Men's Fitness: Changing After 40

It's not like I found myself suddenly getting older, or as if it happened overnight. I stlil like a good workout, and find riding my bike one of the most relaxing things I can do.

But when it comes to making changes, such as losing wegiht or increasing muscle mass, it is getting harder to do as I get older. By God's grace, many of the changes in getting older are great. My children have grown up to become my friends. And my wife handles most of the worrying and fretting (although I do a small amount for myslef so I can get the occasional dirty look and can feel proud when it all works out). Another good chagne is that all the hair that was determined to leave has already gone, leaving me that same good look every day in the mirror. Besides, if I really want a new look I could always use the curling iron on some of those unbelievably long eyebrows! However, the greatest change of all is that I have grandchildren. This is when we realized we had to make changes if we were going to spend quality time with our grandchildren and not be exhausted. Two years ago, my wife and I were riding 150 miles a week-15 miles a day to work, a 30-mile ride on the weekend, and a 10-mile ride several times a week just for fun!

Living in Indiana, you can only ride bikes about 8 months a year, at hottest. So our winter hibernation began. After a long winter layoff, I found myself out of shape, 20 pounds overweight and unmotivated. The next year was on again, off again...Never really getting a well-sustained routine all season. We knew we had to find a way to keep ourselves motivated-not just to get in shape, but to stay in shape. One huge troulbe is that I am not a person who likes to be on a diet. In fact, I like to eat. I have found out that I am a stress eater, which maeks losing weight even harder.

So my first step was to find a way to be accountable to myself and to others-especially my wife. Second was to find a good diet, which for me (for the most part) turend out to be just watching what I eat and cutting back.
When my wife and I went out to eat we began to order only one meal and split it.
At first, any meal would do.
But as our metabolism speeded up, only a larger meal would satisfy. The waiters and waitresses were very understanding, and treated us well (we still tip as generously as before). I have also learned that if I eat only when I am hungry, all food is good-even fruits and vegetables. Third was to find a good wokrout that I liked, which was rather not hard because I don't just like riding bikes, I really love it!

After one day of keeping close track of my diet, I knew there had to be cahnges.
Snacks were killing me.
Keeping track of body and weight measurements was a humiliating starting piont. But that's excatly what it was...A starting point toward a healthier life. So I began to record everything. Time is always a huge trouble in our lives, and keeping track of my diet took time. But once I established a pattern or routine, I could quickly sit down and rceord information once a week. When typing in the information less often, I found it too easy to slip back into old, bad habits. Accountability is everything, and the more human being you're accountable to, the easier it is for everyone to sitck with it. The group accountability also puts some fun into it. At my age, I right now take a number of vitamins, amino acids, and things to ease a variety of ailments. At the cost of these medicine man elixirs, I am tgiht enough (moneywise) to want to know if they really help. The program program allows me to keep track of my supplements and includes a plcae for me to take notes.

I had some troubels with my knees and elbows...Actually, I was getting stiff joints all over, so I started taking sam-E.
My wife said she noticed I had a better temperament and was much more pleasant to be around (Sam-E improves both mood and joints!). At a buck a day, I could have bouhgt her flowers, got the same response, and in real short time been money ahead. But my joints improved so fast that I felt better in less than a month. I also need to keep track of body stats and workuots.

If I'm going to discipline myself, I want to know it's working-like seeing the positive effects of taking my sam-E. So I want to have a record of how many inches it is around my blely. If I lose an inch, there, I know my workout is wokring.

If I don't lose in a reasonable amuont of time, I know I need to adjust my workout.

Likewise, if I am tyring to gain muscle, I want to watch the inches around my arms and legs increase. It is also important to track my heart rate and watch it ease down as the workouts improves my fitness. I have seen my bike riding grow in distance, as the elapsed time grows shoretr. The amount of weight I can lift gets heavier. It's all there in my record keeping-gains and losess look pretty impressive when I hit the button that turns them into graphs!