The Healthy Aging Series by Mark Neese at True North Counseling

An Interlude: What a Fox and a Horse have to Say About Agism | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 11

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Look in the mirror. What do you see?

You might see your mother or father. I do.

I try remembering when my father was my age. My father was 30 years older than me, so I was 37 when he was 67, the age that I am now. That was 1993. I had moved to Louisville the year before and had started seminary to work on a social work degree.

My father was still working, like me today.

His body was starting to fail him, almost all due to smoking. He would hit 70 a few years later and face several operations and procedures that included heart bypass, colon cancer surgery, and the replacement of his aortal-femoral artery.

These were difficult times for him. I can only imagine.

It was at this time that he was diagnosed with emphysema, which would lead to COPD, and eventually take his life at 82 years old. I’m certain he was demoralized when he received that diagnosis. That’s what aging can do.

You are not the person you were 20 or 30 years ago. You become so much more aware of your mortality. And you begin to lose your sense of value, your sense of worth.

It doesn’t help that we live in an economic system that values productivity, and success, and capital, of which we have a little when we age.

I want you to take a few minutes and read a fairytale about a horse and a fox. It’s short. It’ll take 1 to 2 minutes.

The Fox and the Horse

A peasant had a faithful horse which had grown old and could do no more work, so his master no longer wanted to give him anything to eat and said, “I can certainly make no more use of you, but still, I mean well by you, and if you prove yourself still strong enough to bring me a lion here, I will maintain you. But for now, get out of my stable.” And with that he chased him into the open field.

The horse was sad and went to the forest to seek a little protection there from the weather. There the fox met him and said, “Why do you hang your head so, and go about all alone?”

“Alas,” replied the horse, “greed and loyalty do not dwell together in one house. My master has forgotten what services I have performed for him for so many years, and because I can no longer plow well, he will give me no more food, and has driven me out.”

“Without giving you a chance?” asked the fox.

“The chance was a bad one. He said, if I were still strong enough to bring him a lion, he would keep me, but he well knows that I cannot do that.”

The fox said, “I will help you. Just lie down, stretch out as if you were dead, and do not stir.”

The horse did what the fox asked, and then the fox went to the lion, who had his den not far off, and said, “A dead horse is lying out there. Just come with me, and you can have a rich meal.”

The lion went with him, and when they were both standing by the horse the fox said, “After all, it is not very comfortable for you here — I tell you what — I will fasten it to you by the tail, and then you can drag it into your cave and eat it in peace.”

This advice pleased the lion. He positioned himself, and in order that the fox might tie the horse fast to him, he kept completely quiet. But the fox tied the lion’s legs together with the horse’s tail, and twisted and fastened everything so well and so strongly that no amount of strength could pull it loose. When he had finished his work, he tapped the horse on the shoulder and said, “Pull, white horse, pull!”

Then up sprang the horse at once and pulled the lion away with him. The lion began to roar so that all the birds in the forest flew up in terror, but the horse let him roar, and drew him and dragged him across the field to his master’s door. When the master saw the lion, he was of a better mind, and said to the horse, “You shall stay with me and fare well.” And he gave him plenty to eat until he died.

What are the lessons that we can learn about aging from this fairy tale?

1. We tend to see ourselves, the way our culture sees us. And then we reinforce that by becoming the very thing that our culture sees. The poor farmer didn’t see value in the aged horse. The horse was no longer strong, and he was no longer able to plow the fields, pull the wagon full of grain, or carry supplies from town. In the farmers mind, the horse was worthless, a drag on his economy. And so, the horse withdraws from the land of productivity and enters the forest in his despair.

The horse saw itself as worthless. We become the vision that the world projects onto us. That’s how agism works. It’s like parent projection in a way. Parents project out to their children the wants and dreams they have for them. A doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a mechanic, you get my point. Society projects onto us, those of us that are aging, a vision that we are tired, that we are a burden, and that we can barely expressive a cogent thought. That’s agism.
And then we believe that vision. We succumb to our own ageism, much like the aged horse.

2. The horse goes into the forest.
In the Jungian interpretation of fairytales, going into the forest often symbolized going into the unconscious. It’s in the forest that the horse hears a voice. It’s the still small voice of the fox that saves him. It offers the countercultural solution of agism: wisdom and cleverness. 

Foxes symbolize many things in fairytales. Foxes symbolize overcoming obstacles, solving problems, or outsmarting opponents. The fox is the still small voice that advocates for us. The fox was the voice that helped the horse find its value and it’s worth in the face of despair. 

The message from the still small voice is this: You are more than your body.

Think about that for a minute. We are more, much more than our body. We are powerful, much more powerful than the strongest foes, even the lions in our life.  I remember being a supervisor 35 years ago at UPS. I was responsible for loading aircraft in the middle of the night. This involved sometimes loading 75- or 85-pound boxes into the belly of a DC 10. I often supervised women who had a difficult time picking up boxes that weighed that much. I would train them and remind them that they have the great equalizer. We understood that men typically were stronger than them, but they could use their brain, which was that equalizer, and ask for help.

There is another fairytale about a fox in some geese. The fox came upon a flock of geese and announced that he was going to eat them one at a time. In that fairytale the fox is outsmarted by the geese because one of the geese was not disheartened, and came up with a plan to pray without ceasing, which put off being eaten even until now!
The message is, do not become disheartened, you have within yourself the strength needed to overcome the frailties of old age.

The truth is, you will begin to fade physically.  You will become frail. You will lose outer strength.

But what is also true is you have an inner strength, an inner wisdom, and an inner cleverness that makes you valuable and gives you worth in a society that struggles to know what to do with you.

When you look in the mirror, look past the thinning gray hair, and past the crow’s feet, and past the sunspots, and see the real you. See the person who is much more than a body and see the lion slayer or at least the lion tamer. 

Look into the mirror and see into those blue or brown or gray eyes, deep into the inner you and see the fox. Listen the clever, adaptable, and cunning you that lives deep within your unconscious, and listen to that inner voice. That’s what will allow you to fare well in a society that struggles to see your worth.

We have some choices in life. On the one hand, we are aging, getting older, and losing our strength.  On the other hand, we can choose not to see ourselves the way society sees us, but see ourselves as having an inner strength that is able to conquer even our greatest foes in times of trouble.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

The Healthy Aging Series by Mark Neese at True North Counseling

Strategies for Breaking Up, Part 3 | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 10

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What Was the one Moment That Changed Your Life?

I tell my sons and granddaughters that they are here today because the Navy Recruiter had gone to lunch.

Let me explain.

I graduated from high school in 1974. Geez, I’m getting old, yay.
I went to work with my father and Jackson Engineering after high school. He was the vice president and recruited me.

I loved working with Jerry Neese. I loved everything about my father, and in all my life, I never had a cross word with him. I never had a cross word with my mother, unless you count the time she smacked my face. It was the summer of 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated. My mother was heartbroken and glued to our only little black-and-white TV. I wasn’t very sympathetic and wanted to watch something else, probably Star Trek. Mom refused to change the channel and I told her I was glad he was shot! She stood up and smacked me. I sat down and watched the news about JFK. At least that’s what I hope I did.

Going to work with my father was a no-brainer. I had a new 1974 Chevy Nova, new business-casual clothes, but I wasn’t there but a few weeks and the urge or desire to do something else slowly grew within me. It wasn’t a decision to leave, rather it was a decision to explore. There was a push and pull. The push was the thought of never leaving Southern Indiana, and the pull was all the people, places, and things in this big, beautiful, exciting world we live in. It was an urge that nothing seemed to soothe except the thought of leaving.

