There was some slight cleaning up yesterday. I went to the gym. We ate something not associated with Christmas. There are signs that the celebration is winding down slightly chez fibermom. So I am planning my New Year’s goals.
You can find, in blogland, lots of explanations of why people don’t choose to make New Year’s resolutions. I have New Years’ goals rather than resolutions, but I like them. I like having goals, I like traditions, I like the calendar. I usually have about 10 goals, and I like to spend the last few days of the year mulling them over.
The most popular New Year’s resolutions in the U.S. are about health, finances, and enjoying life with friends and family (or sometimes just plain enjoying life).
I have goals about my family and friends, but they do not require a lot of research and planning. As you can probably tell, my family is my number one priority, so those goals come naturally. I also don’t have to work very hard at goals about reading, music, or creative endeavors. Goals about enjoying life sound sad, but they may also just be like writing “eat chocolate” on your to-do list — making resolutions you can’t fail at. I just read a list of resolutions that included watching a new DVD every week. Thre is such a thing as setting the bar too low.
I had a financial goal, but my husband’s car purchase knocked that on its head.
But I do have health-related goals. For the past couple of years, my health goals have been pretty pathetic. “Do what the doctor says” and “Don’t become more decrepit than necessary” are not inspiring goals. The one about following orders was actually pretty good for the first year, but it is too minimalist for repeated use. I figured I could just keep my doctor-mandated workout going and as I got older, it would offset my increasing decrepitude. Strength Training for Women says that the years after 35 should be considered a “maintenance phase.” However, my increasing decrepitude has not kept pace with my workout. My doctor wants my numbers to continue improving, and they don’t with the same workout. And it is not as though I don’t know that the body adapts to a particular routine and needs increasing challenges, but I don’t really know how to increase the challenge. Clearly, I need a new fitness goal.
I got help from this website: RealAge.com. They ask you quite a lot of questions, basically the same ones your doctor asks you, and then they calculate your physical age (as distinct from your chronological age)and give you recommendations for improving your score. Mine make good New Year’s resolutions or goals. I was glad to see that my physical age is five and a half years younger than my chronological age, since that suggests that I am staving off decrepitude pretty well.
I am trying to get my daughter to take the test, since I want to know what happens when a really young person does it. If you are chronologically 22 and they calculate you at 45, then you are clearly doing something wrong. But you wouldn’t want to be a physical age 15, would you? And they wouldn’t recommend that you do stuff to keep getting physiologically younger if you were young to start with, would they?
I am curious about this. If any of you young people try this, let me know, okay?
Anyway, they acknowledge that I am doing the amount and kind of exercise that doctors want you to do, but they recommend that I step it up, and have some specific suggestions for doing so. Essentially, their program would keep my current cardio (increasing the intensity and variety) and add quite a bit more strength training. I will have to read fewer blogs in the morning to fit it in, but I think I can do that. I look forward to having sore muscles again.
They also called me on the few remaining saturated fats and simple carbohydrates I eat, told me to take vitamins (I guess I print out the specific list and go read labels till I find one that matches their suggestions), and to make some other little changes — one of which actually was to get a larger car for safety’s sake.
Maybe I will take up driving my husband’s new car. But I don’t think I can give up cheese.
It put me at .8 years older physically than I am chronologically. It then did not tell me to change anything and rather told me to maintain all of my current habits.
But to add a multivitamin.
I don’t count as a young person taking the test — sorry about that. However, I took it, and it puts me at two years younger than my chronological age. Since I already consider myself to be in excellent health — and already take very carefully chosen multivitamins, and already walk 30 minutes a day — I turned down the offer of a plan to improve my health.
Suggestions:
Be careful in choosing your multivitamin; be very sure you get a balanced B-vitamin set.
Don’t give up cheese.
think it is time to get a plan for the goals in gear…
Personally, I think that “do what the doctor says” may be a bad goal.
In my personal experience, 50% of the things that a doctor has told me to do have harmed me.
My personal goal in connection with this is to EVALUATE what the doctor says to do before doing anything.
DON’T cut out salt to lower blood pressure! It won’t lower pressure, and it is an essential nutrient. Doctors have killed at least 8 people that I know of in hospitals with that one.
I think the VA hospital and every other not-for-profit health care organization that I have ever dealt with has been MUCH better than the usual set-up here in the United States.
The majority of doctors seem to be in the business to make money, and they will order all sorts of awful and expensive tests and prescribe incredibly expensive medicine on a routine basis. The experience I’ve had is that they will do anything to make more money, and they really don’t care how much it harms the patient, or even if it kills them as long as they don’t get sued for it.
I know how cynical that sounds, but it seems to be borne out by my experience.
My allergist told me that I am so allergic to iodine, that I should refuse any test that involves it because he fully expects that I’ll go into anaphalactic shock if I do.
As an aside, someone was telling me yesterday about someone who was severely allergic to iodine whose leg was badly burned by a health care professional who didn’t bother to read that she was allergic to it, and painted her leg with it.
Anyway, although the doctor’s description of the test showed that she would gain no useful information from the test, still wanted to do it even after I explained how allergic I am to iodine. She said, “Oh, we’ll give you a Benadryl or something.” I need a Benadryl, or something equivalent just to survive an ordinary day. I could not make her understand the severity of the situation.
She told me that the reason she wanted the test was because this was going to have no symptoms for about twenty years, and then it would kill me. What she didn’t know was that the same test showed I had the problem 25 years before she was telling me this. I was a little skeptical that ignoring this now was going to kill me five years ago.
She also wanted me to have a completely unnecessary operation, and wound up screaming at me that if I didn’t have it “you’re going to die!”
The end result is that I never went back to her.
Sure. I like the sound of being dangerous.
“Mothers, lock up your sons! Here she comes, talking a vicious line of flirt that will disarm and overcharm and steal those poor boys from you without a second thought. Chase her, ladies, and be prepared for a fight.”