Fitness Focus Happier, Healthier
Boomers escalate their fitness plans, and find they look and feel great
By Donna Olmstead
For the Albuquerque Journal
Revamping
Joanie Griffin, president of Griffin and Associates, a local marketing firm, says she has completely revamped her lifestyle since she turned 50 three years ago. “I have to work harder than I ever have in my life. But now I weigh 125 pounds, what I weighed when I graduated from high school.”
Everything in her diet has to work to support her active lifestyle, she says. She has a Greek yogurt and fruit or a high-protein smoothie most days for breakfast or as a recovery drink after working out and has a serving of chicken or fish with salad or green vegetables for lunch and dinner. She’s cut back on alcohol to one glass of wine a week.
If she has a craving, she gives into it once in a while. “I had a craving for Lemonheads and black licorice. So I ate that and I was done with it.”
Griffin credits her partner, Rob Durham, for getting her interested in biking competitively. She says she had not ridden a bicycle as an adult, but had previously worked out at the gym three times a week.
Now she works out from 5:30 to 7 a.m. before her workday begins and goes for a bike ride of several hours one day of the weekend, usually with her cycling club, Women Riding Well.
Setting an athletic goal and training to compete in an event keeps her motivated, she says.Griffin does triathlons and century bike rides of 100 miles, as well as the recent 50-mile Iron Horse Bicycle Classic in Colorado.
Full Article
Many boomers are discovering that a rewarding Act III in a happily-ever-after life requires rewriting exercise and diet plans.
“Every time you hit another decade, you feel the challenge to stay in shape. My husband and I were stuck in a routine that was not as good as it needed to be to keep us healthy,” says Joan B. Woodard, 59, a consultant, who retired from her full-time engineering position at Sandia National Laboratories a couple of years ago.
Jim Woodard, 63, also an engineer who retired a year ago, says the couple made specific changes in diet and exercise to continue to enjoy activities they love like snow skiing and trekking through Europe.
“We skied opening day at Taos,” he says, offering that as proof that their intensified exercise program with Jenny Gibson, a personal training manager at New Mexico Sports and Wellness, is working.
“She makes it really fun,” Joan explains, adding that Gibson created a special strengthening program for them to get them physically ready for ski season. “It made a huge difference.”
Joan says they work out about five days a week at the gym and recently have added yoga for flexibility and spin classes for cardiovascular endurance. They also work on balance with Gibson.
Jim says that he also has modified his diet to get his cholesterol levels under control: “I’ve avoided taking Lipitor.”
He says that they’ve also added a new golden retriever, Aspen, to their family: “We take her for a walk three times a day, rain or shine.”
Challenging aging
Karen Baker, the city’s 50+ Sports & Fitness supervisor, says she’s escalated her fitness plan. “I feel better than I have in a long time. I’ve always played tennis, swam and worked out, but never at the level I’m doing now. I’m mentally and physically better.”
Baker, 57, who enjoys an active lifestyle with her husband, Mike, 60, says she works out at least an hour a day, usually riding her bike before she goes to work. Several times a week she adds another hour of weightresistance training.
“When you get older it seems like something always hurts. Moving around takes the soreness out for me. I feel better after I work out,” Baker explains.
Recently, she worked out with seven women in a weight-lifting class. They challenged each other to see who could lose the most weight in 12 weeks, Baker says. She lost 7 pounds and took inches from her hips and waist. “I like looking better and fitting into nice clothes,” she says. “I think it’s OK to say that.”
“I basically still have those last 10 pounds to lose,” she says. “I think I work so hard because I want to stay young. I don’t want to be crippled and limited. I want to change that image of aging.”
Baker says her husband, Mike, is responsible for the couple’s better eating habits because he cooks delicious, healthy food.
“I’m in construction so these days I have plenty of time to work out and cook,” he says.
Mike, who loves skiing, golfing, hiking and biking, also does yoga many days of the week. This past summer he broke his collarbone when he flew off his bike and over the years he’s had 10 orthopedic surgeries on his knees and shoulders. He often has pain in those areas, he says. He’s found some relief for his aches and pains with acupuncture, he says.
“I can’t lie anymore. I’m 60. My body doesn’t respond like it used to,” he says. “I’m out there fighting the best I can, but I’m not sure it’s a winning battle. But I have to keep fighting as best I can, otherwise I’m toast.”
Revamping
Joanie Griffin, president of Griffin and Associates, a local marketing firm, says she has completely revamped her lifestyle since she turned 50 three years ago. “I have to work harder than I ever have in my life. But now I weigh 125 pounds, what I weighed when I graduated from high school.”