So, I decided to join the Navy. My older brother had joined the Navy. My dad was a Marine and served on a ship at the end of World War II.  So, I took a lunch break and went down to the Civic Center overlooking the dingy Ohio River to visit the Navy recruiter. I can feel my heart rate increase thinking about that day in July, two weeks before my 18th birthday. The hall was lined with other recruiting offices. Besides the Navy recruiter there were office for the Air Force, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard. When I arrived at the Navy Recruiters office, there was one of those “be back at” clocks that showed 1 pm. I wandered around the hallway for a second or two and the Air Force recruiter saw me looking a little frustrated and invited me into his office. With Staff Sergeant Burke’s help I enlisted in the Air Force.

In that moment, my life was changed. It changed because I went for training in San Antonio Texas instead of Michigan. It changed because I went to my first assignment, which was Rickenbacker Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio, where I would meet my sons’ mother and my granddaughters’ grandmother.  My sons and by extension my granddaughters are here today because the Navy recruiter had gone to lunch.

I can come up with a half a dozen other moments that have changed my life. Some educational. Some made about employment. Some made on basis of relocating to a new state.

What about you? Think about those life-changing moments that you’ve had.

Gemma Dale and Her Moment of Change

This brings me to the fourth Obesity Memoir that I’ve read this season. “Memoirs of a Former Fatty: How one Girl Went from Fat to Fit,” by Gemma Dale

Gemma went from a size 22 to size 8, lost 80 pounds and ended her for your journey of weight loss with a half marathon.

Everything I’ve written about this season on how to break up with the food is in her book. There is a push and a pull in her life to break up with food. The push was the shame, the knee problems, poor health, gall stones, and the problem with walking stairs. The pull was as she said, “I lost weight and gained a new life.“ She writes that she doesn’t have a magazine, perfect body, but learning to love exercise, “There is power there is freedom, in your feet.” The pull was being strong.

“Somewhere along the way, in the middle of 2014, something shifted. I’d lost about four and a half stone by this point. And this is when it stopped being just about a number on the scales and started being about how strong I was; how strong I could possibly be. It was about being toned. And what my body might be capable of.”

Gemma writes that you must change the way you think about yourself and about food. If you want to change the way you act. That change, she writes, starts with simply thinking about making a change. “You’ve got to have a dream.”

Where have you read this?

“Fitness,” she writes, “is as much a mental process as a physical one.”

Gemma doesn’t word it exactly the way that I worded it, but changing your eating habits, and your health often mean breaking up with food. It means, “breaking old habits, and making newer, healthier ones.”

Everything changed about her life. Her friendships. Her family relationships. Where she hung out, and who she hung out with.

And she has some wonderful slogans in her book. I love slogans.

“If you want to do something badly enough, you will find a way, if not, you will find an excuse.”

And her racing slogan is “Better last than did not finish, which is better than did not start.”

How did she lose weight? This was a very common theme in the other obesity memoirs that I’ve read. She simply ate less and moved more. There is something very simple about the way these writers lost a large amount of weight. They simply ate less and began moving and exercising.

She talks about the diet industry or what some call, The Fitness-Industrial Complex, and it’s one purpose to sell a fantasy. A fallacy, she explains. She calls what they sell as garbage.

“There is no quick fix. No matter what the latest guru or carefully edited celebrity yells at you.“

And there’s more in her book. It’s an easy read. But what about that moment, that life-changing moment, that changed her forever. I’ll share a lengthy section of her book in her words.

“Most overweight people who go on to lose a lot of weight, have generally had a moment. A moment in which something happens, something shifts and changes, and they finally decide to do something about it.
I had a few moments along the way. Several false beginnings. But there was one moment that moved me from vague mutterings and half-hearted promises, all of which had historically led to not very much at all, to actual action with tangible results.

My moment was New Year’s Eve, 2011. I was at a black-tie dinner at my dad’s golf club. Already significantly overweight, with the Christmas quality street factored in, I was bigger than ever. My long, black evening dress was straining at the seams. A pair of spanks was doing its best to keep everything in place but failing to deliver. I felt, and probably looked, like an overstuffed sausage. My ankles were agony because of all the excess weight pushing down on them. There would be no dancing for me. Just an attempt to hide as much of my bulk as possible underneath the table and my giant wrap. During the evening, I went to the lady’s room. I sat in the cubicle and had myself a little cry. A pity party all by myself. And then that moment I decided. Something was going to change for definite this time. It would be no more false promises.”

She ends this section by writing, “The journey of weight loss is really a journey to a whole new life.”

I thought of my life as I read this obesity memoir.

I still need to grow. I have things that need to change. I’ll take some time this weekend in the Smoky Mountains doing a solo backpacking trip. No talking, just listening to that still small voice.

Open to change, wanting to change and expecting another moment of change in my life.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

To purchase Memoirs of a Former Fatty: How one Girl Went from Fat to Fit, by Gemma Dale, click here.

The Healthy Aging Series by Mark Neese at True North Counseling

Strategies for Breaking Up, Part 2 | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 9

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Breaking Up with Food by Using Self-Binding Strategies

“Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in an Age of Indulgence,” by Anna Lembke

My wife and I love to use bed and breakfasts when we travel. We stayed in one called Cactus Cove in Tucson on one of our recent trips. We had a desert view of the Catalina mountains and Saguaro Cacti and visited the Biosphere. Pretty cool. Tucson also has great restaurants.

Prohibition

Prior to the Pandemic, we stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast outside Berea, Kentucky that was an old farmhouse built with a wonderful view of an open meadow. On our way to Berea, I noticed the Boone Tavern. We wanted to wake up the next morning, explore, and then finish it with a pint of beer at the tavern. While visiting a pottery shop on the outskirts of Berea, I asked the owner if there were any cool pubs near Berea College. He looked at me and smiled and then said that the county, which included Berea, was a dry county. It didn’t ruin my trip, but needless-to-say I was a little disappointed. By the way, the bed and breakfast had complementary drinks that had been donated by past guests.

Blue Laws

In Louisville, you can’t buy alcohol at liquor stores until 1 pm on Sundays. Having said that, you can order a drink with your brunch on Sunday after 10 am. It seems silly. At the worst, it’s inconvenient, which is exactly what these laws are  meant to do.

These laws are social binders. They are barriers to buying alcohol.

Breaking up with Food Using Self-Binding Strategies

This season is about breaking up with food. This blog is about Self Binding as introduced in Anna Lembke’s book, “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in an Age of Indulgence.” She describes Self-Binding as “willfully and intentionally creating barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice in order to mitigate compulsive over consumption.”

Lembke goes on to describe three types of self-binding.

  1. Temporal Self-Binding or Time self-binding.
  2. Spatial Self-Binding.
  3. Categorical Self-Binding.
  4. I’ve added one or teased out the categorical type to include:
    Social Self-Binding.

I’m going to expand on these as they relate to breaking up with food.

Self-Binding Strategies

1. Temporal Self-Binding (TSB).

TSB means using time limits and finish lines. Time-Restricted Eating or what some referred to as Intermittent Fasting is the use of time limits. You pick an eating window. Let’s say eight hours. You can fast from 8 pm until noon the next day. You break your fast at noon. Of course, you can’t over consume during your eating window, but limiting your eating window is a way of intentionally putting up a barrier to overconsumption.

On most weeks, I use this strategy 2 to 3 times a week. By limiting my eating window, and engaging in exercise activity during the fast, I create a calorie deficit, which helps maintain a healthy weight. There isn’t really anything magical about fasting, except that it tends to decrease your caloric intake throughout the day. The Whole 30 Diet is another example of TSB. You limit your intake of foods like sugar, grains, dairy products, and alcohol for 30 days.

Many of you have been following this blog, and some of my blogs have shared my reflections from Obesity Memoirs. One of the constant variables in these memoirs is eat less/move more. Time-Restricted Eating is a Temporal Self-Binding procedure that helps you eat less.

