Raise your hand if you know someone who has gone on a diet at some point in their life (Yes, you can include yourself – I won’t tell anybody).
Hmmm! Most everybody. Thanks for participating.
Now, leave your hand up if that/those individual(s) stayed with it and adopted a change in their way of life.
Go ahead – I’ll wait.
Yo! Where did everybody go?
$71 billion a year spent on diets –
– and growing.
Yep, you read that right. That’s about the same as we spend on pets and lottery tickets, equally questionable outlays (Please, don’t turn me into the SPCA – I love dogs and have had several. I also love that I don’t have one at this stage of my life.)
That diet number is easy to understand since, as a population, we are doing a marvelous job of carrying around major excess weight.
According to this article/video by CNBC, 45 million Americans go on weight loss programs every year. The article states:
“If you’ve told yourself, ‘this is the year I’m going to lose the weight,’ you’re not alone. Each year 45 million people in the United States go on weight loss programs and there’s no shortage of options— from tailored meal plans like Slim Fast and Nutrisystem to high fat, no carb, gluten-free models like Keto and Paleo. Diet and weight loss have grown to be a $71 billion industry, yet according to studies— 95% of diets fail. Here’s how the diet industry grew to be a multi billion-dollar machine.”
Consider this: the average American woman today weighs the same as the average American male in 1960 and the average American male today is 32 pounds heavier than in 1960 – and neither gender has gotten any taller.
Oh, and by the way – genetics don’t change across a 60 year span. Just sayin’.
How many of those 45 million do you suppose are “repeat customers?”
I don’t have stats, but am comfortable in saying it’s a big percentage. Moving on to the next “fad” diet until they find something that sticks. Except, it doesn’t stick.
We’re suckers for the “new” and the diet industry knows it.
WebMD weighs in with this article about the diet scams. It’s an article that could be written every year with a new set of scams.
Once again, the Greeks had it right.
I was reminded this morning in a LinkedIn post by Dan Go, a very unselfish personal trainer who posts a lot of solid, simple tips for healthy living, that the word diet is derived from the Greek work “diaita” which means: “way of living, way of life, mode of life, lifestyle.”
In our haste and enculturated desire for immediate or short-term results, we’ve distorted the true meaning of the word into becoming an outcome, an event, a project, or a means to an end. Old habits creep back in, the industry thrives, the repeat customers repeat, and lifestyles don’t change.
It’s a gloriously profitable business to be in, largely unregulated and loaded with clever marketers and profiteers.
When will we ever learn?
Unfortunately, it usually takes a calamity to affect a sustained lifestyle change. And sometimes even a calamity isn’t enough. I’m reminded that a sibling continued to smoke for years after being diagnosed with advanced COPD.
One could argue that America is creeping up on a calamity in terms of our general population health. Chip Conley, in one of his daily newsletters this week, unveiled a new study showing the longevity freefall that we are experiencing in American compared to other developed countries:
Conley points out that we –
“- see how one of the wealthiest countries in the world (and the one that spends the most per capita on health care costs) has a full-blown system failure with longevity in freefall, and all at a time when the rest of the world is seeing a post-pandemic recovery.”
I understand – there’s a lot to that downturn. We don’t have universal health care where the other countries do; we have more guns and gun deaths than any country; we have more opioid deaths than any other country; we own more cars, drive more, and die more in traffic that other countries. But the consequences of poor diet still remain the largest cause of premature death in the U.S.
We know something is wrong when we spend $70 billion a year on diets. Yet, we can’t seem to convert that investment into a lifestyle change.
Confession – I’m your poster boy!
At least, sorta.
My bride and I are pretty disciplined about eating the right things.
I’ve stuck to a 16:8 intermittent fast plan religiously for several years now. I exercise seven days a week, three of those 2 1/2 hours of aggressive strength training combined with aerobic.
Yet, my weight creeped up a couple of pounds last quarter. My BMI at 5′ 11″ and 190 pounds (26+) puts me in the overweight category. It’s largely a useless number since it doesn’t distinguish visceral fat (the bad kind) from non-visceral fat. Fortunately, my visceral fat level is in a lower, safer range.
But it also went up a tick last quarter despite increased exercise.
Believe me, I have no business weighting 190 pounds. Just ask my knees and feet!
So I guess I need a diet!
Nope. I need a lifestyle change.
You see, I have a condition and a habit problem.
My condition is an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism). Weight gain is a symptom of hypothyroidism – easy to put on, hard to take off.
The bigger problem is a habit – one called portion control.
I easily eat 25-30% more than I need for someone my age and size. If I didn’t have the exercise regimen to offset this affliction, well, you can do the math.
