How Can We Combat Aging During Adulthood?
As we creep closer towards midlife, we tend to find ourselves yawning more than usual. It is as though our fitness and stamina has been magically taken away from us, and it is unlike anything else we can possibly imagine. We become less strong. We become less healthy. From time to time, we also become less happy especially when we go out of breath after climbing a short flight of stairs.
“Old age” — two words we constantly slather all over ourselves.
Kenneth Cooper famously said, “We don’t stop exercising because we grow old; we grow old because we stop exercising.” When we become adults, we are prone to move less and sit more due to the nature of most of our work. Sure enough, we can point at how higher intensity physical activity tends to decline with age. But it is not even a valid reason to skip exercising. We don’t need to train till we can be on the cover page of a fitness magazine (though it would be pretty awesome if we can all do that), we simply need to work out and not feel as though we’re falling apart inside out.
We know that we tend to become more sedentary during middle age, and that is precisely why we need to be deliberate and diligent in setting ourselves up for being more resilient during adulthood.
Our health is on the line, and I believe none of us are a big fan of solving health problems. We never want to deal with health problems, we want to prevent it from ever happening. Can you imagine having to wait for 3 months to get an appointment only to receive yet another follow-up question? Can you imagine me shaking my head? We can all agree that majority of health problems begin far earlier than the presentation of symptoms.
So we start by combating against them now.
It is not about picking a sexy strategy, but a sustainable one. A strategy need not give us the highest returns, but it needs to be one that we can stick with for the longest time. From my personal experience, a good gauge to picking a sustainable strategy involves two factors — fun and intensity. Is this exercise fun to me? Is this exercise intensive enough for me? The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends at least 150-minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week.
But I sincerely believe no one would bother to carefully clock a certain amount of exercise time, especially if it is fun.
This can be applied to our diet as well. Whichever diet it may be, am I enjoying every bite of food I put in my mouth? It doesn’t matter how healthy it is, because if it doesn’t taste great, we’re probably gonna drop off this diet one way or another. Also, is this diet working out for me? Am I stacking the odds in my favour when I give up a large portion of sugar, candies, pies, cakes, ice cream, bread, pasta and rice? We may not stop aging, but we certainly can age with vitality. How would you choose to age during adulthood?