You can use Temporal Self Binding to limit sweets to only weekends or special occasions. There are some that limit alcohol consumption to 25 or maybe 50 times a year. That would be 2 to 3 times a month. Temporal Self-Binding means structuring your day by putting up barriers that make access to food more difficult. During the pandemic, a therapist friend told me that she decided to only drink alcohol on the weekends. She noticed that she was drinking more because she was home all the time. Temporal Self-Binding is necessary because willpower is unreliable.

2. Spatial Self-Binding (SSB).

Here we are talking about rearranging your space by limiting where we go, limiting what we have in your cabinets, and creating an environment where food is not center stage. I use SSB by not bringing in foods, like sugars and sweets into my home. I try avoiding Panera in the mornings. It also means that I have a healthy snack food in the fridge or cabinet that limits my ability to overconsume. SSB means staying out of the process-food section of the grocery store, you know, the center section.

SSB involves looking at your home, your car, your neighborhood, the route you take to work, your office, where you shop for clothes, where you eat out, where you stop for coffee, and then come up with a plan for making it difficult to relapse back into over consuming and into a dysfunctional relationship with food.

Imagine breaking up with a partner you spent lots of time with hanging out at Sunergos Coffee. It was a tough break up. One of those “I love you, but we aren’t good for each other” break ups, like the kind of relationship you have with food. I think you’re going to want to do some Spatial Self-Binding by finding another coffee shop to avoid running into “you know who.”

Spatial Self-Binding means finding new places to hang out and avoiding the places where you overconsume.

3. Categorical Self-Binding (CSB).

CSB means finding things or categories of things to replace the food that you’ve broke up with. For me, I need to replace sugar, alcohol, and bread. Those are the demons that I want to excise out of my life. So, I need replacements. Some replacement categories include real foods that will help you feel more satiated and more activity that is incompatible with eating processed food.

I remember working with an adult with an intellectual disability who was constantly annoying his housemate. Nothing seemed to decrease that until I asked the staff at his residence “What is he doing when he’s not annoying his housemate?“ They came up with a list of about 20 activities. I said, “Keep him busy doing these things. Offer him a menu of activities.” The behavior stopped immediately. He was too busy, enjoying his life to annoy his housemates.
Ask yourself, what am I doing when I am not overconsuming processed foods like sugar, bread, pastries.

CSB means adding things and structuring things into your life that make it nearly impossible to engage in consuming highly processed food.

In my jeep, I have squeeze fruits that include vegetables and proteins. There is no junk food or fast food in my Jeep. Nuts and dried fruits, that’s it.
I like writing in the evenings. That’s what I’m doing right now instead of eating processed food. It’s silly, but I try to avoid food-shows in the evening.

When willpower is low during the evenings or over the weekends after a grueling week, CSB will make it more difficult to consume, or overconsume foods that I’m trying to avoid.

Lembke stops with three, but I’ve added:

4. Social Self-Binding (SoSB).

SoSB involves the people in your life that affect your breakup with food.
People can affect you in many ways. They can affect you by inspiring you to grow and inspiring you to overcome your addiction. People affect you by being the reason you need to start or stay with your recovery from drugs or food. The love that people show you can help create an inner self-love which fuels your recovery. The people in your life can also weigh you down, affect your moods in negative ways, and can cause you to have an “I don’t give a shit“ attitude about your life and about life in general. And they can also cause a relapse in your recovery. SoSB involves managing the relationships in your life and assessing the influence they have as you attempt to break up with food. Unlike Spatial Self-Binding, where are you simply avoid the places where you overconsume, you can’t always avoid the people in your life that are catalyst for overeating, overdrinking, or overconsuming.

Social Self-Binding is a tool. It’s not a hammer that we used to break things up but maybe a sieve that allows you to sort out your relationships into more purposeful or intentional encounters.

The barriers that you create with Social Self-Binding are there, but more permeable than the other Self-Binding procedures. You let people in, partly, but you know their influence, and you prepare for letting them in.

Before letting them in, you practice letting them in. You practice your encounter. You rehearse your connections with people. People are complicated. At times they help, and at times they disrupt your plans. Seek out the helpers.

Prevention

These are the Self-Binding Principles for helping you break up and stay broken up with food. They are very behavioral and strategies that you typically set up before you encounter food.

Self-Binding is a tool, along with the other strategies, that I’ve presented in this blog.

I’ve read several Obesity Memoirs, and I’ll share some of the Self-Binding principles that they used on their journey to lose weight and break up with food.

 

Strategies for Breaking Up, Part 1 | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 8

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Why Can’t I Stay Broke Up? Because You Got Issues!

I’ve been a therapist for almost 30 years. It’s hard to believe.

In those early years, I trained as a Child and Family Therapist. Lots of parent trainings. For many of the children, I became a surrogate father. I would take them on walks through the city parks and throw frisbees. We would often stop for lunch or snacks at McDonald’s. Some of these children are in their late 30s/early 40s now. 

I remember one of my young client’s name was Nick. Nick was nine years old, and I had been working with him for a couple of years. We would go to McDonald’s for lunch, and on one outing, he was eating his chicken-nugget happy meal when he noticed another little boy running through the McDonald’s. 

“Mr. Mark,“ he said, “That little boy needs a therapist.“

“Why do you say that, Nick?” I asked. 

“Because he’s got issues,” He responded.

Geez. I wondered where he had heard that, but also remembered that Nick had been in therapy himself for years even at nine years old. 

I have thought a lot about what little Nick said and I think he’s right about lots of kids and lots of adults. When it comes to food, we all have issues, and those issues affect our breakup with food and makes it difficult to stay broke up. 

We’ve been examining ways to break up with food and stay broke up. We’re going to look now at strategies for breaking up in 6 separate parts. In Part One, I’ll share some cognitive strategies, changing how you think about food and about yourself and dealing with your issues. 

In Part Two (Episode 9), I’ll share some behavioral strategies called Self-Binding, because after all, I am a behavior analyst. 

In Parts Three and Four (Episodes 10 and 11), I’m also going to share another obesity, memoir, entitled, “hunger: lessons learned on the journey from fat to send,” by Alan Zatkoff. Here’s what the dust jacket says: “instead of employing, the diet, du jour, and other weight loss foods, he began to focus less on what he ate, and more on the physical and emotional underpinnings of what he came to understand as a disease.”

In Parts Five and Six (Episodes 12 and 13), I’ll share about a Twelve-Step Program called, Overeaters Anonymous.

Let’s get started!

1. If you’re going to break up and stay broke up with food, you must change the way you think about food.

I want to introduce you or re-introduced you to book I wrote about back into 2019. The book is, “The Beck Diet,” by Judith Beck. It isn’t really a diet book. It’s a book on strategies for following a diet using Cognitive Behavioral Strategy. “Cognitive therapy,“ she writes, “helps you identify your sabotaging, thinking, and effectively respond to it, so you feel better, and can believe in helpful ways.“ 

I call these sabotaging thoughts my “Inner Demons.” Several years ago, I was talking to my good friend, Sam, about working out five days a week at Premier Fitness, which included using a personal trainer, kickboxing, powerlifting, and spin. “Looks like you’ve become addicted to working out,“ He commented.  I informed him that I already have plenty of demons that I wrestle with, and I don’t need to worry about whether I’m becoming addicted to exercise. 

Here are some of my demons! 

  1. I work out so I can eat whatever I want.
  2. That one cookie isn’t going to ruin my diet.
  3. I can have a breakfast sandwich from Panera just this morning.
  4. I shouldn’t deprive myself from everything, YOLO!
  5. “I’ll work it off tomorrow.”

These are my demons. Beck’s book is splendid and helps you change how you think about food.

2. If you’re going to break up with food and stay broke up, you’re going to need help.

I used a Personal Trainer throughout most of my 50s. There are other professionals, Certified Health Coaches, that have trained solely for the purpose of helping people lose weight. There are support groups and 12 step groups that focus on overeating. Weight Watchers or WW offers weekly or monthly meetings, both in person and via online. And there are many therapists that focus on the body-mind connection and offer support for exercising nutrition.

