Age and Fitness: Three Life Improvements to Make You Young Again

How to regain your youthful shape and stay fit at any age

Can we stay fit all our life until we get old? What effort does it take? What life improvements can we implement to our lifestyle to stay healthy and fit at any age? How hard are they?

There is an enormous variety of suggestions from scientists, medics, fitness experts, and people sharing their achievements. I have my story of transforming a physical wreck into a respectfully fit grey hair person. I suggest 3 easy self-improvements in an attempt to answer the above questions.

A Fatality

I met Ard during a man down drill on a rig where I worked. He was a 39 years old doctor, a bit bulky, liked by everyone for empathy and care.

My emergency response role was as an ambulance driver. It was a routine drill, and while rig hands were retrieving an ‘injured’ dummy, we talked. Ard complained about the pain in his back. I didn’t pay much attention as he was a medic, and I was a driver.

But several days later, he had a heart attack and died during the helicopter medical evacuation.

Still Brave but no Longer Fit Heart

Ard’s heart attack urged me to scrutinize my health condition. My journey to a physical disgrace took me about 20 years. I was 45, not big, but my all-forgiving working coverall could no longer camouflage my growing belly and waist sides.

My body had been aging, weakening, and lacking proper physical maintenance.

I decided to go to the rig gym. I set the treadmill at the lowest speed and ran. I was exhausted in 5 minutes. What a physical wreck!

What happened to a former marathon runner with a decent personal record 3:13:47 in his 23 who couldn’t run for 5 minutes anymore?

Awakening

I started changing my life. I enforced only 3 self-improvements and 5 years later, when I was 50, I won my youthful fitness back.

1. Water

I replaced all sweet or carbonated drinks with water.

Water stands alone from the diet because of its absolute importance in losing weight and keeping fit.

When we are thirsty, our body needs water. When we drink anything else, it is not water, it’s food again. Our body will need more water to process it. That’s why we feel more thirsty after a sweet drink.

Once you get used to drinking water when you are thirsty, you will stop consuming anything else. That’s my best takeaway from that implementation.

I kept drinking alcohol off work, but I didn’t consider myself a heavy boozer. People often call it social drinking: A glass or two of wine, a bottle of beer a day. Oh, and a Friday night.

Had I a second chance to live, there is one thing I wouldn’t even try. It’s alcohol. I should have started with quitting alcohol. Unfortunately, I did that only 10 years later.

2. Diet

It wasn’t about food. It was about discipline. I stopped eating after 6 pm.

I noticed intermittent fasting is one of the trendiest dieting crazes nowadays. And I fully support why. When you don’t eat after 6 p.m., and then have your breakfast at lunchtime, you exercise intermittent fasting.

When I started, I didn’t know the term. But I enjoyed daily and long effect benefits from it. It’s another takeaway that contributed to my overall fitness and a healthy lifestyle.

Thanks just to the above two changes, I lost about 22 pounds in six months. Some would laugh, it’s so tiny compared to what many people lose. But the effort was so insignificant, while the lasting effect was forever.

I lost more weight later, when I stopped eating breakfasts, removed added sugar from all my meals, increased vegetables in my diet, joint the sobriety herd, and embraced fitness with obsession.

3. Fitness

Weight loss and dieting alone can make you healthier but not always fit. Anorexic people are not all in a good fitness condition.

I needed to exercise. My fitness level was terrible, and I wanted to start with something that would not kill me but would have a training effect.

I loved to watch animals. Watching animals triggered some easy and effective techniques and approaches that turned an unhealthy man into an athletic granddad.

From the observations of animals, I learned that their fitness is supported by the main 5 elements:

1. Good long rest. Cats lie idle for days and then climb the tree in seconds.

Unlike animals’, our rest is depreciated by constant stress, deficient sleep, low physical activity, sedentary lifestyle, bizarre eating and drinking habits.

To simply copy animals’ behavior is unachievable. We ill never win tree climbing competitions with cats even if we beat them in sleeping.

But animals have many healthy instinctive approaches we can learn lessons from.

E.g., their commitment to deep rest, which is a must for them to survive. We can take it as a lesson on how important it is for being fit.

2. Limited mental stress. Unlike humans, animals don’t stress over things that don’t matter.

When your dog’s boyfriend didn’t turn up in time, she won’t start developing conspiracy theories over why he didn’t show up.

While we, humans, will launch the array of scenarios full of anger, anxiety, and offended unhappiness leading to depressive thinking and stress.

Anything can be a stress to a modern human being. As far as animals are concerned, they do stress, but only when there’s a real danger to their life.

3. No fitness plan. Animals carry out their intensive or frequent muscle tone energizing workouts when they need to.

We plan and schedule everything. Who doesn’t, we consider that person undisciplined, lacking self-control, and infantile imbecile.

What about animals? Their only discipline is to know their body and react to its needs.

Stretch-tense when their muscles are stiff. Walk, run, or play around if they have been inactive. Chase prey when they are hungry. Relax when they are tired. Stay still, run away, or fight when it’s dangerous.

Isn’t it worth to learn some of those disciplines?

4. Regular intensive unscheduled workouts (chasing prey, running away, fighting, playing). These physical activities train their speed, strength, and endurance.

One of the secrets, why animals are so fit, is their regular intensive workouts.

That’s what we, modern humans, no longer have to do. We don’t need to constantly worry about running away, fighting, chasing prey.

We are protected by our supermarkets, fences, cities, police, and the army. Our instincts have faded.

To be fit like an animal at any age, we have to deliberately add intensive, durable, and speed exercises relevant to our physical condition.

5. Short, frequent stretch-tensing exercises to keep their muscles in tone and relaxed.

Stretch-tensing is the essence of animals’ ever-readiness for action.

We also do this exercise after waking up. It’s a pleasant and energizing exercise. If you do it like animals, more often throughout the day, you will feel the tonicity of your muscles and energy the whole day. These exercises also train you for more intensive workouts. Moreover, they can be easy, refreshing, and effective preventive methods to combat sitting fatigue.

You can read more on stretch-tensing and muscle functioning in another article on Medium:

The 3 major implementations, water, diet, and fitness, can turn a physical wreck I was into a forever young brave heart of any age.

I remember Ard with gratitude for his good work and company. I’m sharing my lifestyle improvements that were triggered by his unfortunate and untimely death. I’m sure he would have been happy to know I’m doing it. Who knows, maybe these little efforts will save somebody’s life.

The more lifestyle approaches from the below list you can implement, the more fit-like-an-animal you will be at any age.

• Replace all soft drinks with water
• Question all myths and overhaul what, when and how often you eat
• Scrutinize your rest attitude, disciplines and schedules; ensure you don’t exhaust yourself
• Remove hangovers; fact check your alcohol-related beliefs
• Tame your emotions and reduce stress
• Do your frequent stretch-tensing exercises to keep your muscles always in tone and relaxed
• Add regular strength, speed, and endurance workouts relevant to your fitness level
• Enjoy your life at any age