Workout and Diet Advice for Women over 45

Following on from last week’s post – I don’t want to give the idea that I see lots of exercise as a negative.  I am all for lots of exercise, just as I am all for healthy eating.  However, becoming obsessed with what you do and do not eat, or becoming obsessed with exercising are still obsessions, still addictions.

  “…it can become a compulsion, an obsessive need to work out multiple times a day, hours at a time at the  utmost intensity your body allows”, says Susan Moore, the program coordinator at the Renfrew Center, a treatment facility  for eating disorders in Philadelphia.

Your friend says:  “I am addicted to cardio” – and you think Wow, that is a good thing to be addicted to, as you think of Belgium chocolate as the something you would normally associate with “addiction” – or worse, alcohol or drugs!

First let’s look at the definition of addiction. 

                        Addiction is doing something you know is detrimental to your mental, physical, or emotional well-being, yet you do it anyway.

In the LA Times Business section last weekend, Michael Hiltzik had a really interesting article, that anyone considering lap-band surgery should read.  A cautionary tale about selecting your surgeon/clinic carefully.  Read More

Of course our objective in working out and bodybuilding is to stay healthy  –  but who are we kidding, it is also to stay looking and feeling young ( well at least a good deal younger than our chronological age).  So it seems ironic that  we give ourselves away, by acting old in oh so many ways.  In fact Pamela Redmond Satran has written a book “How Not to Act Old” and excerpts have been reproduced in More magazine http://tiny.cc/uF2rq,  and even the Wall Street Journal took time to give an excerpt http://tiny.cc/jDTot.   I tweeted a couple of excerpts that I found funny  (one regarding Twitter and one regarding exercise).  I figure there is something for everyone even though a few women commented in More that they were insulted.

Seems we are a fit lot in general  –  and many of us making great strides to get there. (Us being the Baby Boomers.  My goal:  “Buffed-Boomer Queen”).  How about a few quotes from posts/articles I recently came across:

“68 yr old female bodybuilder – definitely not a senior” – from a woman asking for advice to reach her goal of “being ripped by 70”.  I love it!
“ A group of nursing home residents ranging in age from 87 to 96 recently improved their muscle strength by almost 180 percent after just eight weeks of weightlifting”  –  from an article on the Blue Cross Blue Shield ‘Healthy Me’ website.
There is a recent story about a 73 year old power lifter  –  OK a male, but I thought I would acknowledge him.  http://tinyurl.com/dmj56s