Nothing wrong with the composition of the diet, with exception of a tad too much starch.
The problem is all between my temples.
A weight-loss lifestyle change – not a diet.
I’m committing – publicly – to dropping 15 pounds over the next 90 days. My feet and left knee are demanding it.
Solution: one-third less on the plate, fork down after every bite, reduce the starch, and, perhaps, add one full day of fast to the 16:8.
Seem pretty simple, right? We’ll see.
I thought about giving it a name and going public with it for a mere $399. I could find a few suckers out there, don’t ya think?
But I’ve got enough hypocrisy going to stoop to that.
Thanks for reading. Any thoughts? Leave them here with a comment.
I’m Taking a Sabbatical!
Photo by Medium Rare on Unsplash
Makeagingwork.com is going to take the summer off!
After publishing 289 weekly posts and missing less than a half-dozen weeks across nearly six years of posting, I’m taking a break.
Frankly, my brain has too many tabs open at the moment and I’m afraid of “mailing it in” to maintain the consistency.
Two of those tabs are my bride’s upcoming knee replacement surgery (second in three months) and a career coaching/resume transformation/LinkedIn optimization service for healthcare executives that has gratefully kicked into high gear.
Actually, there’s a third tab – sort of a silent tab that says Makeagingwork.com needs a facelift and perhaps a slightly different direction. I’m not sure what that direction might look like, so it feels right to take the summer off to let the universe help me work that out.
I truly appreciate your readership and hope you will stick around for whatever the next edition might look like.
If you have thoughts about what you would like to hear more about that I might consider for this new direction, drop me a note at this email: gary@makeagingwork.com.
Enjoy the summer – see you in the fall.
Gary
How Prepared Are You For The Emerging Healthcare Crisis?
I guess by now, many of you know that I spend a considerable chunk of my time waltzing on the periphery of healthcare as a career coach, resume writer and LinkedIn strategist for healthcare C-suite and physician executives.
I’m fortunate to engage some amazing people – smart, committed, high-integrity, and dedicated to trying to make healthcare better.
The ship they are navigating is taking on water – fast.
COVID-19 opened the kimona on many of the entrenched problems in our capitalistic-focused healthcare system. Predatory capitalism (can you spell private equity?) is doing it’s share of destruction of an already ailing system.
I’m truly amazed at how health system executives continue to push on with so much resolve when the news just doesn’t tilt to the positive on so many levels.
I read an article today in Becker’s Healthcare newsletter that spurred me to get back up on my soapbox and ask you again:
Are you in control of your healthcare?
At the risk of again whipping a dead horse, let me remind everyone that what we refer to as a healthcare system isn’t – it’s a disease-care system. Reactive and cure-based rather that proactive and prevention based.
We’ve been conditioned to treat our selfcare as a $35 co-pay experience when the wheels get wobbly or come off the rails. Reactive and after the fact.
It’s doubtful that’s going to change in my, or your, lifetime. In fact, there are signs it’s going to get worse.
That’s what I felt when I read the Becker’s article.
It was an interview with Dr. Omar Lateef, homegrown CEO of the massive RUSH University Medical Center system in Chicago which is anchored by a 14-story, 671-bed hospital with 10,000 employees providing service to a population of over 600,000.
Amongst his list of challenges facing his organization and healthcare in general, one comment caught my attention and harkened me back to the importance of us individually taking charge of our health and not defaulting to our broken system as the arbiter of our health.
It was this comment about the impending shortage of front line healthcare clinicians. Quoting the 6/5/2023 article (bolding is mine):
Offense vs defense.
Are you on the offense with your self care? Or on the defense? This news should have us all asking that question.
Are we doing the things that will enable us to avoid having to contend with these impending shortfalls?
The reality is that if your primary care physician is part of a large health system (90% of them are), he/she is being driven to spend less and less time with you if you do have a problem because of the business model she/he is part of and the growing shortage of primary care physicians.
And they are getting tired doing it. One of the biggest problems health systems face today is burnout – at the physician and frontline caregiver level. More people are getting out than getting in.
If ever there were a time to get real about our selfcare, it’s now. As a country, we’re already sick and getting sicker. We are the sickest of all developed countries on the planet, by far, and becoming a laughing stock with our claim of being “exceptional.”
There’s no magic in all this!
We’ve known like, forever, how our bodies work. We are born with a birthright of good health and allow ourselves to be taught how to destroy it. And, in general, we do a pretty good job of that by the time we are in our 50s as we succumb to our entrenched capitalism-driven comfort, convenience, and conformity mindset.