There are churches that offer classes and support groups for weight loss and nutrition. Beck recommends that you find a Diet Coach. According to Beck, here’s what they can do for you:

  • Keeps you motivated.
  • Builds your self-esteem.
  • Helps you solve eating problems.
  • Keeps you accountable.
  • Helps you take a more positive perspective.

Ask, what would my coach say?

The Overeaters Anonymous Program includes a sponsor, or diet coach. Beck suggests recruiting a diet coach from close friends or family members. Or maybe someone that has been successful losing weight or breaking up with food and staying broke up.

3. Focus on Incompatible Behaviors.

Incompatible behaviors are behaviors that make it difficult to engage in what we generally call target behaviors. Target behaviors in this sense would be overeating or eating food that is inconsistent with your diet plan. What are some of those incompatible behaviors?

Exercise

It seems to me that if you’re exercising, you’re not eating. There are lots of things that you can do that are incompatible with eating. This means first looking at your eating patterns. Where do you eat, when do you eat, how much do you eat, and what do you eat, and then, develop a plan to change these variables.

In the Applied Behavior Analysis world, we call these contextual variables for eating your “trigger” foods as some define them.  If you know Behavior Analyst, they can do a mini Functional Behavioral Assessment that will help you uncover your contextual variables.

If not, just start writing down and looking at where, when, What, who and yes why you eat and then write a Behavior Plan.

If you find that you snack at night while watching TV, break up with food by doing something else at that time. Like learning to play the guitar or practicing Mario kart. Change it up in some way.

4. If you’re going to break up and stay broke up with food, you will need to develop a written plan and revise it often.

This isn’t a diet plan, but a lifetime. You’re going to look at all the aspects of your life and change them. If you’re going to change your relationship or break up with food, you need to change your whole life. Don’t think you can read a diet book, like a Mediterranean diet, and think that your relationship with food will change. Let me say something very important, a major takeaway from this blog: You are following a diet as we speak. I’m following the Mark Neese diet. You’re following the: fill in the blank diet. And you are deeply entrenched by it. It is a way of life for you. Your diet is a way of life!

Read that again, and if it is a way of life for you, then you will need a plan to change your life. The biopsychosocial model that we use as therapists looks at all aspects of your life. Relationships. Education. Health and physical aspect. Spiritual and mindfulness approach. Social aspects. Employment.  Hobbies. Recreation.

Compare this with it with the list of contextual variables that evoke or increase the risk of toxic eating. Develop a breakup plan. Example: my plan is 8 to 10 hours of exercise per week. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Decreased eating out. Increase time spent with time restricted eating. Increase fruits and vegetables. I use squeeze fruits and vegetables when I’m driving throughout the city. I have a life planned that guides me. I am revising it even now.

5. If you’re going to have a breakup with food, or with your old, toxic lifestyle, you need to practice this principle: Easy Does It.

Throughout my years of practicing as a Family Therapist, Personal Trainer, and throughout my personal life, I have used the principle of Easy Does It. Slow things down. Don’t push too hard be gentle.

Changing Your Life

Strategies for breaking up with food are basically strategies for changing your life, because your diet is really a reflection of your lifestyle.

I’ve suggested five strategies that will make breaking up more likely. I have a few more to share in part two of this blog. Stay tuned.

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

What’s the Hardest Thing You’ve Done? | Healthy Aging Series: Season 9, Episode 7

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What’s the Hardest Thing You’ve Done?

Seven days. Six nights. 17000+/- ft. of elevation. 41 miles. 45 lbs. Minus 2 toenails. One of the hardest things I’ve done. The Grand Canyon.

I wanted to test myself. What a better place to do that than the Grand Canyon. It was 2009. I was 52 years old, and I’d been backpacking for four years and had gone down and come out of the Canyon four times. 

Nothing is easy about doing the canyon. If you think hiking down into the Grand Canyon is easy, you’d would be wrong. Think about walking down stairs for 8 to 10 miles. With 45 lbs. on your back.

You have to prepare by putting on a backpack and putting in the mileage with 30-40 lbs. in that pack.  

The Canyon is one of my favorite places on the earth. I love walking up to the edge of the South Rim at Grand Canyon Village, after being away for a year, and feeling overwhelmed by the view. You can see nearly 20 miles from the South Rim to the North Rim, almost forever. It’s most beautiful when it’s just snowed and it’s cloudy. Especially in January and February when the clouds are hanging around.

I planned a 7 day, 6 night solo backpacking trip. All by myself.

Day One: 5-mile hike down to Havasu Campground and the loss of 3000 feet. 

On one of my trips to the Canyon one of the regulars that I backpack with had invited a friend to “do the canyon.” This was the year my son was graduating from high school, and he was invited. They were 15 of us. A ritual was to weigh our packs at Babbage’s, the outfitting store. My pack weighed 42 pounds and my son’s was 30 pounds. We had both trained hard for this trip. 

The new invitee was 50+ years old and had just quit smoking the year before and was celebrating it with the backpacking trip into the Grand Canyon. Her pack weighed 45 pounds. I glanced at my son, and we both had that, “She’s not gonna make it,“ look.  And in fact, she arrived at Havasu Garden Campground without a pack. She said her legs had turned to rubber. She had dropped her pack halfway down. The next day she and her husband chose to hike out and hired a teenager to haul her pack back up to the South Rim. The Canyon is unforgiving.
I arrived at Havasu Garden CG on this trip in 3 hours, set up my camp, and slept well.

Day Two: Eleven miles on the Tonto West trail to Monument Creek CG.

This is a long 11-mile hike because you were hiking in an out of side canyons. Easily a six- or seven-hour hike. Total exposure to the sun. Day two ends at Monument Creek Campground, which is the payoff for the long hike. The bathroom is three wooden walls. No ceiling. One beautiful view.

Day Three: Nine miles. 4000 feet of elevation gain on the Hermit’s Rest Trail.

It was grueling. Remember my pack was 40+ pounds.

I had planned to hike back 11 miles to Havasu Garden Campground but changed my mind and decided to hike out the Hermit’s Rest Trail back to the South Rim. The problem was that I was going to have to walk 10 miles back to the trailhead and to my car. When I arrived at the rim, I was absolutely, exhausted. Remember I had hiked 25 miles in the past three days. I was lucky to meet a man who agreed to take me back to the trailhead but made me agree to listen to his story about going through a divorce, and how he was traveling from city to city in an RV looking for a new city to live in and call home. You can’t make something like this up. So, I listened.  I stayed at the Bright Angel Lodge, took a shower, and slept in a bed.

Day Four: I hiked down the Kaibab Trail to Phantom Ranch.

8 miles. 5200 feet of elevation loss. The good news: I was fresh and rested. The bad news: I was wearing new boots that rubbed the top of my toenails and remember it was 8 miles of descent, and it resulted in blisters under my toenails. That’s right blisters, not on my toes, but under my toenails
I set up my camp at Bright Angel Campground at the bottom of the Canyon and went to bed.

Day Five and Six: My plan was to hike out to Ribbon Falls (13 miles round trip)

Instead, I popped the blisters under my toenails and laid around for two days.

The thing about the Canyon is, if you go down into the Canyon, you have to get yourself up out of the Canyon. There are mules. There are helicopters. But unless you’re almost dying, you have to get yourself out. So, I cut the toes out of my new boots and hiked 8 miles and 5200 feet up out of the Canyon.

Seven days. Six nights. 17000+/- ft. 41 miles. 45 lbs. Minus 2 toenails. One of the hardest things I’ve done.

“All Bets Are Off”

Betsy Hartley‘s book, “All Bets Are Off,” has a grueling story in it. Don’t let me confuse you here. She ran a 100-mile race in under 30 hours. I didn’t do that. 

