Fitter Happier

OK Computer

A friend of mine is 98. She sees perfectly with her glasses, and hears clearly with her hearing aids. She tells me she feels 18 but knows she older. Her 50 year high school reunion happened just a few years after I graduated. My 40 year one is coming up in just a couple years. Damn, the years fly. I bet she knows that.

If that old 1993 Ford truck, upon which I’ve racked up 55,000 miles without any distress, has taught me anything, it’s that doing some basic maintenance goes a long way towards making things last longer. I’m not young, I have no insurance, and I don’t want to find my health suddenly broken down and have no way to treat it, so I’ve started fixating lately on some simple practices that lead to better health and longer life. It’s not lost on me that some years ago I cared so little I was smoking meth from a glass bulb.

At my peak, which not coincidentally came during the worst of my addiction, I weighed 300 pounds. When I got sober my weight fell to 280. With some dietary adjustments, it fell again to 265. With reta, I dropped another 5 pounds. But, then, about 6 weeks ago when I was in Chicago, I succumbed to this brutal stomach bug. I stopped taking reta because I knew something was wrong. Yet, the stomach trouble carried on for another few weeks anyway. That’s the long way of saying, by the magic of cyclosporiasis (the infection that’s going around), I lost another 5 pounds. Keeping the dream alive once I got better, I’ve lost another 5 pounds naturally. Those ones were the hardest but I’m now down to 245.

My dad used to take me hunting on this old farmer’s property. When we’d pull up, we’d see that old coot, about 90, bouncing around on his ancient tractor and spitting long strands of black motor oil from his mouth down to the floorboards of the tractor to release all the goop accumulated in his yapper from chewing wads of tobacco leaves. My dad used to say: “Ya know how that old farmer got to be ninety? By riding on that tractor every single day.”

Here are a few things I’ve learned from recreationally researching longevity, rooted compellingly in common sense, that I’ve put into practice. Also, despite two years of solitude, my mental health has never been better, my physical strength exceeds that of when I was in college, and I’ve lost 55 pounds. Most importantly, I feel great even though I’m not young.

1. You don’t have to look like Brad Pitt, but you cannot be fat.

   My blood-pressure has fallen from dangerously high levels when I was overweight, back to normal. Everything is easier. And, I’m much happier. As Kate Moss says: “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Since I’m not really skinny either, I’ll rephrase that: nothing is worse for your confidence and sense of well being than showing up everywhere sweating like Lawrence Taylor, breathing like Darth Vader, and knowing you cannot hide all the weight you’ve gained. Obesity is the leading cause of joint disease, circulatory disease, and diabetes. Also, obesity is a major, preventable risk factor for cancer, linked to an increased risk of at least 13 specific types, including breast (post-menopausal), colorectal, pancreatic, kidney, and liver cancer. Excess body fat fuels cancer through chronic inflammation, elevated estrogen, and insulin resistance, which stimulate tumor growth and impair cell survival. It’s debatable but obesity might be worse than smoking.

2. Remove processed shit from your diet.
   No sugar, no flour, no bread. No frozen food, no partially hydrogenated oil, no fast food. Nothing on the ingredients list you cannot pronounce. Eat what came from farms not factories. No fake food colors. No Fruit Loops. No Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Stick to things from the ground rather than from a conveyor belt. This will reduce the assault of chemical additives on your liver, arrest the collection of bad cholesterol on your arteries and limit your compulsion to over eat. Remember RJ Reynolds Tobacco, the company with a fleet of addiction scientists who spent their careers devising ways to blend the right poison additives to put in cigarettes, such as ammonia, which alters the chemical makeup of smoke, allowing the body to absorb nicotine much more quickly, to enhance addictiveness? Well, in 1989 RJ Reynolds acquired the snack food company Nabisco in order to devote these same techniques to your food. They didn’t do that to make you feel better, live longer, or eat less. They did it to turn Oreos into Marlboros. Avoid what they’re selling and all three can be achieved.

3. Get plastic out of your diet.

   A study in Nature Medicine measured microplastics in human brain tissue and found roughly seven grams. Put three bags of cocaine up your nose and you’ll probably die. Now imagine more than double that of plastic swimming around your brain. And, samples from 2024 showed about 50% more plastic than the ones from 2016, too. The New England Journal of Medicine (March 2024) published research on people who had plaque surgically removed from their arteries: the patients whose plaque contained microplastics and nanoplastics were about 4.5 times more likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or death over the next three years. Get rid of plastic cutting boards, Ziplock, Tupperware, and Saran Wrap. No bottled water and no black sushi trays. Toss out plastic kitchen utensils such as spatulas and slotted spoons. Stick to metal and glass containers.

4. Get at least 30 minutes activity every day.

   Walk there. Ride your bike. Take the stairs. I’ve used this method to drop the most recent 5 pounds. The stubborn ones. When I was younger, if I started eating better, I lost weight. Now, I just stop gaining it. Moderate, sustainable, unextreme exercise in concert with a clean diet has been really helpful in reducing my weight at over 50. Again, I’m also stronger now than I was in college or high school. Aged 55. No testosterone.

5. Leave your phone in the car/locker/home when you workout.

   Other than steroids, I can think of no better way of gaining muscle mass. Your workouts will also take half the time and be twice as brisk — enough so that they’ll encourage some weight loss on their own.

6. Eat something fermented every day.

   As I’m sure is becoming obvious, your mouth is the doorway to a better life, so feed it things that promote digestive health: sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi and Greek yogurt. Also, recent research indicates that probiotics in certain fermented foods, such as kimchi, bind to nanoplastics in your gut, helping the body flush them out as waste. Maybe they’re right and maybe it’s a scientific food fad, but either way you’ll be more healthy eating foods that promote a thriving intestinal microbiome.

7. Go to bed the same time; get up at the same time.

   (Except when you’re writing these 😎). Early to bed, early to rise… I cannot remember the last time I got less than 6 hours sleep or went to bed after midnight. Of course, I don’t drink so I have no reason to be up late. Working backward from your planned bedtime, use the 3-2-1 method. Nothing to eat 3 hours before sleep. Nothing to drink 2 hours before sleep. No screens one hour before sleep.

8. Read 10 pages every day.

   I’m not talking about audiobooks or Kindle. Even if it takes 3 months, you’ll finish a few books per year this way. It will cut your screen time, too, and give you something to do during that hour before bed, plus begin expanding your mental stamina to focus on something longer than a 15 second Tik Tok video.

9. Get some sunlight within 30 minutes of waking up.

   Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the United States. There is a reason for that: they also don’t get any sunlight half the year.

10. Positive mental attitude.

    Feed friendships and starve grudges. Focus on what’s good about your life rather than fixating on what you think you need to be happy. Trust me. It works. I lost everything.

My friend’s wife is an in-home caretaker for old people. She has shepherded at least ten nonagenarians through their final years. I told her I have been thinking about this lately and her answer was simple: “The happier they are, the longer they live.”