The reason most people go to the doctor is to find relief for a symptom. Most times the doctor will only give you what you need for that symptom. Going to the gym has the potential to fix most of the problems that you are experiencing. Exercising is the most natural, sustainable, efficient, and longest lasting medicine with no side effects.

I do respect doctors and you should go to them

I may talk quite a bit of smack about doctors but I do respect them and their opinions. They do possess far more knowledge and have been through the trenches compared to me. They are helpful in diagnosing an issue and pointing you in the right direction in terms of medications to solve your problem.

Your doctor is your most valuable resource to see exactly how healthy you are. You should have regular physicals and blood tests, because these are the most important numbers to judge your health. Getting that firm sexy body that you want can be a plus, but your blood work really tells you how healthy you are.

Tests like this can help you reach your goals faster too! Sometimes we have an underlying condition that is causing us to react differently than we should. If we have a condition that is preventing us from consuming certain foods or just not digesting properly then you will run into some issues. If you don’t have issues then your progress may be just a little slower than normal.

Where I think doctors fall short

Doctors fall short with the experience of working with the general population to lose weight by exercising and dieting. Everyone knows that eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly is good for them and they should do this regularly. However, there are so many questions around dieting and exercise that no one knows how to start.

Can you define a healthy diet?

Can you describe what exercises you should be doing?

With so much conflicting information on the internet now it is impossible to determine the right path for yourself. Not to mention, you have habits that have been cemented into you around diet that will be difficult to break. Creating that behavior change is a difficult process and takes a nutrition coach to really recognize those patterns and help you create those wins.

This is how you create sustainable change that can heavily impact your health. Medications will offer short term relief, and after prolonged use they will require you to increase the dosage over time. Sometimes there are also side effects that force you to take more medications to deal with those side effects. It becomes a vicious cycle.

I think that all doctors should have a background in personal training, nutrition, and behavior change. This way they can at least make some recommendations in terms of bettering someone’s health. If they don’t desire to do anything of the sort then they should have professionals in the field that they can refer them to. This way there can be real lasting change and the patient can live a more normal life.

How exercise shines

Exercise is going to be your all natural medication without any side effects. Exercise will promote a healthier weight which takes an enormous amount of stress off the body. Studies will show that being a healthier weight drastically lowers your chances of diseases. This includes issues like heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and many other problems. Instead of being chained by medications you can put in the some work now that will decrease your time waiting in your doctors lobby.

Cardio

Cardiovascular exercise will promote a stronger heart, lungs, and circulatory system. You can only imagine what this does for your health, especially if you are at risk for heart disease. A stronger heart and circulatory system you will have better nutrient delivery throughout your body. The only way for some things like hormones to travel throughout your body is through your arteries and capillaries. So if your circulation is good your body will recover faster and more efficiently.

Cardio doesn’t have to be intense running. If you can start with 10-30 minutes 2-5 days a week of walking you stepping your way to better health. (sorry for the corny pun)

Resistance

Resistance training will manually pump those vessels to create more blood flow as well. However, resistance training will strengthen your joints and this means every joint in your spine as well. A stronger body will keep your body aligned and allow you to move more efficiently and pain free. If you keep strength in your body, especially in your end range of motion, then you won’t have to rely on pain medication just to get your through the day.

This doesn’t have to be intense either. One to three sets that work the major muscle groups is enough to get your started.

Exercise will have the longest effect

If you consider small doses of exercise like your prescription then you will have much longer effects. Some meds have to be taken multiple times a day up to once a week. Let’s be honest, if you worked out twice a day you would most likely be in phenomenal shape and your chances of requiring meds would be slim. Even if you worked out once a week you would still make progress. Become healthier with movement not meds.

Think about exercise like a prescription

Let’s dive a little deeper into how to implement exercise into your daily life. I’m sure you have been very diligent about your medications, am I right? You have stayed diligent with the time of day, how many times a day, with or without food, and whatever other crazy parameters you have to follow. If you consider exercise like your medication then this can be an easier process.

Start with a schedule

What days of the week are preferable for you to exercise? As human beings we work better on a routine. Find some days and times that are best for you to workout. For resistance training it is preferable for you to do twice a week. So maybe 10am on Tuesday and Thursday is best for you. Maybe afternoons work better for you because you aren’t an early riser. The point is to find a schedule that allows you to be the most consistent.

Find the “prescription” that works best for you. Here are some samples in order from most difficult to least.

1. Resistance training 2X per week and cardio 3X
2. Resistance training once and cardio 3X
3. 4 days of cardio 30-60min
4. 5-7 days of walking 10-30 minutes

If one doesn’t work that is ok. Reevaluate and try again. Don’t force something just because you heard that it’s the best. You can never fit a square block into a circle hole.

