How to Stay Young And Healthy at 60 and Beyond - Part 1

© Copyright 2010 Patrice Walker All rights reserved

Freakin' Out at 60!

I turned 60 this past May (2010), and I have to say, I was really freaked out about it. I breezed through my 30th, 40th, and 50th birthdays without much thought to life expectancy, probably because I was distracted by one thing or another when those birthdays rolled around, like having a baby at 30 and dealing with menopause at 50. My 40s, on the other hand, were a blast! It wasn't until I approached 60 that I really started thinking seriously about how to stay young and healthy as I get older, as well as how much time I have left on the planet.

Despite these thoughts, there has always been one issue, as I’ve grown older, that I’ve never been that concerned about (except one time that I’ll describe in a minute), and that’s my health.  For one thing, I was blessed with some good genes, thanks to my Dad, who stayed healthy throughout most of his senior years (he was an active golfer), and only started to decline in his early 80s (he made his transition at 86). The other reason is that, for most of my adult years, I’ve been what some people would call a “health nut.” This started back in the mid-70s when my then-boyfriend and I heard comedian-turned-political-activist Dick Gregory speak about the virtues of a vegetarian diet.  We were sold and made the decision to phase beef, poultry, fish, and a lot of junk out of our diets.  I remained a lacto-ovo vegetarian for about eight years after that.

It was also in the mid-70s that I learned how to mediate during the Transcendental Meditation craze that was sweeping the country, and the world, at that time.  Except for a brief hiatus a couple of years after learning this meditation technique, I can say that I’ve been meditating continuously once a day for over 30 years.

Even though I quit being a vegetarian in the mid-80’s, I still made it a point to try to eat as well as I could, but I have always struggled with my weight. During the mid-90’s I got involved in selling Herbalife, lost a lot of weight, and kept it off for about five years. After a while, however, I decided I didn’t want to have to keep taking their ma-huang-based product that was artificially boosting my metabolism and finally said goodbye to Herbalife (Note: Herbalife eventually eliminated ma huang from its weight-loss products).

I started putting the weight back on as I moved through menopause, reaching close to 160 pounds by the mid 2000’s, a weight I hadn’t seen since I was nine months pregnant.  I tried working out at the gym and did that for about a year.  Not only did I lose weight, my body got a lot stronger.  But after a year, I got tired of going to the gym several times a week, and I also got bored doing the same workout routine over and over again.

While my weight has fluctuated over the years, my health has remained fairly stable, so much so that over the 25 or so years that I haven’t had health insurance, I’ve only been seriously ill once, in 1990. That was a wake-up call for me because I had to get public assistance to pay for three ambulance rides to and a week-long stay in the hospital to recuperate from asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia, all of which had been plaguing me from the spring through the fall of that year. After getting well, I decided to start paying attention to my health and doing whatever I could to ensure that I remained healthy.

Assuming primary responsibility for my health taught me several things. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that staying healthy doesn’t have to be difficult or a hardship. You don’t have to go on a regimented diet or stop eating all the foods you love. Nor do you have to put yourself on a rigorous exercise program to stay healthy. A few simple steps applied as often as you can is all it takes. You probably know most of what I’m going to tell you, but I’ve added a couple of suggestions that might make it a little easier to incorporate the rest of these health tips into your lifestyle.

If you slip up and stop doing some things from time to time, don’t beat yourself up. Simply take note of what you have or haven’t been doing, make the necessary adjustments, and keep moving forward. I decided to divide this content into two hubs because it got to be longer than I expected. Here are the first three things I do to stay young and healthy at 60.

1. Expect to be healthy. I started reciting an affirmation a long time ago, probably as early as my thirties, that goes something like this: The older I get in chronological age, the healthier I am and the younger I look. I’ve believed for a long time that what you put your attention on expands. If you think about sickness and disease, you end up being sick. If you focus on health and wellness, you experience these conditions instead. Even if you’ve never done anything like this before, there’s nothing keeping you from starting now. At the very least, expect to be healthy despite your age and what you’ve been taught is supposed to happen as you age. There is ample evidence of people older than 60 who lead vigorous, healthy and productive lives. If they can do it, so can you.
2. Listen to your body. This is what I started doing after the bout with asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia. Listening to your body simply means that you pay attention to how your body reacts, both positively and negatively, to what you do to it. I discovered, for example, that I am allergic to pet dander (I had two cats at the time). I also discovered that this allergic reaction is exacerbated when I eat products containing yeast and is most pronounced during the spring and fall when pollen and ragweed are at their peak. While I kept the cats for another 10 years, I took steps to cut back on bread and other yeast-containing products during these seasons.
3. Hydrate. I can’t say enough about how important it is to stay hydrated. Our bodies are mostly water after all. That must mean that water is essential to the myriad processes that take place in the body to keep it healthy and functioning properly. You’ll have to listen to your body to determine how much water to drink each day. When I lived in Washington DC in an air-conditioned and furnace-heated home, I drank upwards of 64 ounces of water a day because that home environment was so dehydrating. I’m now living on the Windward side of O’ahu where it rains a lot, especially during the rainy season. As I result, I now only drink about 32 to 48 ounces of water a day. There’s a lot of debate over whether or not drinking water will keep your skin looking young. Whether it does or not, it just makes sense to water a structure that is made mostly of water. I do know from listening to my body that when I’m dehydrated, I’m extremely fatigued, another good reason to make sure I get enough every day. Here, in Hawaii, the tap water isn’t bad at all. Honolulu is ranked as having the 5th best tap water in the nation, so that’s what I usually drink. But if you live in a city that has bad tap water, you might want to consider filtering it.

In Part 2, I’ll cover seven more things I do to stay young and healthy at 60.