Love Over 60, Part IV

In my list of How to Find Love Over 60, I began with these words:

“Stay healthy and fit. However people used to look at this age a generation ago is irrelevant now. We have the knowledge to stay active. Get out and move. Eat sanely. Take care of yourself. There’s a good possibility that many of us Boomers will live well into our nineties…and what better reason than for love?”

So people ask me what I do specifically. Well, I eat a lot of fruit, vegetables and nuts. I do eat meat but fish, turkey, chicken and eggs (mostly whites). I used to love steak. I ate enough steaks for a lifetime by the time I was 50. In the last 5 years, I doubt I’ve eaten 2 lbs of red meat. I love the taste but don’t like the way it sits heavy in my gut. It’s very dense and takes longer to digest than a lot of other foods. It feels hard on the entire digestive system to me. I eat as much raw food as I can. Raw food has lots of fiber and live enzymes in it that help you digest the food itself. What a cool setup that is! When you cook food too much, you kill the enzymes so it’s harder to digest it…even vegetables. A lot of people don’t know that our stomachs have a finite capacity to produce their own digestive enzymes. As we get older, the system is less efficient…which is why most antacid commercials show middle-aged people in distress. I also generally avoid the whites—white flour, white sugar, white rice, white potatoes, white pasta (I LOVE pasta, but it loves my belly more, so I avoid it). My body turns starch into fat very quickly so I avoid it. I love bread but don’t eat much and when I do, it’s wheat or seed bread of some kind.

I generally eat a light breakfast that includes fruit. Lunch is my big meal. I often don’t eat a sit-down dinner. I prefer to graze from about 5 in the evening until 8—mostly having fruit and some nuts, generally almonds, which I love. I do snack between meals but generally it’s healthy stuff—an apple, a banana, some pineapple, a small yogurt.

This really isn’t rocket science at all. As we get older we should benefit from the accumulated experience of what serves our health and what doesn’t. You can find more detail on this if you go to www.bobkamm.com and click on “essays and excerpts” on the home page. There is very thorough piece on health and nutrition that sums up what I’ve learned over thirty years reading a lot about nutrition. Single best book on nutrition? The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.

As to exercise, I’ve always been a kinesthetic person. Even as a kid, I didn’t like board games because you had to sit still to play them. I wanted to be outside running around, climbing trees, building snow forts and so on. As an adult, I ran quite till my mid-forties. Then, my joints and lower back told me they’d had enough. I switched to biking for a while and still do some, though less now. My favorite thing to do is just walk…but especially up hill. So I guess that qualifies it to be called hiking. I live at the base of 1250 foot mountain and generally climb it at least 3 times a week. It’s about 40 minutes to the top—a good aerobic workout, and the downhill return is good for a natural cool-down and working the legs the opposite way. The round-trip is about 4 miles. Several times a year, I do longer hikes with younger clients who come out for 3-day personal retreats (see www.bobkamm.com , The Ultimate One-on-One). We’re talking anywhere from 5 to 10 miles, depending on how fit these folks are. I try to mix it up a bit in warm weather and swim some. It’s great exercise but it tends to bore me, unless I’m in the tropics snorkeling or scuba diving. Now those are fun!

I also hit the gym 3 times a week, do some free weights and some of the machines. Jack LaLanne lives in our area and I’ve run into him numerous times over the years. He counsels to do a lot of reps with light weight as we get older. So I’ve followed that advice. I generally work one or two body segments per visit (e.g. chest and back) and spend no more than 30 minutes at it. One of my other fitness gurus told me that if you’re working out right, you shouldn’t spend more than twenty to thirty minutes per day, unless you’re in training for some big event or trip. Works for me.

I’m going to turn 64 in less than a month. I’m just shy of 6 feet tall and weigh 190. I love the feeling of vitality. My legs have really benefitted from the hikes. I’m quick on my feet and can jump from rock to rock. But I’m no fool. I always take a walking stick for extra balance. I got turned onto sticks in Peru in 1996 when I did the Inca Trail. All these Europeans were marching up and down the Andes with what I thought were ski poles but soon learned were telescoping sticks specifically designed for walking. I use the Leki Photo, sometimes two.

When I travel for a consulting job, I take stairs, not escalators and walk rather than using the moving sidewalks in airports. There are some airports where I know exactly how many stairs there are from this level to that, I’ve taken them so many times. If the weather allows, I walk from my hotel to the business. In the evenings, I often will do some short bursts of push-ups, sit-ups and leg lifts. Anything just to move the blood and feel my muscles. Otherwise, with all the sitting involved in air travel and consulting, I get stiff and my back gets gamey.
I do take supplements such as C, a broad B, resveratrol, acai, l-glutamine, milke thistle, and a blend of things to keep my mind sharp.

All this is working for me because I deeply enjoy being active and pay attention to what my body likes. The payoff? I rarely have a cold or any other illness in the course of a year. I have a terrific sense of well-being most of the time and more energy and stamina than most people I meet who are my age. I’m also told a lot that I don’t look anywhere close to my age. My blood pressure is 120/70; my resting heart rate around 60 (was peskily stuck at 72 for decades!) I haven't had a BMI done in a long time but I'm sure my fat % is down around 20. I do take rosuvastatin for cholesterol because no matter what I did, it was frustratingly high. My doctor says it's genetics--Eastern European Jewish stock. I resisted this med for a long time, trying everything I could. Finally, I consented as long as it didin't make my legs ache, which is a common side-effect of the statins. Well, it didn't. My cholesterol at last reading was 170.
When we travel, we don’t sit on tour buses. I get out and do stuff—hiking, zip-lining, sailing, snorkeling and so on. Just two and a-half years ago, we were in Peru (my 6^th visit—I’m just in love with the place!) and I did a one day hike from about 9000 feet all the way up to 12,800. I’d only been in the country for 5 days so the breathing part was challenging but my legs were good. I plan to take a group there in 2012 and have a number of hikes like that planned.

There’s two other pieces to health and fitness that are really important. I pay a lot of attention to keeping the stress levels tolerable in my life. We’re active and productive. We have a lot going on and we love our life and make sure we don’t take on too much at once.

The other thing, of course, is love. Love is the greatest health tonic. My book, Love Over 60 is testimony to that…but then, I think my previous three books are, too, in different ways.

My good friend, John Ramstetter, is my age and is built like a bull. He can still run marathons, bless his joints! He also cycles ridiculous distances. I have another friend who is 67 and plays the meanest game of squash you can imagine. His partners are all younger and he wins at least as much as he loses (and doesn’t mind losing to a talented person who makes his game better). Finally, we had a resident in town here who was a very dear man. His name was Dr. Paul Spangler. After a 3 mile run, he lay down on the couch and went to sleep forever. He was 95. I met him when he was 83…at the high school track. He shuffled his legs very quickly but he really moved. I don’t know if anyone has broken his record, but at the time of his death, he had won more Senior Olympics gold medals than anyone. Now here’s the mind-blower: he didn’t even start running till he was 67! So what more proof do we need that it’s never too late to get out and get moving. If you have a partner in life, it’s all the more joyful to do it with that person. If you don’t, you’ve got a much better chance of finding one if you are healthy, active and fit. Healthy is attractive. Healthy is sexy. And healthy will get you a lot more years to love someone…which is especially great as we age because we’re better at companionship, if we’ve been paying attention! So...that's what works for me. Howabout you? Please comment!
C 2011 Bob Kamm