It’s Not Too Late to Start Taking Care of Yourself

I was 53 when I finally got serious about taking care of myself.

Not 23.

Not 33.

Fifty-three.

I was nearly 100 pounds heavier than I am today. I had type 2 diabetes. My feet hurt. My knee hurt. My back hurt. My shoulder hurt.

There were surgeries being discussed for several of those problems.

I could have looked at all of that and thought, “Well, I guess this is what getting older looks like.”

I’m very glad I didn’t.

Because my life today at 72 looks remarkably different from the future I imagined back then.

And here’s something I wish more people understood:

Starting late still counts.

There’s actually some pretty encouraging research behind that.

A large study published in JAMA Network Open looked at more than 300,000 American adults and how their physical activity changed throughout adulthood.

One of the most interesting groups was people who hadn’t been very active when they were younger but became active later.

They still saw substantial reductions in mortality risk.

You didn’t have to spend your twenties running marathons to benefit from moving your body in your forties, fifties and beyond.

We’ve seen something similar with smoking.

Quitting earlier is obviously better. But quitting later still matters.

In one enormous study, people who stopped smoking between ages 45 and 54 gained about six years of life compared with people who continued smoking.

That’s pretty remarkable.

But research involving hundreds of thousands of people can’t tell you what happened to one overweight, sore, diabetic guy in Oregon.

I can.

I Didn’t Have a Grand Plan

At 53, I wasn’t trying to become a fitness guy.

Good grief, I certainly wasn’t planning to spend my seventies teaching movement classes six days a week.

I just didn’t like where I was headed.

So I changed how I ate.

I started moving.

Eventually I discovered resistance stretching, which became a huge part of my own recovery and later our work at RiversZen.

Some things changed fairly quickly.

Others didn’t.

My weight came down. My blood sugar improved. My type 2 diabetes went into remission. The surgeries that had been discussed never happened.

I can’t promise anybody else my results.

I can tell you they happened.

And after thousands of sessions working with people over the years, I’ve seen enough surprising changes to believe something very strongly:

Older doesn’t mean finished.

Bodies Can Surprise You

We’ve had people come through RiversZen convinced something was simply gone.

They couldn’t comfortably get onto the floor.

They’d stopped walking as far.

Balance had become shaky.

Their shoulders didn’t move the way they once did.

Sometimes they’d simply become afraid to try.

Then something changed.

Maybe it was small.

They got off the floor a little easier.

Reached something on a shelf without thinking about it.

Walked farther.

Got back into the garden.

Climbed the stairs without planning the whole expedition first.

That’s not turning back the clock.

That’s gaining capacity today.

There’s a difference.

I’m not 53 anymore, and I have no particular interest in pretending I’m 53.

I’m interested in seeing what this 72-year-old body can still do.

Turns out, quite a bit.

There Wasn’t One Magic Tuesday

This is something transformation stories tend to leave out.

Years later, everything gets compressed.

I weighed this.

Then I did this.

Then I became this.

Ta-da! 😂

Real life wasn’t like that.

There were experiments.

Things that helped.

Things that didn’t.

Ideas I believed for a while and later changed my mind about.

Eventually resistance stretching changed an enormous amount for me.

But there wasn’t one magic Tuesday.

There were a whole bunch of ordinary Tuesdays.

That’s how most of this works.

And I’m still doing it.

I still experiment with how I eat.

I still change how I teach.

I still notice things in my body and wonder what happens if I approach them differently.

At 72, I’m still learning how to take care of a 72-year-old Dave.

Next year I’ll get a new model to figure out. 😂

That’s not failure.

That’s life.

Don’t Rebuild Your Entire Life by Tuesday

This is where we tend to make things unnecessarily difficult.

You decide you’re going to “get healthy,” and suddenly you’re supposed to overhaul your diet, join a gym, meditate, buy supplements, walk 10,000 steps, sleep eight perfect hours and develop a passionate relationship with broccoli.

No wonder Wednesday doesn’t go well.

Do one thing.

Take a walk.

Get down on the floor and move for five minutes.

Make one meal from real food.

Go to bed a little earlier.

Pick something that makes sense in your life.

Then do it again.

Pay attention.

Adjust.

Here’s Something I’d Like You to Try This Week

Think of one thing you’ve quietly decided it’s too late to change.

Not ten.

One.

Maybe you’ve stopped getting on the floor because getting back up has become difficult.

Maybe you haven’t walked regularly in years.

Maybe strength has slipped away.

Maybe your eating has wandered somewhere you don’t particularly like.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with health.

There’s something you’ve wanted to learn.

Someone you’ve wanted to call.

Somewhere you’ve wanted to go.

Something you’ve wanted to begin.

And somewhere along the way you started telling yourself:

Probably too late now.

Don’t solve it this week.

Just challenge that sentence.

Do one small thing that points in the other direction.

Five minutes counts.

One phone call counts.

Walking around the block counts.

Getting onto the floor and figuring out how you’re going to get back up counts.

Then pay attention.

Not to whether you’ve transformed yourself.

Just to what happens next.

Because that’s what 53-year-old Dave didn’t know.

He wasn’t deciding what the rest of his life would look like.

He was simply changing what happened next.

Nineteen years later, I’m awfully glad he did.

And wherever you’re starting from today, Peggy and I are rooting for you.

Tell us what you’re working on in the comments, or send us an email. We really do like hearing from you.

You still have today.

That’s enough to start.