How to Improve Health and Fitness After Age 50

How to Improve Health and Fitness After Age 50

I encourage those over the age of 50 to consider upgrading to the longevity lifestyle because it’s a balanced way of daily living that utilizes a holistic approach to improve health – focusing on habits of nutrition, exercise, money, relationships, and personal development:

• The longevity lifestyle invites each person to craft (and then, periodically update) his or her own strategy for healthier aging.
• That strategy must be specifically designed for each person’s unique circumstances and needs – if it’s to be helpful and effective.
• The idea behind the longevity lifestyle is not just to extend lifespan, but most importantly to improve daily quality of life.

How to Be in the Top 3% of the Healthiest People

Here’s the shocking news: under 3% of Americans are living the longevity lifestyle.

Recent research – a study sample of 153,000 adults in 50 states – revealed that the vast majority of people are not managing all four of the most-basic fundamentals of wellness:

• exercising regularly
• eating healthily (including enough vegetable servings per day)
• keeping body weight within safe ranges
• not smoking

If only 3% of people in the US are living a minimally healthy lifestyle, this does not bode well for future outcomes.

But your outcome can still be positive.

You can improve health significantly.

Action Step: today, I encourage you to look at these four bullet points above, and decide:

1. which one am I managing the most effectively?
2. which one am I managing the least effectively?

This increased awareness about your current habits will help you in the upcoming weeks as you begin to turn up the dial on your self-care protocols.

What if the best year of your life hasn’t happened yet?

I’m Dane Findley and my message is simple: it’s only in your thriving that you have anything to offer anyone – therefore, the best investment you can ever make is in your own health.

When you get my free updates you also get instant access to my bonus guide on how to better manage your time, energy, and nutrition.

• the newsletter is for free-thinking, creative types who’ve decided they want to be even healthier than they are now
• the evidence-based, actionable strategies for a better life – that I share freely – are for those intrigued by personal development
• if you are kind and curious, you will likely find this information motivating and helpful
• there’s nothing wrong with someone being rigid in their beliefs, but if that’s you, you’ll likely not enjoy my newsletter (no hard feelings – I wish you well on your journey)
• if you go more than 4 months without opening one of my email messages, you will automatically be unsubscribed
• don’t sign up for my newsletter if you are someone who is not fascinated by human optimization and stellar health

However, if you are someone for whom improved health is becoming a top priority, then I invite you to sign up for my free updates:

What is Holistic Health?

The holistic approach to wellness seeks to improve health and facilitate healing by addressing all aspects of a person – their physical body, their mental agility, and their life purpose.

Having worked passionately for decades as a wellness coach and fitness trainer, I’ve learned first-hand that holistic healing can be a profoundly effective form of prevention from accelerated aging.

As a believer in prevention, I spend my time encouraging others to turn up the dial on their wellness now, and not to wait until they experience significant symptoms.

The Big Idea here is to think ahead.

It’s easier to improve your health while you already enjoy a certain level of good health. It’s a bit more difficult to improve health when you’re in the middle of having a significant health challenge.

I invite you to ask your doctor about disease prevention, and also ask your doctor if the longevity lifestyle is a good fit for you.

I believe strongly that each person needs to craft their own conscious strategy for aging successfully.

You’re never too young to create your aging strategy, but if you’re over the age of 50 I strongly suggest you start immediately.

Most people do not plan smartly for healthier aging, because the whole topic of aging can be unappealing. I encourage you to be the exception to this tendency.

You probably think of yourself as healthy. But how important is it to you to improve health for yourself even more than what you’re currently experiencing?

How Do I Begin to Improve Health?

When you improve your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness, you are setting the stage to add more years to your life and – more importantly – more life to your years.

The longevity lifestyle is about living the longest, happiest life possible by optimizing your thinking, feelings, beliefs and habits.

Build Your Happiness Momentum

To improve health, you must move your body strategically and consistently.

Engaging in daily physical activity is one of the scientifically proven (see sources below) keys to happiness.