I’ve done a couple marathons. And all the training to prepare for them, but not 100 miles. 

I was exhausted after reading about this race. Geez! It was one of the most grueling accounts of a race that I’ve ever read. But this is not the real story of her book. 

Her story is about losing 220 pounds. Not an easy feat. 

Her plan: Eat less, move more. 

She started this plan in July 2011. Five years later, 220 lbs. lighter. 

That was the most grueling thing she did. Imagine. Five years. 44 pounds per year. Then run 100 miles in 30 hours. 

Honestly, one of the most impressive things I’ve heard or seen was she broke up with food and stayed broke up. That’s what this season of Healthy Aging is about. How to break up with food… How to change your relationship with food. 

What was the turning point in her life? What were her agents of change? 

What Didn’t Help?

Hartley spent 40 years of her life living with obesity, and with the “well-meaning” comments from family and friends. People were concerned for her health and safety, but no matter how tactful, and no matter how loving the comments about her weight, none of them helped. It only made her feel more ashamed. 

Shame is not a good change agent! 

Here’s why: shame makes you want to eat more, because food has become your drug of choice to address your shame, your guilt, and your depression. We feel bad, we eat, we feel better. It’s a never-ending cycle of “food comforting negative feelings!!!!” 

Stop and read this again!

What Did Help?

If it wasn’t all the noise in her environment about her weight, then what changed her? It was that still small voice that came from within her consciousness, her shadow, her true self, and her authentic self, that evoked the change to lose weight and begin living.

The Push and the Pull

Betsy’s willingness to listen to the still small voice from within helped her decided that she had had enough. That was the push in her life and the pull was that she wanted a life without diabetes, a life of mobility, and a life of running. 

It takes a push and a pull to change. Change comes when you take some time and listen to the voice within. “The biggest mystery for me,” she writes, “in my whole crazy adventure is why I finally chose to listen to that little voice, which I smothered for so long. And I work every day on making that voice, stronger and louder.”  

The Still Small Voice

There are a lot of takeaways from her book, but the still small voice struck a chord with me. The voice was saying to her, “It’s time to love yourself. It’s time to lose some weight and begin caring for yourself. It’s time to become something else, a more authentic something else.”

What helped her stay broke up was not the love of running, but what running represented. Running represented her domination over her appetites and over her body. Running, summiting Mount Sherman in Colorado, doing the Grand Canyon, cycling across Indiana, or anything else you do is telling your body, “Eff you! You’re gonna do what I tell you to do!”

That’s what I was doing in 2009 on my Solo Backpacking Trip. 

It’s more than that. It’s the beauty and majesty of all you see and experience while dominating your body.

But that its core it’s about telling your body it’s going to do what you tell it to do and not the other way around.

It’s the process of total domination as Nandor from “What We Do in the Shadows,” says to the zoning commission on Staten Island. The total domination, not of you, but of your body! That’s what we admire about athletes. They have worked their bodies into almost complete domination.

We regular people, like Betsy Hartley, fall short of total domination, but attempting feats of strength is our way of joining the fray. This next weekend I’m headed to the Smoky Mountains to do Mount Sterling. It’s not for the faint hearted. Three days. Two nights. 18 miles. 7000+ minus feet of elevation, hopefully not losing my toenails. Not the Canyon but a challenge. The second day will be grueling. I do it in part because I can but also do it because I want to send a clear message to my body that it will do as it’s told. I struggle every day for total domination and to stay broke-up with food. Hartley is a wonderful example of the person who wrestled with obesity for 50+ years and continues to work toward total domination of her body.

Those are my takeaways from her book. Breaking up is all about listening to that still small voice and staying broke up is all about taking charge of your body and telling it what it’s going to do. It is a wonderful challenge and a wonderful strategy in life.

How about you? Are you a Betsy Hartley?

I have a hard time finding people to Backpack with me, especially as I get older. It’s rare for me to find people that are up to the challenge. But I keep pushing on, and I keep dominating my body, and I work very diligently at staying broke up with food. 

How about you?

To read more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

To purchase or view “All Bets are Off,” By Betsy Hartley at Carmichael’s Book Store, click here

All Bets Are Off: My journey of losing 200 pounds, a showdown with diabetes, and falling in love with running (Paperback)

The Real Mr. Miyagi: How to Die Badly! | Healthy Aging Series: S8, E6

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“He described himself as a unique drunk. He could work almost every day, and no one would know it.”

“I’m drunk almost every day.” Pat Morita.

Mr. Miyagi. I’m guessing most of you have heard his name. He taught Daniel LaRusso karate in the three karate kid movies. Such a great character, and Pat Morita did a wonderful job bringing that character to life.

I’ve written about Daniel and Johnny in the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai Series. Both of them are petty, resentful, jealous of each other, egocentric, and basically really immature. Mr. Miyagi, on the other hand is portrayed as the wise sage. He is in the “giving back“ stage of his life. His story is about the early rivalries and losses during World War II, and how he rises above them, and becomes a man of peace and tranquility. It seems like the Bonsai trees are the metaphor for his life.

That is Mr. Miyagi. The story of Pat Morita is a much sadder story. I became interested in his life and watched a very good documentary, “More than Miyagi: The Pat Morita story.” Marita had what he described as an abandoned childhood. He gave up his dream of attending college and medical school, to follow his parent’s dream of working in their Chinese restaurant. Later, he did stand-up comedy and had several TV roles, including a part in the series, Happy Days. And then he got his big break with Karate Kid.

What the general public did not see but what Marita confesses is that he was drunk almost every day throughout his adult life.

He described himself as a unique drunk because he could drink almost every day, and no one would know it. He died at 73 from kidney failure . The last decade of his life was filled with a steep decline in health. He was practically penniless due to his two failed marriages and his inability to show up for work commitments. I encourage you to watch the documentary.

I’ve been writing blogs on healthy aging, and refer back to the book, “Triumphs of Experience,” by George Vaillant. It’s a book about the Harvard Grant Study, which was a longitudinal study of 268 men that began when they were 20 years old and students at Harvard. The study followed them until they died. I’ve looked at the overall lessons from the study, and I’ve  shared the predictor for successful aging (having healthy adult relationships when you’re 47 years old) and now I want to look at what predicts longevity or living to 90.

What predicted that the men of the Harvard grant study live to 90 years old? I want to know what those predictors are! Are there things that I can do or not do that will increase my chances of living to 90 or 95 years old?

There’s no question that there are things completely out of our control that affect longevity.

Heredity and the predisposition to various illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease affect longevity. Ancestral longevity plays a role in your longevity, but not as much as you think.

Five things that we learned from the Harvard Grant Study about living a long life!

The factors that contribute to a decrease in longevity are more lifestyle related. Vaillant spotlighted five risk factors or as he lists them, Vascular Risk Factors. Here is the checklist. Check off the boxes that apply to you!

  1. Smoking.
  2. Alcohol abuse.
  3. Hypertension.
  4. Obesity.
  5. Type 2 diabetes.

“Men with no vascular risk factors,” Vaillant writes, “lived to an average age of 86. Men with three or more, live to an average age of only 68. This complex of factors subtracted 18 years from a man’s expected life.”

The Bad News

Did you check smoking?

Throughout my studies on aging, smoking is the king of bad behaviors. Thirteen Hundred people die each day in our country from cigarette related disorders. If you smoke, do everything you can to stop now. There are several strategies for stopping. Smoking will contribute to a shorter life span and also to a very difficult “Marginal Decade.” If you haven’t followed my past blogs, the Marginal Decade is your last decade and if you haven’t prepared for it, it could be a very difficult 10 year for you. Nothing ruins your life like COPD!!

Did you check Alcohol Abuse?

