Prime Time (19 page)

Very different than pity, which masquerades as compassion and drains us and the other person, compassion energizes us and others. It activates an impulse to outward action. This is what I see as the beautiful sequence: from visceral, attentive, nonjudgmental body awareness, to empathy for self, extended out to empathy for others, to compassion for others, and then to universal compassion, an expression of compassion that is unbiased, all-inclusive.

Deep inner to wide outer.

My challenge to you to become physically active and attentive to your body is also a call to become both embodied and compassionate. You have the time—now more than ever—to do this work. You need to
make
time and develop the guts to get into your guts—to feel, accept, love, and be present in your body.

In Conclusion

Even if you have never been active a day in your life, you can start now. The MacArthur Foundation Study of Successful Aging concluded that physical activity is “perhaps the single most important thing an older person can do to remain healthy … the crux of successful aging, regardless of other factors.”
¹⁰

It’s not too late, but the sooner you begin, the better. You have to get up and “just do it.” And chances are, once you do, you’ll be motivated to keep on doing it, as you start experiencing how much better it makes you feel. You’ll actually come to miss exercise when you have to skip it. Now’s the time.

CHAPTER 7

Now More than Ever, You Are What You Eat

Had I known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.

—EUBIE BLAKE, JAZZ PIANIST, AT AGE 102

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four; unless there are three other people.

—ORSON WELLES

I
MENTOR A FORTY-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, KELLY, WHO HAS HAD A very challenging life. We correspond by email. A while back, she wrote and told me what her usual diet consisted of: Kool-Aid, Doritos, pizza, whatever was cheap. I was horrified! Of course, her “normal” diet was the same as many people’s, especially poor people. So I sent her a little money and told her to go to a store and buy chicken, broccoli, and fresh fruit, and I explained how to cook the chicken. After several months of her new diet, she sent me this email:

My situation caused me to become depressed (no job, constant setbacks, etc.). It seemed no matter what I did or tried nothing ever worked. I was isolated, angry, and depressed. Then you wrote me those magic words, “Get out of your head and into your body.” You told me to just try eating healthy. I really didn’t want to but I did anyway. I began to notice a change. I began to feel better. Then when I finally got my food stamps I was able to afford to buy healthy foods. (Before the food stamps I tried to conserve money by buying cheap food that would last the longest. I was trying to stretch a dollar—but that food was horrible.)

So, running and eating healthy actually changed not only how I feel physically but how I feel mentally—and it goes further than that. It changed how I react to things. I get upset sometimes but I don’t STAY upset. My emotional state is stronger and getting stronger. I know it has something to do with the fact that I’m no longer eating sugar, dyes, chemicals, artificial this or that, or preservatives. I am able to sleep better and I feel less fidgety and hyper.

Jogging and eating healthy is not gonna make unemployment, racism, discrimination, poverty, violence, the system, or any of the other stuff disappear from my life but I tell you one thing, working out and eating right is like armor. It makes me feel stronger and better able to deal with the tough stuff.

Well, getting older is “tough stuff,” and to handle it and keep our body, our “container,” as healthy and strong as possible, we need to pay more attention to how we eat.

Back when I was ten or eleven years old, on the mornings when I expected a school test, I would always eat oatmeal for breakfast (not the instant kind—I don’t think that even existed then—but the traditional kind, which takes a while to cook). To this day, I think I scored well on those tests due to the oatmeal, because if I’d forget and eat sugary cereals, I wouldn’t do as well. I’d be fidgety and hyper, just like my friend Kelly said. There’s a reason for this, which I’ll explain in a moment.

As I got older, I stopped eating breakfast altogether because I was always on some diet or other—or in between bouts of bulimia and anorexia. Sometimes I’d go for days—weeks, even—without drinking water or eating anything green or any fruit and never feel affected by it.

Most of us did all sorts of injustices to our bodies earlier in life, out of ignorance and a feeling of immortality. Our bodies were still young and resilient, so, beyond the immediate effects, we didn’t really notice. The rate of our body’s breakdown and repair on the cellular level were essentially equal. Our cells may have gotten damaged from what we ate or didn’t eat, but our repair mechanisms kicked in right away. It felt like a free ride.

But by midlife, our cellular self-restoration processes begin to fall behind, and as we grow older, what we eat determines a lot about who and how we are. Now, for better or worse, we tend to notice it. This is because, with age, the ability of our cells to utilize life-sustaining nutrients and eliminate waste products so as to remain robust is diminished. We become more vulnerable to diseases. Of course, the speed of the breakdown process varies widely, depending on a person’s overall health and her or his exposure to external toxins such as cigarette smoke, air pollution, pesticides, poor diet, radioactivity, and anesthetics, as well as excessive stress, time in the sun, and alcohol intake, all of which compound the normal damage.

This chapter is about how the quality of what we eat and
how much
we eat can intervene to slow down the cellular damage and keep us healthy for as long as possible. (Avoiding the external toxins I just mentioned is also very important, so it might be good to reread that list.)

Calories

A moderate calorie-restricted diet is especially good for us now, and not just as a weight-reduction strategy. So try to keep your caloric intake within a range that is appropriate for your age and level of physical activity. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans published by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services, a woman over fifty who is sedentary should eat only 1,600 calories a day. If she is moderately active, she can consume 1,800 calories per day, and if she is active, 2,000 to 2,200 a day is appropriate. A sedentary man over fifty can eat 2,000 calories a day; a moderately active man can have 2,200 to 2,400, and an active man can consume 2,400 to 2,800. The more calories you burn up though activity, the more you can consume safely. The main challenge for us now is keeping the calories we consume under control while still meeting our nutrient requirements. This means that every calorie has to count! They have to come from nutritious, fresh foods. We mustn’t squander our daily allotment on the wrong foods, such as soft drinks and typical restaurant fare, which can offer little nutritional value and a lot of sugar, fat, and sodium. These days, the old adage “You are what you eat” takes on added significance.

