As an older adult

Photo courtesy of the CDC website page about older adults

The recent coronavirus fear pandemic is exacerbated by the media’s constant stream of news coverage.  It seems they’ve discovered the reading public has an insatiable thirst for more news about it.  And, it’s likely that a recent news article posted on the internet will be a clickbait giant.  Where will it all end?

Fortunately, Pierini Fitness is rather busy right now with his work and, by necessity, spends less time surfing the internet for the latest and greatest news. Some news headlines, however, manage to grab his attention.

Like one from last week.  It had a clickbait title, “New CDC guidance says older adults should 'stay at home as much as possible' due to coronavirus”.  Always curious of who is “older”, I succumbed to the clickbait and power-read the article.

It reported that “early data suggests older people are twice as likely to have serious illness from the novel virus according to the CDC.”  Further into the article, I learn that older people are over 60 years of age.  

Yikes!  My “older people” ship departed five years ago according to the CDC.

This made me curious to learn what else the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) powers to be who are responsible for the health and safety of middle-aged men, and older adults, are saying about us.  Plenty and troubling are what I learned.

Recent content on the CDC website about “older adults” casts a blanket doubt on our health literacy skills.  Specifically, they warn health care professionals the following about the health literacy skills of older adults:

(1)  71 percent of adults older than age 60 have difficulty in using printed material,

(2)  80 percent have difficulty using documents such as forms or charts, and 

(3)  68 percent have difficulty interpreting numbers and doing calculations.

The CDC advises that “we can improve how we communicate with older adults and create materials and messages that match their health literacy skills.”

Who are “we” that are being advised?  Obviously, health care professionals but, undoubtedly, among them are older adult health care professionals.  

Does this mean the warning is also self-directed?  Are older adult health care professionals capable of advising us older adult ordinary average American citizens?  After all, the warning suggests we’re a crowd of bumbling Mr. Magoo-type health illiterates.

What about our President or the cast of characters parading across the country peddling their qualifications and asking for our votes to be our next President?  They’re all septuagenarians and a couple of the candidates will soon enter octogenarian land.

And, what about the head of the CDC, Dr. Robert Ray Redfield Jr.  He’s 68 years “old” and, by golly, an older adult according to the warning his CDC organization is giving us older adults.

Older adult, 68 year old  Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC Czar 

They're all card-carrying members of the Geritol Club.  Are they incapable of delivering the leadership necessary to win the war against this coronavirus?

Obviously, this blanket older adult warning fails to delineate how the general literacy and level of education older adults have may impact who is really at risk.  

Who wrote this website content?  Some older adult employee of the CDC?  I doubt it.  

Probably some millennial employee wanting to move up the CDC government bureaucracy ladder and frustrated that an older adult supervisor is getting is his or her way.

Pierini Fitness perceives there’s a new generation of discrimination on the horizon; actually, it’s already arrived, but will grow to new levels unless we middle-aged men of the older adult CDC variety, and all other older adults, call a “spade a spade” to those making such blanket nonsense aging-discrimination statements.

Pierini Fitness has always been proud being a middle-aged man and this CDC nonsense makes him equally proud identifying as an older adult.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Grandpa bod

Pierini Fitness is enjoying this chapter of his middle-aged man life being a grandfather to four little boys. To them, he’s known as “Grandpa” which has a more familial soundbite to it. 

As I tell others who have arrived at this coveted status, grandfather-hood is an honorable profession.  We get another round being in the company of little ones who think we’re better than their favorite candy bar.

Well, almost because outdoing a little boy’s favorite candy bar is a tall task.

It gives him extra motivation to chase and achieve fitness, health and wellness goals to be able to keep up with them.  It’s easier now but will only get more challenging as Pierini Fitness marches towards old-man-land.

Staying fit, healthy and well will make it easier to give them a pony back ride, get on the floor and have a wrestling match with them, maybe put them in fun and gentle headlock or hammerlock and expand their vocabulary of another meaning of the word “Uncle.”

But it’ll only be a matter of time when the tables turn.  Pierini Fitness remembers when that happened with his son.  The day when he could no longer run faster or longer than his son.  Such will eventually be the case with the grandsons. 

So, he must be diligent with his middle-age man fitness training and with his eventual old man fitness training.  He wants to be able to keep up with them, whatever the physical fitness activity happens to be.

There’s another vanity reason why Pierini Fitness will continue being diligent with his middle-aged man fitness training. 