Although alcohol related deaths per day are significantly less,  it is still 260. I remember, many years ago, selling a car to an acquaintance that had an alcohol problem. I was such a tragedy. She died a year later from her alcohol abuse. It happens. Alcohol abuse shortens your life.

Did you check obesity?

Obesity has become a very serious health issue in our country. The U.S. obesity prevalence was 41.9% in 2017 through 2020. It’s difficult determining the number of annual deaths attributed to obesity because of other overlapping disorders like type 2 diabetes, but a conservative estimate was, 300,000. That’s about 820 deaths per day from complications related to obesity.

Did you check hypertension or Type 2 Diabetes?

Untreated hypertension and type 2 Diabetes contribute premature death that can be avoided, to some degree, by wise lifestyle choices.

Marginal Decade

In a previous blog I introduced you to the concept of marginal decade. The marginal decade is your last decade, and it has the potential and prospects of being the most difficult in your life.

You have a chance now to make decisions and make lifestyle changes that will improve your quality of life and increase your chances of living to 90. In the documentary on Pat Morita, alcohol abuse took at least 10 years away from his life. It’s interesting in the first karate kid he gets very intoxicated, which is in some ways a very tragic way of mirroring the life of Pat Morita, the real Mr. Miyagi.

To see more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

How to Escape the Rat Race | Healthy Aging Series: S8, E5

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This blog will examine the work, “The Country Chronical,” by Gladys Tabor

I love sleeping in a tent, especially when it’s raining. I’ve had a few unpleasant experiences camping. Mostly I love it. I’ve slept through a blizzard in the Sierra mountains. Woke up to a foot of snow. I’ve slept through a “no see him“ infestation in Utah. I think mosquitoes are worse. And I’ve slept through a 14° night on the Knobstone trail in Indiana. I had to thaw my boots to put them on the next morning. Backpacking has always help me escape the rat race as you get older. Don’t you just crave peace and quiet?

Isn’t it nice to get away from people, and your computer, and traffic. That’s a big one for me. Getting away from your job, and people, and the news, and have I mentioned people? Backpacking is one way I get away from all that. Hiking is another. Sitting in my easy chair with a good book is yet another. I’m escaping now as I write this blog.

My male kitty, Hansel, is stretched out on the floor in front of our gas fireplace. I can hear him purring from several feet away. He looks up periodically and then jumps up on the arm of my chair and kisses my nose. I love his nose kisses! All of this calms my nervous system.

I think I learned how to escape from my mother.  A recent study that I read on aging suggests that as men age they are influenced more by their fathers and then by their mothers. Maybe. But I feel my mother’s legacy even now, as I slowly approach 70.

You might not believe what I’m about to tell you, but she introduced me to some books by an author, Gladys Tabor, when I was a teenager, and I read them, and I loved them! I asked for them before she died, and I cherish those early memories of reading them. I guess they helped me escape the rat race of adolescence, even just a little. Gladys Tabor left city life in 1935 and moved  into a vintage 1690 farmhouse she called Stillmeadow. I think my mother moved out of the city when I was 14, in part, because of Stillmeadow.

Through my four years of high school, we lived on a 20 acre farm. She named Terre Boon, which means the good land. I’m sure she thought it was going to be harder for me to get into trouble when we lived on a farm. Not impossible but harder. I reread “Country Chronicles,“ this past evening. It’s a journal of Taber’s first full year at Stillmeadow. It was written in 1974 when she was 85 years old. Country Chronicles is written in four parts, based on the four seasons, starting with winter.  I really can’t tell you what the appeal was when I was a teenager and first read these journals. They are the insights of an older woman and her life with her good friend, her children and her cocker spaniels. She writes about her meals, her neighbors, the snow, her house, the fresh smells of the country and the chores around Stillmeadow.

I randomly opened Country Chronicles to page 62 and here’s what Tabor wrote:

“On a clear day, toward the end of winter, the sky is forever. It loses the flat look of a bitter cold days, and seems to have a special promise. Even the birds fly differently, in widening circles instead of huddling. The air smells of melt instead of ice, and the buds on the lilacs are freshly varnished.”

Gladys Taber loved country life and shares tidbits of her “philosophy of life” throughout her books. Many of them were written during the Vietnam war and have an activist feel to them at times.

Here are some of the things that drove her to leave the rat race, and pursue country living:

  1. She writes a lot about the Vietnam war, and the effect that it had on relationships. I think her comments are somewhat appropriate in this very polarize time that we live in today. She writes, “The Vietnam war has been blamed for many things, and I suspect it had something to do with personal isolation, therefore, we now tend to keep conversations superficial in case that other person does not agree with our policy. We keep our cool, as we say, by talking about the weather.” I find myself in today’s rat race withdrawing and keeping my topics on small talk.
    2. Tabor worried about the loss of farmland and about progress. She wonders, “what the next hundred years will bring is not predictable. But I hope the basic personality of our town may survive with some woodlands and meadows left, some streams, still rippling with trout, some winding country roads unpaved.“ I think this is still relevant today.
    3. Clocks. Tabor hated clocks. “Within our society,” she writes, “we all watch the clock, nevertheless. They are clocks in almost every room in the house, and practically everyone wears a wrist watch. Radio and television announce the time hour after hour, to be sure, we know exactly what time it is.” Part of the rat race is being at the mercy of the moment, and at the mercy of time, and at the mercy of schedules. Maybe unplugging means leaving your wrist watch and your smart phone at your bedside for a day or two.
    4. Tabor loved her pets! She writes: “I stand firmly on my belief that both dogs and cats give richness to life, and both have been invaluable to humankind down through the ages.” Pets were a large part of her life, and I’m sure helped her have a sense of getting away from the rat race.
    5. For Taber, happiness was a choice. “I believe happiness,” she writes, “is simply reaching out for something lovely and believing in it. All of us need some magic in our lives, and all we have to do is believe in it.” Later she writes, “It may be that happiness is as simple as accepting what we are, and never envying those who seem to be endowed with other gifts.”
    I think that part of the rat race that we create for ourselves, is the competition that we create for ourselves with other people. Tabor reminds us that life is not a competition and maybe it’s as simple as appreciating the magic that is around us.
    6. Being grateful. By the time she wrote this book, she had lost her husband, but instead of feeling pity, she practiced gratitude. “I think,” she explains, “when we find so much to complain about, we should spend a little time, adding up what we have, and being grateful. I myself never open a box of tissues, without being thankful. I am not boiling up squares of linen.” I am not sure what, “boiling up squares of linen,” means, but it must not be one of her preferred activities.
    7. Tabor had a rather old fashioned idea of parenting. Maybe this is why my mother was drawn to her. She believed that mothers should stay home and take care of their children. I think in today’s world, the application of Taber’s old fashionness should be interpreted as: parents spend as much time as you can with your children. The rat race acts as a siren, pulling us away from our partners and our children. We should realize that those wonderful moments with family are in fact, a way of escaping the rat race, which soothe our sakes.

I think we can safely say that Stillmeadow rescued Gladys Tabor from the rat race. Maybe Stillmeadow can rescue you as well even though her books are difficult to find because they are out of print.

Or maybe you can escape by taking a walk or hike in the Jefferson Memorial Forest, or The  Parklands. May be reading sci-fi is a way for you to escape. Or adventure novels.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s time to move to the country.

To see more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

 

The Healthy Aging Series by Mark Neese at True North Counseling

How to Finish the Race of Life | Healthy Aging Series: S8, E4

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This blog will continue examine the work, “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study,”  written by George E. Vaillant.

How do we sucessfully finish the race of life? 

Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence see life as a competition. Johnny is “jelly” because Daniel has a beautiful family, a very successful car dealership, and frankly Johnnie thinks Daniel believes he’s better than everyone else. Johnnie, is it an alcoholic and has a strange relationship with his son, and doesn’t have enough money to pay his rent.

