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Remember last week I asked about where you get your health and fitness information. I discussed various places where health and fitness information is available and discussed the inconsistencies.

It doesn’t really end there.

Most of the information we get from the sources I listed in last week’s article assumes a couple of things:

1. That we all want bikini or swimsuit bodies.
2. That we are all totally dissatisfied with who and where we are now.
3. We all want the same thing – BUT, in reality, all our goals are different.
4. There is only one way to get to where you want to go – their way. If you don’t do it their way, you are doomed to failure.

I understand that there are many common goals that most of us share. Some of these are

1. Happiness (as only you can define it)
2. Vibrant health
3. More personal energy.
4. Freedom from long term chronic illness
5. Ideal weight, look good, feel good.
6. To be fully functional . . . Physically and mentally able to do those things we want to do.

The above items can have different meanings for different people and our goals and meanings can be different at different ages and can depend on our outlook or attitude toward life in general.

That’s why it’s so important to find out what works for you. One size does not fit all. For example everybody needs upper body strength to be able to lift, carry, push and pull. Let’s use the biceps muscles as an example. These are the muscles that form the front part of your arms. The biceps extend and contract a certain way. But there are numerous ways to cause this extension and contraction. The simplest is to raise a dumbbell from your side to your shoulder with your palms facing forward.. That will strengthen your bicep muscle. But there are many ways to contract the bicep. You can do dumbbell or barbell curls. You can do pull-ups. You can do a variety of pulling exercises. You can use free weights, or you can use resistance bands, or you can use a machine. You can even use soup cans and do the exercise in your kitchen. Each person will do the exercise in their own way. It doesn’t matter which method you use, but you need to do something to strengthen the muscles in the front of your arms so you can lift, pick up and carry things in your arms, like groceries or your infant grandchild. The same goes for all the other muscles of your body. If you really want to be fully functional, that is being physically capable of doing the things you want to do, there are many different ways to get there and each of us must decide for ourselves what works best for us.

We all have different preferences for moving our bodies, strengthening our limbs, lubricating our joints. Some prefer swimming or water aerobics, some prefer weightlifting at the gym, some prefer running (you need some resistance training too). Try them all and then pick something that suits you. It doesn’t matter what your friends or neighbors do, they have their preferences and you have yours.

One size fits all is usually slanted to the lowest common denominator. That’s not you.

Most of you reading this are seniors. We are a stubborn lot overall. But we still have to make our choices daily and do what is right for us. Most of us know what we should be doing to reach the real goals we want for our senior years. Some of us do them; others don’t. It’s hard. We live in a culture where healthy people are outnumbered by unhealthy people and the marketers aim for where most of the money is.

But it’s still our own personal choice and or responsibility to take care of ourselves. One size will never fit all as long as there are at least two people living on earth. Listen to your own body. Set your own goals and make your own choices. Be one of the few, the proud and the healthy.

Thanks for reading.

P.S.  By the way. If you want to read a source with a little different perspective on health and fitness, as well as advice worth heeding, I highly recommend Experience Life magazine. This is one of the best references for health and fitness I have found for the everyday person. The magazine is a subsidiary property of the LifeTime Fitness organization but the magazine is a separate entity. For the purposes of full disclosure, I am not a member of LifeTime Fitness, nor do I get a commission or other compensation for recommending the magazine. In fact I go to a different gym which is around the corner from LifeTime Fitness in Reston, VA, and I wouldn’t change for anything in the world.

There is a huge amount of health and fitness information available. Where do you get yours? Bookshelves? Magazine racks? Television? Newspapers? The internet? Your neighbor’s nephew? Most of it is confusing and it all seems to point in different directions. How do you stop the confusion and get it right? Good question.

