Anti-Aging Mobility and Energy Action Plan

There’s a commonly shared myth that growing older means you’re destined to have trouble with your mobility and energy. The truth is that it depends on how well you treat your body when you’re younger whether or not you’ll have trouble with this as you grow older.

Not everyone does. If you take care of your body and give it what it needs through each stage of your life, then you won’t you have to worry about this issue. However, you do need to make sure that you have an anti-aging mobility and energy action plan for each stage of your life.

In Your 30s and Younger

It can be all too easy at this stage of your life to think that you can eat whatever and take a laid back approach to that extra fifteen or so pounds. After all, when you’re younger, it can be easier to get rid of weight simply because you do tend to have more energy.

But the problem is that as you age, gaining weight is a whole lot easier. Before you know it, you can easily have packed twenty or more pounds and each year, if you add just a few pounds, by the time you reach your 50s or greater, you can be in for some serious health problems.

What you want to pay attention to right now is the size of your waist. Take a measuring tape and make how much your waist size has increased from the year before. It can be easy, especially if you’re not actively trying to lose weight to let excess weight creep up on you.

Most people don’t have a regular habit of weighing themselves. Some people don’t do it because they don’t want to live according to a scale. And while that’s a good way to free yourself of any body image issues, it’s also a good way for the pounds to add up.

It’s a lot easier to lose ten of fifteen pounds than it is to have to take off twenty or thirty. As you hit your 30s, you’ll begin to notice that gaining weight happens a lot quicker than it used to.

One of the reasons that some people believe weight gain happens at this point is because of a metabolism slow down. But the truth is that at this point in your life, your metabolism is still just as fast as it was before.

You would be wise to examine other factors behind the weight gain. Usually, people don’t realize the steps that they’ve taken that has led to the weight gain. The number one culprit is found in eating more food than their body can use.

When you eat more calories than your body needs to run on, unless you burn them off, the only place these calories will end up is as pounds. You can also raise your BMI level and put yourself at risk for weight related health problems.

Whatever extra calories you put into your body and don’t use will turn to fat. You’ll want to take a look at what you’re eating. Most people at this age are eating far too many empty calories.

When you’re younger, it can be easy to think you can just grab whatever and go. But check yourself and if you’ve noticed that you have put on some extra weight, then it’s time to stop and do something about it.

What you can do doesn’t take a lot of work or really any big changes all at once. What you need to do is to change up the way that you eat if excessive calories are the problem causing your weight gain.

Just start by counting the calories that you are eating. You can get a simple notebook or a journal and make a column for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus a column for snacks. Then for every bite of food that you put in your mouth, you count the calorie content.

This is the best way to take off extra weight if you don’t want to end up really struggling with it later in life. Calorie counting is also not as restrictive as some diets. Eating this way allows you to have the foods that you love as long as you’re careful.

Instead of having a serving of something what usually ends up happening is that you get two or more servings on your plate. Since it can be hard to judge what a serving size is anymore, it’s wise to measure out your food.

Use measuring cups and get a food scale for your kitchen. If you know that you have a weakness with some kinds of junk food, either don’t have it in your pantry or buy only the single serving sizes.

Make sure that you don’t skip breakfast because this does affect your metabolism and it can also create the tendency to overcompensate with food later on in the day. If you have trouble with counting calories, then what you can do is find a healthy eating plan that offers meals that are nutritionally sound and packed with nutrients.

Look for foods that are high energy foods. These would be items such as bananas, oranges, spinach, brown rice, beans, almonds and more. Whatever you do, never get involved in a fad diet.

These diets are dangerous and can cause significant health problems. As you do get rid of any extra weight, you will end up seeing a natural upswing in the level of energy that you have.

In Your 40s

At this state of your life, you’re going to want to pay even more close attention to being on the offensive about your mobility and energy. That’s because this is the time in your life when your metabolism does start to slow down.

It’s also the time in your life when any extra weight you’re carrying will lead you into issues such as high blood pressure, higher than normal blood glucose readings, hardening of the arteries, strokes or heart attacks.

Usually at this age, you’ll start to see issues with health that can be directly linked to your family’s health history. If you have an unhealthy lifestyle, what that can do is speed up the development of genetic related health problems.

Too often, people reach this stage of their lives and they begin to slow down. They start to take it a little easier. Careful calorie counting isn’t important and staying active isn’t as important.

One of the reasons for this is that people fall into the trap of believing in the middle age slow down. They think that slowing down physically and having less energy is something that’s simply inevitable and that’s not true.

