At the time of this recording, I’m closer to 50 years of age than I am 40. And sometimes I reflect back to when I was younger… say when I was 17. Approximately three decades ago.
I look back and think sometimes that, by and large, I’m more or less the same as I was then. I think of others who have gone through the past 30 years and look and know, they’re quite a bit different than they were in when we were, say 17 years old.
And I think okay, what makes the difference, and how are they different. One way is physically. I see some people after years and they’ve gained 30, 50, 80, 100 pounds or more. They’ve gone bald, they’ve let their health deteriorate. And mentally they are no further along in knowledge base or acumen than they were then… and sometimes a lot worse, through decline.
And so we look at okay, what makes the difference?
And I think it’s the realization of some key factors, or what we could call, lifestyle choices.
In no particular order…
I recognized back then, from even before then – before I was 17 – the importance of taking care of my health, taking vitamins, and exercising. And oftentimes people would ask me, in high school, well “why do you take vitamins?” “Why are you taking…” And even still to this day – “why do you take vitamins? Why are you taking these supplements?”
And my default answer back then was, well at the time and even still today, you see older people, senior citizens, through health ailments and age related things… They’re taking a handful of pills and medications every day just to maintain.
So my contention, my default answer back then, when I was 17…before then, and even now is: “I take a bunch of vitamins, supplements, minerals, so on and so forth, so that when I’m old I don’t have to take a handful of prescription drugs and pills and things just to maintain. (Which have a bunch of nasty side effects.)
Equally as important is exercise. For the most part, by and large, for over 30 years now…
I’ve exercised. Progressive overload, resistance training, cardiovascular health, and the like. Maintaining my movement, my mobility, my flexibility. Even though I’m not gymnasts and not flexible in that regard. But the articulation of the joints everyday – stretching, moving, exercising, pushing yourself…
Now I’m not as strong as I was when I was 17…18, or my 20s. I’ve seen a decline there, but I still push myself. I still progress, even if it’s only over six or eight, or 12-week process. Or longer.
Also is efficiency of movement. You know, a lot of people just they don’t move with much efficiency. They don’t exercise at all, combined with the lack of proper supplementation, a poor diet – processed, synthesized diet – is one of the reasons that they end up being overweight.
Or over that period of time have this mental decline, physical decline rather, and gain the weight, and have these age related diseases and things. People getting cancer at a young age, arthritis at a young age, osteoporosis at younger ages. If you look at somebody that’s the same age as me, that has made consistent poor lifestyle choices over that period of time, and they’re much worse off than then if they had not made those choices.
Now, to be fair, and full disclosure, I’ve made my fair share of poor lifestyle choices. But after a while, I realized, hey, this isn’t good. Let’s make a change. Let’s reverse that. Let’s quit doing that… whatever the case may be. And so those poor lifestyle choices are not propagated and continued over years and decades.
That’s what makes the big difference. You know, I have in the past I’ve eaten too much complex carbohydrates, and then come to realize, hey, you know, I’m gaining weight in the wrong areas. And it’s not good. So let’s cut out those complex carbohydrates. Let’s make dietary changes. Let’s make activity changes and exercises changes, to reverse that, to go back to a neutral kind of “where I was before”…homeostasis, if you will.
And as of this recording, from when I was say 17, 18 years old, my body weight isn’t more than 30 pounds what it was then Now some of that’s muscle mass, some of its fat, of course.
I’m not perfect. And I don’t maintain single-digit fat percentages. I live life and I could do better in that regard. But you know, I’m not like 50 pounds, 100 pounds or more from what I was.
I see people, say for instance, somebody that my wife works with. I saw this person, a young lady, when we first had kids. And then I saw a picture of her some years later and my god, I hardly recognized her… she gained at least 100 pounds.
How is this possible?
You know, it gets back to what I was saying before. Poor lifestyle choices that are, propagated and continued for years upon years. Then that compounding effect, just as a snowball effect, the damage it does on your body and the systems within your body can get to a point where it’s irreversible. You create changes (not good changes) that are irreversible. Even if you lose the weight, there’s still these other residual issues that you have created because of this.
I recognized back in my youth… again around the time when I was in high school or little after, I didn’t have the scientific terms or proper knowledge to describe it, but I loosely described it to myself as “adaptive energy.”
I realized then, anybody only has a certain amount of adaptive energies. Once you use that up, you’re done.
If you use it up all the way, you’re dead. Now I’ve come, through self-education to realize, these are enzymes, enzyme deficiency, probiotics, the flora in your digestive system, adrenal fatigue, stress on your overall central nervous system (which comes in a multifaceted ways – it’s not just one way).
Now I can put names to that and scientifically describe, at least semi-intelligently, but even then I realized, you’ve got a certain amount of adaptive energies.
Now you’ve got more of it when you’re young… you can stay out late, you can abuse your body with food and other things, lack of sleep, lack of hydration, and all that. And you have a certain amount, more enzyme potential… more adaptive energy potential, if you will, where you can bounce back and your body can tolerate that more. But a lot of people didn’t realize – and still don’t realize – that there is a limit to that. And as you age that limit declines.
You have to make proactive choices. You have to curtail that, so if you do overstretch yourself, even with exercise, you know too much of a good thing is not good for you, as they say. Even too much exercise…you’re gonna have to, lay off of the exercise. In power lifting terms, you’d have a deload week. You’re gonna have to get extra sleep, you’re gonna have to get extra good stuff into your body. Hypercaloric intake, good calories, at least for a few days… to compensate for that overtraining. It could be cardiovascular, it could be resistance training, the combination of the two, whatever it is, functional training, whatever.
As you get older, you have to have an understanding…a realization of that “adaptive potential, adaptive energies.” You don’t bounce back like you used to is a common way of saying that.
So you have to take measures to compensate for that. I can’t work out the same way I did when I was in my late teens and early 20s. So I compensate for that, and that’s fine. That’s a way to maintain.
That’s the gist of it.
I think with this, what this is titled: “The virility of youth.” Because that’s what it is…
When you’re young, your body is all full of the good stuff. You haven’t worn yourself down, wore yourself out. Lots of good hormones going through your body at the time.
And the myth of growing old, a lot of people again, through education or lack thereof, fail to realize that you can maintain the virility of youth. You don’t have to grow old.
Yes, we all age, we all get older. But again, I look at some of my peers, if you will, people I knew from back then. They’re balding, they’re overweight, they have all these problems.
You can’t control genetics, but you can control your health, by and large, through: exercise, through supplementation, through hydration, proper sleep, mitigating stress, reducing stress, and all of these things.
And it does make a difference.
So those are the thoughts that’s on my mind this morning. Just like the virility of youth as you age, keep the good stuff running through your body. Good food, good nutrition, supplementation, vitamins, exercise, all of those things. Propagate, proper hormone balance and food digestion, and so on and so forth.
Live All the Time You Live.