Let’s start with popular culture: magazines, TV and the Internet. Go back fifty years and you’ll find the same teasers on the covers of popular magazines. “Lose 10 Pounds in Ten Days Using this Recently Discovered Miracle Food”.   “How (insert any movie star’s name) lost twenty-two Pounds in Just Ten Days for Her Role in (insert any movie or TV show)”. “Tighten Your Buns With These Ten Powerful Flab Reducing Moves”.   Television is one of the best or the worst offenders in the area of clear health and fitness information. Oprah has numerous clones out there promoting their own brand of healthy living.   Dr. Oz comes to mind right away but alas, there he was on TV, in front of a congressional committee, trying, with a great deal of effort, to defend the value of some of the supplements he suddenly started promoting. People listen to Dr. Oz because of his association with Oprah.

Public TV is out there too, with their sixty and ninety minute specials.  Dr. Amen, “Fit or Fat”, “Younger Next Year”, all with gurus promoting their own brand of health and fitness, all saying different things.  Infomercials, all day long, promoting supplements and juicers and machines that will tighten your tush in just thirty days with no work on your part, the machine does it all. Remember Susan Powter and “Stop the Insanity” and Tony Little and his gadgets. (NOTE: Actually Susan Powter was right in most cases: Move, Eat, Breathe).  And who can forget Jack LaLanne, who was on the air with the longest running health and fitness show of all time. Go back and look at some of his shows on YouTube and you’ll find that he was preaching “no sugar, no white breads, eat your veggies, and get plenty of exercise” in the late 1950s through the eighties. He died at 96 and he was still working out two hours a day and promoting juicers on TV with as much energy and enthusiasm as people a third his age.

Newspapers are great for good solid fitness information (sarcasm implied). Listen to this from today’s (July 1) Washington Post (I’m not kidding, this is unreal): “Mediterranean Diet may Help Kids Avoid Obesity” shouts the headline on Page E6 of the Health and Science Section. The article points out how children on a Mediterranean diet were 15% less likely to be overweight or obese than those who weren’t. OK so far. But get this: The people who were most likely to follow the diet were from Sweden and the least likely to follow the diet were from Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean. The study was done by a University in Sweden and the author of the study, an Italian, said that the “Mediterranean Diet” isn’t really Mediterranean but is more Swedish. Got that? Hmm. No confusion there, is there?

And how about the internet. I can find anything I want to find on the internet and it will tell me whatever I want to hear. Even the Government sites are confusing. There are more health, fitness and nutrition gurus on the internet than anywhere else and there are some real gems. I particularly like the one by the guy who promotes using two large slabs of unsalted butter in his morning coffee as the best health cure of them all. Of course it has to be the coffee he sells because all the other coffee in the world is tainted with an exotic form of mold. Here’s a link http://www.bulletproofexec.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproof-and-your-morning-too/.

Books, of course, are a great source of health and fitness information. The exercise and diet sections of the bookstores are filled with “how to exercise”, and “the one and only diet for you” books. Atkins, Pritikin, Ornish, South Beach, Low Carb, High Carb, Low Fat, Sugar Busters, etc. You know what? They will all work for a short time. Just don’t stick with them for a long time. The China Study and The Blue Zones are two of the best in my mind. I’m partial to The Blue Zones but after reading today’s Washington Post article, a Mediterranean style diets may not be a Mediterranean diet after all.

So, where should you get your fitness, health and nutrition information? You already know what to do: Exercise, Breathe and Don’t Eat Junk. Your body will tell you what’s best for you. Move your body a lot and move it against resistance. Stay away from refined sugar, flour and other refined foods. Cut way back on processed foods. Eat a little less meat and a few more vegetables. Breathe deeply to oxygenate your system. Think positive. Find what works for you over time and stick with it. Play with the diets and exercises in the popular magazines if you want but just move your body, don’t eat junk and breathe deeply.

Thanks for reading.

I’m back home, I’m part human, part cow and part metal wire – Moo!

Finally, after a full ten days in the hospital, I got home. I’ll explain. I had full chest-splitting open heart surgery on June 2, to have an Aortic valve replaced. It was successful and they used a cow valve to replace my own used up Aortic Valve. It turns out that two prongs of the three prong valve were also calcified so it was it was a good thing they did this now instead of later. I was fortunate. I had the same surgeon that transplanted Vice President Dick Cheney’s heart. Luck of the draw I guess.

