40+ looking for motivation

For me, looking around at family and friends my age (+/- 10 years or so) is motivating. Don't get me wrong, they're all wonderful humans, and I value them all for their individual, unique talents and insights. But still.

At my age (59-60 when losing weight, now 68), looking around me leads to inescapable conclusions: My healthy-ish weight, active connections have much better quality of life, on average, than my overweight/obese and inactive ones.

Some specifics?

The inactive/overweight group, on average:
* Is sick more often
* Spends more money on health care, so has less discretionary income to spend on travel or other enjoyment
* Depends more on adult children/family for help with heavier routine home chores (or hires help for $$)
* Are less able to do fun things that involve lots of walking, stairs, or other physical activity (some examples are art fairs, music festivals, stadium-based music or athletic events)
* Need to limit food/drink choices more because of health conditions (diabetes, fatty liver, high cholesterol/triglycerides, etc.) or contraindications because of drugs they take for health conditions
* Need more surgeries, and recover from them more slowly because of more complications
* Tend to have a long period of poor life quality, essentially a slow and unpleasant decline of health, before dying (usually younger)

The healthy weight (or close) active people, by contrast, usually have better quality of life at every age, plus tend to have a short, sharp decline before dying at a later age.

On top of that, especially now that I'm retired (so more appointments mid-day), the waiting rooms at my medical appointments are disproportionately people who are visibly more overweight and less fit than the average similar age person I see at grocery stores and whatnot, let alone at events that require more robust physical capabilities.

Of course, there are individual exceptions or outliers, but those are the trends or averages.

Me, I'm not a family man. (I'm female, only child, childless, orphaned, widowed . . .). If I had children/grandchildren, I'd be thinking even more than I do now about being an excellent role model for healthy, robust aging. "Old" and "disabled" are two different things, not synonyms. We can illustrate that for the young people in our lives . . . or not.

Just a few thoughts.

Best wishes!

P.S. In my mid-40s, I was obese and lumpishly inactive. I honestly feel more vital (younger, if you will) now, at 68, than I did at 45. I do things now easily that were punitively challenging then. I started being routinely active even while still obese, in my late 40s/early 50s. Stupidly, I didn't reach a healthy weight until 59-60. Both increased athleticism and healthy weight were huge quality of life improvements for me, and the two together were absolutely gangbusters.

Go get it. I predict you won't be sorry!

Is being your healthiest for your family a motivation? Healthier means that you can enjoy those family gatherings more and for more years.

Also, you're probably not the only one at the gatherings who is wanting to lose weight, so make sure there are healthy options there!

nossmf wrote: »

I'm age 46, family man.

All that's been said above is 100% true, but all comes from the perspective of thinking about others or the future. I want to mention the perspective of being selfish in the here and now.

Specifically, I work full-time, have a long daily commute, and when home much of my time is taken up by household chores (I'm the chef of the family), helping my wife/daughter finish schoolwork to graduate from their respective schools, and keeping the peace between 6 humans, 3 dogs and 6 cats.

My gym time? That's MY TIME. For an hour a day I escape from my other responsibilities, focus exclusively on ME. Whether that's zoning out during cardio or exerting my will to move heavy pieces of iron around, causing a change in the world because I WANTED TO, working out is for me. I always leave the gym feeling like I just completed a therapy session; I'm calmer, less stressed, everything else is just a step closer to being put into perspective.

My kids are out of the house but I agree with this. For years I was at the gym when the door opened at 5AM to workout for an hours or so before going to work. At 5AM generally nobody wants you for anything. After work you can concentrate on the family.