We know the basic of what it takes to allow our 24×7 immune system to do its thing and enable us to avoid reliance on a broken system. Yet, we ignore it because it takes us a small step outside our comfort zone.
My wife and I have avoided COVID. Maybe we’ve been lucky. But we feel its more due to our health-focused lifestyle.
Aside from some surgery to address a problem with an arthritic thumb, I was in a doctor’s office just once last year, for an insurance-mandated wellness checkup (they used to call them physicals). It was a 20 minute experience.
A simple plan.
I know what to do to maximize my wellness – and I do most of it pretty well. It’s really no more complicated than getting plenty of cardio and strength-training exercise, good sleep, avoiding processed foods, and staying mentally challenged with purposeful work.
Anyone can do it – and many do it much better than me.
But, alas far too few even think about it – until a cataclysmic event happens. Then it might just end up being a dice roll.
Self care requires self knowledge. I suggest that our healthcare system is not where to go to get that knowledge.
I’m hopeful – –
-that preventive or functional medicine will someday prevail. I don’t expect it in my lifetime. But, you and I can pursue it on our own.
I’m following Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Peter Attia, two leaders in conveying the preventative care message.
Dr. Attia’s new book, “Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity” just hit my desk today – a 411 page monster that I can’t wait to dive into.
Dr. Hyman’s book, “Young Forever: The Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life” has had rave reviews and is on order.
If you need a starting point on a new journey that will help you not have to participate in the decline of our healthcare system, these would be good choices.
Have a plan for avoiding our healthcare system? We’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment for us and others to ponder.
Where Do You Go With Your Wisdom? Don’t Waste It On An 88-year Old Retirement Model.
Image by Georgi Dyulgerov from Pixabay
Shouldn’t we, as “modern elders” be marrying our wisdom to others, somehow, someway?
We’ve piled up 30, 40, 50 years of it. Where does it make sense to hoard it, warehouse it, let it go stale?
OK, so you don’t feel like you are wise.
Wrong, dear friend!
You have your own individual wisdom, a mash up of all your victories, defeats, exhilarations, embarrassments.
Personally, I feel I’ve earned a masters degree in screw ups and a doctorate in toe-stubbing.
But, I claim no failures. It’s all just been a long string of research and development.
One of my failures, some would say, was that I missed that road sign that said “Detour 65. Please move to the sidelines, get out of the way, and take it easy.”
I often wonder what it would be like for me today if I had bought the traditional retirement Kool-Aid.
I can only conjecture, but there’s a part of me that still wants to avoid challenge, problems, or leaving the comfort zone. At my core, I’m as likely a candidate as those who succumb to the temptation to grab hold of this semi-entitlement and hop on to an ever accelerating downward curve.
We’ve all got this part in us. In fact, Steven Pressfield wrote a whole book on it: “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.” He calls it “the resistance” and “genius’s shadow” saying further that “- it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.”
I arm wrestle with resistance everyday. Some days it wins, like last week when I failed to post my weekly article for only the 3rd time in 5 1/2 years. OK, it was the day the Nuggets swept the Lakers, so a little slack is accepted.
There is little more gratifying than winning that wrestling match and breaking through the imposter syndrome and doing what is invariably a mix of discomfort, inconvenience, and doubt.
Just know that the resistance doesn’t want you spreading that wisdom around. It won’t get in the way of you letting it atrophy.
Genius? Who me?
Yep. You!
We were all born individual geniuses. It doesn’t take long for that to be squashed. Parents, peers, professors, pastors, physicians, politicians, and pundits team up with the media and Pressfield’s resistance to take it away in favor of conformity, comfort, and convenience.
The result is a learned mindset that puts a time stamp on our value.
Retirement by it’s very definition means to “retreat to a place of safety and security.”
Biologically, neurologically, physically – that’s not a good place to go. But, the temptation is great because of the disguise that the resistance puts on an environment that slows the learning process, leads to sedentary lifestyles, reduces social relationships, and encourages removal of a key component of longevity – work!
Don’t be a burned-down library.
There’s an African proverb that says:
“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.”
What say, let’s spread our library around before it burns down. And, oh, by the way, it is going to burn down.
Keep learning. Keep stretching and pushing the edges. Help somebody. Be a rebel against the stale, illogical retirement model.
Favor us with your genius – it ain’t dead yet!!
What Happens When Our Doctors Don’t Like Or Trust Our Healthcare System? Positive Change May Be Coming!
I’m going to step aside and let someone else take center on my little stage this week.
An article appeared in my daily Medium.com feed this week on a topic I’ve riffed on repeatedly across the near six-year life of this blog:
Our hosed-up medical system.