They spend the first five or six seasons, literally fighting each other, miserable, and both languishing out the year. They not only failed to flourish, but failed to thrive. They both seem confused about what it means to flourish and what successful aging looks like.  The Harvard Grant Study followed 268 men (the study, included a number of the other men that were part of the study, called the Inner-City Study) throughout their lives in over a period of 85 years.

Instead of depending on Johnnie and Daniel’s idea of aging, let’s look to this study and consider what the Harvard Grant Study determined as flourishing.

Decathlon of Flourishing

From age 60 to 80…

  1. Included in Who’s Who in America
  2. Earning income in the Study’s top quartile
  3. Low in psychological distress
  4. Success and enjoyment in work, love, and play since age 65
  5. Good subjective health at age 75
  6. Good subjective and objective physical and mental health at age 89
  7. Mastery of Ericksonian task of Generativity
  8. Availability of social supports other than wife and kids between 60 and 75
  9. In good marriage between 60 and 85
  10. Close to kids between 60 and 75

Take a look at this picture of aging. Keep in mind that this is not about longevity. We will look at longevity in our next blog. This is more about quality of life. If you’re like me, you’ll immediately dismiss the first two criterion, income and professional status. In my opinion, these do not always equal flourishing in our modern world. But the last four or eight assessments they boil down to:

1. Psychological well-being. Generally speaking, this criteria means good coping strategies and mental resilience.

2. Physical well-being. This means the ability to do the things that most people need to do to take care of themselves. This would include shopping, chores, self-care, and other things that we call activities of daily living.

3. Social supports. I think this means our connectivity to people, family, and friends.
Flourishing simply put means doing well, physically, mentally, and socially.

What Predicts Successful Aging?

The Director looked at several factors that contribute or were possible contributing factors to successful aging. I’m not going to go through that lengthy list of things they looked at, but I am going to share one identifying factor that strongly predicted successful aging. Can you guess what it was? Of all the factors that they looked at, which included things like: a warm childhood, overall college, soundness, and coping strategies, the fact that predicted successful aging, the most, was the ability to find and maintain friendships at middle age.

When the study looked at the Decathlon of Flourishing, finding and maintaining friendships had the highest predictability for scoring high on this standard for successful agent. Here’s what the study did. They took a snapshot of men at age 47 years old. Those men who had developed friendship skills flourished. Here is my take away: the skills that you need to maintain good friendships, are also the skills that promote healthy aging, or help you flourish as you age. It isn’t necessarily the friendships that lead to flourishing but the skills that you need to maintain those friendships.

So what skills promote making and maintaining adult friendships? Here is my list:

1. The ability to tolerate other people’s opinions.

The world is full of opinions. I reminded of the saying that I overheard often while in the military: opinions are like assholes, everyone has won it. And I might add: everyone is entitled to their opinion. Learning to tolerate, appreciate, come, and respect the opinions of others serves as a type of Teflon for your sake, and is essential for good friendships.

2. The ability to see other people as multi-dimensional beings.

Labels are a curse to friendships. No one is just Democrat, Republican, Christian, Muslim, atheist, mother, or father. No one is just one thing. We are all multifaceted, multi-dimensional people. People are complicated. We are better equipped to age and flourish if we see everything about the people in our lives.

3. The ability to forgive and forget when people have wronged us.

Friendships are healed by forgiveness. People who do not or cannot practice forgiveness become prisoners of the resentments. I know that forgiving others isn’t easy but harboring, resentment, and anger almost always turns into depression. If we can learn to forgive others, we can learn to forgive ourselves from that internal cancer that eats away at our sake.

4. Being generous with yourself, and with your things.

Your friends need you and benefit from the gift of yourself to them. I never loan money to a friend or family member. I give them what I have as a gift. My friends, my family, my world, is better, I am better, when I give them all generous portion of my cell.

5. Seeing everyone as a peer.

Nothing disarms, others better or more effectively than treating them the way you would want to be treated. Nothing disarms others better or more effectively then treating them the way you would want to be treated. We live in a world of status and we are made to feel less than others because of that. I have two masters degrees, a license, and several certificates, but everyone I meet I treat like a fellow traveler, fellow, struggler, and a fellow explorer. I’ll never forget the interview of Norman Lear when he was 93. The interviewer asked him how he maintain his youthfulness and he responded “I treat everyone like my peer.”

6. Being humble.

Putting others before yourself. This is a hard one, but egocentrism, self-centeredness is a constant threat to our friendships and to us. Learning to think not what your friends can do for you, but what you can do for your friends is a skill that promotes peace and harmony.

7. Balancing being a giver and a receiver.

There must be a balance in a relationships in the world. We cannot always be the giver, and we cannot always be the receiver. Those who are always giving become bitter, and those who are always receiving become a burden.

8. Reach out as often as you can.

You cannot have a relationship with others if you refuse to initiate your get togethers. Pick up the phone. Send a text. Set up a coffee, date or dinner, or a walk in the park. Reaching out ensures that you experience the richness of others. It allows others to infect you with their hope, optimism, and love.

9. Avoid giving unsolicited advice.

Stop giving your family, friends, children, spouses, partners, neighbors, employees, and for that matter anyone else unsolicited advice. Giving unsolicited advice is a subtle form of disapproval. It’s a subtle form of being judgmental. People hate it. You become a conditioned punisher, and people will avoid you. There is that old principle that I have heard many, many times that applies to this and all other friendship, skills, and it’s this: live and let live.

If you want to be a person who is aging successfully, then look at your life and determine what your adult friendships look like. I think as we age, we tend to be more intentional about our relationships and therefore we don’t linger with relationships that are toxic or dysfunctional. But we do nevertheless, have friendships and those friendships will indicate how well you age because of the skills that you have used to maintain these relationships.

Friendship skills are, in essence, successful aging skills.

To see more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

 

Can You Outrun a Bad Diet? | Healthy Aging Series: S8, E3

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Reading time: 4 minutes.

Can You Outrun a Bad Diet?

Endurance athletes have one thing in common. Regardless of age, they run to eat! I can remember finishing a long training run for the Air Force Marathon, and remember finishing my summit to the top of Mount Whitney. I remember backpacking out of the Grand Canyon. Afterwards, I gorged on whatever I wanted. I couldn’t get enough to eat, and I didn’t worry about one single calorie!

Maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but I believe that most endurance athletes believe they can outrun a bad diet.

How does research answer the question: Can you outrun a bad diet? There are two answers to this question depending on how you defined the bad diet. If by bad diet you mean, a hypercaloric diet or over consumption of calories, then yes, it’s possible to outrun a bad diet There is some truth to the calorie in/calorie out strategy that many of us have been taught through the years. You can manage your weight by consistently exceeding your caloric intake with exercise (cardio and resistance training). In other words, if you take in 1800 calories of food daily and you expend 2300 calories through daily activities, you will lose 1 pound per week. (3500 calories equals 1 pound of fat). It’s science!

So, YES you can outrun a bad diet if by bad diet you mean over consumption of calories.

But…can you out run a bad diet if a bad diet means consistently eating junk food, fast food, simple carbohydrates like sugar, trans fats, and not enough fruits and vegetables? Can you out run that kind of a bad diet?

That’s not exactly the question that British researchers asked when they recently studied the diets and behaviors of nearly 350,000 people over a period of 11 years. They were asking the question:

Between diet and exercise, which of these played the most important role in decreasing the risk of mortality?

