Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Am I Really Getting Older Like Everyone Else Is?

(Posted in Wellness Wednesdays)

I think it’s worse when you think you are so much healthier than everyone else, this whole getting older thing.  I’m a healthy weight.  I exercise about an hour most days.  My diet is relatively healthy.  Most of the time I don’t drink too much alcohol.  I’ve never smoked.  And I certainly don’t suffer much stress these days.

Except for when I’m in the doctor’s office apparently. 

I was at my annual OB/GYN appointment on Monday and my blood pressure was 145 over 90-something.  I assured the nurse that that is NOT my real blood pressure.   They had noticed a high reading on my last visit, but when I went home and obsessively took it two or three times a day for a week, I could never get a reading higher than 120/80.  I, of course, informed her of this, that I must have that white-coat syndrome or something.  My husband Doug has high blood pressure, that’s why we have the equipment at home.  And I know the equipment is accurate, as it has been tested at his (which is also my) primary care doctor’s office.

So I told them let’s take the blood pressure again at the end of the appointment.  I was sure the difficulty of parking, the 40-minute wait, and the dread of those stirrups were all to blame for my false reading. 

Except, at the end of the appointment my blood pressure was 163 over 100-something.  I can hardly focus on those bottom numbers when the top numbers are so insane.

So now my doctor is withholding sex.  Ok, not really sex, but birth control pills.  I’m cut off until a real doctor, my primary care physician, proves that I just have that white-coat problem.  Apparently, it’s not just good enough for me to tell them that’s what’s going on.

So today I went to my primary care physician.  I got there 20 minutes early, there was parking right in front, and the doctor was running right on time.  Not to mention there would be no stirrups at this exam.  All the stars were in alignment for a perfectly normal blood pressure reading.  The nurse said that she would let me relax for a moment, and that we would not talk during the test.  I decided to think of puppy dogs.

One-sixty-five over 90!

I was armed with data this time.  I brought my obsessive log of normal readings over the last few days.  I brought Doug’s blood pressure machine so they could see that it really was accurate.  Surely this travesty would be rectified now that I brought PROOF!

Dr. Primary Care Physician was unconvinced.  She agreed with the No Pills For You doctor, and I’m still cut off.  Well, except for the 3-month stash of pills I hoarded when I thought Rick Santorum might be president.  But I’m saving that for a real emergency.

So now they are using the M-word.  Both doctors agree that it’s best to stop the pill while we sort out this blood pressure thing, but also, it will give them a chance to see if perhaps I’m entertaining menopause. 

Menopause.  It seemed like they were calling me old.  I did remind them both that I’m only 49.  Both doctors informed me that the average age of menopause is 51.  I explained that that is two whole years away.  They explained what average means.

But I guess it’s true, no matter how healthy I am, I’m just like everyone else.  I’m getting older.  While I don’t know how the blood pressure thing is going to work out yet, the reality is, as you get older, “The parts, they break,” to quote another blogger’s dad.  But there is a silver lining.  If I really am in menopause, without the hostage of birth control pills, I could actually withhold doctors’ appointments.

I will use my power wisely.

Related Posts:

Middle Age Fitness

Racing to a Milestone

Don’t Blame the Fat Lady

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This Time Around

 

(Posted in Wellness Wednesdays)

Re-retirement, Day 1:  I participated in my own version of a triathlon, 15 mile bike ride, 4 mile walk, and 2 showers.

Re-retirement, Day 2:  I improved on the triathlon, 12 mile bike ride, 5 mile walk, and 2 beers.

Week one shaped up to be a real shape-up week, 87 miles of biking, 20 miles of walking, and one pound of fat gone.  Not to mention my house and garden are now also in stellar shape after a week of cleaning and clipping.

I’m off to a much better start this time around.

Related Posts:

            Easing into Retirement

            It Feels Like Sunday Afternoon

            Practical Advice for Retirement:  Stock up on Underwear

 

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Quality of Life

(Posted in Wellness Wednesdays)

I’m in the sixth grade.  I come home from school and plop my books on the entry hall table.  I find my mom sitting in the living room, not reading, not watching TV, just sitting. 

She asks about my day, I tell her I got a part in our bicentennial play, “Let George Do It,” as a cheerleader—the “ton” in George Washington.  I sing the song: 

    Take a G and an E and an O,

    And add a little RGE,

    And a double-u,

    ASH,

    I-N-G. 