Published in the Nuance publication and written by veteran writer Markham Heid (323,000 followers on Medium), the article is an interview of a cardiologist and medical director of a major American health system who unpacks his take on how the incentives in our health care system are “messed up, meaning they’re not always aligned with patient welfare.”
The physician talks about “the unprecedented and recent drop in U.S. life expectancy, the rise of non-communicable diseases, and the need to take control of our “toxic” lifestyles.”
Topics near and dear to my heart – and yours, I hope.
Finally, someone in the “system” that understands and can spell “prevention.”
Here’s a link to the article. I hope you’ll take the time to read it (6 minute read).
One caveat: you may discount the validity since the cardiologist is not named – and we are now aswhirl in ChatGPT written articles. I trust the author and understand the physicians posture on anonymity. Regardless, the content is undisputable.
I encourage you, dear reader, to absorb and take to heart what we are up against in enhancing our ability to achieve healthy longevity.
A Giant Conflict of Interest: A Doctor’s Views On Our Flawed Medical System and Toxic Lifestyles
I’d appreciate your views on this. Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.
How does one work 40 hours a week, have time to cook healthy meals, sleep 8 hours a night, and go to the gym?
Photo by Julien L on Unsplash
I suspect most of the advice you will get on this will say better “time management.”
At the risk of sounding insulting, let me remind you that we can’t “manage time.” Time is fixed, immutable and unchanging. It manages itself and we can’t change what exists for us to function within. You can’t change that a minute is a minute and a day is a day.
You can only manage yourself. What we tag as “poor time management” is simply “poor self-management.”
I can sense your pain because you are baffled – as we all are – by “where does all my time go?” “How can I end up killing so much time?”
WTH!
I’m a pretty organized guy that doesn’t finish a day without saying to myself: “Where the hell did my day go and why didn’t I get done what I wanted to get done?”
Have you tried doing the math on your day or week? I do it all the time trying to get better at not “killing” so much time.
You’d think, after 8 decades on this mudball, that I’d have it figured out.
Go ahead – think again!
Let’s do a hypothetical on the question, granting the benefit of the doubt on some of this. There is some solid priority stuff built-in already – sleep, healthy meals, and the gym.
Isn’t it freaky how we can’t account for a quarter of our week? Or that it slips through our fingers so easily?
The gold for a fulfilling, happy, purposeful life may lie in your 24%.
People who demonstrate productive self-management seem to have a handful of common sense things they have put in place:
You can see that the principles of good “self-management” aren’t rocket science. But that’s not to say they are easy. Life just gets in the way. Being able to roll with the unexpected that sucks up so much of that 24% and get back on track takes discipline. And, without question, discipline is central to good self-management.
The simple fact that we feel the angst about this and ask the question means we are at a good starting point.
Endless battle
I ‘spect I’ll go to my grave still wrestling with this. But there is one thing that I feel supremely confident in advocating and suggesting that will get any of us closest to solving this persistent challenge.
Stop time traveling and bring it down to today.
John Wooden, arguably the best basketball coach ever, coached his player to avoid “time travel” – projecting into the future or reaching back to their past. His mantra was simply “Make today your masterpiece,” something his father had taught him. He focused his players on today – each practice session was as important as a championship game.
Steve Chandler, in his book “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself” emphasized that Wooden knew something profound:
Time is our most valuable resource. Once spent it is irretrievable. Treat it with respect and it will reward us in kind.
How are you dealing with battle against time? What’s working for you? Love to hear your thoughts – leave a comment. If you haven’t joined our tribe, sign up for this weekly blurb at www.makeagingwork.com
Is Getting Old As Bad As Most People Think When They Are Young? I’m Not a Good One To Ask.
Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash
I found myself time traveling back to my youth and comparing my attitude to that of the youth of today. Attitudes in the 40s and 50s were definitely different. There was still a modicum of respect for those of advanced numbers. I revered my grandparents as I watched them age. They died earlier than grandparents of today, the product of decades of hardscrabble living in rural, windy southeast Wyoming.
But we loved ’em and cared for them in their decline. No warehousing. Aging and death in place.
Will we return to that reverence for the elderly? Let’s not hold our collective breaths.
Can we blame them?
I guess it’s just one more demonstration of a naive attitude from our ill-and TikTok-informed youth. But, can we really blame our media-infected youngsters for viewing “old” as bad when the vast majority of media portray “people of advanced age” as irrelevant, slow, useless, unattractive, etc.?
In his recent book, “What Retirees Want”, Dr. Ken Dychtwald references a 2019 AARP study of the online media image portrayals of people age 50 and up. That age cohort represent 46% of the population but only 15% of the people pictured. The study found that older adults are seven times as likely to be portrayed negatively as younger ones, and the portrayals are heavily stereotyped.