Everything in her diet has to work to support her active lifestyle, she says. She has a Greek yogurt and fruit or a high-protein smoothie most days for breakfast or as a recovery drink after working out and has a serving of chicken or fish with salad or green vegetables for lunch and dinner. She’s cut back on alcohol to one glass of wine a week.
If she has a craving, she gives into it once in a while. “I had a craving for Lemonheads and black licorice. So I ate that and I was done with it.”
Griffin credits her partner, Rob Durham, for getting her interested in biking competitively. She says she had not ridden a bicycle as an adult, but had previously worked out at the gym three times a week.
Now she works out from 5:30 to 7 a.m. before her workday begins and goes for a bike ride of several hours one day of the weekend, usually with her cycling club, Women Riding Well.
Setting an athletic goal and training to compete in an event keeps her motivated, she says.
Griffin does triathlons and century bike rides of 100 miles, as well as the recent 50-mile Iron Horse Bicycle Classic in Colorado.
Serious training
Her fellow cyclist in Women Riding Well, Diana Tuggle, a program manager with Hewlett-Packard Co., says although she did aerobics classes, she didn’t start training seriously until she was 49 and had moved to San Diego from Los Alamos.
She had a good friend who ran marathons, she says. Her friend just didn’t accept no for an answer.
“I race-walked my first marathon,” Tuggle, now 61, remembers. She decided to challenge herself to another marathon for her 50th birthday, this time in Anchorage, Alaska.
Next came a 100-mile century bike race. “I had never ridden a bike, let alone ride 100 miles,” Tuggle says. “I hated the whole day. I suffered the whole day, but I finished.”
Tuggle says she decided to try another century event near Lake Tahoe. “That’s where I fell in love with cycling. I was well-trained and I loved it.”
Tuggle says she eats to support her cycling ambitions and trains most days of the week on her bicycle. Her diet when she’s racing is something her body can use effectively for fuel. When she eats before an event, she has a high-protein smoothie for breakfast and usually salmon, vegetables and a salad for lunch and something similar for dinner.
She competed in the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic this past year.
“I started crying. I was hurting terribly, but I finished. It was the most amazing feeling in the world.”
Tuggle, who moved back to Albuquerque to be near her six grandchildren, says she doesn’t see herself slowing down. “If I slow down, I will get old and I won’t let that happen. I know women who are 75 and 80 and still do century rides. That’s where I’ve set my goals.”
Halting aging
The effects of aging are real, but reinvigorated exercise and diet programs can halt or reverse many of those natural, debilitating changes, says Dr. Laurence R. Laudicina, a sports medicine spokesman with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
Laudicina, who practices with ABQ Health Partners, says, “Everybody can do this. It’s never too late, even for an octogenarian, to learn to do these things to improve ourselves physically.”
For many reasons, including reduced sex hormones, muscles begin to decline, sometime around 50 years of age, he says.
Without a weight-training program, an average person would lose 33 percent of his or her muscle mass between the ages of 50 and 85.
“That’s a stunning number,” Laudicina says. Muscle loss and “wasting,” called sarcopenia, has become a hot research topic.
“There are 187 research studies and counting that demonstrate that weightresistance training can halt or reverse muscle loss. Weight-resistance training is just as effective for Grandma and Grandpa as it is for a younger person,” he says.
Along with muscles, bones also lose density, and can result in a disease of brittle bones, called osteoporosis. Aging also brings declines in flexibility, cardiovascular endurance, balance and the ability to absorb adequate nutrients from food, Laudicina explains.
“We have a higher requirement for protein as we age. Boomers should eat about 400 calories of highquality protein everyday,” Laudicina says.
He recommends cardio training most days, like swimming or brisk walking, that is easier on the joints. Endurance exercise should be followed several days a week by a weightlifting session of about two or three sets of 10 exercises that work all the major muscle groups. He says warming up and cooling down adequately helps prevent injury. Consistency, cross training and working slowly toward a new exercise goal all help prevent injury, he adds.
Boomeritis or inflammation that causes pain is also a reality, he adds. “We need a workout that is welltailored for the individual. We need to keep our bodies tuned up.” If pain flares up after a workout, Laudicina recommends icing the area.
If the physical decline is unchecked, falls and resulting injury are the sixth leading cause of death in people older than 65, Laudicina says.
“We slowly realize we can’t do what we were able to do back in the day. We don’t recover like we used to. Our bodies don’t function as well as they used to,” he says. “As we mature, we have to work harder to maintain a certain level of fitness. No one is immune. But we have control over this. That’s what’s so awesome. We have control over this. We can train physically and improve in all these areas.”