Retirement: A Full-Time Job

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

            Lusting for Boredom

            Is It Worth It?

 

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?

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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

 

 

 

What Does Yard Work Have to do With Retirement?

A couple of days ago I received an irate email from a reader regarding this post.  He resented any implication that a person’s body falls to pieces when he retires.  This 73-year-old reader told me that he plays tennis every Wednesday with his 66-year-old friend and consistently kicks his ass.  But he’s not the oldest tennis player in his social set, on Tuesdays he plays doubles with three other friends, 80, 84 and 87.  Just to stress his point he wrote, “THAT'S 324 YEARS OF TENNIS PLAYERS ON THE COURT AT THE SAME TIME.”

The irate reader?  My dad.

Using a technique that I certainly appreciate, taking a random sampling and making a glittering generality out of it, he has come to conclude that he can tell who will enjoy good health in retirement simply by who does their own yard work.

Another reader, 66-year-old Emelita, writes that she has always walked 3 miles every other day, participated in aerobics 3 times a week, and still wears a size 3 in her retirement.  She points out that, “Bad or good habits never die . . . if you’ve been lazy it’s hard to start anything.”

It certainly is easier to be fit if you are just staying fit rather than waiting to get fit after retirement.  But all is not lost if you’ve waited.  Clay, another recent retiree, emailed that he only had time to work out 2 times a week when he was still working.  Now that he’s retired he goes to the gym every day and is now in the best shape of his life.  (I’m jealous—while I already had a pretty good exercise regimen before I retired, I can’t say that I’m in any better shape than before, even with all the “extra” time.)

Don't despair if you don’t do your own yard work, though.  My irate reader agrees with Clay, it’s never to late to start.   But start slowly at first, you don’t want to bring out a chainsaw when you haven’t even mastered the clippers yet.

Related Posts:

            Retirement Calories

            The Myth of the Skinny Retirement

            Retirement and Skinny Jeans

 

This is an article from Retirement A Full-Time Job

The Myth of the Skinny Retirement

Ok, I'm just going to come right out with it.  The absolute most disappointing thing about retirement is that I weigh exactly the same as I did one year ago when I retired.

Even more disappointing than the shattered illusion of the romantic retirement, is the shattered illusion of the skinny retirement.  Before I retired, I thought the only thing holding me back from the body of my dreams was work.  If only I didn't have to spend eight hours a day at my desk, I could be in the best shape of my life.

I imagined daily intense workouts.  I would start running, and train to do those 100 pushups.  I would incorporate more active fun into my daily routine.  I would make healthy meals.  That, combined with all that time I spent gardening and cleaning the house would get me into the best damn shape of my life!

Well, it wasn't my job keeping me from the body of my dreams after all.  Turns out it's me.  I hate running.  Retirement does not make you like things you don't like.  I used to like pushups, until I started the 100 Pushups Challenge (100 pushups in 6 weeks).  I made it to week three, I don't know how many times.

And eating.  When you have more time to have fun, you have more time to eat.  It's as simple as that.  Speaking of fun, martinis and steak are way more fun than Perrier and salad.

I'd like to say that I've let this one go, that retirement has somehow cured me from this desire to be really fit.  But it would be a lie.  I still get on that scale every day, hoping something mysterious happened, and I have a feeling I'll still be writing about this one next year, when I reflect on my second year of retirement.

Other Reflections on My First Year of Retirement:

Part 1:  Money

Part 2:  Loss of Identity

Part 3:  Boredom

Retirement Fitness Challenge

It seems like all the personal finance bloggers are talking about fitness and health these days.  Must be the bathing-suit weather around the corner.

Maybe the nature of finance bloggers (spend less money than you earn) is consistent with the mindset of getting fit (consuming less calories than you burn).  Millionaire Mommy addresses this symmetry in her post about using weight management techniques with your finances.  (By the way, she is in the weigh yourself daily camp--suddenly I don't feel so lonely there!)

Lisa at Greener Pastures talks about the Four Things You Need For Retirement; and yes, one of them includes exercise.

Over at Dooce, Heather is doing a 21-day cleanse:  no sugar, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, or animal products.

And today, Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme talks about how he keeps his health care costs down by leading a preventative lifestyle.  (Although, I'm not sure I could manage to eat only once a day!)

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly (on his Get Fit Slowly Blog) is taking the 100 pushups challenge.  I'm inspired; I'm going to do it too.  Right now I can do about 2-3 sets of 15-20 pushups (yes on my toes!)  It seems impossible to be able to do 100 consecutive pushups by the end of 6 weeks.  But I'm intrigued, so will join in trying with J.D.

In addition to the 100 pushups challenge, I want to see if I can develop a love for running like J.D.  I love the idea of running (you can do it anywhere, any time, and it's totally free), but so far, it feels very hard.  Today I jogged 3.5 miles and walked the remaining 1.5 mile loop from my house.  The path is a beautiful road winding through vineyards of the Napa Valley.  When I walk it, I don't bring an iPod; I'm perfectly happy to listen to the birds and enjoy the environment.  When I jog it, I have to bring music to distract me from how much I do not enjoy this activity.

Lise at Frugal in the Fruitlands has made her exercise goals public.  Seems like a good idea.  I'm going to give running the same 6 weeks as the 100 pushups challenge and see if I can't learn to love running as much as I love the idea of it.

Related Posts:

Retirement and Skinny Jeans

Exercise Like a Kid

Retirement Calories