Leaderboard

When I was 57 I had surgery to compensate for a torn tendon in my right ankle and caused it to deteriorate over 30 years, giving me plantar fasciitis and pronating enough to make it impossible to run any more. When I was 58 I had my left hip replaced, probably because it wore heavily due to the asymmetry caused by that missing tendon. When I was 59 I was 40 lbs over weight because of a decade of poor diet, combined with increasing sedentary lifestyle from work, divorce, and that bad ankle. I sometimes found myself wheezing when I walked, which was incredibly scary during COVID, and unfathomable to me given I was a college athlete (practice dummy) on a national championship wrestling team, rode as much as a hundred miles a day in the off season, and after college ran 40 miles a month, half marathons, etc until my late 40s. Today I'm 60 and have to take THC edibles to sleep through the night because of the pain of a (presumably) torn rotator cuff in my shoulder. But I've lost 33 lbs doing hot yoga almost every day for the last 15 months, along with some improvements to my diet. And I got on a weight lifting program this year (along with TRT) which has increased my muscle mass noticeably, even though every morning I wake up with an aching shoulder, and I have to skip some exercises (haven't bench pressed in months) because of the pain. I have an MRI next week, hoping there is an easy arthroscopic fix because shoulder replacement is way harder and rehab takes far longer than hip replacement. The lesson I wished I had learned before this is that I can't get back all those days I woke up healthy and skipped my run or workout, and ate whatever I wanted. Instead I was forced to put myself through incredibly hard workouts and food choices for over a year just to get back close (but not there) to where my health should have been naturally. Maintenance is so much easier than undoing a decade of bad choices. So my advice to others is, don't take health for granted. Every day I'm grateful that I'm still healthy enough and the pain is not so great that I can still push through it enough to slowly improve my fitness, even if its nowhere near as easy or fast as it was when I was younger. One of my yoga buddies and me talked about the need to stay ahead of the curve, and how Charlie Munger proactively moved to walkers/wheelchairs to avoid the falls that commonly rapidly accelerate our declines in our last years of life. I am witnessing what can happen in stark terms today. Our best dog ever who would turn 12 this summer and was so active and energetic that people thought she was half her age. Three weeks ago she yelped from pain jumping out of the car and it started a downward spiral to where now her back legs are so weak she needs my help to stand, and all she can do is rest all day. I'm in $2,500 into tests and x-rays without a clear diagnoses or treatment plan for recovery, and on the cusp of the decision whether to put her down or not today. So my advice to everyone is, stay active even if you don't feel like it. Find something you like, or can tolerate, enough to do regularly. If you can't/won't run, then swim or bike or go to fitness classes, or take up weight lifting. Or just go for long walks or take up hiking. Podcasts can make long workouts more tolerable, but they are also useful times to meditate on your day and your life and think more deeply and clearly. Find and create your own healthy habits that can last you a lifetime so when the inevitable setbacks occur, your body is stronger and more ready to help you recover from them. Because it's the setback we can't recover from that is often the cause of our end.