Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty (18 page)

Lack of exercise eventually leads to high blood pressure, a weaker heart, and a decline in hormone production, which results in shrinking muscles, thinning bones, a weaker immune system, and a growing inability to concentrate. See the cascade? Like dominoes, one after another the problems of aging—sickness and obesity—begin. But the good news is, it’s reversible if you start now.

Regular use of free weights stimulates bone growth, builds lean muscle mass, and creates a cut, defined look that is beautiful. Most women hate their arms. What a drag it is that from middle age on we often have to cover up winter and summer to hide arms that no longer have tone. The tragedy of being sedentary is that without exercise, by the time people are ready to start enjoying their lives they’ve lost so much lean muscle and aerobic capacity and are so tired and weak they don’t feel like doing anything. You see it all the time—older people who are out of gas. Lean muscle mass begins to decline steadily after age thirty. Unless you take steps to stop that decline, by age sixty-five you will have lost 25 percent to 30 percent (or more) of the lean muscle mass and strength you had in your twenties. But again, the good news is this decline can be avoided through exercise.

You don’t have to be a fanatic. You don’t have to spend hours at the gym. I have laid out what I feel is a good program for losing weight and restoring definition and shape to your body. Age has nothing to do with
being strong and fit. In fact, one summer in St. Tropez, our eighty-year-old host, a fitness advocate, towed our small boat into shore (with three full-grown adults inside) holding its rope with one arm while he swam. He was hardly winded when we reached shore. I know it is possible to achieve what you think now is impossible.

There are three main components of physical fitness: flexibility, aerobic (cardiovascular conditioning), and strength. How do you get more of each?

I know of no better way to stay flexible than to regularly do yoga. And staying supple is desirable for both women and men. Most every city has a yoga class somewhere; in fact, most anywhere in the world you can find a class. When I was in China, I went to a local yoga class in Shanghai and had a great experience.

Yoga helps me as a writer because after I do my initial workout in the morning I sometimes sit in front of my computer for hours at a time. Anyone familiar with yoga knows the position Pigeon, and it is one of the positions I work into before I go to bed at night. It loosens up my back, so I never have back problems. I originally started yoga because I watched my cat, Gloria, stretch slowly and deliberately each morning, and I realized that I wanted to be as limber and flexible as she was. Yoga is meditative and calming, and you can get a good cardio workout and a great stretch and pull of the muscles. It makes for a long, lean, beautifully toned body. It is something I will do until I die, and that is the beauty of it—you are never too young and never too old. In fact, my four-year-old grandson does yoga in school daily.

If you do not want to do yoga, a Pilates class might appeal to you. If classes just aren’t for you, make sure you do some stretching exercises every day.

Aerobic exercise increases lung capacity, which gives better-oxygenated blood with every breath you take. Life is air and water (hydration and oxygenation)—they must flow in and out of the cells and are carried to the cells through the bloodstream. Well-oxygenated blood means higher energy, faster healing, stronger immunity, greater endurance, and overall better health, including lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides, and lower LDL cholesterol.

A sedentary lifestyle means less blood is pumped by your heart, which results in less oxygen and nutrients getting to your brain and organs. To compensate for less oxygen and nutrients, the heart beats harder and blood pressure rises, all in an unsuccessful attempt to feed the brain. In other words, the more you move, the healthier you become.

Your body is made for movement. You need a certain amount of physical activity to stay healthy. Without exercise, you become weak from the inside out. More exercise means more energy, improved lung capacity, and more oxygen in your blood; oxygen-rich blood feeds your muscles and your brain to make everything function more efficiently.

Aerobic exercise strengthens your heart and lungs and builds strength and vitality throughout your entire body. Aerobic exercise, or cardio as many are calling it now, can be anything that appeals to you. It doesn’t matter how you get your heart beating; just get it beating rapidly at least once a day. Perhaps it’s the StairMaster or the elliptical trainer. Or if you have stairs in your house, go up and down them as many times as you can without stopping, adding to the amount of reps as you progress. Other ways to get aerobic exercise could be walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, rebounding (using a mini trampoline), or aerobic classes. If you walk every day, try to walk a little faster and a little farther each time. If you jog, do the same. All of these activities are wonderfully aerobic and the benefits of regular effort will pay off. Again, whatever you choose, try to push yourself a little farther each day.

