In response to yesterday’s post briefly explaining my absence from the blog here on the Older Bolder Life for a few weeks, reader Paul offered this comment / question –
And there in lies the rub. How do advise your clients who live demanding lives and want to remain healthy? I am on tour for 3 months with an outdoor show and I can tell you the diet is the first thing to go.
Upon seeing Paul’s comment early this morning, my initial response was “what a great question”, and it resonates very well with commentary I hear literally almost daily from friends, clients, and family. After thinking about it for a minute, I thought it worthy to respond in a bit more detail, channeling (at least attempting to anyway) what I’d say to Paul if we were sitting in the coffee shop (or a drift boat on the river) enjoying a break and a cup of hot coffee. During that hypothetical conversation I’d offer up the following points…
Real Life Happens (Almost Every Damned Day) In Ways We Hadn’t Planned For
Most of us, at the least the people that I run with and help through Older Bolder, have to work for a living to pay bills, buy groceries, keep a roof over the family’s head, and educate the occasional offspring. Work tasks often vacuum up huge chunks of time as well as physical, emotional, and cognitive resources we’d prefer to spend in other places, doing other things.
I get that point, and understand damn well that real life rarely proceeds according to the plans we’ve laid out – whether it’s for the day, week, year or whatever time frame you’d care to define. (Working in medicine, it was absolutely guaranteed that urgencies and emergencies would interrupt every single day – it wasn’t a matter of would it happen, it was just a matter of when).
Some changes in the daily life game are more or less voluntary, like my excursion into the world of a commercial kitchen laid out yesterday; many (perhaps most) bumps along life’s scheduling road are simply out of our control.
One of, and by no means the only one, the key points to be made here responding to Paul’s comment is this – there will always be daily challenges and obstructions to living the healthiest lifestyle we can. Some days (weeks, or even months) we win the battle, some days it’s a draw, and some days we get hit below the belt and stumble. It happens, and will happen again to all of us.
How we prepare for, and respond to those eventualities, is where we all have, at least in my humble opinion, the greatest opportunity – and like most things in life, making the most out of those opportunities requires sharpening a few skills…
Hone the Art Being Brutally Objective About Yourself
As I shared yesterday, I got into a bit of trouble physically last quarter because I really wanted to learn the ins and outs of working in an upscale, busy, creative commercial kitchen. Of the many lessons I learned, one was this – there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of 60+ year olds in busy restaurant kitchens. The work is fast, even furious at times, and often amazing physical. As much as a I really really wanted to dive in and do that, given the bundle of other business and family responsibilities I have on my plate (as do we all), it took me a while to listen to my wife and objectively measure the pros and cons of my little adventure.
Like most humans walking the planet today, I had developed a bit of a blind spot that allowed me to wander down a path that ultimately wasn’t the best one for me now, and like most of us, there was a price to be paid. Being objective about things we need to face up to in our lives can be damned hard – things like am I over-working, overweight, eating or drinking the wrong things, under or over active, and so on so forth.
Hone the art of being brutally objective about yourself, and find a partner, mentor, or friend who will pull alongside and steer you back to reality.
When Sh*t Happens, Flex and Pivot
When life throws those curve balls, sometimes we need to flex and / or pivot. For example, when I found my activity demands changing rapidly, and after struggling for a few weeks, I began to fiddle with my macros (upping carbs and good fats) in response. Flexing my macros and my eating schedule (I’m a long time time restricted feeding fan) made significant improvements; one of the most interesting parts of health and nutrition game is that sometimes we all have to run that N=1 experiment to see how we can make this human machine run optimally.
Sometimes we need to pivot; for sake of discussion here I’m using pivot to denote making a bigger change for our long term good. Sometimes making a pivot means leaving the good behind for the better ahead.
Metabolic Flexibility Still Wins the Day
At least from where I sit, the absolutely most critical thing anyone can (and really should) do to improve their health and function in life is to develop a robust ability to be metabolically flexible.
For sake of discussion here, let’s define that as developing the metabolic machinery (hello mitochondria!) to process multiple substrates to provide energy for our daily function, namely the fats we all so efficiently and amply store, and not just exist from one glucose spike to the next, stuffing our faces with fast-burning carbs every two hours every danged day.
Being metabolically flexible brings a host of benefits to the table, though I’d argue that top of the list is experiencing more even, sustained energy production, effortlessly by the way, which opens up a whole new world of ability to complete life tasks – actually doing things every day – which is what life is all about.
Developing metabolic flexibility is within the reach of just about every human on the planet, but you’ll have to be intentional about it, and be willing to spend a bit of time in nutritional ketosis.
Functional Fitness Still Matters
Another point I’d make to Paul in response to his question is so simple as to be in essence common sense – the point being that functional fitness really does matter.
All of us, regardless of age, need varied, interesting, and sustainable exercise that promotes strength, endurance, cardiovascular condition, and flexibility. What does that look like for you? YOU get to decide what your program looks like; and you don’t have to spend thousands on gyms, gear, or coaching to get it done, you just have to do it.
Functional fitness still matters, and always will; figure out how to make it a non-negotiable part of your day and week. (Think you don’t have time? How much screen time do you spend waste each day?)
Mind the S’s (Stress and Sleep)
Though it occasionally garners an eye roll from coaching clients, I’d gently remind Paul that many of us, due to the demands of the day, neglect managing stress and sleep. These are big topics, bigger than space and time allow for deep exploration here, but suffice it say that unmanaged stress and disordered or too little sleep can have profound impacts on health and wellness.
Two Final Thoughts…
Finally, I’d close my hypothetical chat with Paul with these two encouragements. One, life can, at times, be a bitch, throwing us curve ball after curve ball that we can’t hit. Relish the victories, dust yourself after the losses, and get back in the game. Sisson opines that we should strive for 80% compliance with a healthy lifestyle; I’d argue 90% or better is just as easy and still allows for that occasional stumble.
And two, always be exploring, learning, and testing. There’s a wealth of great free information available today at your fingertips, experts to query, and consultants to engage. Ask questions, experiment, make changes in your diet and routine, and pay damned close attention to what your body is telling you. It’s NEVER too late to make changes that will lead better health and rewarding function.
Git ‘er done.