Was it quality diet or sufficient exercise? Don’t you want to know? What is more likely to help you live longer: diet or exercise? In a recent blog I looked at a study that asked something different. It asked what are the behavioral predictors for successful aging? They defined successful aging as free from disease, high cognitive and physical functioning, and a social support system. It did not look at longevity. Although you could infer from the definition of successful aging that a person is more likely to live longer. Let me set up this British study. Researchers access the UK bio bank. That’s a database of over 500,000 participants between the age of 40 and 69 gathered from 2007 to 2010. 350,000 of these participants completed the study the study looked at diet and here’s what they scored high:

  1. You scored high if you consumed 4 1/2 cups of vegetables and fruits on a daily basis. They also measured whether you had two or more servings of fish per week and two or fewer servings of processed meat, and five or less servings of meat as your protein. They rated diets from 0 to 3 based on the previous criteria with three being a high quality diet.
  2. They assessed the activity level and exercise level of participants. There were four levels of exercise: “0” was four no moderate or vigorous exercise during the week. “1” was scored if you exercised from 10 to 74 minutes each week of moderate to vigorous exercise. You received a “2” as a score if you exercise at a vigorous to moderate level for 70 forward to 149 minutes. And you scored a “3’” if you exercise 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous exercise. They followed all participants for 11 years and in 2020 they looked at the death certificates of all participants that it died and looked at their scores for diet and exercise and here’s what they found: people that ate a high quality diet and exercised at a high-level lived longer

Exercise

When they looked at good diet and exercise separately those individuals who only exercised did better than those who did not exercise. So, if you only exercise, you will live longer than those individuals who do not exercise at all. Or exercise wins out over nutrition. But….

Diet

If you only have a good diet then you will do better than those individuals who have a poor diet. But, what this study indicated was, that individuals who had a good diet and exercise moderately or vigorously for 150 minutes a week, those individuals did better than those who only had a good diet and those who only had a good exercise regimen. It seems kind of silly that we have to look at 350,000 individuals and look at their diet and the amount of exercise that they do each week in order to determine whether or not it’s more likely that you’re going to live longer if you do both.

Take Aways

One “take away” from this study is that there are some things that I can do if I want to live longer. I’ve mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that both of my parents outlived all of their parents. And that is despite the fact that my father was a smoker. Both of my parents were relatively in good health and ate well. They weren’t big exercisers, though.

And so there’s no question that diet and exercise has the ability to trump genetics. It’s difficult to protect yourself from environmental factors such as accidents or exposure to toxic factors. I guess there are people out there that are pretty resigned to the fact that they are not going to outlive their genetics.

This study does indicate that within reason your behavior is going to determine to some extent how long you live.

You cannot eat whatever you want and avoid moderate to vigorous exercise and expect that you are going to live past your parents. I’m going to be sharing in a future blog a strategy known as back-casting. It’s a process of looking forward to what are call your “Marginal Years” or the last decade of your life, and then looking to your present life that is leading up to your marginal decade and determining what kind of things you need to do in order to have a very successful marginal decade. Clearly diet and exercise will play a role in that back-casting your marginal decade.

Can you out run a bad diet? If you mean, can you outrun eating or consuming high caloric meals? Then the answer is, probably yes. But if it means having a diet that includes sugars and avoids fruits and vegetables, then the answer is probably no. You need both exercise and high quality diet to counteract environment and genetics! Sorry for the bad news!

To see more entries in the Healthy Aging series, click here.

 

Healthy Aging: Physical Resiliency “The older the house more the maintenance.”

“The Older The House, More The Maintenance” | Healthy Aging Series: Part 13

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(Read the last paragraph first!)

I remember sitting in a classroom at Portland Community College, Portland Oregon (pronounced aw-ruh-gun, not aw-ruh-gone). It was 1979. The Class was Lifespan Development. The instructor was John Lawrence. The first words out of his mouth were, “The older the house the more the maintenance.” Since then, I’ve owned an older home for twenty years. I know exactly what he meant, except of course, he was talking about the aging process and, yes of course, he meant our bodies. Drive by any abandoned home. Anywhere. Roll down you window and stare at it for 5 or 10 minutes. Now, think about this: That’s you if you don’t take care of your body.

I can predict your future.

What you eat and how much you exercise will determine your future physical resiliency. What you eat and how much you exercise will determine almost everything about your future. Don’t delude yourself. You cannot escape the consequences of bad diet and a sedentary lifestyle.

Exercise: The Silver Bullet.

I’m going to write several blogs on fitness and health and aging, so this will be a brief explanation of the benefits of exercising. Having an active lifestyle is the best gift that you can give to your future self. One of the more important books I’ve read over the past five or 10 years is a book entitled, “Younger Next Year,” by Chris Crowley. It’s a book that promotes a good diet and regular exercise. Read it!

If there’s one thing you can do to improve your resiliency it’s, start exercising. Here are some of those benefits: 

  1. Exercising helps control weight. It helps prevent obesity and accompanying diseases.
  2. Exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, which is one of the leading causes of premature death. 
  3. Exercise helps manage blood sugar and insulin. 
  4. Exercise improves our mental health which enhances in mind-body connection. I’ve written about this in an earlier blog. 
  5. Exercise improves your brain functioning, see future blogs and the aging brain. 
  6. Exercise reduces the chances of falls. See future blogs and fall prevention. 
  7. Exercise helps to maintain muscle mass. Losing muscle mass is a big problem as we age, and dramatically impacts our physical resiliency.

Diet: You Can’t Outrun a Bad Diet

Michael Pollen writes, “Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The purpose of a resiliency-based diet is threefold: 

  1. Helps maintain weight and muscle mass. I don’t believe this means starving yourself. It means portion control. Most Americans eat too many calories and not enough protein for muscle mass maintenance. But there is a caveat to promoting muscle growth. You must also couple protein intake by or with exercise.  Muscle mass equals stability and mobility. 
  2. Provides needed natural micro and macro nutrients. Your body was engineered to extract needed micronutrients from real food. If you’re eating real food, unless your doctor prescribes supplements, you don’t need to take them. I was taking zinc because I was told that “it enhances your immune system.” I told my doctor and she advised me to stop. She said that it could interfere with my ability to absorb copper. Some people take a daily vitamin for insurance but if you’re eating right, you don’t need them. Eat real food, to include lots of fruits and vegetables, which provide vitamins and minerals that boost immunity and lead to enhanced resiliency. 
  3. Maintains good gut health, both pre-and probiotics. Never forget that you were eating for two: you and the colony of bacteria or microbiome that lives in your gut. Feeding the micro biome means eating lots of natural fiber, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lots of fermented food . This includes kombucha and yogurt.

Here are the benefits of a healthy gut:

  • Improved food digestion.
  • It helps regulate your immune system which promotes resiliency
  • It produces vitamins, which includes B12 Simon and riboflavin.
  • A healthy gut enhances weight control.
  • It improves your mental health by enhancing the brain gut connection. A heathy gut improves cardiovascular health by helping to control cholesterol.

How do we improve our microbiome?

  1. Eat fruit and fermented food to include yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir. Be mindful that sauerkraut often is not fermented but simply stored in salt brine.
  2. Eat a wide range of real food. Vegetables, beans, fruit, fiber, whole grains. Eat foods that include polyphenols. Red wines, green tea, dark chocolate, olive oil. Limit your use of antibiotics.

Physical resilience is the result of good diet and exercise.

Make no mistake. You cannot eat junk food and neglect fruit and vegetables, on top of living a sedentary lifestyle, and expect to be a physically resilient person. Your ability to bounce back from viruses, broken bones, exposure to chemicals or other toxins, and from genetic minefields, if you do not take care of your body. That’s as simple as it gets. It’s about taking care of your body. If you take care of your body, you will be a more resilient person now and in years to come.

Don’t do what I say, do what I do!

I’ve just finished editing this blog. I’m visiting my granddaughters in Colorado. I’m leaving my room in a few minutes for a 2-hour hike in the mountains. I had a high-fiber, high protein breakfast with some fruit. I work out every day, most weeks. I eat food, not too much, mostly plants, most weeks. 

This is part thirteen in the Healthy Aging Series, written by Mark Neese, LCSW, BCBA. To see more entries in this series, click here.