Normally, I would have been out and home in four days, but I had to stay a full ten. There were a couple of challenges. The first was that after two days my heart stopped for a full eight seconds. This brought about some rapid movement on the part of the hospital staff. Note that hospitals don’t like to say “the heart stopped”. They prefer to say: “You had a slight pause.” So they decided to wait a few days before letting me loose on the public until all the heart chambers worked together to beat at the same rhythm. Second, there was an air leak in the chest cavity and they wouldn’t remove one of the chest tubes until it repaired itself. If they removed the tube early, it would have collapsed a lung. And third, it seems that human kidneys and artificial heart/lung machines don’t like each other, so often there will be some kidney dysfunction after they hook up your insides to the machine. Anyhow, I’ve been home a few days and they are monitoring me pretty closely with ongoing blood tests and chest X-rays and visits by a visiting nurse.

I’ll point out that the complete staff at the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute (Fairfax Hospital) , in Fairfax, Virginia was nothing short of magnificent. They did their best to keep me comfortable and happy, from check in to discharge. These folks were truly outstanding in their care and in their attitudes toward the patients. I’ll add too, that my wife, Edie, has been an absolute angel during this entire process

Now let’s make this relevant to senior health, fitness and personal energy. Just a few, short years ago, you stayed in bed for a week before you even moved to a chair. The normal hospital stay was as much as two weeks or more for a normal patient, with lengthy bed rest at home for a while after that. Exercise after that was to be done minimally and carefully. Today, you start walking your first day after surgery and walking is prescribed as the very best of all exercises for recovery for most major surgery, even knee and hip replacements. I was given a set of non-resistance lower body exercises to do for my legs, flexibility and balance. I am not allowed to do any upper body exercises and a grocery bag is the limit on weight. I am not supposed to lift anything exceeding five pounds with my arms for four to six weeks. I can’t push or pull anything and I am not supposed to lift my arms above shoulder height for the entire recovery period. I can’t drive for four to six weeks. Obviously I can’t go to the gym for a long time. The good news is that Inova Heart and Vascular Institute (Fairfax Hospital), has an outstanding outpatient cardiac rehabilitation program where exercise after heart surgery is carefully monitored in a true fitness facility with weights and treadmills. They hook you up with wires and make sure you make progress properly and quickly. I’ll be scheduling that as soon as the doctors give me the OK.

Lessons Learned:

1. Don’t get cocky going in. I felt confident that I would be an exemplary example of the benefits of being fit at the start. Because of all the preliminary tests and other things they did, all the doctors felt there would be no complications and I would be home in no time. There are still complications that are unique to heart operations, no matter how healthy you are otherwise.

2. Depression sets in easily. A good attitude going in usually means a good attitude coming out. Fortunately I was able to put some of the mental exercises for improving my attitude into practice. For the most part, they worked . . . But there were times. Many people have stressed to me that depression is a common problem, and I can easily see how. Even now, two weeks after the surgery, I feel disheartened that I can’t be more active and do more things.

3. Do what the Doctors tell you to do. That’s one thing I have been adamant about. I have done every exercise and taken every precaution they said to do and take. There is nothing worse in my mind than someone who slacks off when they get home, doesn’t follow the doctor’s instructions, and then complains about the slow progress they are making. Give me a break!

4. “This too Shall Pass!”  Recovery is only a maximum of eight weeks (actually, if you have diabetes, recovery is expected to take about two weeks longer). That’s just a blip on the radar screen, but it seems like forever to me. It’s worth the discomfort, pain and petty annoyances, to get it done now, rather than wait and have the valve problem show up at the autopsy.

So enough of that. I am alive and kicking. The visiting nurse tells me I am a “Poster boy” for recovery. I am part human, part cow, and part metal wires (used to put the breast bone back together).  Next week the blog post will be back on track about your health, fitness and personal energy.  Thank you for reading.