To avoid the visual unpleasantries of having a grandpa bod.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Unless I try

It’s common in discussions that sooner or later one, or the other, will express an opinion about something related to fitness, health and wellness, expressed authoritatively as if they're an expert on the subject; I know I have.

Generally, the source of this "expertise" comes from something read somewhere else written by someone else who believes it and then regurgitates it to others.  I remember, the first time I experimented with intermittent fasting over ten years ago, telling my Mom that I only ate during a two to three-hour window all my food for the day.

“it’s bad for you to do that”, she said to which I replied, “How do you know?”  “Because”, she said, “Dr. Oz said so.”  And how does Dr. Oz know this was the question I next wanted to ask but didn’t because the conversation would have led to nowhere.  Pick your arguments and battles wisely with parents and other family members.  It isn’t worth the effort.

Recently, I read an article authored by Jeff Novak, a dietician and nutritionist with over 25 years of experience.  The title of his article was, “Did you hear about the study in the news today?”  It cleverly drove home a point about how, thanks to the internet, health information today is much more common than the past.  We constantly hear or read about another new study or report on health. These reports are often very confusing and conflicting because if you listen to them, one moment something is good for us and the next moment it’s bad.

The good news is we’re now able to pick a study supporting what we believe and spread it around like wildfire.  The bad news is so can everyone else and, as a result, it makes for some heated discussions.  Such heated discussions are no longer limited to Christians and atheists going at it, or political conservatives mixing it up with progressive liberals debating capitalism versus socialism, or whether global warming is real or imaginary.

We now have heated debates about whether cholesterol is good or bad, whether the Keto diet is good or bad or whether fasting is good or bad.  As an experienced practitioner of intermittent fasting, I’ve wasted time discussing it with those who believe it’s a bunch of nonsense offering no proven health and wellness benefits.  Generally, these are people who have not tested the waters, but get their knowledge from something they’ve read written by someone else who may also not have first-hand experience either but, nonetheless, believes it’s good or bad for whatever reason. 

Mr. Novak’s article points out that studies over the last few decades, have repeatedly shown that less than five percent of Americans follow the basic healthy lifestyle habits with regard to smoking, alcohol, body weight, activity and diet and less than one percent follow the basic minimum nutrition guidelines of a healthy diet. Yet up to 90 percent claim they consume a healthy diet and over one-third say they consume a very healthy diet.  Many of these “experts” will be the ones dispensing advice based on something they’re read or heard.  Most will not be from actual experience.

Unless we go beyond the internet article, generally written click bait style, we’ll never understand what a research study completely reports but only what the author decided was important.  And, unless we occasionally test the waters with our own sample-of-one “science experiment”, we’ll not have the perspective from personal experience allowing us to have a higher-level perspective to share with others when having fitness, health and wellness discussions.

This is what Pierini Fitness tries to do.  Whether it’s testing an exercise approach or doing an experiment with eating a certain way, he’s constantly testing the waters for his own personal benefit.

So, when someone says that fasting is not good for you, he’s able to share real-life experience of having fasted 22 hours a day for 45 consecutive days and what was his experience.  Reading some article can never be as good as a real-life anecdotal experience.

While sample-of-one results may not be representative of the “truth”, it happens to be my truth and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

So, he'll continue with the science experiments from time to time in his pursuit of his truth because I’ll never know unless I try. 

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Wharf to Wharf, here I come!

Pierini Fitness has a few 2019 fitness goals that he hasn’t shared here before. One goal is to resurrect my “career” as a fun runner and enter a 10k running event sometime this year.  I’d like to finish the run at a 9-minute mile pace and will be training with this goal in mind.  It’s a much slower pace than the 7:10 to 7:15 mile pace I used to run 20 years ago.

Now that I’m leaner and meaner, running as a fitness activity is on the table and my knees don’t hurt when I run. 

My history as a fun runner is loaded with memories that’ll always be mine to cherish with the best ones dating back to over 20 years ago.  This was when my son and I would enter fun runs together.  He was an accomplished high school cross country and track runner and I was just a tag-along father trying, to the best of my abilities, to be half the runner he was.

Probably my favorite memories were the annual and very popular Wharf to Wharf 10k fun run in Santa Cruz, California.  This event gets its name because the course begins at the Santa Cruz Wharf and ends at the, nearby town, Capitola Wharf.  It’s a great running course with refreshing views and an ocean mist to keep everyone cool and comfortable.