    Then you take two thousand pounds,

    That makes a ton,

    So what do you got?

    You got a lot!

    GEORGE WASHINGTON!

She laughs.  I’m the smallest kid in class—she gets the joke.

So after she congratulates me, she gets up and asks me to sit in the blue chair where she had been sitting, “Sit here and look this way with the window there at your right.  Yeah, like that.  Do you see flashing lights up to the right when you sit there?”

I didn’t.

“Maybe turn your head a little this way.  Now do you see them?”

Nope.

That was the first sign that my mom had ocular melanoma.  The cancer that would take her life only five years later.

Like most parents probably would, my parents tried to protect me from the seriousness of the situation.  I knew she had cancer but I never fathomed she would die from it.  Maybe they didn’t really know.  I’m not even sure the doctors knew then what they know now, perhaps they gave her hope.

Yesterday, I learned more about ocular melanoma than I’ve ever known before.  This article in the New York Times brought back all those memories and gave me insight that I never had all those years ago.

There’s a new genetic test for ocular melanoma patients that can very accurately predict a their prognosis:

            The test identifies one of two gene patterns in eye melanomas. Almost everyone in Class 1 . . . is cured when the tumor is removed. As for those in Class 2, 70 to 80 percent will die within five years. Their cancers will re-emerge as growths in the liver. For them, there is no cure and no way to slow the disease.

When my mom was diagnosed, there was a spot on her liver.  So you can see now which group she was in.  The doctors monitored that spot for years before it started growing.  When it did, they started chemotherapy. 

I don’t remember how long Mom withstood chemo treatments, but I remember it being grueling.  She’d be horribly sick the first week following treatment, mildly sick the second week, and even though she felt fine the third week, she would fall into a depression, anticipating the next round of treatment.

After several months it was clear that the treatment had failed.  She was admitted to the hospital for an even stronger regimen of chemo.

She was released for a few weeks, long enough to come see me one night in my high-school’s production of “Bye Bye Birdie.”  But she couldn’t even sit through the whole performance she felt so awful. 

It wasn’t long after that that she fell into a coma, dying several weeks later, right after Thanksgiving.

I think if my mom really knew what her prognosis was, she might not have elected to spend the last year of her life hopelessly trying to cure the incurable.  Fighting to stay alive, when all that staying alive meant was to be so sick and so tired that she could barely even endure what was left of her life.  Chemo didn’t extend her life, it just made what was left of it miserable, possibly even shorter.

There are some doctors mentioned in the Times’ article that are not offering this genetic test to their patients, claiming that their patients wouldn’t want to know if they had a cancer that they could do nothing about. 

Besides the fact that you are taking treatment decisions away from the patient with that approach, the final story of the article shows the other downside of that attitude.  In the case of the 18-year old patient profiled in the article, she happily turned out to be in the class of patients that would be cured by removing the tumor, Class 1.  Based on the large size of her tumor, without that genetic test, she would have been told that her prognosis was very bad, when actually, her prognosis was that she had been cured.

 

Related Posts:

         My Decision to Retire

         Travel in Retirement:  Why Get Away When There's Nothing to Get Away From

         Drama Queen

 

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Don't Blame the Fat Lady

Posted in Wellness Wednesdays

 

It’s the time of year when many of us turn our attention to our health.  Ok, let’s be honest, by health I mean weight.  Now three weeks into my resolution to lose six pounds, I’m down two.  Not exactly a stellar performance, but it beats the alternative.

The startling facts are, according to the CDC, 33.9 percent of U.S. adults are obese, and another 34.4 percent are merely overweight.  Which leaves those folks at healthy weights in the minority. 

There is certainly no shortage of approaches to weight-loss.  The multi-million dollar weight loss industry hawks thousands of books, magazines, weight-loss centers, and food substitutes.  Our problem is not from lack of information, or even for lack of trying.  I know very few people, even in the healthy-weight category that aren’t trying to drop at least a few pounds.

To be fair, the problem for obese people is a lot harder to tackle, it’s not just their imagination.  Tara Parker-Pope’s NY Times article, The Fat Trap, explores the frustrating problem that so many people encounter of gaining back weight that they so diligently worked to lose.  Turns out it’s not a problem of willpower or discipline.  And it also turns out it’s not true that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. 

A typical 30-year old woman who weighs 190 pounds can eat about 2,600 calories a day and maintain her weight.  But the same woman who achieved that weight by losing over 10 percent of her body weight will only be able to eat about 2,300 calories per day without gaining weight.  Yes, unfair!

To blame are the metabolic and hormonal changes that accompany significant weight loss.  So it really is harder for someone to keep the weight off after losing it than it is for someone who never varied from that weight in the first place.  To really add heft to the unfairness of it all, this effect on calorie burning may last up to six years.  

Which brings me to my six-pound goal.  I am not overweight by any measure of the word.  But I have consistently gained a half a pound a year for the last 16 years.  So I’d rather reverse that course now, before I land in the land of the metabolic catch-22.  And for that, I will share a little inspiration, Michael Pollan’s, Food Rules, an Eater’s Manual.

Most of us have figured out that it’s easier to keep up a moderate exercise program consistently than a drastic, complicated, intense one.  Well, it’s the same with an eating program.  I don’t buy the philosophy that the more complicated it is, the more effective it is.  I think we all know what to do, we just need a little reminder. 

Michael Pollan’s compact book is just that, a quick reminder of what you already know.  The book contains 64 rules, they read much like a series of blog posts.  They revolve around the central advice, “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  The first section defines food.  For example, food your great-grandmother would recognize as food, things with ingredients that a third-grader can pronounce, foods that aren’t pretending to be something they are not.  The last two sections are on making the healthiest food choices and tips for portion control. 

If you, like I, need a little inspiration to keep the resolution you’ve made year after year by following advice you already know, I recommend this short read.  It’s not rocket-science, it’s just common sense, something we can all use a little of from time to time.

Related Posts:

            Racing to a Milestone

            Do French Fries Count as a Vegetable?

            The Myth of the Skinny Retirement

 

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Guilty Feet

Posted in Wellness Wednesdays

So I’m feeling a little guilty because I didn’t actually tell my part-time employer that I’m in Hawaii this week.  I really only go to the office a day or two a week and I was there on Monday, so I’m not sure they will even notice I’m gone.  As long as I have an Internet connection, whether I’m home or out of town is kind of irrelevant to them.  But this year I already spent a week in Hawaii, two in Canada, and then three in Australia.  And that’s not counting a few quick trips to Las Vegas sprinkled in here and there.  So I’m kind of embarrassed to tell them I’m skipping town again.

Guilt notwithstanding, it does seem that I’ve cracked the code.  All those years of working I resented only being able to travel three weeks a year (a few more when I worked somewhere where I could game the system).   Then when I retired, I finally had the time to get out of town a lot more frequently.  But here I am now with the best of both worlds, a little extra income to finance more frequent trips AND the time to take them! 

Now guilt has no place in a healthy retirement and exercise definitely does, so I’m off to take a long walk on the beach now.  It’s just my health I’m thinking about.

 

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Related Posts:

            The Accidental Tourist

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Middle-Age Fitness

Posted in Wellness Wednesdays

Most of you have probably heard that we lose muscle mass as we age.  But according to this article in the New York Times, this is not an inevitable outcome.  It’s kind of a use-it-or-lose-it thing.

As you know, I’ve decided to use it.  I did that whole P90X thing and definitely got stronger by the end of the 90 days.  It was a tough regimen.  I was committed but it was tough.  Was it worth it?  Well, I’m not really sure.

While I know I got stronger, as evidenced by the amount of weight I could lift and number of repetitions I could perform by the end of the program, it’s probably not a routine I will keep up.  It’s a little bit of torture, not total agony, but definitely extremely hard work.  I really don’t think I can keep up that level of intensity.

Well, I’m not alone.  According to this study, middle-aged women are happier, and more apt to keep up their exercise routine with moderate exercise rather than a vigorous regimen.  "The study found that moderate intensity exercise caused more women to report later that they were in a better mood and to have greater feelings of energy, psychological wellbeing and ‘self-efficacy.’"  Most interestingly, the boost in mood was not as great for those that exercised more vigorously.

Now, I don’t care to know the technical definition of middle-aged, but I do know that I was much happier walking a moderately paced five to eight miles over the course of a day on my Australian vacation than I was doing P90X over the course of a mere hour at home.  And I don’t think it was just because I was on vacation.   It was because it didn’t feel like exercise.  It didn’t feel like a chore.  The study's lead researcher pointed out, “Exercise makes you feel better but it is going to be more pleasant when performed at moderate intensity as compared to vigorous.”  Well of course, exercise is more pleasant if it doesn’t actually feel like exercise!

