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Staying healthy and fit longer:
We can actively do something to maintain our health, flexibility and performance - this benefits us as we get older
Photo: Halfpoint Images / Getty Images
Knowledge about maintaining health has never been so easily accessible as it is today. And there is broad agreement that regular exercise and a predominantly plant-based diet are the basis for a healthy lifestyle. Nevertheless, the morbidity is increasing. Morbidity means the ratio of sick people to the total population. This means that we are getting older, but if we don't take care of ourselves, we will be sick longer. It doesn't have to be.
We don't have to come to terms with the increasing complaints of old age. We age the way we live. The aging process is inevitable and starts with birth. But our body and our brain are adaptable, able to adapt dynamically to a healthy lifestyle. We can therefore actively do something to maintain our health, flexibility and performance. According to various European studies, a maximum of 30 percent of our health depends on genetic predisposition. This means that we can influence at least 70 percent of our physical and mental fitness through what we do. With our lifestyle. Lifestyle beats genes. And this lifestyle begins with our attitude, the attitude towards a self-determined and healthy life.
Stay young for a lifetime with exercise, nutrition and the right posture
Below, I'll introduce you to five strong attitudes.
Attitudes that shape your personality and make it easier for you to live a healthy lifestyle.
I also make small implementation suggestions for each stance.
But a positive basic attitude is the indispensable basis for a sustainable success of the implementation.
Without mental strength, without sustained willpower, most resolutions fail.
I therefore recommend that you make my personal principles yours and internalize them on a daily basis.
· I am young
· I am responsible
· I exercise every day
· I eat healthy
· I love challenges and grow alive.
1st attitude: "I am young"
Think young, because aging starts in the head.
Those who feel old do not dare to do so.
Scientists have been able to show that how old you feel has a major impact on lifespan and health.
With a positive view of aging, diseases can be avoided and biological age can be influenced.
Because those who feel young are more willing to actively do something to maintain their fitness.
People with an affirmative outlook on life are more successful in maintaining their wellbeing than people with an "At my age I won't start this anymore" attitude. Those who have positive expectations of their own life are also ready to do something for these expectations to materialize. If you think you are young, you are more willing to change your lifestyle, for example to embrace new diets, eat less meat, more vegetarian food, maybe even go vegan for a while and test what that does to you.
Those who view aging negatively, on the other hand, are less open to doing something to stay young, for example to exercise more. "I'm already sixty", the emphasis on age is the mental door opener for many things that make people old and sluggish. Already so old, the results of such debilitating thoughts are usually the loss of physical abilities, the associated limitations and the resulting frustration. A tapering and faster turning negative spiral. Anyone who accepts illnesses as due to old age and thus given, is mentally already with one leg in the box. Does not have to be.
If you think yourself young, however, then you are increasingly making decisions that are youthful.
As a young-minded person, you often decide in favor of running shoes and against the sofa.
You choose to go to the theater in fancy clothes instead of watching the television in a house suit.
And you go to dance school yourself instead of just watching "Let's Dance" on RTL.
That is why you make "
I am young
" one of your strengthening attitudes.
2. Attitude: "I am responsible"
The conscious acceptance of responsibility also makes you strong. Because this attitude implies that you can do something for your future yourself. Civilization diseases such as joint pain, high blood pressure and immobility are multiplying rapidly. They are seen as troublesome but unavoidable. This fateful attitude is a convenient but completely wrong view of things. Rather face personal responsibility. Because diabetes has something to do with high sugar consumption, gout not infrequently with too much animal-based foods and high blood pressure with a lack of exercise and junk food. You can control all of this and much more yourself. A truly empowering thought.
On the other hand, the thought that the doctor will fix it is unfortunately wrong. Recognize the doctor as a repair shop for the scratches on your lifestyle. But he won't teach you how to park properly. You have to take care of the parking of your habits yourself. You see, medicine is simply about identifying diseases and treating them as best as possible. And our doctors are really good at that. But our doctors do not learn how not to get sick in the first place, it is not part of their training. As a result, the doctor's office will prescribe you medication to relieve symptoms rather than prescriptions for your everyday healthy diet. A diet that won't make you sick in the first place. And orthopedic insoles are prescribed instead of guided running courses,in which you learn the ABC exercises that strengthen the muscles of the feet and thus lay the foundation for avoiding injuries caused by excessive strain (see Never Injured Again).
Therefore, make yourself aware every day that you are responsible for the health in your life.
And recognize this responsibility as an opportunity.
Because whoever accepts responsibility with the strengthening attitude "
I am responsible
", it is much easier to take the strengthening measures.
And through the daily repetition and awareness of this responsibility you will be able to give less and less space to weak thoughts.
Because willpower can also be trained with daily training, not just your foot muscles.
3rd attitude: "I train daily"
"I only train on days when I also eat or drink". This is my admittedly somewhat provocative standard answer to the question of whether I train daily. And I really want to provoke the idea that training should really be something everyday.
Daily exercise is in our nature. Just like eating, drinking and sleeping every day. All of this after tiring physical work every day. All of this has made us humans in the last million years what defines our talents and dispositions today. I don't have to show you what our everyday life looks like in reality. Rather, raise awareness with two numbers. People in western civilization only walk around 700 meters a day on average. Our disposition allows and our body expects daily trotting over about 20 kilometers.
My wife Gisela (born 1965) does indeed run every day. 20 kilometers only now and then, but at least three kilometers. I myself "only" run about five to six days a week. I need and enjoy my day off because I not only jog, but also train hard and my body demands intensive recovery. Still, I train every day. When I'm not running, I do relaxing yoga or vigorous athletic training. I train daily because I feel that these forms of movement help me to alleviate the effects of sitting for several hours every day due to work.