The number one cause of a lack of mobility and energy at this stage is tied in directly to how much physical activity you have in your life. You must stay physically active but especially at this stage of your life.

What you need to do is to take stock of where you are in how active you’re being. If the only exercise you get is moving around your office or cleaning your home or running errands, then that isn’t enough to keep you healthy.

When you’re not active enough at this age, you’ll set the stage for later problems with weakness in your muscles and painful joints. Your body is like a machine and it must have regular use in order to keep all the parts working properly.

Otherwise, they rust out from non-use. Have an honest look at where you stand physically at this moment. If you’re someone who has a hit and miss exercise program, that’s not going to cut it.

You need to have regular exercise at least 3-5 days a week at this point. It’s better to exercise every day but if you can’t, try not to fall below the minimum of three days a week.

If you’re someone who can’t stand to go to the gym or you just can’t squeeze the time into your already overbooked schedule, then look for ways that you can be physically active at home or even at work.

If you’re at work, you can use a fitness ball instead of a desk chair. This forces your body to balance itself and uses its core muscles. For people who don’t have time to make it to the gym or don’t want to, you can buy exercise equipment to have at home.

There are tons of affordable treadmills, some of which come with desks for people who just can’t find the time to exercise. This way, you can work and exercise at the same time.

If exercise equipment is out of your budget for the time being, then buy exercise DVDs and workout to those regularly. By maintaining a steady physically active routine, you’ll be able to retain mobility and keep up your energy level.

In Your 50s

By the time you’ve reached your 50s, you probably already know that you need to maintain a healthy weight. You also are probably already actively engaged in a good, steady exercise program.

What you need to do at this time is to focus on how well your muscles feel. For each decade older that you turn, you’ll lose some muscle mass. When that happens, you won’t be able to lift things as easily.

You might start to notice that you don’t have the strength that you once had. As you lose muscle mass, you can feel a loss in energy as well. Many people concentrate on making sure that they build muscle mass when they’re younger but some don’t.

And it’s this lack of muscle that will determine whether or not you have ease of mobility and energy in your 50s. Even if you didn’t concentrate on building muscle mass when you were younger, that doesn’t mean that you can’t start now.

You can check yourself on the scale but know that your scale will not break down the pounds according to muscle or fat. The reason that it’s important to build your muscle mass is because it not only helps to keep your weight at a healthy level, but it also gives your body strength.

If you take part in resistance exercises, this can help you to build muscle mass and muscle mass uses up calories at a higher rate than fat does. In turn, this charges up your metabolism so that you keep the weight off as well as look and feel better.

At this stage of life, unfortunately, many people aren’t interested in building muscle mass and that’s a shame because it can lead to problems with mobility. If you don’t regularly engage in some kind of resistance training to strengthen and build muscles, over time, you will lose enough muscle mass to impact your ability to get around.

This is why some people in their golden years end up barely able to get out of a chair. You can prevent this – and even reverse it in many cases, just by leveling up your activity and strength training.

In Your Senior Years

In your senior years, depending on how well you’ve taken care of your health up until this point, you can start to have noticeable problems with both your mobility and your energy.

What some seniors try to do is compensate for the lack of energy by making sure they take multivitamins or supplements that contain minerals that will help boost energy. While this is a good idea, it’s not as good at restoring mobility and energy together when you need it most.

There is a way that you can test both your mobility and your energy level. You need to perform a self-check to see if you’ve had to adjust the way that you do things. This might be evidenced in having to turn a certain way to go up or down a set of stairs because you’ve started having pain in your back or joints.

It could be that walking the same distances you used to walk with ease now leave you feeling tired and in need of taking a break to rest before you continue the journey. At this point, the best way to keep your mobility and action at a good level is to engage in fluid movement.

This type of movement won’t cause harm to your joints and is perfect for someone who’s in their senior years. What you can do to retain or even regain mobility and energy right now is to start a yoga program.

Yoga is one of the best ways for seniors to remain flexible without exposing themselves to injuries like can happen with high impact exercises. Another benefit to yoga is that even though it’s gentle movement, it does work to help make sure your bones and your muscles remain strong.

You can practice yoga without having to deal with any heavy equipment and it’s a great choice for seniors who have problems moving around. While there are many poses within yoga that can work for seniors who want to have an anti-aging mobility and action plan in place, there are some that offer great benefits such as the low lunges you can do in yoga.

Another pose that you can use when practicing yoga as a senior is to lie down with your legs against a wall. You simply get into position by having your backside against the wall and your legs raised onto the wall. This helps with blood flow and relaxation as well as mobility, too.