Wine Drinkers Rejoice

Why? Because TIME magazine just reported that wine, especially red wine is good for you. Yes, I’ve read similar reports before, but this particular article somehow seemed more convincing to me.  Could it be because I drink a glass of wine almost every night and wanted someone to tell me I should keep it up? Perhaps.

When I saw the title of the article, “Here’s what happens when you drink red wine every night,” I groaned, thinking it would be an admonishment to stop drinking, accompanied by some scary medical picture. Just like the stories of old about eggs, bacon and other tasty foods being bad for you, the take on wine has been all over the board.

This time, though, Ben-Gurion University researchers set out determine “how safe and effective it is for … those with well-controlled type-2 diabetes … to drink moderately... [because] people with type-2 diabetes are more likely than the general population to develop cardiovascular disease and have lower levels of heart-protective HDL cholesterol ...”

Their test group included 224 people who fit this profile and who did not currently drink wine, and each one was assigned to drink one of three liquids daily at dinner: five ounces of mineral water, dry white wine or dry red wine.  Over the two years of the test, they also followed a Mediterranean diet.

OK, so far so good. My husband and I kinda, sorta follow a Mediterranean diet because I’m Greek and like olive oil, olives, feta cheese and the like.  We eat plenty of lean meat and fish and green vegetables. No mineral water for me, but I have a glass of red or white wine most nights, and except when out with friends, usually keep to only one glass. So what were the results of the two-year test?

 “… Red wine drinkers had significantly increased their levels of good HDL cholesterol and had a more beneficial cholesterol ratio compared to the group that drank water, [and] … were also the only group to experience a significant drop in components of metabolic syndrome.” The other bit of good news was that both red and white wine drinkers said they slept better.  Regardless of whether the participants drank water or wine, there were no adverse effects.

If you enjoy a nightly glass of wine like I do, this is great news all by itself, but it gets better:

The results made sense to Dr. James O’Keefe, chief of preventive cardiology at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute (who was not involved in the study.) He noted that the high resveratrol levels and unique antioxidants in red wine would all contribute to a positive result and that red wine with dinner would lower your blood sugar level. “The post-meal spike in sugar is one of Americans’ main sources of inflammation, which contributes to everything from diabetes to dementia to heart disease and arthritis, he adds.” A little red wine with dinner “makes your system more able to sop up the sugar and the calories that you’re consuming.”

Like many of us of a certain age, I worry that I’ll eventually develop dementia, and I already have a touch of arthritis. I take Aleve and apply ice to soothe my arthritic joints. Now when I sip that nightly glass of wine, I’ll consider it another weapon in my fight to stave off arthritis.  And hey, if it helps ward off dementia, I’ll drink to that too.

French fries are the devil's food

That’s the quote that has stuck with me from the book “Younger Next Year.” You have to admit it’s catchy … and it’s hard to argue with. Actually, you could say that about the entire book. I read it years ago, still dip into it now and then, and heartily recommend it. But this column isn’t about the book and its messages on staying healthy as you age; it’s about French fries.

When I first read the French fry quote, I diligently avoided French fries.  It’s not like I didn’t already know they were bad for me, but the quote was a humorous inspiration. Over the years, though, they’ve crept back into my diet.  Who doesn’t think, “I’m eating grilled fish; I can afford French fries on the side?” Or maybe it’s, “I’ll just split the fries with my husband--no harm done.”  Wrong!

It’s so easy to fool yourself until some bit of news stops you in your tracks.   For me, it was a short video, “Should I eat French fries?” featured in a TIME magazine article, “Why restaurant food may be less healthy than fast food.”  We all knew eating out wasn’t all that healthy and that preparing meals at home was the healthiest route, but fast foods as the next best option is a new one for me. The article included some interesting data on the differences in how much fat and sodium we consume depending on whether we eat out or take out.

Much more disheartening was the video. In just over two minutes, it establishes there’s “no redeeming nutritional value” in French fries. I knew they were bad, just not that bad.  I’ve been avoiding them because they’re so fattening, but there’s more.  Apparently, once you remove the peel—the healthiest part of the potato—and then fry and salt ‘em, you’ve merely succeeded in making the devil’s food highly addictive.

Seven of nine nutrition experts say you should not eat French fries at all, and if you do, they should be a selective treat.  Worse news? French fries are the #1 vegetable consumed by toddlers as young as fifteen months.  Guess they’re well on their way to being addicts by age two.

