What Simple Changes in Your Lifestyle Will Help You Be Healthy Well Into Your 70s and 80s?

As we age it is natural to move around a bit more slowly, but there is much that we can do to keep fit, maintain high energy levels, and keep our minds sharp. Here is my own personal 6-point shortlist of the daily goals I set to help me keep up with my grandchildren and our ever-changing world:
• Avoid junk food as if it were the plague.
• Keep the daily calorie intake low for my size and weight.
• Add a diversity of foods containing antioxidants to my diet.
• Include foods in my diet that have both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. These are "good" fatty acids.
• Exercise daily, even if this means using the treadmill on rainy days.
• Solve mind puzzles like Sudoku, play brain-challenging games like chess on a regular basis, and constantly learn new facts, ideas, and even languages.
It is difficult to say which of the above is most important. They all need to be part of your daily routine if you want to meet the objective of keeping fit both mentally and physically.
Taking a Closer Look:
1. Junk food appeals because it is fast and tastes good. The folks whose business it is to prepare and sell such food have optimized these two characteristics. The production and delivery of junk food is a smooth, factory-like operation. It let's you multitask and cut corners in your energy consumption budget. Pick up a burger and fries in the drive-through lane in less than five minutes, and you are immediately back on your way to the next daily task, whatever it may be.
But what are you getting in exchange for refueling quickly and adding more time to your day? Basically just the opposite of each of the above goals: a truckload of calories, no antioxidants unless you ordered hot water to which you'll add your own bag of green tea, no omega-3's or 6's unless you ordered a fish sandwich, no exercise, and no challenge to your mind unless it was figuring out how to avoid traffic on the way to your next meeting.
2. A number of recent studies have shown that an amazing variety of organisms, from fruit flies to mice, live significantly longer when their caloric intake is restricted. Think about this for just a minute. Was your grandmother who lived to 106 overweight or thin as a rail? Probably the latter.
Each of us has a different optimum calorie budget, but you will flourish health-wise when you maintain a calorie-restricted diet. That is a diet that keeps your intake just below the traditional numbers for your size and weight.
3. Over and over again, virtually all recent studies have shown that antioxidants decrease the rate at which cells and tissues age. For example, as you well know your skin ages, but that happens more slowly if you add a rich diversity of antioxidants to your diet. Two really good sources of antioxidants are certain kinds of fruits and green teas.
Fruits that have high levels of antioxidants include the blueberry, most citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, limes, etc., which have higher levels of the antioxidant Vitamin C), and the açai berry and guava berry have exceptionally high levels of antioxidants.
4. Your body needs fatty acids, which come in two forms, saturated and unsaturated, but unsaturated fatty acids are better for your health. Because fatty acids are one of the two kinds of building blocks your body needs to make lipids, they are essential to your good health. For example, the body uses fatty acids to manufacture cell membranes. Without cell membranes we wouldn't have hearts, or lungs, or blood vessels, or any of our other organ systems. In fact, we would all be more or less like jelly fish.
As a general rule, animal fats contain saturated fatty acids, and with some notable exceptions, plant fats (oils) contain unsaturated fatty acids. Unfortunately, our minds and palates like animal fats better than plant oils, but if you can tolerate the difference, do all of your frying in plant oils, and shun bacon grease, butter, and lard. Likewise substitute soy products for milk products whenever you can.
A really important set of fatty acids includes omega-3's and omega-6's. Fish are the best source of these important fatty acids, and ocean fish such as cod and tuna are among the best of these. It was common knowledge, not scientific fact, that explains why your grandparents insisted on taking a spoonful of cod liver oil every day. A gel cap containing these important fatty acids is much easier to swallow, but not nearly so good as fresh breaded cod, deep-fried in vegetable oil, and served with a whole-grain bun straight from the oven.
5. Your daily exercise routine does not have to take an hour or more from your busy schedule. Walk around the block, once at noon and again after dinner; walk as fast as you can and still be comfortable. Walk up and down one flight of stairs, but do so several times a day. Twenty simple pushups/pushouts against the kitchen counter is good for your arms. Fifty leg crunches are really good for your body strength, and crunches do much less damage to your back than do sit-ups. They also take less time.
6. Exercises for your mind are just as important to overall fitness as are physical exercises. Computer programming and learning new languages are both at or near the top of this category, but most of us prefer solving the weekly Sudoku puzzle found in the Sunday paper, or playing a game of chess. Remembering and keeping all the character names from the Star Wars series separate from those of Lord of the Rings, from those of the Harry Potter series is also a very good exercise for the brain. Constantly challenge your mind by gathering new information about any subject of interest to you.
Barring accidents and disease, if you meet these six goals daily, you should be in excellent shape both mentally and physically up to and past the time you reach those golden years.
Written by Ian Wallace: To learn how you can buy a wide variety of Health and Fitness products at great savings, please visit: http://mnbodyworks4.com/ or the MN Body Works News blog at http://mnbodyworks.com/bodyworksblog/ for additional information.