Staying Healthy in Retirement

Years ago, I took a retirement course through the public service and they did a whole segment on health, which I found strange. I mean, sure, health is important, but what’s that got to do with retirement? I was probably in my late 40s at the time.

In my 20s and 30s, health was something I took for granted. I didn’t see it as something I had to work at, and for the most part I didn’t. When I hit 40, my metabolism changed and I started exercising more, though not consistently. I was motivated more by preventing weight gain than by the associated health benefits.

The year I turned 50, I hit the “OMG, I’m getting old” phase and set myself a few goals, including running a half marathon and running a 10K in under an hour. I achieved my goals and then promptly stopped running. I guess I felt like I’d won the stare-down with old age and could carry on as before.

With 60 breathing down my neck, I’m starting to understand why health had its own module in the retirement course. I’ve become very aware that if I don’t start paying attention to my health and fitness now, I won’t be able to do the things I want to do ten years from now. Things that used to come and go – extra pounds, aches and pains – now come and stick around. Everything will start to decline unless I do something now to counteract the natural effects of aging.

Ray told me he resisted the urge a while back to take a picture of me napping in the sun in my lounge chair, with the book, “Built to Move” lying open on top of me (while he was busy climbing up and down a ladder building a new shed). That anecdote captures our differences in a nutshell. I’m a planner and he’s a doer.

For some people, being active is an inherent part of their personality. Ray and Nick both have a hard time not exercising. I’m not one of those people. My interests tend to be sedentary – reading, writing, researching, helping kids read, doing crosswords, drinking tea, napping, staring into the abyss, etc. I’ve always rationalized it to myself that I tick most of the health boxes – I eat fairly healthy (despite my love of carbs and sweets), my cholesterol and triglycerides are good, I don’t smoke, I drink very little alcohol, and I get at least seven hours of sleep a night.

Then I read Peter Attia’s book Outlive. He talked about how a fit smoker has better longevity odds than a sedentary non-smoker, and an overweight person who exercises is better off than a thin person who doesn’t. The gist of his book is that exercise is the #1 factor in improving both your health span and your life span. That made it harder to hide behind my rationalizations.

I’ve had high blood pressure (controlled by medication) since I was in my late 40s, courtesy of my dad’s genes. My dad had high blood pressure from an early age, despite being thin and fit. His dad died in his 40s from a heart attack and two of my cousins on that side had fatal heart attacks in their 50s. So, I need to pay attention.

Although I’m not naturally an athletic person, I think we couch potatoes are capable of change. I’ve proven to myself time and again that, left to my own devices, my willpower is not enough to get me up and moving. Inertia takes over and I come up with an excuse to postpone, like the diet that always starts tomorrow.

When I was training for the half marathon, I took courses through the Running Room. If I was on my own, it was always too hot or too cold or I was too tired, but when I had that commitment and accountability, I’d show up and run in all kinds of weather, whether I felt like it or not.

We have weights and training equipment in our loft, but I never use them. They’re all the way upstairs and somehow that becomes an insurmountable obstacle. So, I go to a personal trainer who tells me what to do. It takes up a significant chunk of my annual budget, but if health is a priority, then I need to put my money where my mouth is. I’m also more likely to keep active if I’m doing something I enjoy, so dragon boating and cycling are my summer activities.

It’s easy to take our health for granted, but once we lose it, we’d do anything to get it back.

Karen came for a visit this week so naturally we walked to The Tin Roof for an ice cream. It was closed due to a malfunctioning payment system. This was the third time in a row they’ve been closed when the two of us have gone for an ice cream. We started thinking maybe someone was trying to send us a sign, but we couldn’t figure out what the message might be, so we drove to the Presqu’ile Park ice cream truck instead (twice).

We also had a visit from Ray’s nephew, Curt, from Kitchener. It was his first time staying with us but hopefully not the last. 

Our third visitor this week was Daisy, Juno’s BFF, who came to stay with us while Bill and Lorrie were away. She sulked for the first 12 hours or so (we’d try to take her for a walk and she’d just plant her feet – hard no) but eventually she gave up and decided to settle in and enjoy herself. 

I wrote in my last post about the importance of community when you move somewhere new and I got to see that in action this week. I occasionally have fainting episodes, triggered by heat, alcohol, standing, dehydration, stress, exercise, giving blood, or some combination of those. It’s annoying and embarrassing, but not particularly dangerous, as long as I sit down before I fall down. I felt an episode coming on as we were waiting to board our dragon boat, so I lay down on the picnic table to wait for the wooziness to pass. I decided to skip that morning’s session and Josée stayed on shore with me. She called Rick to pick us up in his van (we’d both cycled there), but Rick was out on his bike so he called Ray, who was in the backyard and didn’t answer, so Rick called Bill, who was out of town, so Bill called our new neighbour across the street, who brought her phone over and gave it to Ray, who then came to pick me up. When I signed up for dragon boating, they asked for an emergency contact, but maybe should have asked for my emergency contact chain. In any case, it’s good to know there are people there to catch you when you fall, literally and figuratively.