Related Posts:

            Do French Fries Count as a Vegetable?

            What Does Yard Work Have to do With Retirement?

            Happy Birthday Dad!

 

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Racing to a Milestone

Posted in Wellness Wednesdays

I turn 50 in two years and four months.  It should be obvious what I’m going to say next:  28 months to get in the best shape of my life.  And I have to say, good thing I’m getting a head start, it’s not as easy as it used to be.

Nineteen years ago, this month, I was in the best shape of my life and it took virtually no effort.  Yes, that was in part due to age, but it was also due to the fact that I was getting married, and there’s no motivator like a walk down the aisle in a white gown to get a girl in shape.  But a milestone birthday is a close second. 

If you are like I was when I retired, you probably think retirement will automatically bestow upon you the greatest shape ever.  After all you have all that time to work out.  But as I’ve mentioned before, it wasn’t my job keeping me from getting in the best shape of my life, it was me.

So a couple of months ago I borrowed a set of P90X DVDs from some friends of mine.  I’ll be the first to admit that being retired is a major advantage in finding the time to commit to this P90X thing.  The program schedule includes six tough but varied workouts a week for 90 days.  I’ll also admit that at 139 bucks for the set of 12 DVD’s, it’s much better to have friends you can borrow them from, at least to check it out while you decide whether you can stand it.

It was great fun to have my friends cheering me on with daily emails that first week, asking me how it was going.  After workout number one, I reported that I could barely lift my arms to wash my hair afterward.  By day three, when I emailed my friend to tell her that now every body part ached in unison, she replied, “Aahh, Day Three, I remember it well.”

Before you start the program, you are supposed to take “before” pictures of yourself to compare to the “after” photos you take at the end.  I just couldn’t bring myself to take a photo of that unfit Syd, so I’ll have to report back to you in four more weeks from memory alone, and maybe even a change in the way my clothes fit.

Interesting Fitness Reads:

            Why Doesn’t Exercise Lead to Weight Loss?  (New York Times)

            Studies Show 15 Minutes of Daily Exercise Can Help (AP via Yahoo)

            Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin (Time Magazine)

 

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Do French Fries Count as a Vegetable?

Posted in Wellness Wednesdays

Don’t ask me why I picked on meat, it just seemed like a good way to do penance for my sins. 

The first eight days of our stay in Montreal included French fries at least once a day.   Add to that the fact that we didn’t really focus on meals with nutritional value while we were there.  We were, after all, on vacation. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one out there that uses vacation as an excuse for eating junk.  There were whole days that included no vegetables at all, I mean unless you are counting the French fries as a vegetable.  So on the last day of our vacation I told Doug, when we get home we’re going to be vegetarians for a week.  It was intended as punishment.

The funny thing is, when we got home, we each had lost a pound.  Ok, not much to brag about, but it sure beats the alternative.  And that was with eating (and drinking) anything we wanted for two whole weeks.

It was all the exercise.  We didn’t do intentional exercise while we were there, but we explored every corner of Montreal using only public transportation, which meant a lot of walking.  We walked four or five miles each day. 

And Montreal’s public transportation system includes a great biking system.  I think the city has more Bixi Bike stations than subway stations.  For less than a round trip fare on the subway or the bus, you get the use of a bike for 24 hours, providing you get your bike to the next stand within 30 minutes.  But you can take out a new one two minutes after your dock the previous one.  The last day of our stay we rode all over that town, 25 miles by the end of the day. 

But still, I was feeling guilty about all the French fries, so I stocked up on fruit and veggies when we got home and made nothing but meatless meals the whole week.  Turns out I loved being a vegetarian.  I mean, I’m not converting or anything, but I do think I’ve found a new way to eat that’s much healthier than my old way. 

Instead of vilifying certain foods (carbs, alcohol, sweets, or in this case meat), and saying “no you can’t have those,” I’m aiming to get at least the recommended minimum each day of the foods with important micronutrients:  fruits and vegetables, and then eat whatever else I'm hungry for.  I wind up having less room for junk after I’ve managed to work 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of vegetables into my day.

Oh and for the record, I don’t consider a glass of red wine to be junk.  It may not count as a serving of fruit, but it is made from it.