Dychtwald further points out that the average age of advertising agency employees is 34 and they are openly transfixed on their own age cohort.
Since there may be a prevailing tendency to not think on their own amongst the younger, maybe we can’t blame them for this attitude and bias?
It wasn’t always like this. Old used to be “in”, even here in the U.S. The signers of the U.S. Constitution, although relatively young, tried to look older (white wigs) because age was venerated. Older meant wiser and the younger looked to this wisdom for advice and direction.
Then, as we approached the 20th century, it all got turned upside down as we moved into and through the industrial revolution. Sage wisdom began to be replaced with an obsession with youth.
Portals galore.
In the 19th century, we essentially had two age classifications – child and adult. Today, with the help of social scientists and creative and opportunistic marketing experts, we have at least seven age portals: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescent, young adult, middle age, and old age – each creating its own opportunity for marketing and profit.
Do you notice the 6:1 ratio there? Old age almost seems to be an afterthought. The status and privilege enjoyed by older society members eroded and the old represented a burden on society, an obstacle to progress.
I remember someone saying: “Youth is wonderful. It’s too bad it’s wasted on the young.” Our global obsession with youth is wrongheaded and ignorant and blinds us to the real world of what it’s like and what it means to grow old.
Be the example.
While it certainly is not true for everyone as they age, the vast majority of those 50+ enter their later years in great shape mentally and emotionally despite the tide of ageism and youth-orientation that older people swim against.
What our naive youth don’t understand – and most likely will never be willing to accept – is that they are headed to an abyss of emotional and psychological instability that, on average, bottoms out in early middle-age i.e. 47–50.
Research shows that, on average, it gets better from there and reaches a peak of happiness and overall well-being in the late 60s on through into the 80s.
What? The experience of “fun” dips in mid-life and then rises to a peak in the retirement years? Yep! Share that with the next irreverent, arrogant, whipper-snapper millennial that dishonors your modern elder status.
Here’s what “fun” looks like at various life stages, according to an AgeWave/Merrill Lynch study entitled “Leisure in Retirement: Beyond the Bucket List”
Age Happiness/Fun Level (on 1-10 scale)
25 – 6.4
35 – 6.0
45 – 6.0
55 – 6.4
65 – 7.3
75 – 7.1
That same study revealed that most retirees are turning out to be living their best years with their contentment and relaxation in the 70+ percentile and anxiety in the under-20 percentile while 25-35-year-olds are in the 30-50 percentile in all three categories.
So, on average Mr./Ms. Irreverant Youngster, your worst years are looking you in the face while you buy into the myths of aging and deploy your abject ageism. Meanwhile, we slow, stooped, senile, slobbering, senior citizens control 76% of the wealth in the U.S. and, frankly, are doing just fine, thank you.
We are now “modern elders”, not senior citizens. We are living longer and healthier, we are highly active, and are the biggest givers of our wealth and our time for other than self-aggrandizement. We have finely-tuned “bullshit meters” based on life’s experiences and our acquired wisdom.
Yet, we are patient with youthful insolence knowing that age has a way of bringing things into proper focus.
Three Words That Can Change Life At Any Age: Choice, Creativity, Courage
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
Raise your hand if you have found life to flow smoothly, without unexpected twists or turns.
Crickets!
Anyone here been sailing along, everything under control – good work, good health, enough money, things good at home, lots of friends – and then suddenly something knocks you off that plateau.
If that hasn’t happened to you, chances are it will at some point.
I want to talk with you about a three-step process common to nearly all of us when this happens – and how it can work for or against us.
What I just described is a wake-up call – or what I will call a trigger. A trigger is something that precipitates a change. That trigger can be a conscious choice – or an external event that disrupts our comfortable status. The game changes so we must adapt. We must make a choice.
That is me at age 60 when I was offered an “early retirement buy out” at Worldcom. They wanted me out – and I wanted out because it was obvious the company was in trouble.
It was a trigger that forced one of the most significant life changes I’ve made. I was faced with an external event that forced an internal choice.
That trigger took me to the next step in that process – limbo. I was in limbo at that point. Do I get another job? Do I leave the industry? Do I go on unemployment and sulk? Do I start a business?
In my case, being thrown into limbo forced a positive decision that had been brewing in my mind for a long time. I started my own business.
I want to stay on this limbo concept for a moment because it is so important. The trigger pushes us into limbo – an “in between time”. We may have ended one period of stability but, as we face forward, we may not be seeing another beginning.