Don’t depend on the doctor to determine your health

There is no magic pill and even diet and exercise has its limitations. However, actively pursuing a healthy lifestyle will give you the greatest chance of warding off lots of illnesses. You can’t depend on a pill or shot to constantly save you, this is only putting a band aid on the problem. You are in control of yourself so you have to do the things that make you feel better. Yes, it is hard work and there will be a lot of times that you don’t want to do it. But, if you get started now I promise that yourself 10 years from now will thank you.

The post Stop Going to Your Doctor and Start Exercising appeared first on The Super Senior.

Yoga is a low impact exercise that can yield massive benefits for older individuals. Breathing while holding a yoga pose will create more self-awareness of your body in space. The tension that is part of every pose will challenge your body in a plethora of ways. You will get 4 main benefits from incorporating yoga into your week, which are:

• Balance
• Strength
• Mobility
• Functionality

Balance

Balance shouldn’t be a surprising benefit from practicing yoga. After all, you can probably see the challenge with holding particular poses such as the warrior poses and the tree pose. However, let’s dive a little bit deeper into this topic.

The unfortunate thing about balance is that the only real way to improve your balance is by practicing. Keep standing on one leg until you can hold steady for longer period of time. Increasing your core and leg strength are also a couple ways to improve your balance as well. However, knowing where your body is in space (proprioception) is something that needs to be practiced. I’m not going to go too deep into the biology of balance, but if you want more information please send me a message.

Yoga is great for improving balance because of the variety of different positions that you will be performing. For example, warrior one is a staggered stance with your arms stretched out overhead. Warrior two is a staggered stance with your arms parallel to the ground. This slight change in the arms makes a difference in your center of balance and your equilibrium. One pose might feel different from one to the other. Now, let’s change some other parts of both poses that will change how they feel. Typically you are focusing your gaze on something in front of you, so let’s instead try looking at something to the side of you or up at the ceiling (or the sky, trees, clouds, wherever you feel like doing yoga). This change in your focus will challenge your equilibrium which will allow you to stay balanced in other situations while looking in different directions. I’m positive that a decent percentage of older adults that fall every year can be attributed to looking at something while walking.

Now, let’s bend the front leg parallel to the ground(or as low as your strength will allow). Your body is no longer locked into position, and is instead slightly more mobile which creates more instability. Your core and your hips are going to work much harder to stabilize in an unstable position. This can be very challenging because the less stable you are the more that you have to work to stay stable. You can probably see the trend here. We are progressing from stable and stationary to unstable and dynamic. Becoming more comfortable with your balance in unstable and dynamic situations will keep you safe by allowing you to keep your balance in a variety of different situations.

Strength

Believe it or not you can develop strength by doing yoga. Again, falling back on the misconception that yoga is nothing but meditated stretching. Holding and cycling through dozens of different poses in particular sequences helps build a good amount of strength. Not to mention just holding the poses for extended periods of time. Don’t forget, yoga is stretching under tension, and you tend to hold this tension throughout your entire yoga workout. Imagine holding a warrior pose, which is essentially a lunge, for 15 seconds before transitioning through other poses to do the same thing on the other side.

Holding these poses with tension creates a lot of stability for your joints. You’re strengthening the muscles and creating stability around the joint while holding the pose. Overtime these moves will get easier and easier and you will have to do harder poses to get the same effects. Huh this sounds a lot like progressive overload! Progressive overload is how you get stronger and stronger, because you are constantly challenging your body to adapt and build more muscle to meet the demands placed on it.

Mobility

Mobility is essentially your ability to move through your entire range-of-motion (ROM) without pain. This has some obvious benefits to your everyday life. Yoga has the ability to create strength in different ranges of motion which have huge benefits to your mobility. For example, the downward dog position can help with the ROM of your shoulder through the tension it creates from holding the pose. You would eventually be getting your head through the window that your arms and the floor create to develop your shoulders ability to reach that full extension. This will help a great deal with moving an object above your head such as lifting a box onto a shelf or playing rocket ship with your grandkids. Yoga can allow you to perform such tasks with ease, because you now have the ROM and the strength in that ROM that allows it to be pain free.

Functionality

Yoga’s benefit to your body’s ability to be functional is a given based on all the points I discussed above. The combination of balance, strength, and increased mobility all create one of the most functional bodies that you can ask for. You have created a tremendous amount of stability and flexibility in your body which will allow you to do just about any daily task that you have on your list. Laundry, cooking dinner, getting groceries, entertaining guests, and playing with grandkids are only a few actions that can become much easier. Not to mention other tasks that become increasingly harder with age when the body remains stiff and untrained. For example, getting in and out of the bathtub or vehicle, picking up something small off the ground, and cleaning high and low areas of your home. These tasks can be scary and painful because one false step will result in fall which can lead to serious injury.