I can feel your frown as I write these lines. But please read on. Because daily training is less a question of time and more a matter of attitude. In addition to sport, recognize the many everyday opportunities to be active. Recognize an opportunity to be active in every staircase. In the office or in the train station, for example. When shopping in the region, recognize the chance of leaving your car behind and taking your bike instead. Recognize everyday habits as an anchor to tie up small sports units here. For example, I do some push-ups every time I wash my hands. Washing your hands three times a day at home means doing push-ups three times a day. Suppose you also made ten pieces each, then that would be thirty a day,210 per week and an unbelievable 11,000 push-ups per year, which you would not have done without this "strange" habit in the best sense of the word. And push-ups train your stability and help to avoid the back pain caused by relieving posture (sitting is the new smoking).
Therefore, if you make "
I exercise daily
" your attitude, you will more often see a walk during your lunch break or the walk to your colleague as an opportunity to be active.
And if you want to flank these daily routines with a training plan for running or walking, then of course this is the best possible decision you can make.
4. Attitude: "I eat healthy"
Changing diet is by far the most challenging task that civilized people can face today. Anyone who manages to permanently abandon the pleasures identified as debilitating vices will experience great effects on mental and physical fitness. But the way there is very, very arduous. Shedding cherished habits is hard enough in itself. If then taste, enjoyment and addiction are added, then this is impossible for most people. Bad habit is best combated with strengthening habits, but before that comes the mind. So here are some explanations of where the cause of most "age-related" diseases lies.
With increasing age, the probability of a noticeable loss of performance increases. The reason for this lies in the cell renewal, which unfortunately works more slowly and no longer fully as the years of life increase. Cell renewal means the building metabolism, which creates the body's own substances from nutrients. Here are a few figures: Humans are made up of around 100 trillion body cells and around 50 million body cells die every second, but are rebuilt by the building metabolism. For a better understanding: During football or marathon running, cartilage in the knee joint is broken down, but it is built up again by the building metabolism. Provided we eat healthy. However, if the age-related restriction of cell renewal is accompanied by a poor diet, i.e. too few building materials or metabolic disorders,Like industrial sugar or alcohol, this hinders cell renewal and accelerates the loss of personal fitness and performance. The loss of cartilage gradually turns into osteoarthritis. And that is exactly what we can actively avoid.
Fortunately, the body is malleable through our lifestyle and metabolism. In addition to daily exercise, our tools for this are, above all, everyday nutrition. In this way, we can provide cell renewal with large amounts of nutrients and vital substances with fresh fruit, salad and vegetables every day and thus offer the best building materials to become more beautiful, more athletic and more productive.
You should therefore eat mainly plant-based foods, reduce animal products, avoid industrial sugar and alcohol as much as possible, season with herbs and spices instead of table salt and avoid food supplements.
Because dietary supplements only soothe the guilty conscience, but in the rarest cases are beneficial to health and distract from recognizing where the cause of malnutrition actually lies, in everyday nutrition.
All these changes begin with your attitude, ideally with your readiness to make yourself anew every day: "
I eat healthy
".
5. Attitude: "I love challenges and grow alive"
The first described attitudes, to feel young, to take on new responsibilities, to do sport every day and to optimize the diet, presuppose the basic willingness to want to change. When I hear statements like "I won't start this at my age" or "This is only for young people", then I recognize beliefs that definitely make people appear old and thus make them old. Of course you can't chase after your own youth. It is also understandable that at seventy you - possibly - no longer feel as comfortable in hot pants as you do at twenty. And whether you have to get to know apps like TikTok at fifty, I would also like to leave that open - in this case, admittedly as an ignoramus.But those who do not dare to use tablet computers or smartphones, who believe that colored clothing is the fashion of young people and beige is the appropriate color for senior citizens, who avoid contact with young people because they are concerned about being compared, risks being left behind and lost getting old.
On the other hand, those who are willing to learn new things instead of just going for a walk also try Nordic walking, instead of riding a touring bike also test a gravel bike, who buy smart watches and post their training on social networks, who are ready to do it themselves Twenty years of vacation in the same location to try out a new country, who, in addition to the favorite restaurant around the corner, also gives the new vegan a chance in the southern part of the city, who dares to accept small and large changes, grows alive and is sure to stay longer young.
Changes can mean pain, even if it's just the pain of separating from the unfortunately unhealthy nut nougat cream. Changes can also be enriching, such as discovering a new sport with rowing on a home exercise bike. One of my favorite realizations is that those who keep experiencing small successes are really successful. If these are achieved, you pay into the self-confidence account. Our personality largely determines whether we remain young or grow old. If we strengthen our personality, we can change the living conditions. We can live colorfully. We can stay up to date with technology, we can lose weight and build muscles. And we can counter unchangeable aging processes with aids such as glasses and hearing aids.We can with the attitude "
I love challenges and growing up alive
"staying young longer."
Make the five strong postures for a young life yours
That's how it works. The best way to make the five described attitudes your own, in order to follow up with deeds, is to make yourself aware of them again and again and thus gradually consolidate them. In the early morning, for example, lying in bed after waking up, or as peaceful thoughts before going to sleep in the evening. In these moments, think of these five strong personal attitudes: "I am young. I am responsible. I exercise every day. I eat healthy. I love challenges and I grow up." And then observe how your attitudes lead your life and how you fill aging with a lot of zest for life and great agility.