The funny thing about exercising each day is that it can be so hard to get started.

But once you do it a few times, it starts to better regulate your brain chemistry – the hormones and endorphins start pumping and this brightens your mood and lifts your self-esteem.

You begin to feel competent and increasingly agile.

Your spirits rise, and this, in turn, becomes a sort of rocket fuel for subsequent workouts, which then make you feel even better. And so the cycle continues.

You think you might be an exception to this dynamic?

You’re not.

Dane Findley believes there is a better way to improve health. Dane has been a professional wellness coach for over three decades. He holds a masters degree in counseling psychology and has over 200 articles published online on getting healthier, as well as hundreds of videos and podcasts. Together with his partner David, Dane assists others in relocating from cold-weather climates to fair-weather communities that offer a higher quality of daily life.

Too busy to read the rest of this article now? Pin it for later.

Exercise is self-perpetuating. It’s rough-going at first, but as your exercise sessions become more consistent and habituated, they become easier to do until one day: it’s almost like muscle-memory.

Case in point: on Wednesday mornings at 10am I take a yoga class. Many months ago, when I first started “trying” to go to this new class, it was difficult for me. As a writer, I’m often in my writing-flow in the mornings, and getting me to stop in the middle of a crafting a writing piece is similar to pulling teeth.

At first, trying to get to the class was stressful.

I was harried and inconsistent.

My inner-critic would whisper inside my mind that I was too busy to take a yoga class.

But I’ve been intrigued by how to improve health for many decades now, and I’ve long-since learned that a resistant inner-voice is just a natural part of the process of trying to build a new positive habit into an already-busy week.

So I stuck with it.

Now, taking that class is almost automatic. I’m no longer rushed. I no longer “fight” with stopping my work to get ready for class. I even clean my yoga mat on both sides before I walk out the door.

There’s nothing special I’m doing, it’s just that I’ve been going every Wednesday for so many months now that it’s as if I’ve worn a comfortable groove into the process.

I no longer have to use a machete to clear a path through the jungle – there’s a well-worn trail now.

Action Step: today, I invite you to build your happiness momentum by moving your body (even if it’s just a short walk). Take a quick self-assessment of how your mind and body feel before you exercise, and then again, how they feel after.

Be especially aware of your thoughts.

This awareness will prove valuable to you as begin to slowly craft all types of exciting, new, positive habits in your weekly life.

Make a Positive Impact

The more strength, flexibility and sustained energy you have, the bigger your impact will be in the lives of the people you love.

The degree to which you enjoy excellent health, correlates with your ability to make a positive difference in the world.

In the video above, I discuss how you can use this idea – of how improved health correlates to increased impact – to inspire yourself toward better self-care.

The path to improve health can be a lot of fun, but it’s not without obstacles.

When you are challenged, feel like giving up, or are tempted to slip back into old habits, that is time to connect with the reason behind the goal – you want to be healthy so that you can live your best and most purposeful life.

New Healthy Habits (Start from Where You Are)

You have the best chance of optimizing your daily life if you take small steps in their proper sequence.

If all you needed to create inner peace, improve your health and lengthen your lifespan was information, you could simply Google a question, and get an answer.

However, information is ultimately meaningless unless you’re able to turn that information into a daily positive habit and then – and this is the challenging part – make the new habit stick for the rest of your lifetime.

The longevity lifestyle is a holistic, solution-oriented, evidence-based approach to living that seeks to establish new, positive habits into daily life – so life can be longer, more meaningful, and more enjoyable.

I provide free weekly updates to help start you on the new leg of your journey to wellness and increased prosperity. Subscribe now, and you’ll instantly receive access to my downloadable report, containing surprising strategies to help you better manage your energy:

Additional Sources:

Research: Physical Activity Increases Long-Term Happiness – http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/staying_active_increases_your_long-term_happiness

Percentages of Healthy Americans – http://www.livescience.com/216-study-3-percent-americans-live-healthy-lifestyle.html

Original article and pictures take overfiftyandfit.com site