The Reality of Healthy Aging

If you had the opportunity to jump into a time machine and see your future self, would you take it? Would seeing your future self change anything about how you live your life? Would you be afraid of what the future holds? Unfortunately, people tend to gamble with their health and wellness starting when they are young, doing things like:

• eating a lot of processed foods
• binge eating
• binge drinking
• not exercising
• smoking
• not getting enough sleep
• consuming too much fast food
• looking at electronic devices much of the day

In our youth, our body can handle this wear and tear, then rebound quickly. As we age, the speed at which we rebound becomes much slower. Our body’s ability to recover from unhealthy habits becomes ineffective over time. Yet, if we look around us, how many people do you see that are out of shape, overweight, or obese? This didn’t happen overnight.

Aging does not mean we cannot enjoy life the way we did when we were younger. We can successfully age with awareness and accountability. Awareness means:

• monitoring our daily activities.
• making better food choices.
• getting plenty of sleep each night.
• drinking more water each day.
• making exercise a priority.

In terms of accountability we can:

• align ourselves with others who have similar goals.
• seek out wellness professionals such as a chiropractor and massage therapist.
• sticking with the perimeter at the grocery store, where most of the whole foods are located.
• commit to ourselves with a written contract to live our best life now.

While we cannot prevent ourselves from aging, we certainly can help ourselves age better. Looking better, feeling better, sleeping better, and moving better will happen with awareness and accountability. We really don’t need a time machine to show us what a life of poor decisions can do to our body. We can simply look around us.