The challenge in old age is pretty simple: stay strong.
Category: Old age
Hardest Part
Hardest part of growing old is maintaining one’s strength. You need weight training/resistance training to maintain your muscles. And you need to do that with discipline.
Many older people either don’t know that or they don’t have the discipline, so they end up feeble in old age.
Strength and Old Age
Aerobic exercise is not enough to maintain your strength in old age. You need to use weight training/resistance training to break down the muscle so that it can rebuild with protein. That’s the process that maintains muscle and strength, and that’s what the majority of older people don’t do, and therefore suffer from severe sarcopenia.
You see this all the time in very old people, that they don’t have the strength to do simple things — like just standing up is a real effort for them. The other day, I saw an old woman who needed help getting out of the hot tub. She didn’t have the strength to step up to the next level. Clearly, this was person who never did any of the weight training for years, so her muscles atrophied.
Don’t let that happen. Do the weight training/resistance training on a regular basis — at least 3 times a week at the gym. Just do it. Your strength depends on it.
New Game in Old Age
How to get to 100?
Entitled
By the time you reach old age, you are entitled to a little bit of insanity.
Biggest Challenge
Biggest challenge in old age is staying strong.
Sarcopenia
Trying to do something about muscle loss in old age. But I’m very late to the game. Now I learn that muscle loss in old age begins in earnest at age 50, and from that point on, one loses 3% of muscle if you do nothing about it. That was 26 years ago without any weight training/resistance training at all — just aerobics, which doesn’t really do much for muscle loss. You have to really stress the muscle to preserve it.
So I’ve joined a gym and am now doing weight training/resistance training every other day — 30 minutes a session, and 10 minutes in their sauna. Discovered early on that you don’t want to do 2 days in a row because you have to give the muscles at least 48 hours to recovery. Will be sore the next day, but that goes down a bit to a tolerable level.
No way I can make up for those lost 26 years of muscle loss, but I don’t want to lose any more and turn into jelly — a feeble and accident-prone old man.
They tell me that weight training/resistance training is also very important for maintaining bone health — plus taking a calcium supplement with Vitamin D before bedtime.
Old age is turning out to be a challenge. You are either up to it or not — your choice.
Diet in Old Age
Avoid processed foods entirely. 65% in carbohydrates with high fiber and whole foods. Choose your fat in your low-fat diet carefully with high amounts of monounsaturated and Omega 3 fats, particularly EPD and DHA. Boost your protein to 20% minimum, as protein digestion is not as good in old age, and there is significant muscle loss.
Ageless
While the body ages and shrivels, what’s in your heart always remains the same.
White
Reached the white-haired stage in life.
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