That is where, as a career coach for people at midlife, I see people skid off the tracks because the limbo stage is where we are faced with “what’s next”. Limbo is a critical juncture. It can be debilitating, a form of resignation, a prison sentence that says “it has to be this way.” It can cause someone to keep living the old story and accept it as the new reality.
Tim is an example. I remember spending an hour on the phone with him some months back – he was referred to me because he is 61, unemployed, and unable to break back into the job market as a software developer.
Tim was forced into limbo five years ago when his company re-organized and let him go after 15 years. That trigger sent Tim into a limbo that he can’t seem to get out of. His work life since then has been a series of contract position doing less than he is qualified to do at 60-70% of the income level he had five years ago – and with no benefits.
Right now, he is back in limbo, finding it difficult to even secure a contract job because skill-level requirements may have passed him by.
My hour with him was similar to those I’ve had with others in this situation. Tim has discovered that his inattention to the rapid changes in software development has left him underqualified and unprepared for a return to what he used to be best at. He is nearing the end of his unemployment, living off of a trust his wife has, and even admitted to me that the daily cocktail hour is the best part of his day.
Inner kill
Tim could be succumbing to the worst-case scenario of being in limbo –inner kill – or dying without knowing it. The third element.
Inner kills starts when we stop growing, when we give up on ourselves, or when we take the easy, safe way.
Inner kill has recognizable symptoms: avoiding decisions; daydreaming about early retirement; constant talk about intentions without doing anything; not sleeping at night; irritability as the default personality trait, repeating the same topics over and over again; frequent visits to the liquor store seeking a stronger alcohol prescription.
On the other hand, limbo can be a time for a deeper, game-changing conversation with ourselves. We accept the limbo, work with it, and get fully engaged with the challenge that limbo presents.
That brings us back around to the three words I had you write down. The way through limbo and away from inner kill is this simple success triumvirate. You have a choice – move forward and grow or die without knowing it.
You have creativity within you – you didn’t get to where you are by accident. Resurrect that creativity and look at the limbo as a transition to a higher level.
And be courageous because you will need to be.
Resistance and self doubt will still be your partner – courage is the antidote.
Choice – creativity – courage. Three easy-to-remember C’s that can change your life for the better.
Within us at any age.
The Truth About Diets – They Are As Sensible As Lottery Tickets!
Raise your hand if you know someone who has gone on a diet at some point in their life (Yes, you can include yourself – I won’t tell anybody).
Hmmm! Most everybody. Thanks for participating.
Now, leave your hand up if that/those individual(s) stayed with it and adopted a change in their way of life.
Go ahead – I’ll wait.
Yo! Where did everybody go?
$71 billion a year spent on diets –
– and growing.
Yep, you read that right. That’s about the same as we spend on pets and lottery tickets, equally questionable outlays (Please, don’t turn me into the SPCA – I love dogs and have had several. I also love that I don’t have one at this stage of my life.)
That diet number is easy to understand since, as a population, we are doing a marvelous job of carrying around major excess weight.
According to this article/video by CNBC, 45 million Americans go on weight loss programs every year. The article states:
Consider this: the average American woman today weighs the same as the average American male in 1960 and the average American male today is 32 pounds heavier than in 1960 – and neither gender has gotten any taller.
Oh, and by the way – genetics don’t change across a 60 year span. Just sayin’.
How many of those 45 million do you suppose are “repeat customers?”
I don’t have stats, but am comfortable in saying it’s a big percentage. Moving on to the next “fad” diet until they find something that sticks. Except, it doesn’t stick.
We’re suckers for the “new” and the diet industry knows it.
WebMD weighs in with this article about the diet scams. It’s an article that could be written every year with a new set of scams.
Once again, the Greeks had it right.
I was reminded this morning in a LinkedIn post by Dan Go, a very unselfish personal trainer who posts a lot of solid, simple tips for healthy living, that the word diet is derived from the Greek work “diaita” which means: “way of living, way of life, mode of life, lifestyle.”
In our haste and enculturated desire for immediate or short-term results, we’ve distorted the true meaning of the word into becoming an outcome, an event, a project, or a means to an end. Old habits creep back in, the industry thrives, the repeat customers repeat, and lifestyles don’t change.
It’s a gloriously profitable business to be in, largely unregulated and loaded with clever marketers and profiteers.
When will we ever learn?
Unfortunately, it usually takes a calamity to affect a sustained lifestyle change. And sometimes even a calamity isn’t enough. I’m reminded that a sibling continued to smoke for years after being diagnosed with advanced COPD.