Perhaps we boomers didn’t get addicted at quite such an early age because fast food restaurants weren’t as prevalent back then.  My mother only occasionally made fries from scratch until the bags of frozen fries came out. Then we had them at least weekly for dinner. Still, it wasn’t French fries that were my downfall; it was potato chips. 

In New York, where we grew up, there was always a big bag of Wise potato chips in the pantry. Once we moved to Georgia, though, that staple was replaced with tins of Charles Chips. Who remembers the Charles Chips truck making home deliveries?  They kept our home well stocked with potato chips, pretzels and the occasional tin of cookies.

That never-ending childhood supply is probably why, to this day, I’m addicted to chips. If a bag ever hits the door, it’s sure to be demolished in a day or two. I keep my addiction in check by only allowing myself a snack size bag with a sandwich when I’m out. For me, the warning should read “Potato chips are the devil’s food.” What about you? 

Surprise! Most Americans are out of shape

You’re not really surprised—are you?  Neither was I when I read this headline in the Wall Street Journal: We All Need to Shape Up Fast. Despite the fact that I and most of my friends are reasonably fit and active, I realize that oh-so many folks are not.

The article is light-hearted in tone but contains some pretty dismal facts:

• More than a quarter of the U.S. population—28%—did not participate in a single physical activity last year as defined by the [Physical Activity] council.
• The physical activity did not have to be something super-intense like mixed martial arts, or quarterbacking the New York Jets. Stretching was considered an activity.
• The number of Americans who could be described as “totally sedentary” has risen to its highest level since 2007.

I had to laugh when I read that 

“…this surge in sedentary behavior has occurred as sales of stylish fitness clothing—the ‘athleisure’ category…have continued to rise…[and]there are indications that a lot of this ‘athleisure’ clothing is being purchased for pure leisure—and not, you know, the ath.”

The author also notes the irony in the overwhelming number of fitness devices available that will track your steps, your heart rate, and your calories burned at the same time that technology is putting everything at our fingertips so we can live and thrive without “stepping outside to get something.”

In contrast to this news about inactivity, the topic of one of my recent blogs was the Get Active! program my company runs annually to inspire us to be—you guessed it—more active.  Long before that program started, my husband and I were already cycling most weekends, and I was working out at the gym and walking with friends. Probably because all my adult life, I’ve obsessed about my weight and watched my eating (well, I watch it but don’t always curb it), I’ve always included some physical activity in my life.  In the 80’s and 90’s, it was running.  I added cycling in the 90’s and soon gave up running, but eventually added yoga, and most recently a personal trainer.   

These days, working out is not as much about my weight as it is about staying fit.  I’ve significantly increased my activity level over the past few weeks, and I’m pretty pleased because I seem to have a bit more energy and an  easier time cycling hills.  It’s doubtful I‘m going to continue working out 60-90 minutes every day as I’ve done during our company challenge, but you never know. Before it began, I thought four-five days a week of 30-45 minutes of activity was gracious plenty, but the competition upped my game.

The good news?  Even if I choose to exercise less, I am nowhere near sedentary. And hey, additional research reveals that pastimes like billiards, bowling, and even darts count as activity according to the survey.  Darts anyone? 

Boot Camp Equipment

Get Active! Round Three

Yup, we’re at it again.  The Get Active! program where I work is designed to help us all get off the couch and get moving by joining teams and tracking our activity—steps, minutes or both—and it works.  For this eight-week challenge, we’re only tracking steps, a change that could have put me out of the running, as I don’t routinely walk or run and don’t earn many steps for my hours of circuit training, cycling or yoga, but we now have an activity converter online which allows us to convert 50+ different activities to steps.  We can even convert housework and yard work. If we hit the goal of 56,000 weekly steps for four of the eight weeks, we earn a $40 Amazon gift card or can choose to give our $40 to a non-profit.

My team of 11 go-getters isn’t satisfied with hitting 56,000.  We’re averaging 77,000 steps each per week, with many of us hitting 100,000+.  We were already a pretty active bunch, and we’re pretty darned competitive. There are more than 12,000 teams company-wide, and 14 in our department alone.  Among those 14, our team--Wicked FIT--has been in third place for the past five weeks, putting us among the top 300 teams at the company. As team captain, I function as the coach/cheerleader/nag, sending multiple emails encouraging the team to walk, go to spin class, whatever it takes to get those steps.

