{"id":1354,"date":"2014-08-12T22:57:15","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T22:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2014-08-12T22:57:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T22:57:15","slug":"how-to-slow-aging-it-isnt-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=1354","title":{"rendered":"How to slow aging (it isn’t easy)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clay<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CLAY MOYLE AND SON CALEB<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I was leaving the local fitness club after work yesterday a young man in his twenties walked up to me and asked if I minded telling him my age. As usual these days it took me a few seconds to remember just how old I am, but then it came to me and I told him that I was 57 (Hopefully, he didn\u2019t think I looked even older!).<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I hope I look half as good as you do when I\u2019m your age,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

I thanked him for the compliment and we had a short discussion about working out. I\u2019d seen him doing walking lunges while carrying 35-pound dumbbells in each hand under the direction of a personal trainer while I was going through my own leg workout.<\/p>\n

When I watched that young man do those walking lunges, I remembered thinking that 35-pound dumbbells looked like a good sensible weight to use for that particular exercise. But, I recalled that when I was in my early 40\u2019s I occasionally did it with dumbbells that weighed as much as 90 pounds in each hand.<\/p>\n

But then, I lifted with a lot of weights that were much heavier when I was in my 30\u2019s and early 40\u2019s than I do now. Back then, I was all about lifting as heavily as possible and convinced that doing so in order to gain and maintain as much muscle as possible was the best way to remain lean and healthy. After all, I\u2019d learned that building muscle will increase your metabolism and your body burns more calories maintaining muscle than it does maintaining fat so it made sense to me that it would be advantageous to build and maintain as much muscle as possible.<\/p>\n

But, like most things in life, too much of a good thing can often be detrimental, and it\u2019s no different with weight lifting. If one gets carried away lifting too heavy, and\/or too often without giving their body a chance to recover, they can do themselves more harm than good.<\/p>\n

For example, I\u2019m convinced the biggest reason I have two artificial hips today is that I got carried away doing squats, dead-lifts, and walking lunges with very heavy weights for so many years. I suspect I may have been predisposed to suffer from arthritis in the first place, and that all the years I spent playing basketball and other sports played a role in this outcome as well. But I\u2019m reasonably sure that lifting so heavily for many years brought about this result much sooner and was the primary cause.<\/p>\n

So, while I still lift weights, I no longer do so four times per week and I now lift with amounts that are about 65-percent of the weights I used to throw around.<\/p>\n

Another reason for lesser weighs is that at age 57 I\u2019m no longer capable of lifting as heavily as I did in my early 40\u2019s. My body also needs more time to recover from workouts.<\/p>\n

Sadly, at some point in our 30\u2019s, we all begin to lose muscle mass no matter what we do. I read on-line that people who are physically inactive can lose as much as three-to-five percent of their muscle mass per decade after age 30. Even if you are active, you are going to experience some muscle loss. All you can do through regular exercise and weight lifting is slow and reduce the rate of loss somewhat.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to accept the fact, but am constantly on a mission to slow my own decline. So, on those occasions like yesterday, when a young man tells me he hopes he looks half as good as I do when he\u2019s my age, or another tells me I play basketball like a much younger man, I appreciate the compliment and feel the hard work is paying off.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I\u2019ve come to realize the ability to control our weight and how lean one is has a lot more to do with diet and nutrition than it does with exercise. In fact, I think that as much as 85 to 90 percent of that is a result of what we put in our mouths.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve witnessed a lot of individuals diligently work out on a regular basis in the various health clubs I\u2019ve frequented who remained overweight. Some of those parties worked as hard as anyone else in the gym, yet they never seemed to get any leaner.<\/p>\n

Now for some, it\u2019s just tougher than it is for others. Genetics are definitely a factor, and some folks just have an advantage over others in that regard and don\u2019t have to work as hard to achieve their desired results.<\/p>\n

However, I think that\u2019s an excuse that\u2019s used way too often and it\u2019s much less a factor than many make it out to be.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, if one wants to become leaner it comes down to burning more calories than you\u2019re taking in and there\u2019s two ways to accomplish that, namely through a combination of diet and exercise.<\/p>\n

My experience tells me that if you examine what \u2011 and how much \u2011 someone is sticking in their mouth, along with their level of physical activity, you\u2019ll typically discover all you need to know about why they look the way they do.<\/p>\n

I propose that a much greater percentage of our population \u201clives to eat\u201d rather than \u201ceats to live.\u201d Just look at all the photographs of foods that individuals lovingly post on their social media pages as an example of that.<\/p>\n

I enjoy eating things that aren\u2019t necessarily good for me from time to time myself, and will certainly over indulge on occasion. But, when I do, I feel obligated to make up for it by being more fanatical in terms of my workouts and burning calories to make up for it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no getting around the inevitable decline as we age, but we certainly have some control over the extent and rate. We have a lot more control over that than many realize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  CLAY MOYLE AND SON CALEB   As I was leaving the local fitness club after work yesterday a young…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}