What does "Fitness" mean for the over sixties

Now, fitness is a very complex subject, with as many different ideas as there are people willing to speak on it.

Clearly, depending on your current fitness levels, the way you approach getting "fit" will vary widely. Furthermore, your fitness goals will also have a big effect on your approach, as will the length of time that it will take for you to reach your goal.

Another thing to remember is that if you have not exercised for a long period of time or you have been following a poor eating regime, then it is imperative to start slowly, making small changes over a period of time.

Although, mainly because of my own age, I am writing primarily for an older audience, I also have young children (10, 11 and 12), plus young adult "children" (from 20-31), and everything I write will apply with just as much relevance to them as to the older adult.

With regards to diet, the important thing is NOT to think in terms of "A diet" but rather in terms of "MY diet" - i.e. what I eat and why, from now on, rather than for "the next six weeks before I get back to eating whatever I want". The trick is to change what you want, for ever, rather than wanting what you want now and denying it.

Your body is so very important as a human being. One day we may evolve into spiritual beings who do not need what we think of as food to replenish their energy. However, that time is unlikely to occur in your lifetime or my lifetime. So for now most of us need to rethink and re-evaluate our relationships with food.

Now, given the mass of processed, junk, highly sugared and bad fatted foods that are paraded in front of us on the TV and in every supermarket, garage, corner store and magazine, taking a stand in the name of "good health" is not an easy thing to do. It IS remarkably simple to do, but sixty years of conditioning make it very difficult to remove the emotion from our relationships with - well, you choose your "lovers" from the following list:

Chocolate
Chips
Biscuits
Crisps
Toast
Hot crispy bread
Fruit scones
Cream cakes
Milkshakes
Beer
Cigarettes
Wine
Sweets
Roasted nuts
Fried food
Fast food
Potatoes
Pasta

The list just goes on and on. ANY supermarket is 95% full of processed food that is NOT GOOD FOR US!!!

OK - all for today. Tomorrow I am going to write a little about what is good for us and then put some context around just what YOU might want to choose to do about YOUR relationship with food moving forwards.

Best wishes

John

The Importance of a Controlled Diet

Now I do understand that going on a traditional "Diet" does mean that there is control happening. The problem is that this control usually comes with the limiting of certain food types, or the exclusion of most food types, which in itself can actually be detrimental to good health.

Furthermore, the type of control brought about by "a diet" usually means that emotionally "the dieter" knows that he or she will have a time limit after which return to the old ways is almost inevitable.

Now, as far as I am concerned, there are only two things that have to happen to ensure that what is eaten is actually good for the health:

1. Acquire the knowledge about what food actually is and is not good for your health
2. THIS IS THE BIGGY - Break The Emotional Ties To Food

The western diet is originally and still, based on masses of carbohydrates - carbs forming the base of the triangle used by governments as their "model" for a healthy diet:


A TYPICAL CARB BASED PYRAMID

The biggest danger of a lifetime of following the guidelines of the above type of food triangle is that we are all hooked on sugar. Most of the stuff in the base of the triangle is one step away from sugar, and sugar is precisely what the body recognises those products as. If you look at the top of the triangle it says to only eat very limited amounts of sugars.

You now therefore know that the information in the government backed food triangle is absolute nonsense. It actually contains other information that is nonsense - more on that later.

However, the worst effect of eating foods that turn to sugar is the emotional dependance that builds up in relation to these foods. What do you include in your list of "treats"? Chocolate, toffee - or are you a crisps or chips person? All of these so called treats are related directly to sugar. How many of us think of a green smoothie as the ideal treat? The fact is that whilst our emotions push us in the direction of sugars, our bodies would choose the green smoothie or the salad every time.

So how do we sort this problem out? One certainty is that breaking the emotional tie to sugar is as difficult as it is for the alcoholic to break the emotional tie to alcohol. I know this - I have been trying to ditch sugars for around ten years.

So, back to the title of this Blog - the only way to make sure you eat a healthy diet is to BREAK the emotional tie to food of the wrong type by exerting self control.

More on this tomorrow.

Fitness For Over Sixties

Hi there

As I write these first words on my Blog, Fitness for Over Sixties, I am in fact a mere 59 and 7 months old. This project will test me to the limit, as although I have been interested in and have a lot of knowledge about, health and fitness, I have never managed to put everything together at the one time and create the health and fitness that I desire.

So, with just 5 short months until I hit sixty, I have decided that NOW is the moment to do something I have been attempting to do for the last ten years - bring all the knowledge and experience I have gathered studying under and working with experts in the field of health and fitness and create the physical person that I know I should be.

Then, on my sixtieth birthday, I am going to release a product to the unsuspecting world that will enable others to do the same with their health, fitness and more. As well as a product/plan I am going to have a membership site that will enable people to get together and help each other with health and fitness as well as giving them some great tools to do so.

Now, I call this Fitness For Over Sixties purely because of my own age. In fact, the product/plan that I release will be suitable for any age. However, my focus is on older people because there are particular reasons for them to start taking real care of themselves. These reasons will become clear over the next five months.

For now, I will say that I am going to deal with five main areas of "wellbeing":

1. Fitness
2. Diet
3. Personal Growth
4. Relationships
5. Helping Others

All for now - I am going to take this a step at a time. This is not something I am used to - I normally jump in with both feet and then run out of steam. This time is different.

Very best wishes

John