Cheerleading—now there’s a flashback. I tried out in high school but didn’t make the squad and turned instead to the drill team. I wonder how many steps I was accumulating back then with two hours of marching practice daily plus a football game every weekend.  Bruce Springsteen would call those the Glory Days, and I was certainly a gloriously smaller size. Back then only the track team ran, no one had even thought of Spin class, and I certainly never imagined I’d have a personal trainer.

These days, we’re having fun with creative team names and logos and the trash talk among teams.  The team in second place is “Zombie Quest—Stop you dead in your tracks.”  That name just cracks me up.  On the Wicked Fit team, we’ve each chosen evil characters to represent us. We’ve got Darth Vader, Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook and plenty of other Disney villains. Me? I’m Wicked Queen Penn from Snow White.

Of course, the benefit of all this friendly competition is that we’re all getting more active--and hopefully more fit and more healthy.  One team member set 70K steps as a goal, which prompted me to go for it too.  The Spinning Witches, as we call the three who regularly attend Spin class, routinely clock 90K steps a week, and they inspired me to attend one class a week.  We’ve got one gal who kayaked, walked, ran and swam all in one weekend. I wisely do not try to keep up with her, nor am I going for 100K a week.

I suppose if I were even more competitive, I would shoot for 100K weekly steps for these last two weeks of the competition.  Hmmm…I wonder if we’d overtake Zombie Quest if I hit 100K, and hmmm…I wonder whether my creaky knees could even get me there.  There may just be a limit as to how many hours a week I can ice my knees. Making this decision may require a more thorough cost benefit analysis…or at least a glass of wine.

Who's a Slacker?

That would be me. I must admit I've felt like a slacker lately because, for a variety of legitimate reasons, I've missed yoga for two months.  And you’re wondering how I define legitimate, right? The story is that I attend lunchtime yoga on Mondays.  When I travel for work or vacation, Monday yoga is almost always out.  During September and October, I was on the road five out of eight weeks.  Combine that schedule with a pulled hamstring necessitating two physical therapy sessions a week, and you can see how yoga might go by the wayside.  It’s just hard to rationalize taking two hours away from work for physical therapy and then following it with a yoga session.

Though the hamstring issue hasn’t completely gone away, my prescription for physical therapy has, so I finally made it back to yoga this week. That’s why I have a heating pad under my leg as I sit here at my desk. At least, it’s cool enough in Atlanta these days to make the heating pad a pleasant experience.

 Because there’s a core group of us who’ve been taking yoga from the same instructor for many years, walking into class is like coming home.  Most of the folks in class don’t work full time but know that I do, so they supposed I’d been traveling for work.  One was worried that something had happened to me, but another gal wisely noted that since she was still seeing my column in the local paper, I was probably OK. It’s nice to be missed, and I missed all of them as well.  

We tend to be a bit chatty before class gets going, as that’s the only time we see each other. On occasion, a few of us have gone to grab a bite when class ended, but not often.  I may be the chattiest of us all, and that may be why I started thinking last year about having an afternoon holiday gathering for my yoga pals so we could have more time to get acquainted.  Somehow the idea never came to fruition, but I’m considering it again for this year. 

Most folks would begin thinking about dates and menus, but as a word nerd, my first thought is what to call the gathering. I considered a play on the Stephen Sondheim song The Ladies who Lunch,  famously sung by the late Elaine Stritch, maybe Women who Workout, but we do have one guy in our yoga class. Not to mention, that song is an ode to drinking and desperation. Ah well, if this idea is to become a reality, I’ve got to get into gear, or I’ll soon be feeling like a slacker about party planning as well as yoga.  

Train the Trainer

This familiar term in corporate America refers to training trainers so they’ll be proficient in facilitating a course.  Back when I was on the road delivering three-four day leadership courses in person in different cities, we trainers attended train the trainer sessions whenever a new course was developed and ready to roll out.

 

Today, though, this term popped into my head as I headed out the door to meet my workout buddy and our latest trainer. We are trying our best to train him. My workout bud and I have been together for close to five years and have been through as many trainers.  And no, it’s not that we’re difficult people.  We’ve come to realize that if we’re in it for life, as I like to say, then our trainers will come and go.

 

After six months, our first trainer, whom we still see for the occasional dinner out, decided to take a full time job. We found another trainer and continued our twice weekly sessions with her.  She was a tad less convenient in the morning rush hour traffic, so when our original gal went back to personal training, we returned to her. When she moved on the second time, she steered us to Gold’s Gym and told us which trainer would suit us best.

 

We were extremely happy with our new guy, a Marine.  He called us only by our last names and was a 6’5” gentle giant who upped our game considerably.  Alas, after a year, he was promoted to Training Manager and handed us over to another trainer.  We liked our new guy equally well. He was even tougher than our Marine, though a bit less stern, and we enjoyed our banter with him. When you can hardly lift your arms to style your hair, you know you’ve had a good workout.

 

Then the Marine left and shortly after that, our trainer decided to set up shop at his home and build his clientele there.  Neither of us can afford the travel time to go to his home, so once again, we have a new trainer.  

 

Here’s where the train the trainer part comes in.  We are trying to give him a chance. He proclaimed he had to see us in action before he could settle on a regimen for us…to be sure he didn’t cause any injuries.  We thought that meant one session, but after two weeks, we’re getting a bit impatient with his approach. This week we finally had to tell him to up the weight on one of the machines, and when he said something like, “let’s see if you can make it to 12 V-ups,” I gave him an incredulous look and replied, “make it to?”  After five years of abdominal work, we can easily do that and more.

 

He’s offered to let us try another trainer, but we’re not quite ready to start over again.  Instead, we’re working on “training him” to work us harder.  We’ve been pretty clear about needing to increase the weights for our arm workouts because we’ve long since passed the three-five lb level, and today he gave us 30 lb kettle bells, so he may be catching on. On the other hand, he gave us a back-handed compliment on our box jumps today, observing that we were doing well in that “most women jump up one foot at a time,” and then demonstrating a tentative little jump.  You’ll all be happy to know I didn’t slug him for that somewhat sexist comment.

Springing into Action: Get Active! #2

Who doesn’t want to tone up those arms and legs just a bit before the tank tops and shorts come out? Not to mention tightening those abs for swimsuit season. It’s round two of the Get Active! Challenge at work, and getting active as spring starts seems perfect timing. If you read my 2013 blog post on this topic, you may recall that my company introduced an eight-week challenge in the fall to encourage us to exercise 140 minutes a week and/or rack up 56,000 steps for at least four of the eight weeks. Round one appropriately ran right up until Thanksgiving week, and round two started April 14^th. If you achieve the goal, you can earn a Fitbit, a $40 Amazon gift card or, new this year, you can donate your $40 award to Habit for Humanity.

We can sign up individually or join teams, so I formed a team called the Family Circus.  Why Family Circus?  Because this time, we can enroll family members on our teams. We started out with four spouses signed up on our team, but I had to kick my husband off, uh, I mean, remove him from the team because he was sidelined by some unexpected minor surgery the second week.  As team captain, I just couldn’t let him drag our averages down! Do you get the impression we’re a competitive bunch?

Even though I achieved my personal goal the first week, I was at the back of the pack when compared to my team mates. Instead of 140 minutes per person, the team averaged 271 minutes each and we averaged 74, 231 steps per person, far exceeding the 56,000 step  goal. The team I was on last time never quite hit its stride, so I’m hoping this first week is a good indicator of some committed folks.  And, who knows, I may even be inspired to step up my own exercise program.  I’ll never be the class star, but I can try adding a bit more walking to my routine to increase my steps and minutes. 

That small change would have the added benefit of increasing my aerobic capacity, something my personal trainer keeps encouraging me to do. And, it sure would make my dog happy.  As much as Banjo loves to lie around, he also loves his too infrequent walks.  Sounds like a win all the way around.

A Balancing Act

If we think of balance at all, most of us think of work-life balance and the never-ending struggle to make time for work, family and even, selfishly, ourselves. Somehow, pre-families and pre-careers, we managed to fit in studying, playing, maybe a part-time job, and plenty of sleeping. It’s only in our late twenties and thirties that we seem to become conscious of the juggling act, as we add more and more to our schedules. And, it doesn’t get any easier after that. 

Think of balance another way, and you can add yet another ball to your act: maintaining your physical sense of balance. I know, I know, you thought if you ran around all the time and were physically active most of your life, you could start to take it easy later on. Not! 

The WSJ reports that the three systems—the visual, the vestibular (or inner ear) and the proprioceptive (or sense of body position)--that keep us balanced start to erode when we’re in our 40’s.  The good news is that doing 5-10 minutes of balancing exercises each day can counteract that erosion. 

Reading the WSJ article made me thankful that I’ve been doing yoga for so many years.  So much of yoga focuses on balance.  The tree pose, where you stand on one leg with the foot of the other leg resting on your inner thigh, can be challenging, but well worth it.  As most yogis know, some days you can balance, and some days you can’t, but you keep trying. The John Denver line “Some days are diamonds; some days are stone” keeps running through my head. I guess because some days in yoga class, you sparkle and other days, your body feels like a lead weight.

There is also a mental component to regaining balance, says Arlene Schmid, an associate professor of occupational therapy at Colorado State University. This mental aspect is a bigger factor for people with impaired balance due to advanced age or illness. In a study published by the medical journal Stroke in 2012, Dr. Schmid's team taught yoga to post-stroke patients for eight weeks. Of the 34 patients, 19 initially had balance impairment as measured on the Berg balance scale. After training, 11 had impaired balance…Yoga can boost balance ability because it increases flexibility and its many poses integrate movements that strengthen a lot of different muscles, including those in the hip, says Dr. Schmid.”

Consider these facts:

• In the U.S., falls are the leading cause of injury for people over 65
• Every 17 seconds, someone in this age group is treated in an emergency room for a fall
• Every 30 minutes, one will die from injuries caused by falling  

I’ve experienced some of this with my 82 year old mother, who has had several falls.  She goes further downhill with each fall and never quite comes back to the level of health she had before. 

If reading this doesn’t make you run right out and sign up for yoga, perhaps you’ll instead try a few of the simple exercises included in the article. Here’s to all of us staying balanced in every way. May all of our days be diamonds.   

Just Breathe

No, I’m not thinking of the Pearl Jam song or even Breathe by Faith Hill.  I’m thinking yoga. For over ten years, I’ve been taking a weekly yoga class. I may occasionally miss a week and have sometimes missed a month or so due to an injury, but I always return.  Yoga poses takes tremendous concentration, so it’s the one activity in my life where I don’t think about work or personal issues. Trust me, it’s hard enough to do a headstand, much less do one while planning what you’re going to say in your next meeting.  If my mind does drift, I can usually attribute that drifting to being more stressed than usual.

And you’re thinking, “This relates to breathing how?” This week, my yoga teacher chose to throw out her lesson plan on standing poses and instead shift to a pranyama class. My reaction was, “Wow, I could really use that today.” Pranyama focuses on being conscious of your breathing. The benefits come in intentionally clearing your mind beyond what you do when practicing more physical yoga positions. Consider: do you ever really clear your mind? Even when you’re sleeping, your mind is still swirling. It takes work to focus only on breathing, and I have to consciously kick other thoughts out of my head, more so than when I’m doing a standing pose or shoulder stand.  As I’d been engaged in exploring nursing home options for my mom, an activity to help clear my mind sounded like the perfect plan.

We began our class with stretching poses like downward dog and resting poses like supported shoulder stand before moving to breathing awareness exercises.  If you are not a yogi, you may think that yoga is only about relaxing and stretching, but there are many different yoga disciplines. Iyengar yoga, which I practice, emphasizes form, and we practice and hold the various poses, stretching and strengthening our muscles along the way.  I can be just as sore after an Iyengar class as I am after working out at the gym.

My yoga teacher had an interesting story as to why she had shifted her plan this week.  She’d read a column in the New York Times by David Brooks in which he compared the different approaches to life of Michel de Montaigne and Samuel Johnson, essayists you’ve no doubt heard of.  “They tackled similar problems and were fascinated by some of the same perplexities, but they represent different personality types and recommended two different ways to live.”

Both proclaimed to have minds that ran wild, with thoughts endlessly careening through their brains.  It was in their approach to this proclivity that they differed.  Montaigne chose to accept and value his randomness, and his approach “…produced a kind of equipoise…he was amiable, mellow, disciplined, restrained, honest and tolerant.”

Johnson, in contrast, “…put the emphasis on self-conquest [and] sought out to earnestly reform and correct his sins. His diaries are filled with urgent self-commands to stop being so lazy.”  He felt his rambunctious mind was detrimental and could be conquered with discipline. Interestingly, Brooks observes that we’d be more comfortable today with the easy-going Montaigne, but I see our world of workaholic multi-taskers as more Johnson-like. Aren’t we always striving to sell more, make more, run faster, jump higher, and leap tall buildings in a single bound?

