes is greater than if your body stores fat elsewhere, such as your hips and thighs.

c] Inactivity. The less active you are, the greater your risk of type 2 diabetes. Physical activity helps you control your weight, uses up glucose as energy and makes your cells more sensitive to insulin.

d] Family history. The risk of type 2 diabetes increases if your parent or sibling has type 2 diabetes.

e] Race. Although it’s unclear why, people of certain races — including blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Asian-Americans — are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than whites are.

f] Age. The risk of type 2 diabetes increases as you get older, especially after age 45. That’s probably because people tend to exercise less, lose muscle mass and gain weight as they age. But type 2 diabetes is also increasing dramatically among children, adolescents and younger adults.

g] Prediabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which your blood sugar level is higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as diabetes. Left untreated, pre-diabetes can progress to type 2 diabetes.

h] Gestational diabetes. If you developed gestational diabetes when you were pregnant, your risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases. If you gave birth to a baby weighing more than 9 pounds (4 kilograms), you’re also at risk of type 2 diabetes.

i] Polycystic ovary syndrome. For women, having polycystic ovary syndrome — a common condition characterized by irregular menstrual periods, excess hair growth and obesity — increases the risk of diabetes.

SUMMARY

What you need to take away from all of this is that while genetics play a major role in your destiny, lifestyle changes are just as important.

So basically, eat right and stay in shape. The rest is up to mother nature.

2] Cardiovascular disease

It may surprise you to know that depression plays a major role in cardiovascular disease.

The twist here is that exercise tends to mitigate the effects of depression, so you might want to consider getting off your butts and into the gym for reasons you didn’t consider but better learn before there’s nothing left to learn.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150731/IUPUI-researchers-receive-NIH-grant-to-study-effect-of-depression-treatment-on-cardiovascular-disease.aspx

SUMMARY

“In previous studies, we have found intriguing positive evidence that managing depression lowers risk of future heart attacks and strokes,” said Stewart, associate professor of psychology and an affiliated scientist of the IU Center for Aging Research. “With this new NIH-funded clinical trial, we hope to confirm that treatment of depression is cardio-protective, lowering the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.”

3] Cancer

Genetics are again the major factor in determining the likelihood of contracting cancer.

And again, the environmental culprits line up like dominoes – all the usual suspects we need to memorize.

a] Tobacco is attributed to 1/3rd of all cancer deaths in the United States each year. Keith Richards, however, is apparently immune to everything that kills other human beings so do not use him as an enabler.

b] Sunburns are something all of us have experienced at one point or another in our lives. The blisters, the burns, the endless tubes of Aloe Vera gel. It’s over. Those days are gone. there’s nothing you can do about something that’s already been done. Move on. This time with sunscreen.

c] Eat right. It’s funny how the same themes keep resurfacing. No matter what the illness, or prevention of said illness, eating right keeps popping up. So eat right for God’s sake.

d] Keep your weight down. Obesity is not okay no matter how you spin the narrative. The whole “curvy women” or “dad bod” craze is a lame attempt to justify unhealthy lifestyle habits.

e] Stay active. See #3 and #4 and get your butt to the gym.

f] No more than two drinks a day. Most people can pull this off without much difficulty. But this doesn’t mean that not having a drink all week and then binging on the weekends is okay. It’s not. Find the nearest AA meeting and say your prayers. You’ll need them.

g] Work in environmentally safe conditions. In other words, don’t work in a coal mine. For those of you who do, I might suggest a lobotomy.

SUMMARY

Adhere to all the lifestyle habits and throw the dice. Personally, iIm not a fan of getting blood work every 5 minutes because if the numbers aren’t perfect I begin to obsess about it, which makes me more likely to experience stress, and this in turn causes cancer. So no.

4] Depression.

I pulled the following article from Psychocentral.com, which offers a good overview of this topic.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/depression-and-baby-boomers-how-having-it-all-may-be-too-much/

On a personal note, it has been my experience that exercise is the best medication for anxiety and depression.

The problem is that the effects don’t last as long as psycho-pharmaceuticals, so you may want to do both in equal measure.

SUMMARY

Healthy lifestyle habits may include Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors along with your daily multi-vitamin.

5] Eye problems

After a certain point, we all have eye problems.

Hell, even kids who spend too much time on computers have eye problems.

Big deal. Get reading glasses or have your vision corrected, surgically.

SUMMARY

If your eyes are bothering you like the3y do me, go to an eye doctors to determine whether or not you have macular degeneration or cataracts or whatever and go from there.

You know damn well you’re not going to stay off the computer.

6] Alzheimer’s disease

This year, the first baby boomers turn 65. While Alzheimer’s is not normal aging, age is the greatest risk factor for the disease.

So basically, the older you get the greater your risk of death and dying in general.

How does one help prevent your forgetting the names and faces of your children and spouses?

1] Keep your mind active.

2] Eat and drink raw fruits and vegetables.

3] Add vitamin K to your supplements.

4] Reduce stress.

5] Commit to regular exercise.

6] Laugh more.

7] Run 15 miles per week [or the equivalent]

8] Consume more whole fruit.

9] Meditate [i.e., get your shit together and relax]

10] Consume more fish.

11] Quit smoking nicotine.

12] Adopt a Mediterranean diet.

13] Learn early Alzheimer’s symptoms, but don’t obsess about it until you start leaving your car keys in the freezer.

14] Sleep well no matter what it takes to get there.

15] Limit sugar intake.

http://www.alzheimers.net/1-1-15-resolutions-reduce-dementia-2015

7] Arthritis and Joint replacement

“Simply put, regular activity provides lifeblood to the cartilage that cushions joints. Unlike most tissues in the body, cartilage doesn’t receive nutrients from the bloodstream. Instead, it gets nourishment from fluid (called synovial fluid) in the joints. When a joint moves, the fluid sloshes around, giving the cartilage a healthy dose of oxygen and other vital substances. As an added bonus, regular exercise encourages the body to make more synovial fluid.”

I’ll leave it at that.

SUMMARY

If you don’t exercise, you can kiss you ass goodbye years before you technically die.

8] Osteoporosis

Adults who had spine curvature as children can develop severe arthritis in the spine next to their old curves. In other cases, osteoporosis, or weakening of the bones, can develop as a complication of menopause or medications as people age, even causing fractures. Forms of arthritis in which joints in the back wear out can also let the spine sag into a bad position.” Dr. Huddleston, mayo Clinic

No surprises here. Try strength training.

SUMMARY

Absent childhood trauma or a genetic predisposition to spinal curvature, the best thing anyone can do to prevent osteoporosis is strength train.

Most older men with that geriatric stoop are usually found wandering around the indoor track on their cell phones.

9] Flu/Pnemonia

Everyone has gotten the flu, and many, pneumonia. They both suck in equal measure.

The best you can do is wash your hands, keep your hands away from your face, get a fly shot, and then say your prayers if you know any. If not, make some up.

If you’re in good shape, your immune system should be strong enough to withstand a bout of either one, though it won’t feel that way.

SUMMARY

We all get sick from time to time.

But when you have less time, you tend to take it more seriously.

It’s not like you get to stay home from school and be served for a week.

This time around you have to cancel your trip to St. John and still have to deal with the office.

10] “Sandwich generation” stress.

There isn’t a damn thing you can do about this one.

In my case, I don’t have kids to worry about – and my mom lives near my brothers. of course, she’s only 83 and still running circles around them at 83.

When she does get old, however, we may be too old to care for her.

SUMMARY

There is no solution to this problem other than exercise and sedatives.

Good luck. You’ll need a lot of that, too.

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