Yoga is one of the top exercises you can do

BONUS! One bonus benefit of yoga is HAPPINESS. Your feeling of happiness is essential to your health. The deep breath work, meditation, and appreciation of the work you’re putting in helps to lower your heart rate and stress levels. Stress has major effects on your body by throwing your hormones completely out of whack. So increasing your levels of happiness will allow your body and hormones to react in ways that are much more appropriate. Don’t forget that you will be getting a better functioning body as well. The ability to perform daily tasks with ease all attributes to your happiness. We become increasingly more stressed and frustrated when we can’t do simple tasks that were once easy for us. Yoga is a foundational movement that everyone should incorporate into their arsenal of exercises in order to create a happy and healthy body.

The post Top 4 Reasons Why Seniors Need to Give Yoga a Chance appeared first on The Super Senior.

Finding that motivation requires you to really dig deep and find what matters most to you. “I want to get in shape and look good naked” is going to eventually fall apart because…

It’s too superficial

The idea of getting in shape normally encompasses the number on the scale and how you look in the mirror. These two qualities are enough to drive one mad. You will probably see some good progress in the beginning in terms of the number on the scale getting lower. But eventually that number stops going down and may even go up. You are doing everything right and using all your will power but the scale isn’t matching your effort. This can cause depression and anger that causes you to lose motivation. To look good just doesn’t work in the long term.

We need to really dive deep into our soul and find what really matters to us. This is where we will find the motivation that will help us create a healthy lifestyle. This can take some time and deep thought, but this is a crucial first step before you begin your fitness journey. Why do you want this? The things that mattered to me were…

Protection

I stay in shape and push myself to the limits to protect myself and those that I love. If my house catches on fire I want to be able to grab both my kids and get them out of the house safely. If I see a car coming right at my children or other loved one I want to be able to get them out of the way. If anything or anyone decides to threaten my family I want the power to protect them.

You already know that life isn’t just a straight line. It goes up, down, left, right, makes a couple U-turns, and even makes you go in circles from time to time. It’s like when GPS navigation first started coming out and it would tell you to get off the freeway just to get back on going the same direction. Life always throws you curveballs and we need to expect the unexpected. I hope and pray that nothing ever happens, but I will always be prepared in the event that something does.

Survival

I can’t protect others if I can’t protect myself. If I were to slip and below me is severe injury or death, I want the ability to pull myself back up. If I need to run from the zombie apocalypse I better have the ability to do so. If something happens and my survival depends on my strength, I’m going to give myself the best chances possible to survive. A strong body has been shown to have significantly better at avoiding injuries in comparison to an untrained individual. The recovery from an injury is also substantially faster if something happens.

My Kids

My children will be the biggest factor that keeps me going and pushing myself to stay in shape. Part of the reason is that I believe “do what I say not what I do” will only go so far. I know that I need to set the example for my kids. If I sit on the couch and watching TV all day, or if I’m constantly on my phone then my kids will follow. I want them to see the affects of putting in the effort to take care of your mind, body, and spirit. Especially in today’s world it is so easy to become complacent with everything. We have so much food available that we can eat anything we want whenever we want. We have so much entertainment that we couldn’t finish everything within a lifetime. I know I need to be the one to get them up and outside to really experience life and keep their eyes open.

The biggest reason why my kids are my motivation is to see them grow old and be apart of all their milestones. By staying in shape I increase my chances of being around for a long time. For my daughter, I want will be there for all her biggest accomplishments, walking her down the aisle for her wedding, and the father daughter dance. I’ll be sure to brush up on my breakdance skill from my teenage years to embarrass her. For my son, I just realized nothing has the same significance as those events. But, I will be an icon that he will have to work hard to surpass. I will be there for his biggest accomplishments, supporting and pushing him every step of the way. These are very far into the future since my daughter is 4 and my son isn’t even 1 haha.

If they decide to give me grandkids one day then I will be there as the very active grandpa. I’m very grateful and blessed that my parents have put their health as a priority for most of their life. It always warms my heart that they have the ability to play with the kids the way they do. After this experience I know that I want to be able to do this for my grandkids as well.

Find your motivation

These are the reasons that motivate me to keep going. When I find myself starting to fall off I take a minute and remind myself why I want this. This motivation goes beyond just wanting to look good. We need to find those deeper reasons why we want to stay healthy or even become healthy. Focus on how you feel and your goals to keep you going. When you find your answer I suggest writing it down to always remind yourself why you do this. So finding your “Why” is THE most important step to keep your motivation for the rest of your life. Leave a comment below and tell me what your why is?

The post How to Find The Motivation That Keeps You Going appeared first on The Super Senior.