When searching for a fun run to enter, this one was at the top of my list.  But, because of its popularity, there was no guarantee I’d get to run it.  The good news is I was able to register and get accepted and I’m stoked.  It’ll take place on Sunday, July 28^th later this year so I have a little over three and one-half months to get in 9:00 minute mile running shape.  I think I should be able to do this.

Due to current work demands, I’m now only able to run once a week which, lately, has been a 60-minute long and slow run on Sunday at a favorite local park.  But my busy work schedule will soon be coming to an end, and I’ll be able to begin a more structure training effort in about three weeks.  So, this should be plenty of time for me to be fun run race ready, capable of accomplishing my 9-minute mile pace goal.

Stay tuned for more details as I share how goes my fun run training effort, and other details of my continuing middle-aged man fitness, health and wellness journey.

Wharf to Wharf, here I come!

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

My Friday foods for thought

Lately, I've shared a lot about eating and nutrition and today is more of the same here at Pierini Fitness.  Next week I'll change subjects and share more about how I've been training lately now that I'm busier with work.  

Today, I’ll share how my OMAD “science experiment” is going.  In case you missed the news, during Lent 2019, that began on March 6^th, I’m only eating one meal a day, sometimes described by the acronym OMAD.  I’m also abstaining from eating meat during Lent.  I’ve completed nine days of OMAD through yesterday which is slightly more than 20 percent of the days of Lent 2019.

And since eating this way requires great discipline, I’ll also share some pearls of wisdom for middle-aged men trying to have the requisite discipline necessary to eat clean and smart and have a healthy relationship with food.  

So, how’s my OMAD “science experiment” going?  Not bad, and better than I thought.  I’m only eating once a day after fasting for 22 hours.  My feeding window is two hours beginning when the sun sets.  Today, the sun sets at 7:13 pm. and each day is one minute later.  This means I’m eating much later than in the past when I tried to be done around 5:00 p.m.     

The last two hours of my 22-hour fast are the most challenging, ones where I think more about food and wanting to eat.  Fortunately, this isn't the case for the other hours because I’m very busy with work and will continue for the rest of Lent.

What I've also discovered is how OMAD sure makes feasting a wonderful experience.  Everything tastes delicious.  You know the old saying, “Hunger makes a great chef.”  

Finally, I’m eating more than I was prior to beginning OMAD, exercising less and, thus far, losing more weight.  This is not something planned but it’s happening.  So, I’ll start eating more calories each day to keep my weight where it is.  I’m within striking distance of what I weighed when discharged from the Army over 40 years ago.  Who would have thought?

Now, moving on to pearls of wisdom for middle-aged men trying to have the requisite discipline necessary to eat clean and smart and have a healthy relationship with food.

One topic that comes up is cheat meals and whether someone who’s being very disciplined with their eating should have a cheat meal every now and then. 

My answer, being a prude, is that that if we're smartly fueling our bodies each day with nutrient-dense and satisfying food, there should be no need for a cheat meal.  Smartly includes selecting foods meeting our satiety needs.  If we're satisfied, we won't need to overindulge.  Fueling our bodies means feeding it with adequate calories for the energy needed to live our lives to the fullest, and that we have no unmet nutrition needs. 

But we're humans, and humans are weak.  Consequently, if we're following a disciplined eating protocol, we may occasionally fall victim to relapse and resort to a pigging out session, sometimes described as binging.  Some struggle with binge eating more than others.  Pierini Fitness must be honest and confess how he's pigged out in the past but, now, he promises no more.  

Relapse, by having a pigging out session or binging, isn’t the act of pigging our or binging.  Rather, it’s all the thoughts and behaviors leading up to the act.  This is understood in the addiction world and it’s no different with eating.   

What should we middle-aged men do when faced with overwhelming desires to to pig out and binge, or we've just done so and now feel disgusted and terrible for falling off our healthy eating pony?

Start by retracing our steps and identifying when relapse began and what were its obvious cues.  Again, relapse isn't the the act of pigging out or binging, but all the thoughts and behaviors leading up to it.

Learn from this retracing and then build an action plan for the next time we're about to relapse.  Borrowing from what is said in religious circles about sin, avoid placing ourselves in the occasion of "sin" of pigging out or binging.  

In the context of eating healthy and avoiding pigging out or binging, this means avoiding placing ourselves in the occasion of relapse.  So, we  must fuel our body adequately, not stock our refrigerators and kitchen cabinets with foods known to be a struggle to eat in moderation and be mindful of how important healthy eating is in helping us achieve our fitness, health and wellness goals.

My fellow middle-aged men, these are my Friday foods for thought.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum