The Right Path from 50 to 100, and Beyond

(This article has been updated as of Jan 21, 2020. Covid has now dramatically accelerated the already growing trend toward online wellness coaching and age group-specific guidance on healthy habits. To address these needs directly I have launched a comprehensive online program for Boomers like me with my longtime colleague and favorite healthy eating expert , Anne Moselle, R.D. Check it out here.)

I get you. I AM you. We’re old enough to remember the Summer of Love but probably weren’t old enough to have enjoyed it. We still dig “Purple Haze” but are closing in on the Blue Plate Special. Bill, one of my favorite clients and a contemporary, just a few years behind me, shared with me a lyric from a song this week by Toby Keith that probably expresses it best:

“I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.”

So maybe this is the best time in your life. Or maybe you feel like you’ve squandered that part away. In either case, you have today, and all the tomorrows ahead. Want to make the most of them? Stop doing these things:

1. Eating crap
2. Sitting on your behind most of the day
3. Drinking a big portion of your calories
4. Exercising without proper direction
5. Living without a plan

You know some of the things you should be eating and you know what you want to eat that’s not so good for you. What you don’t know is how much of each you’re eating, how to handle the stuff in the middle and what that lack of clarity and the habits that follow are doing to you long term.

Screen time is likely dominating your life. Even if you’re retired to a cabin, read and take long walks in the woods every day, you’re probably missing critical elements that would help build your strength, protect your joints and low back and improve your balance and coordination. If you knew what to do and how to do it correctly, 90 minutes a week would radically improve your health and fitness level.

Do you think you know how many of your calories you’re drinking? I guarantee that you are fooling yourself, unless you’re already at least as knowledgeable as I am on the subject and are just reading this article to confirm it. What’s wrong with drinking a lot of your calories? Plenty, for most. A good fitness or nutrition professional can explain exactly what that might be doing for you, or doing to you.

Most of my clients in our age range (the lion’s share of my referral business for the past ten years or so) hurt themselves pretty severely at some point, either because they were out of shape and tried something they shouldn’t have, or they did it working out the wrong way. And there are lots of ways to do that.

When I say it’s a bad deal to live without a plan, I don’t mean a retirement plan (but that’s a good idea too) or a five-year plan (I’m not interviewing you for a job). I mean that as we get older, a sense of purpose and usefulness is critical to keeping our heads and hearts “in the game”. So, we need to have at least an idea of what’s important to us. And if there’s a way we can have it, make it or do it, we need to clearly define what that is and get the heck to it!

How do you fix all that? You can’t do it over night and you can’t do it until you’re ready. And, finally, you can’t do it without the right guidance that pertains to you, specifically.

You can hunt around on the internet and hopefully find, eventually, exactly what you need in each of these areas and pray the sources all support, rather than contradict each other. Or you can hire a personal trainer, a registered dietitian, a life coach, a medical practitioner and a meditation and yoga teacher to provide comprehensive direction for you throughout the day for a few months till you get the hang of it yourself. If that’s a realistic financial option for you, would you please legally adopt me?

Or you can look for a coordinated, integrated preventive wellness program designed for those at our stage of life that encompasses all these elements. I saw an ad for a concierge medical group that is growing in popularity in the East San Francisco Bay area and there are existing businesses that are expanding add-on wellness services to their primary offerings.

I’m part of a team whose sole focus is exactly what I would want if I was in the over-fifty club. Wait! I am!

Good thing I’m so smart. But then so are you, right?

If you’d rather venture out on your own, below are a few websites I trust and that you can visit to at least get the process started.

Your time is now, and it is precious. Spend it wisely and well.

American College of Sports Medicine

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Lesli Smith Coaching

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They provide personal training and small group fitness solutions at their studio and a premium, innovative, medically endorsed web-based group coaching wellness program for the over-fifty tribe.