Five Key Things to Watch

Five key things you should cut down on or cut out of your Third Act are:

ADDED SUGARS

Americans today consume 50 percent more sugar than we did in 1910. The sugar industry now produces about 130 pounds of sugar per person each year! This is more than a third of a pound daily for every woman, man, and child. A major Harvard study notes that, besides being devoid of nutrients, excess sugar promotes obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and tooth decay; the study singles out sugary beverages in particular. The label might say corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, glucose, or invert sugar, but, honey, it’s all sugar! So don’t eat those sugary muffins and cereals for breakfast! Don’t snack on candy. Cut back on the sweet desserts.
Try to consume less than 30 grams of sugar a day—but don’t worry about the naturally occurring sugars in fruits, vegetables, milk, and yogurt.

FAT

Fat is an essential nutrient. Without enough fat, the skin deteriorates and vitamin deficiencies flourish. Fat is a carrier of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, and aids in the digestion and absorption of important disease-fighting plant components called phytonutrients (
phyton
is “plant” in Greek). Those substances include carotenoids, lycopene, and lutein, which may help prevent inflammation, cellular oxidation, and ailments such as macular degeneration (the major cause of blindness with aging), cancer, and heart disease.

To many people, the term “healthy fat” seems like an oxymoron. Evolving science is finding that there is a minimum level of fat you must eat to maintain health, but the type of fat you choose is crucial.

Fat is our second most important source of energy after carbohydrates, but there are good fats and bad fats, and the bad ones are a potential dietary time bomb.

Trans Fats

Artificial trans fat (from partially hydrogenated oils) is, gram for gram, the most harmful fat in the food supply. It both raises the “bad” LDL cholesterol and lowers the “good” HDL cholesterol in our blood. Thankfully, the amount of this artificial fat created by the food industry (it’s cheap and so very profitable—at our expense!) is now required to be stated on food labels—and most large food manufacturers and restaurants have stopped using it. (In fact, California, New York City, and other jurisdictions have largely banned it from restaurant foods!) The amount of trans fat in the food supply has declined by at least half since 2004, but trans fats are still found in some brands of microwave popcorn, fried foods, pies, cookies, and pastries. Check out the labels carefully (or ask a baker), and you’ll see.
Your goal should be to eliminate trans fats from your diet altogether. (Beef and cheese have small amounts of naturally occurring trans fat; you’ll avoid most of that if you choose low-fat meat and dairy products.)

Saturated Fats

The other bad fats, the saturated fats, are the ones that are solid at room temperature—such as butter, lard, and shortening, including shortening made with coconut or palm oil. Saturated fat increases the “bad” (LDL) cholesterol level in the blood and your risk of heart disease. However, it is not nearly as harmful as trans fat because it also tends to raise the “good” (HDL) cholesterol. Try to avoid fried foods, butter, ice cream, full-fat cheeses, cream sauces, processed meats such as cold cuts, sausages, and bacon, and most red meat. By the way, those of us over fifty don’t need to worry as much about cholesterol; it doesn’t carry as much risk for us as it does for younger people.
Minimize your intake of saturated fats to less than 10 or 20 grams per day.

Good Fats

There are, however, good fats: the unsaturated kinds, which are liquid at room temperature. These come from vegetable oils such as olive, soy, canola, corn, and safflower and provide essential fatty acids. Typical vegetable oils, including those found in nuts and soybeans, lower LDL cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Fat in fish provides omega-3 fatty acids, which help protect against heart attacks. While those oils are actually beneficial, they also contain calories, so don’t overdo them.

Good fats should account for about 20 or 25 percent of our daily calories, so getting those calories from an oil-and-vinegar salad dressing is a whole lot better than getting calories from 2 percent milk, cheese, or meat.

SALT

Too much sodium is a major cause of high blood pressure and water retention. High blood pressure, of course, is a major cause of heart attacks and strokes. As a nation, if we cut our sodium intake in half, it would likely save at least 100,000 lives per year. Enough said?

Most of the sodium we consume comes from packaged and restaurant foods, so check the “Nutrition Facts” labels carefully and either avoid high-sodium foods entirely or choose lower-sodium versions. The government classifies a food as “low sodium” if it contains less than 140 milligrams of sodium per serving. Eating out can be treacherous. Restaurant meals are generally huge, and often very high in sodium—a meal at a place like IHOP or Denny’s may contain three or four times as much as you should eat in an entire day!
Try to make your daily intake of sodium less than 2,300 milligrams—ideally, under 1,500 milligrams—and do not add salt to your food.

ALCOHOL

Excess alcohol interferes with healthy nutrition for several reasons. It reduces the intake of nutrient-dense foods, and it affects the metabolism and absorption of several key nutrients. In fact, malnutrition—otherwise rare in the United States—is common among alcoholics. Alcohol depletes our levels of vitamin C, vitamin A, the B vitamins folate and thiamine, and such essential minerals as iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc. I write elsewhere about the damage oxidation does to our cells. Well, too much alcohol is a potent oxidant, and it stresses the digestive and hormonal systems, the kidneys, and the liver. As a result, alcoholics can suffer gastrointestinal distress, immune system disorders, nerve and brain damage, heart inflammation, osteoporosis, and fat malabsorption, contributing to deficiencies of the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K). Moreover, one drink adds 100 to 400 nutritionless calories.