The Come Alive Project

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  • Energy Bite 330 – Clarify the Confusion

    Most seniors don’t want to be bodybuilders or performance athletes. Yet most seniors are presented with exercises and diets that seem to promote building large muscles and losing weight to the point at which you have minimal fat on your body. There is virtually nothing about fitness as part of your overall lifestyle.

    Yes, bodybuilders have huge muscles and very low fat. And most marathoners are thin and look malnourished. Neither are necessarily healthy.

    The problem for seniors who want to just be healthy and fit, but not go to extremes, is that there is very little good information available to satisfy that need.

    There are lots of exercise programs for seniors. They say all sorts of different and confusing things. Most don’t touch on lifestyle and only talk about the fitness end of it. The best I have seen that DOES include lifestyle factors, is Younger Next Year, by Chris Crowley and the late Dr. Henry Lodge. It has the best advice I have seen to date for Seniors about keeping fit and staying young, and is the closest I have seen to my own thoughts and theories on Health and Fitness for Seniors. It’s still not good enough.

    Another good resource about staying fit and living young is Making Old Bodies  Young, by Bernarr Macfadden. This book was originally published in 1919, and is very “old school” about health and fitness. That’s one reason it’s so good. Many of Macfadden’s principles, thought of as “far out” in the 1900s are just now being validated by science.

    There is still a lot of confusion, particularly on the weight loss and diet side. Most of the dietary plans out there work short term and some are arguably, dangerous. But they are only useful for a while. Most of those programs are not long term solutions and most people on them revert to their original weight over time.  Keto, Whole 30. Vegetarian, Vegan, Paleo, etc.  The list goes on and on.

    I was successful in losing weight using The South Beach Diet, by Dr. Arthur Agatston. I lost 40 pounds and never gained a bit of it back. It promoted neither low fat nor low carbohydrate. But it did stress the right fats and carbs and was what he called “Low Glycemic”. It worked for both me and my wife, but I have no idea whether it would work for you.

    So, what’s the answer?

    Stay tuned. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share ideas that have worked for me to go from 200 pounds to 160 pounds and be in the best shape of my life, starting at age 70 and still continuing today. I’ll include and share ideas from people I have interviewed and studied for well over a decade. The goal is to provide ideas and guidelines, but not specific dictates about what is best for you. As Bruce Lee said so well, “Take what you find useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely yours.” Great advice!

    As a side note: I’m neither a Medical Doctor nor a Psychologist. I earned an NASM Personal Trainer Certification a decade ago with a designation as a Senior Fitness Specialist. I am letting them lapse this year because I have never actually used them, and I am 80 years old after all.

    Anyhow, I hope you will find the upcoming material useful, and I thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 329 – I Need Your Help, Please

    Am I out of topics? There are probably a lot of topics I haven’t covered in these 329 articles. But in my mind, I am running out of topics. I need your help. I need your questions and comments. I want to know your questions, wants and concerns about your Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Living.

    So, this week’s post is NOT an article. It is a request.

    I need your input. I don’t take comments on this website, mostly because I don’t like Trolls, negativism and unwanted spam in the comments section.

    But I do like feedback. I get most of my feedback in the form of the emails you send me. That’s why I include my email address when I send out these articles every week. Please keep those emails coming.

    But I need more comments and questions and thoughts. Yes, I welcome them. I want them from anyone and everyone who reads these articles. I will use them to get questions to answer either in print or in a new and upcoming video format I will soon be trying out. I want your comments as to what you would like to see covered, questions you want answered, and anything I can do to improve the quality of these short weekly messages.

    Remember that my goal is to provide useful and practical information and commentary that will help active seniors look and feel better, be fitter, healthier, discover the Fountain of Youth that is already within each of you, and tap into the flow of life. What I write is not always relevant to all readers. “Take what you find useful, disregard the rest, and add your own unique perspective.”   — Bruce Lee

    So, I thank you in advance for your comments, thoughts and questions. My email address is bob@thecomealiveproject.com.

    Please let me hear from you. I do read and respond to my emails.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 328 – Why These Weekly Messages?

    These weekly messages are Short “Bites” of information, advice or commentary, usually somewhere between 400 and 800 words, that usually take two to three minutes to read. I try to keep the reading time under three minutes, usually two minutes. You can read it quickly, absorb what’s in it, and get on with other things. I hope you choose to read it.

    Occasionally, it is wise to provide a refresher as to why I write and why you should read these weekly articles. I wrote about this four years ago and I thought it might be a good time to have that refresher during this period of disruption to many of our normal daily activities.

    There’s not a lot out there for Active Seniors, so I attempt to provide useful, inspiring, and sometimes entertaining information about Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Adults approaching age 55, 65, 75 or even older. I cover the physical, mental, and sometimes the spiritual aspects of becoming Seniors and how we can be prepared to get the most from our Senior Years. It’s all about how to discover and tap into your own Fountain of Youth. Sometimes I include stories about interesting people and situations.

    The information I offer comes from research, experience and opinion (mine and others). Sometimes I have strong opinions. Sometimes you will agree with me, sometimes you will disagree. I try to cover all sides.

    Often there is so much conflicting information (Nutrition for example), that I use my own experience as the example. At 80 years old, I am reasonably healthy and fit and try to live what I speak and write about. Most of the time it works, occasionally it doesn’t.  There are so many opposing theories on nutrition that there are likely to be two new theories published by the time you finish reading this article.

    Cutting back on meat, upping the vegetables and cutting out a lot of sugar and processed foods seems to be a workable common denominator for weight loss and healthy eating. I lost nearly 40 pounds in 6 months. But that might not work for you. Remember your goal should not be just to lose weight; there are a lot of unhealthy skinny people. Your goal should be overall health and fitness.

    Exercise, too, is a matter of what works for you and what your goals are. Seniors have different abilities than younger people. It takes a little longer to build muscle and a little longer to recover from exercise. Fall prevention is a major consideration. So is injury prevention. Is cardio best? Is weight lifting? Stretching? Running or walking? The real answer depends on your goals. For most of us, our goal is not to be a performance athlete, but rather to have a balanced, healthy and fit body that looks good, feels good and will do the things we want it to do so that we will live a long, functional, happy and independent life.

    I don’t offer medical advice. I don’t always believe what doctors tell me. Sometimes I’m right. Mostly they’re right.

    I’ll always be transparent about what is real, what is opinion and what is nonsense. But don’t forget that today’s nonsense is tomorrow’s science. Science is now getting serious about the whole “mind over matter” thing. Does your body really respond to your thoughts?  What role does your attitude play in your overall health. Can you modify your genes, or do your thoughts just influence the way they act?  “Epi-genetics” is a new buzzword. The possibilities of new discoveries that are being made about our genes can have powerful effects on medical treatment in the future.

    So, I’ll continue to write these “bites” of information about Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Seniors. In a few months, I may be adding some video into the mix so look for that. Stay tuned, you should find it interesting, useful, and even entertaining.

    Thank you for reading.