I think the worse “mess up” and the hardest thing to repair is being dishonest with ourselves.
Simple example comes with two words:
I can’t.
If there’s a REAL reason for “I can’t”, it is one thing but those two words have caused more mental and physical health dangers than anything else I can think of.
“I’ll try” (slowly and with caution) is a much better attitude than simply not trying at all.
I agree. I don't want to come off as an expert on growing old, because some of you have more experience than I do, and this isn't the kind of thing they teach in paramedic school. However, now that most of the people I know and love, and some I don't even like, are growing old, it seems that so many of them are self-limiting.
When I was younger and my hip or leg hurt, I could reasonably assume that I must have hurt my myself, so it would make some sense to take it easy for a while and wait for it to no longer hurt. Given that I didn't have a disease process causing the pain, the pain would soon go away and I could resume normal activities.
However, at 74, I have found that it doesn't work that way anymore. That would be the equivalent of waiting around until I grew young again. Sitting around and waiting for my hip to quit complaining every time I get up would result in a sedentary and probably a short life. Yes, there are some actual processes going on that cause the pains that we feel as we grow old, but these aren't generally things that are going to get better by waiting around for it.
Rather, if my hip hurts when I get up from a chair, I have found that it will quit hurting once I take a few steps, and by the time I have walked a block, I'm not hurting at all. It didn't start out that way, though. When I retired from being a paramedic, I began working online full-time, which led me to spend most of my waking hours behind a computer.
Just over a year ago, I realized that I couldn't do this anymore, and that if I did, I would probably die soon. My weight was much higher than it should be, and while my vital signs (pulse, blood pressure, and respirations) were traditionally low, my doctor was now trying to get me to take medication for cholesterol and high blood pressure. I tried some of these medications, but the statins, in particular, were causing cramping and restless leg syndrome, and my cholesterol and blood pressure were still high.
I am not a very disciplined person, so I will say that it was the Apple Watch that prompted me to do something about what I already knew I had to do something about, in that it would keep track of all kinds of stuff that I wouldn't otherwise bother tracking.
When I first started doing workouts, the elliptical machine made my legs and ankles hurt after only about five minutes, and my first walks were just around the block. When I would walk up a small hill, my pulse rate would pump up to above a hundred, and I would be short of breath.
But, I stretched one block into two, then three, and I started making a point of planning my walks to include hills, and by the time that spring came, I had my wife drop me off 10-15 miles from home, and I'd walk back, often through the woods or along trails.
Now, I am still overweight, and I gained nearly 15 pounds during my trip to Michigan and back, but I sometimes don't notice when I'm walking uphill, except for the largest hill we have here in town. I notice that one, but my pulse rate still doesn't reach 100, and I'm not short of breath unless I am intentionally trying to walk the hill at the same speed I'd walk on flat ground. Now, for a good workout, when I try to get my pulse rate above 100, I have to alternate running with walking. My left ankle hurts when I run so I am careful with it but I don't want to concede that I can't run, so I will walk 50 steps and run 25 steps, which is a modified Scout Pace, which is 50:50. When I do that, I can get my pulse above 100 and it will stay there during the walking period. I hope to eventually run 50 steps at a time without my ankle bitching.
I'm no athlete, but my pulse rate is back to what had traditionally been the norm for me: the low to mid-30s while asleep, and the 40s while awake but at rest. My blood pressure was 126/58 when I saw my doctor last week, and my respirations are 12-16 or so. My cholesterol is well within normal ranges, whereas it was on the high side of normal before.
My point is to say what
@Bobby Cole has already said, but with far fewer words, that we are sometimes too quick to accept that we "can't" do something because we're "too old," or whatever. Yes, some of you may well have some true limitations that you probably shouldn't try to work through, but even then, I think I would be looking for ways in which I could reach the point where there were more options.