There may be nothing wrong with all this striving, but it makes regularly calming and clearing your mind even more of a necessity. The discipline of Iyengar yoga allows me to set aside worries and responsibilities, at least temporarily. Can you hear me sighing deeply, as I look forward to next week’s yoga class and another hour’s respite?

Get Active?

Get Active! What does that mean to you? Get off the couch?  Take a walk?  Go to the gym? For me, it’s a program we’re running at work to get folks moving.  We, as a company, are self-insured, meaning we pay the medical bills for employees insured through our health care plans, though we pay an insurance company a fee to administer the plan for us. So, when someone pays a $20 co-pay, it’s actually my employer who pays the remainder.

You can understand, then, that the company has a vested interest in having healthy employees. Yes, we all pay insurance premiums which come out of our paychecks, but the company is paying the lion’s share of the expense. Starting last year, if you got an annual physical, which our plan covers by the way, you got a discount on your premium. We’ve learned that early diagnosis can significantly cut medical bills in the long run, so identifying high blood pressure or cholesterol through a physical pays off not only for individuals but for the company.

This year if we watched a video on controlling health care costs, we got an additional discount. Think about it.  When you’re only paying the $20 co-pay, how much attention do you really pay to your doctor’s bill?  And how closely do you read your hospital bill?  Not as much as you probably did years ago when the bill came to you. Having employees be more aware of the bills and maybe even shopping around can be a huge help.

Get Active! is a new program this year that rewards us for, you guessed it, getting active.  Right now, we’re running an eight-week competition to exercise at least 140 minutes/week and/or walk 56,000 steps/week. Once you signed up, you got a pedometer. We were encouraged to form teams, and in my department, we have ten teams competing. We have team names like the Thumpers, the Roadrunners, and the HolyWalkamolies, and we all have team mascots.  We’re having fun with this, and there’s a bit of trash talk going back and forth.

If you achieve one of these goals for four of the eight weeks, you can choose either a Fitbitz or a $40 Amazon gift card. Pretty cool incentives, don’t you think? I am happy to say I earned my gift card in the first four weeks. Of course, if you read my blog regularly, you know I’m pretty darned active anyway.

 I chose to compete in the minutes category, though, not the steps. I simply don’t walk or jog that far on any regular basis.  I do get a ton of steps on the days I bicycle, but I usually only do that once a week.  Did you know that it takes approximately 2,000 steps to equal one mile? And, if you do the math, you know you have to take 8,000 steps a day to hit 56,000 a week. Just going up and down the steps to get coffee, fix meals, wash clothes, and all my other daily activities gets me about 3,000 steps.  The days I work out at the gym or go to yoga, I make maybe 5,000 to 6,000.  Apparently doing squats and lifting weights just doesn’t add up like plain old walking and jogging.

This program is offered to promote healthy habits.  Folks are finding that being aware of your activity or lack of it can motivate you to move a little more.  And, of course, the hope is that being more active will make you more health conscious and ultimately healthier. We’re blogging about it at work, and my teammates are saying it’s paying off for them already.  Even if you don’t hit the goal and get a gift, you just might get the reward of better health.  Not too shabby. 

A Tale of Two Vacations, Part One

I took two girls’ trips in October, one with three women I worked with years ago and one with my youngest sister. A good time was had by all, but the two trips could not have been more different.

The first one to Hilton Head Island with my former co-workers was health focused, as it was organized by our size-two-petite friend who is now a personal trainer.  She had several groups of clients in throughout the week, but we kicked it off for her on the first weekend. She had the time slot available at her beachfront condo, so we all thought it was a perfect excuse to get together. We stuck to quite the regimen.

The Dreaded Itis Brothers

I see a massage therapist who says, “When the Itis brothers visit, they are hard to get rid of.”  And you are wondering what on earth he’s talking about, right? I laughed the first time he said it, because I immediately knew what he meant.  You see, that day, I was complaining about bursitis in my hip, and I’d seen him before when I had tennis elbow, the nick-name for tendonitis in the elbow. And, no, I don’t play tennis.

I have, however, been visited by several of the Itis brothers—not only in my hip and elbow, but also in my wrists and heel. Somehow, more than any other of the “itises,” bursitis sounds like an old lady disease to me, but it isn’t.  A few years ago when I visited a physical therapist about my hip, he told me he had a patient in her twenties who had it.  Just knowing someone who was twenty-something had it cheered me up no end.

