How I Stay Healthy at 79 by Accepting Life and Living Mindfully

But there are some warning signs on the horizon.

Old age can be scary, as hell — just one damn thing after another.

A week ago, my good friend and next-door neighbor, Kent, underwent eight hours of Mohs Surgery to remove skin cancer from his head. He is 90. The procedure was exhausting for him but successful, and Mohs Surgery has a 99 percent success rate. I’m so happy for him.

But helping Kent this week got me thinking about my mortality.

If you were to test me on my health habits, I’d get a bad grade. I do many things not recommended in the wellness books, yet I’m pretty healthy. Many people my age or younger who took better care of themselves are dying all around me. I know because I’m at an age where I carefully read the obituaries of people who make headlines when they die.

This morning, I took an honest health inventory of myself and assigned a PASS or FAIL grade.

• I am overweight by quite a bit — FAIL.
• I live a sedentary life as a writer and have not exercised regularly (at least not for the past year) — FAIL.
• I’m a daily drinker and have been all my adult life — FAIL.
• I eat a healthy diet — lots of home-cooked veggies, olive oil, moderate meat, and no fast or processed food — PASS.
• My cholesterol and blood pressure are in the normal range — PASS.

According to science, I’m flashing three bright red warning lights that can cause illness and premature death: overweight, lack of exercise, and excessive alcohol consumption.

Yet I have sailed through my 70s with no hospitalizations, no serious diseases, survived two bouts with COVID-19, numerous flights to Europe, and a ton of stress. And I have only ever taken one medication in my life (for my thyroid). I am in excellent health at 79, even though I’m stressed, overweight, sedentary, and drink wine. How can that be?

Is it all a lucky accident, good karma, or the wine?

Everyday Mindfulness

My good health is partly due to good luck and good genes, but I believe it’s primarily due to my capacity for acceptance, gained through my mindfulness practice. These vital mental health traits — acceptance and mindfulness — are the secret sauce of my longevity. My unrelenting optimism helps, too.

But!

There is more to life than the mental game. I’ve been intensely involved in my Zen studies, meditation, and mindfulness for three years. But life in old age is not all spiritual. There are hearing aids, dental work, cataracts, weight loss and healthy eating and drinking to attend to. These things are also part of being mindful.

How could I have missed this?

I have some accepting to do around my physical health. I am pushing my luck. I’ll turn 80 this November, and I want more health insurance. I need to walk every day and moderate my eating and drinking. My models are the legendary men of Sardinia, where there are more male centenarians than anywhere in the world. It’s one of the five Blue Zones.

Their transportation is walking the rugged, hilly terrain. They are sheep herders who grow their food, make wine, and eat simple diets. They work hard and live long — and a statistically significant number live to be 100. Somehow, I will adopt a version of their way of life in my hilly San Francisco neighborhood.

My wife and I are planning a trip to Germany and France in September, and I am setting weight, exercise, and moderation goals in anticipation. My wife is 15 years younger, and I want to keep up with her. We will spend hours standing and walking as we take in the sights. Seven years ago in Florence, we walked more than 18,000 steps in one day.

Currently, I get winded and sore on a 30-minute walk. My work is cut out for me, and I have six months until the vacation. Failing to act is not an option. I owe it to myself and to my wife to get my ass back in shape. I’m motivated as hell.

Acceptance

The first step to solving any problem is to accept it. Let’s take my health goals. For me to bring my weight down, I need to accept that I’m seriously overweight. Once I am firmly grounded in that reality, I can make my weight loss plan and implement it with a better chance of success.

But I could rationalize it by saying, “Well, it’s not a big deal. Look how healthy I am.” That may be true, but it’s also true that I don’t like my reflection in the mirror, and I feel better physically and mentally when I’m not overweight.

So, I need to accept my weight and how it affects my emotions and proceed from that reality. It’s the same with exercise and drinking.

My understanding of acceptance deepened when I began to practice meditation daily.

Mindfulness

We meditate to calm our minds and find some inner peace. In the process, we become good friends with our thoughts. Before meditation, I never thought about my thoughts. I assumed my thoughts about someone were the reality of who they were. Now, I know that’s not necessarily true. Never in my life had I thought about thinking. Most people don’t.

When I began to meditate, I was surprised at how random and disconnected from reality my thoughts were. In meditation, I learned the object is to accept my thoughts without clinging to them and let them go. It was harder than I thought.

Meditating is like being a stranger at a party full of criminals. Once you realize they’re members of a crime family, you’ll be polite toward them (exceedingly polite) and won’t get caught up in their criminal deeds. You’ll accept them for what they are, quickly get away, and let them continue their criming.

In meditation, we learn to stop letting our thoughts control us. But we can’t do that by trying to push them away. It would be like wrestling with a pig. You get dirty, and the pig likes it! Instead, we accept the pig for what it is, let it go on, and enjoy its piggish behavior. In meditation, we accept our thoughts for what they are without attaching to them.

Meditation 101

To meditate, concentrate on your breathing. When thoughts cause you to lose concentration, put your attention back on your breath. You do this over and over. Each cycle — concentrating, losing concentration, and bringing it back — is a cycle of mindfulness. Losing your concentration is not a mistake — it’s a learning.

The more times you repeat this mindfulness cycle, the better. It is important to accept this endless cycling as a good thing. You accept your state of mind at the moment. There is no bad or good about this. It’s just you going in and coming out of the present moment. — you can’t fail at it.

Once you can do this fairly well in meditation, you can learn to accept the people and situations around you — the angry coworker who talks behind your back about you, for instance. If the suggestion that you should accept their underhanded behavior makes you uncomfortable, you might be confused about the difference between acceptance and approval.

Acceptance is acknowledging what’s already happened; approval is signing up for more of it in the future. I was 68 when I finally accepted my age. Did that mean I gave up on growing and learning and began shopping for canes and burial plots?

No. It meant I was standing on the solid ground of reality. I accepted my old age—there was no more denial or wishcasting. I accepted, “I’m getting old. What should I do now?”

What Should I Do Now?

Yesterday, I had dim sum with a woman who works in senior healthcare. Dim sum is a traditional Chinese meal of small plates typically shared during brunch. “Dim sum” translates to “touch the heart” in Chinese.

Sometimes, the wisdom you need pops up just when you need it. We talked about senior healthcare, and I told her about my need to start walking. She said that was great but added some important information for my upper body.

She told me about sarcopenia, a condition characterized by loss of skeletal muscle mass and function. She said regular workouts with light weights are just the ticket for older people to prevent it. Perfect, and I already have a set of light barbells in the house.

So, I have accepted what I need to do now: walk daily, work out with light barbells 4–5 times a week, and moderate my drinking. My weight will begin to fall as I count my calories. I have my marching orders, and I have motivation.

The exciting thing is that all this is mindfulness. Mindfulness is not all about meditating. It’s going to the dentist to get your cavity filled or not missing your daily walk. Mindfulness encompasses your entire life.

Anything you do, you can do it mindfully. It helps to have some formal mindfulness training like meditation, yoga, or tai chi. But mindfulness is just paying attention.

My new goals touch my heart because I’m not only doing them for myself to improve health and longevity. I’m doing them for my wife so she won’t be embarrassed by her “elder husband” while we’re on vacation in Germany.

And I’m doing them for everyone who follows my writing. If I don’t tell the truth about who I am and what I’m doing, what good am I anyway?

Gary March 2024

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