Good Ol' Days

This week I saw an article on TV about how good Christy Brinkley looked at the age of 60. The first thing I thought was that she did look good and that she was my age. Next I thought that I wouldn’t mind looking like her. Then I remembered that I have never looked like Christie Brinkley. The point: like many people I know and many of my clients over the years, when the New Year nudges me to take better care of myself, I go to a “memory” of what I was like. Only problem is that it wasn’t a memory as much as it was a wish.

How many of us would like to be like the actresses, actors and models that we see on TV, online, or in magazines?

Often there are descriptions about how they keep in shape or their favorite diets. My question is how many hours daily do they spend working out? Any private chefs to make those special meals? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have several hours per day to work out or the money to pay for a personal chef or even Jenny Craig.

Another “false” expectation is to lose weight or be able to exercise like you did when you were decades younger.

Recently I was talking to someone about how I used to exercise when I was her age, 29 years old: 1 hour of racquetball, 1 hour of aerobics class and finishing with 30 minutes of weights every day after work. If I tried starting with that routine now, I wouldn’t be able to move the next day or the next week. At that time I had already worked up to the routine, but I did not keep up that routine.

Many things have happened over the years. I am not the same person, physically or mentally, that I was 30 years ago. Are you?

I have found that while we might be twenty in our minds, after the age of forty our bodies are more likely to reflect all of the damage we did when we were younger. The younger self did not have years of yo-yo weights, of picking up twenty to fifty pound children, grocery bags or mulch, or sitting at a desk for eight to ten hours daily to make a living.

Think of the clothes in your closet or in boxes somewhere. Even if you were the same size as those clothes, would you still want to wear them?

Admit it. Some of those clothes would make us look odd now. Why? Because WE have changed. While some clothes look good at any age, some don’t. It is the same with exercise and eating.

Some things never change such as walking 30 minutes daily, yoga, or choosing Greek yogurt over ice cream.

While you can’t return to yesteryear, you CAN be better than you were yesterday or even last year.

You CAN get better every day.