Related Posts:

            Retirement and Skinny Jeans

            Retirement Calories

            Exercise Like a Kid

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Money as a Renewable Resource

There is a bit of debate among my friends, family members, and blog readers as to whether someone can be earning money and be retired at the same time.  I don’t really care whether it’s called retirement, semi-retirement, or not retired at all.  My goal is to do what makes me happy even if, inconveniently, someone will actually pay me to do that.  Setting the controversial semantics aside, there definitely is a difference between the actual experience of “working in retirement” (I’m going to call it that because I need it to be a verb) and working before retirement.

Before retirement.  Before I retired-retired (where I gave up my well-paid, well-respected profession for the full-time pursuit of goofing off), money was a renewable resource.  Whatever I spent it on, it didn’t matter so much because there would be more of it coming in on the 1^st and the 15^th of the following month.   Luxury vacations, a house cleaner, or new clothes, whatever it was I spent the money on, it didn’t matter that much because someone was always giving me more of it after I spent it.

I was also saving for retirement, but for most of those years of working, losing that job would have meant that I would have had to go get another one to support myself.  Deciding that I wanted to walk out the door tomorrow was just not a practical option.

Retirement.  When I did walk out that door, I had a stash of retirement funds that would carry me through the next 50 years, if I only spent a set amount of it each year.  Money was no longer a renewable resource.  If I spent money on a housecleaner, that meant one less dinner out that week.  If I spent money on a week-long luxury vacation, that meant giving up a whole month of less luxurious travel.  And if I paid someone to mow my lawn, that would limit the number of jazz concerts I could attend that year.  Money went from a being a renewable resource to being a measure of exchanges.  I could spend up to my budgetary total, but spending money on one thing meant giving up another thing.

Working in retirement, semi-retirement, or whatever you want to call it.  When I was offered the opportunity to pick up some paid work a day or two each week, I couldn’t really see any downside.  If I hated it, I could quit.  If I liked it I could take that money and do some things I would want to do if only I had more money.  And I had an idea for what that would be.  For years I’ve been lusting after a little studio pied a terre in San Francisco.  While only 30 minutes away, I miss the energy of the city and would love a little crash pad for all those nights we head up for dinner with friends, or for jazz and symphony concerts.   I used to dream of owing a condo, but that’s too much commitment, that would tie me to the job forever (or require me to sell it if I wanted to quit.)  So I figured, I could take the money I make and rent a furnished apartment for as long as I liked the job.  That was part of the reason I took the job.

But a funny thing happened even after I picked up that retirement job.  First of all, I still think of money as a unit of exchange rather than a renewable resource.  If I spent the money on an apartment, that’s money I could have spent at a resort in Mexico.  Secondly, the reason I retired in the first place was to enjoy freedom, freedom to do almost exactly as I please.  If I rented an apartment, or hired a housecleaner, or spent the money on some other thing that upgrades my standard of living, I’d need money as a renewable resource again.  And for that, I would have to exchange freedom.  And that is why I won’t be spending much of the extra money I earn.

Because even if you don’t want to call it "retirement", I want the option of goofing off full-time available to me at any given moment.  I don’t want to lose my freedom, and part of that freedom is knowing that I could still decide tomorrow that I would rather have the extra time than the extra money.

Related Posts:

            Retirement as a Balloon Animal

            Am I Still Retired?

            Retirement and the Magic Number

 

This is a post from Retirement:  A Full-Time Job

 

How Long Will You Live?

A couple weeks ago I wrote about what traits make a happy retiree.  It turns out two of them, enjoying good health and enjoying good friends, are pretty intertwined. 

A strong social network not only makes you happier, a recent Brigham Young University study shows it will also make you healthier, increasing your odds of survival by 50%.  Not having such social connectedness was the health equivalent of:

            -smoking 15 cigaretts a day,

            -being an alcoholic,

            -worse than being sedentary,

            -twice as bad as being obese.

Want to get an idea of your own life expectancy?  Emily Brandon’s piece over at U.S. News this week has links to a couple of fun calculators to estimate just how long you’ll be kicking.  Mine said I’ll live to 100 but that was before I shared a bucket of extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken last night with some friends.  I’m sure that shaved at least a year off, but at least I’ll die happy.

 

This is a post from Retirement:  A Full Time Job