Was I Younger Then?

I took the first of many bicycling vacations with a gal pal back in the 90’s. Imagine meeting new folks, experiencing quaint B&B’s and seeing different parts of the country year after year—Vermont, Maine, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington. On one trip, we met two girls from NYC, and we four became fast friends, scheduling several cycling trips together over the years. Later, two of my work friends joined us on some trips too. 

Eventually, life got in the way and these week-long trips took a back seat. I’ve since taken two trips with my husband, a bike and barge trip to the Netherlands and one to France, but I thought the era of girls’ cycling trips had ended until last year when my one of my girlfriends said, “We’ve got to do another one.”  I replied, “We need to do it while I still can.” Thus came about our Outer Banks trip with Carolina Tailwinds, chosen primarily for the description—flat.

Because I’d only occasionally been riding, I knew I had to start a training regimen so that I could do 20 to 60 miles a day on this trip without killing myself.  Let’s be clear for you cyclists out there: I ride a hybrid, not a road bike, so this was major mileage for me.  My typical ride around home is about 15 relatively flat miles.

I asked a friend to start riding with me so I’d be in shape for that early spring trip, and we rode on some pretty cold and windy days.  He kept telling me that I needed to cycle more than once a week to get in shape, and when I told him I’d typically only ridden once a week to prepare for my trips in the 90’s, he said,  “You were younger then.”  He could’ve gone a long time without mentioning that. The good news--I was able to do my personal best of 50 miles on the first day of the trip.

This year, my husband and I are taking a sailing/cycling trip to the Greek Islands with my training partner and his wife, and he just had to bring up that “younger” comment yet again.  I’m trying to ignore him, even though the description of this tour is a bit daunting.  Bike Tours Direct describes it as “…relatively mountainous…one of the more demanding…with some longer and rather steep climbs where pushing your bike is permitted.”  When I mention this, the response I get is, “That’s what gears are for.” And, you wonder why he’s still my friend, right? 

In my head, I keep hearing the Byrds singing, "Ah, but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now," and I'm hoping that it's true.

Aging with Spunk

I just got home from the gym where I took two back-to-back 30 minute classes, one of which was a spin class. I barely have the energy to walk up the stairs. I’m supposed to feel invigorated, not exhausted, right?  At least I think that’s the goal. It is the first time I’ve tried doing two classes together, but I didn’t expect it would take so much out of me, since I regularly do 30 minute workouts.  When I can breathe again, I’ll start chanting, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Of course, when I consider that I was likely the oldest person in either class by at least ten years, I should be thankful I kept up with the younger crowd, even if I’m paying for it right now. Who knows? They may feel as bad as I do.

In another life, I ran, bicycled and went to the occasional gym class, but somehow those habits went by the wayside , and I found myself exercising only intermittently. A few years ago, I tried to convince myself to gracefully give in to the aging process and just accept my thickening waistline and arms that were beginning to jiggle, but try as I might I just couldn’t throw in the towel.  I decided I needed an intervention and started the search for a personal trainer. 

Since I’m pretty frugal, it wasn’t easy finding a trainer with what I deemed reasonable rates, but finally, I found one who was priced right and only a few miles from my house.  Even better, she hooked me up with Jen, another gal who wanted to start working out.  Jen and I have been working out together for three years now. We still keep up with our first trainer and have the occasional girls’ night out with her, but she’s shifted her focus to folks who want a true short-term intervention as opposed to “in it for life” folks like the two of us have become. I’m pretty sure we’re in it for life; after all, three years is a pretty long time. Thankfully, she found us another trainer at a gym with a variety of equipment and classes.

Shortly after finding Kelly, I also started walking on weekends with my friend Mary, who gave me the book, Younger Next Year for Women, which has been an inspiration. It’s an easy and entertaining read with alternating chapters written by a doctor and a gentleman in his sixties who, like me, realized he needed an intervention. Their advice is to “move” six days a week, which I don’t always manage to do, but I count five days as close enough.  Way harder for me is consistently following their advice for women to drink only one glass of wine or beer on any given day.  I’m smiling, as I picture another friend who’s a fitness fanatic, loves her wine and has a wine cellar to boot. After careful consideration, we’ve agreed this is one piece of advice we girls can ignore.  After today’s workout, I can assure you I’ll be enjoying a glass or two tonight—for medicinal purposes, of course.