One could argue that America is creeping up on a calamity in terms of our general population health. Chip Conley, in one of his daily newsletters this week, unveiled a new study showing the longevity freefall that we are experiencing in American compared to other developed countries:
Conley points out that we –
I understand – there’s a lot to that downturn. We don’t have universal health care where the other countries do; we have more guns and gun deaths than any country; we have more opioid deaths than any other country; we own more cars, drive more, and die more in traffic that other countries. But the consequences of poor diet still remain the largest cause of premature death in the U.S.
We know something is wrong when we spend $70 billion a year on diets. Yet, we can’t seem to convert that investment into a lifestyle change.
Confession – I’m your poster boy!
At least, sorta.
My bride and I are pretty disciplined about eating the right things.
I’ve stuck to a 16:8 intermittent fast plan religiously for several years now. I exercise seven days a week, three of those 2 1/2 hours of aggressive strength training combined with aerobic.
Yet, my weight creeped up a couple of pounds last quarter. My BMI at 5′ 11″ and 190 pounds (26+) puts me in the overweight category. It’s largely a useless number since it doesn’t distinguish visceral fat (the bad kind) from non-visceral fat. Fortunately, my visceral fat level is in a lower, safer range.
But it also went up a tick last quarter despite increased exercise.
Believe me, I have no business weighting 190 pounds. Just ask my knees and feet!
So I guess I need a diet!
Nope. I need a lifestyle change.
You see, I have a condition and a habit problem.
My condition is an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism). Weight gain is a symptom of hypothyroidism – easy to put on, hard to take off.
The bigger problem is a habit – one called portion control.
I easily eat 25-30% more than I need for someone my age and size. If I didn’t have the exercise regimen to offset this affliction, well, you can do the math.
Nothing wrong with the composition of the diet, with exception of a tad too much starch.
The problem is all between my temples.
A weight-loss lifestyle change – not a diet.
I’m committing – publicly – to dropping 15 pounds over the next 90 days. My feet and left knee are demanding it.
Solution: one-third less on the plate, fork down after every bite, reduce the starch, and, perhaps, add one full day of fast to the 16:8.
Seem pretty simple, right? We’ll see.
I thought about giving it a name and going public with it for a mere $399. I could find a few suckers out there, don’t ya think?
But I’ve got enough hypocrisy going to stoop to that.
Thanks for reading. Any thoughts? Leave them here with a comment.
Can We “Unteach” Traditional Retirement? Maybe We Should.
Image by CoxinhaFotos from Pixabay
Quiz for you: Name two major industries that are ripe for disruption but remain rigidly unassailable.
If you guessed education and healthcare, you are spot on.
Both are yellow brick roads to rising costs and decreased value. Both are heavyweight political playgrounds where the needle just doesn’t get moved.
In his book “The Practice”, Seth Godin riffs on education, saying:
Seth’s point is that we can teach people to overcome fear, innovate, express our uniqueness but our entrenched system unteaches bravery, creativity, initiative.
Take healthcare.
I’ve written before about how ineffective our U.S. healthcare system is.
It occurred to me, as I pondered Seth’s comments about education, that our healthcare system unteaches good health. As the general health of our population continue to cascade downward, where is the proactive teaching that will reverse the cascade?
Let’s not hold our breath that it will come from a system that is currently shoveling truckloads of money out the door as they struggle to prop up a system built on a broken model.
I doubt that any of the efforts to right the healthcare ship will change the fundamental “drug it or cut it out” foundation of the system.
We unteach preventive healthcare by only offering cure. Doesn’t it seem reasonable to unteach cure by teaching prevention?
We’ve been taught that healthcare is a $35 copay experience available when thing skid off the tracks. The monoliths and the providers within them are not schooled to help us unlearn bad habits and take possession of our birthright of good health.
We shouldn’t be buying this either.
Is there a third?
I believe there is a third entrenched concept that is subject to, and deserving of disruption and unlearning. I won’t win any popularity contests amongst my cohort by saying it, but here it is – – –
Traditional retirement
I’m talking about the off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation retirement. The total-rejection-of-work type of retirement. The park bench, beach, bingo, bridge, backgammon, and bocce ball type of retirement.
The one that continues to invade and entrench our psyche with the questionable theory that work is best avoided and that leisure is healthy.
The one that has enriched the financial services industry for a half-century while our population continues to stack more years of chronic illness onto the the post-career phase of life.
How do we “unlearn” retirement.
Start by accepting the fact that retirement- –
The GenXers and Millennials are starting to figure it out.
They’ve witnessed the generations ahead of them burn themselves out trying to abide by the 20th-century linear life model: Earn – Learn – Adjourn – Die.
They see plainly the futility of expecting to be able to support 30 years of doing little or nothing with 40 years of working and saving.
The average savings by generation tells it all:
Can we get our egos out of the way?
I know it’s difficult for hard-headed modern elders like you and me to accept advice from someone two generations back. I’m still dealing with having my 48-year-old daughter show me how to dead lift at Lifetime Fitness last week.
But, given the times and conditions, I believe they are onto something that we need and that will stick.
And I believe the financial planning industry will finally be forced to change their approach to planning with an increased focus on healthspan-oriented lifestyle design and less emphasis on work abandonment.
I sat through a webinar last week presented by ROL Advisors featuring a young financial planner, Jake Northrup, that I believe is a model for how financial planning is beginning to transform. This is not a commercial for Jake, but you can check him out at https://experienceyourwealth.com/
What are your thoughts?
Should we “unlearn” our education and healthcare systems and traditional retirement? What else should we maybe be unlearning? We’d love your feedback – leave a comment.
We Stopped Listening to the Ancient Greeks. It’s Costing Us.
I’m still working at 81. I blew right past that obligatory “65” retirement stop sign. I don’t remember seeing it.
Some say I’m nuts, not realizing that’s the best compliment you can pay an oddball like me.
I still get asked why I haven’t retired by those in my age cohort. There is a steady decline in the question because the cohort is shrinking.
Maybe there’s a connection.
I respond to the question with: “Retire to what? What could be better than doing what I like, when I want, for whom I choose, on my timetable, at a price that I control, helping someone, and mixing in leisure at my will.” Oh, did I mention the afternoon power naps?
The response to my response is usually a blank stare rooted in deep dissonance.
Socrates and friends figured it out!
It even stretched all the way back to ancient Greeks who introduced the concept of “eugeria” which meant“a long and happy life of the pursuit of worthy goals.” To the Greeks, the path to eugeria was work and paying it forward and working for the sake of others.
The evidence of the payback of this philosophy in ancient Greece was revealed as men of distinction typically had the “eugeria” mindset and were discovered to have much longer lives, averaging around 70 years when the normal lifespans were about 35.
For example, Socrates lived to 80; Isocrates to 98; Sophocles to 90. Some even lived to be centenarians.
Recent global research on centenarians, the fastest-growing population segment, has revealed that few stopped doing work of some form.
Work as a villain.
We ignore the importance of work in our western culture and seem to have turned it into a negative four-letter word that we can’t wait to get away from, refusing to acknowledge that work plays a key role in our overall health and longevity.
I love what Wendell Berry, conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet says about work and retirement:
Pretty harsh words, but true. We’ve disconnected what we do for 40–60 hours a week from life satisfaction. So many of us toil in jobs we simply tolerate until we collect enough to sail into the “golden years” often to find that the bloom on the rose of traditional, leisure-based retirement fades and reveals itself as a trojan horse with unrevealed downsides in terms of health and longevity.
In his book “Boundless Potential”, author Mark Walton tells the story of when, in 1962, distinguished educator and author, Dr. Mortimer Adler, was a guest speaker before a group of the elite of insurance executives at a million-dollar roundtable. Adler shocked the group, who expected a dose of his highly-touted executive coaching. Instead, he delivered this provocative message, at a time when retirement was a national rage (bolding is mine):
My position on this has won me no popularity contests as I realize I am assaulting a pseudo-entitlement that has become so deeply entrenched that it will fade only slowly as we gradually awaken to the wasted potential that it engenders.
But it is beginning to fade as we now face 20–40 years of extended post-career life phases and realize that multiple-decades of beach, bingo, bridge, backgammon, and boche ball don’t make for a fulfilling life.
We are slowly – very slowly – trending away from off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement, and toward unretirement or semi-retirement. More businesses are being started by people over 50 than any other population segment. More and more “retirees” are pivoting from their leisure-based retirement and finding meaningful work by volunteering or starting non-profit organizations or, in some way, finding engaging work, realizing that their health, energy, vitality, and sense of self-worth depends on it.
My observation, as a career/life transition coach, is that retirement stays a motivating goal because people are functioning, in their work environment, outside of their core talents and strengths, and suppressing deep inner dreams or passions in favor of earning and conforming to cultural beliefs and expectations.
Retirement is thus viewed, as one answerer to the question so aptly stated, as a way to get away from “the politics in the workplace and being accountable to the system every single day for 8 – 10 hours.”
We all want freedom. Retirement seems to offer that. But freedom without purpose has few upsides.
As I engage coaching clients who are approaching the generally accepted retirement phase of life, I encourage viewing the third-age of life – between end-of-career and true old age – as an opportunity for a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning that dusts off and pays forward accumulated skills, talents, and experiences in the service of others.
That’s “eugeria” for the 21st century.