DEVELOP HEALTH HABITS FOR HEALTHY AGING

It is not rocket science to know that if you are going to develop healthy aging as your way of moving forward into the future, you need to develop some really good health habits. Do you now have healthy habits for eating, exercising, and sleeping? That’s a very different question from asking, “Do you know what healthy eating consists of?” Most people know lots of things that they could do that would improve their heath and enable aging with more energy and vitality. The problem does not lie primarily in knowing, it lies in doing.

Eating Undoubtedly the biggest problem lies in all of the things that we eat that we should not. Sugar is probably the biggest culprit and it is in just about everything. Simply cutting out sugar would be a major contribution to better health and aging. Similarly, we eat far too much flour and salt as well. Personally I have gone on an anti-cancer diet and have eliminated as much as I can all sugar, flour, salt, dairy, and red meat.

That’s the doing, yet above and beyond the doing is the thinking. What you think and believe about eating, about food, about deserts, about sweets, about fast food, etc.? This brings us to your neuro-semantics—the meanings that you have given to these aspects of eating that are now programmed into your neurology. Why do you eat? For what purpose? Many eat for de- stressing, others eat to be social and to connect with others. Some eat because it is a reward, or an expression of being loved. Some eat because the clock says “it is time to eat.”

Ultimately, it is your food neuro-semantics that govern your eating. Over the years of your life, you have learned various things about eating, and now those learnings are your neurological programs. But the good news is that if you learned your current programs, you can unlearn them and learn new and better programs. This is the central theme of Games Fit and Slim People Play (2001).

Not only do most people eat too much of the wrong stuff, most people also eat too much. They take in more calories than they burn. The result is that they constantly gain weight. Statistics indicate that more than half of the American population is over-weight. And with obesity, every ten pounds of extra weight cuts off another year of life. But this is not merely a matter of too much food, it is also a matter of too little exercise.

Exercising What we call exercise is simply movement. And for well-being and health, you need to move your body. That means more walking and less sitting. That means taking the stairs instead of the

elevator, that means walking up the escalator rather than riding. That means getting minimally 30 minutes of cardio-vascular exercise four times a week. Do that and you keep your internal organs in better health.

Again, it’s not the doing that’s the biggest problem, it is the thinking. What you think and believe about exercise plays the critical role. It’s not even your schedule or life-situation, it is the meanings that you give to your situation.

Sleeping Then there is sleep. What’s amazing about sleep is that what is natural and easy and non- neurotic for animals is a major source of problems for we humans. It takes a human being to mess up something as natural as sleep. And this is mostly a matter of your semantics. So again, we ask, “What do you believe about sleep?” The biggest barrier today is that people de-value sleep, discount its benefits, treat it as a nuisance, and do things to interfere with it. As a result, a large proportion of the population suffers from sleep deficiency which leaves them tired, grumpy, stresses, and not at their best.

By “burning the candle at both ends” most people push themselves so that they do not get their needed seven to eight hours of sleep. Nor do they create a “getting ready to sleep” ritual that helps them relax so they can release the tensions and worries of the day. To make matters worse and to interfere with sleep, many eat and drink just prior to going to bed, others take their phones with them to bed, and others stay up watching TV or surfing the internet which does not put them in the best state for sleep.

Eating, exercising, and sleeping—the easiest things you can to to age healthily and yet the very things most people discredit as having a significant impact on their health. Nor is it that most people don’t know what to do. They do! The problem is that they simply do not implement. And why not? Because their semantics are in the way. Their meta place is not organized and well-formed for healthy aging. That’s where the problem lies, that’s where the solution will occur.

For more, see Games Fit and Slim People Play (2001); also the training manual for Unleashing Vitality.