A Friendly Nudge - Supporting Health

Health issues don’t care how busy you are. No one asked me if surgery and 6 weeks of radiation therapy was convenient. They just told me that the tumor they removed seemed particularly nasty and that radiation improved my odds that it wouldn’t metastasize. That was 8 years ago, so it appears that it was time well spent. Jude has some weird autoimmune issues going on; so when the doc says the immunotherapy infusion needs to happen on a certain date, our calendar gets cleared without a second thought.

Nothing gets our undivided attention like an acute health issue, either yours or the health of a loved one. It feels like a gut punch and resonates with us at a visceral, almost primal level.

That’s what makes this next part so puzzling– it’s so easy for us to convince ourselves that we don’t have the time or the energy for the things that can help us avoid, or at least survive, those same health issues.

Eating real food, engaging in enough exercise to push our bodies to get stronger, and prioritizing sleep don’t make us invincible, but they do make us a little harder to kill.

I’ll never forget sitting in the waiting room before my first appointment with the surgeon and later with the radiation oncologist. I certainly wasn’t feeling bulletproof, but I remember feeling fortunate at a certain level that a fairly recent discovery of multiple coronary lesions and insulin resistance had finally convinced me to stop taking my health for granted.

I’d started exercising a little, nothing like I do now, but more than I had been. But the biggest change back then was to my diet– the giant bowls of ice cream were gone and I’d broken up with the fast food drive thru. We were cooking virtually all of our meals at home and were sticking pretty closely to the meat, seafood, veggies and fruit paleo template pretty well. I’d lost some weight, but more importantly I was just feeling better. So health-wise, I was in a better position to deal with what was coming than I had been a few years before.

Fortunately a lot of folks get to skip becoming a member of the heart disease or cancer fraternal order, but if we’re lucky enough we all get a chance to try our hand at this aging stuff. And real food, exercise, and sleep not only make us a little harder to kill, they also make aging feel more like a privilege and less like something to be endured.

I’ve stopped trying to get it perfect. I spent years obsessing over how many grams of carbs there were in a mango or a peach and now I just savor them. I still get messages from people telling me that steel cut oatmeal is wrecking my health. I cringe a little when I remember being a version of that guy.

Some days I get to the gym and my workout unfolds just like I’ve planned it. Other times I get there and it’s a zoo and instead of getting irritated I get a chunk of it done and catch the rest of it the next time or do some of it at home.

Some days and weeks are going to be better than others and beating ourselves up or getting stressed out over missing some mythical or arbitrary standard feels like majoring in the minors.

I enjoy cooking and eating great tasting food and, as I told someone yesterday, I’m lucky that I actually look forward to going to the gym or doing some of the exercises or mobility work that I do at home. I also love how I feel after a good night’s sleep. Strength and good health not only make life richer and more enjoyable now but they act as a sort of health reservoir that’s there when we need it.

Don’t worry about getting everything dialed in, but make sure that you’re carving out some time to prioritize your health so that aging feels a little more like a privilege and less like an ordeal.

Let’s take some of the ordeal out of eating real food and keeping it tasty.

Lentil Cucumber Salad

A couple of years ago I made a conscious decision to increase the fiber in my diet. Years of daily ibuprofen use prior to my shoulder replacement had taken a toll on my gut health and beans and lentils were an inexpensive and effective way to up the fiber. They’d been virtually absent from my diet during the time that I was doing tight paleo and keto.

I could handle some version of this salad pretty much every week. Let me know how you like it.

Ingredients:

4 ½ cups cooked green lentils

1 seedless cucumber, diced

½ large red onion, diced

1 large red bell pepper or 4 minis, diced

½ bunch curly parsley, chopped

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

Arugula for serving

Dressing

¼ cup Olive oil

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp dijon mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

Salt & pepper to taste

Optional 1-2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Add the lentils, cucumber, red onion, parsley, bell pepper and feta to a large bowl and then top with the dressing. I added the red wine vinegar as a last step because I thought it needed just a touch more acidity. This is what I mean when encouraging you to “play with your food.” That little extra acidity gave it a bump of brightness.

Enjoy!

Now let’s move to exercise…

I’m struck by how small changes in our routines can start making a significant difference in our health. Including a few servings of this week’s lentil salad in your meals this week and knocking out a few sets of a handful of exercises not only check some nutrient and fiber boxes but also contribute to your strength, balance and mobility.

Skip any exercises that you don’t feel ready for and take your time on the warm up and mobilization exercises. This week’s world’s greatest stretch is a fantastic way of preparing for exercise.

The suitcase carry, pushups, seated resistance band rows and goblet squats all beg for a warm up set or sets depending on how heavy you’re wanting to go. If I’m going to do heavy suitcase or farmer’s carries, I’m going to do at least 2-3 warm up sets with increasingly heavier weights to get myself acclimated and prepared for the heavier weight. Same with the goblet squat.

If I’m going to use a resistance band that’s heavy enough to really tax me, then I want to warm up with a lighter band. If I’m just doing a quick set of 10 pushups, I’m not too worried about a warm up. Grudgingly I’m beginning to appreciate that if I want to avoid firing up a tendon, going for a max set of pushups warrants spending a few minutes doing some pushups against the counter or just doing a few sub maximum sets to get warmed up. Those few extra minutes can make a big difference.