HEALTHY RETIREMENT

Not only do we need to get financially fit as we plan for our retirement; we must make sure that we are mentally and physically fit as well. We all have been reminded throughout our lives about the importance of maintaining a healthy attitude and the value of getting at least moderate exercise; but the key is to remember those words and act on them; even when we don't really want to. I know, personally, that I shall never accomplish some of the feats in the following article; but I know that I can do a lot more than I am. So I shall.

How Fast One Ages is Determined by This Single Trait

(PRWEB) April 11, 2006 -- Those who look, feel, and function as if they are thirty years old, when they are actually in their fifties, have it. Those 50-year-olds who more closely resemble those in their seventies, don’t. Men and women who display youthful qualities that belie their years think differently.

That’s the finding of author, Ed Mayhew, “Fitter For Life: The Secrets of 25 Masters of Fitness” (http://www.fitterforlife.com/). Mayhew concluded this after studying dozens of top master athletes, men and women ages 40 to 93 who, defying Father Time, successfully compete with athletes who are decades younger. Mayhew says, “These successful agers are invigorated by thinking about what they want to have and to do – the next big challenge, adventure, race or game, while those on a fast track to old age think more about what they don’t want, what they are trying to avoid.”According to Mayhew, “These faster agers, dominated by the specter of age-related decline, try to ‘push away’ or evade dreaded conditions, thus keeping these things ever present in their consciousness and bringing on themselves a long-term, low-grade stress. This ongoing stress interferes with the body’s natural repair and regeneration of cells.”

Here’s the difference between focusing upon what one wants and what one doesn’t want:

• While some lament that they are too old to do what they used to enjoy, speed skaters Boris Leikin and Bruce Conner qualified for and competed in the 2006 US Speedskating Olympic Trials. At the ages of 53 and 49 respectively, they were enjoying competing with skaters half their age.
• While it is not uncommon for people to think that their time has come and gone, Tamara Savage, a health care administrator in Flint, Michigan decided to quit her decades-long smoking habit at age 48 and to get “fit by 50.” Topping off at 233 pounds, she got her act together and proceeded to lose 105 pounds. She then celebrated her 52nd birthday by running a 100-mile race in a time of 29 hours, 30 minutes.
• While many settle for reminiscing (“In my day I was…”), California’s Laura Val, a world-ranked swimmer in her youth, was setting more than 160 national and world age-group records and swimming lifetime-bests in her forties and fifties.Val says, “…anyone, regardless of their age or circumstances, can become healthier and happier and can slow the aging process by simply becoming more active…It is simply a matter of the right attitude, and with the right attitude, anyone can do it.”

To learn more about how the Masters of Fitness slow the aging process and even reverse aging for a period of years and the role of the mind in this process, contact Ed Mayhew http://www.fitterforlife.com/ http://www.fitterafter50.com/