Aim for thirty minutes a day three or more times a week of moderate aerobic exercise, to burn calories, speed up your metabolism, increase your energy, and strengthen your immune system. If you’ve never exercised
before you might want to attend a class, or buy a DVD, or go to a health club and buy a few sessions with a personal trainer to get you started.

Push yourself! It’s for you and your health, and an extra gift will be weight loss. While aerobic exercise is great for your heart and lungs and builds endurance, it does nothing to prevent the gradual loss of lean muscle mass. Only resistance training can restore or increase muscle mass and the most common form of resistance exercise is weight, or strength, training. So that’s next on our list.

This is the most beneficial form of exercise to help keep your hormones working efficiently and your bones strong. Studies show that even people in their seventies and eighties can regain and maintain much of their youthful strength simply by doing regular exercise. The most common form of resistance exercise is weight training, although I am quite partial to the EZ Gym (I will say, unabashedly, it is my product). The EZ Gym has resistance bands that attach easily to any door and is so lightweight and easy to install that I travel with mine. It is not cumbersome, it doesn’t overwhelm, and it can do the job. You can start with beginning strength and work your way up; full strength is plenty even for the most avid male workout buff. But you don’t have to buy this system of resistance bands—any reputable brand will do, as will free weights.

When at home, I alternate between the EZ Gym and free weights, and I constantly push myself to amp up the resistance as my body becomes ready. As soon as a movement becomes too easy I know I am ready to increase it. At present, I have built up to fifteen-pound weights and I find my arms have become nicely toned. Start with a weight or band that suits you, whether it’s two pounds, five pounds, or more, then work your way up.

Dr. Michael Colgan in his book
Hormonal Health
says, “Stress on the bone initiated by physical activity is what triggers the electrochemical spark that activates estrogen and progesterone to interact with various minerals and cause the manufacture of new bone material.”

Hormones play an important role in bone strength. Bones are made of osteoclasts and osteoblasts; the former are activated by estrogen and testosterone and the latter are activated by progesterone. One hormone burrows holes and the other fills them; burrowing and filling, that is the bone-making process. Weight training is the engine that stimulates this process. The weight, by pulling the muscle against the bone, causes the muscles to stimulate the bone, thus starting the process that hormones play in bone formation. If muscle stress against the bone is insufficient to cause the electrochemical spark, no new bone material is made and eventually the bones weaken.

We sit around all day. We no longer do as much physical work as we once did; we live sedentary lives and we are paying the price. Too many older citizens are in wheelchairs or using walkers as a result of bones that no longer hold them up. Don’t allow that to happen.

Make a commitment today to add exercise to your life. Choose a convenient time each day and then, as the slogan goes, just do it. By scheduling a workout into your day, it will happen; otherwise you will find excuses to get out of it. This step is invaluable in the Sexy Forever plan. You are now in this for life—a detoxed, hormonally balanced, fit body, all of which equals health, longevity, and feeling and looking good. It can be yours with a little effort.

GET HEALTHY, STAY SEXY

THE DAILY MOVES

• Do yoga stretching exercises. If you have never done yoga, attend a class a few times to get the hang of it. I do my own form of yoga, exercising the areas of my body that feel tight and need stretching.
  
• Work your abdomen. Start with five sit-ups (not crunches—do full sit-ups, the real thing). Then work up to ten and beyond, as many as you can pull off. My Torso Track is great for abs and your upper body. That flabby stomach will disappear in due time. Keep at it. It will happen!
  
• Work your waist. Lie on the floor with legs bent at the knees. Keep hips flat on the ground and not moving while you bicycle your knees back and forth. Perform fifty, then eventually one hundred daily. This keeps the waist nice and trim.
  
• Get your heart pumping. Walk briskly for at least a half hour daily. Or go up and down the stairs ten times, working up to twenty times, until it is no longer difficult. And then keep adding, whether it’s minutes to your walk or steps to your climb. Or use the elliptical machine or StairMaster at your gym. Just make sure you are breathing hard at the end; you want to get that heart rate up so you can strengthen this most important muscle.
  
• Work in resistance training two or three times a week. Start with a low weight, perhaps two to five pounds, then work up slowly. You don’t want to start with too much poundage or you can injure yourself. A trainer at the gym or health club will be very
  helpful in designing a weight program for your fitness abilities. Or you can check out my EZ Gym for strength training and no-impact cardio all in one.
  

After a few weeks of this, start preening in front of the mirror and congratulate yourself on your new healthy, detoxed, hormonally balanced, beautiful, toned body. Life is good!