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EXCESS DISABILITIES: STICKING TO GOOD HEALTH HABITS
In addition to guarding against excess disabilities, the research shows that prevention is crucial. Exercising, not smoking, and adhering to good health habits are doubly important as the years advance. But the key is consistency, continuing a life-extension program for life. And the rewards of lighting an after-dinner cigarette or living on cake are more immediate and so have a powerful pull. But psychologists think the idea that people abandon their attempts to live healthfully because they lack willpower is wrong. Quitters are simply people who use poor strategies. The way they put their resolutions into practice makes it difficult not to backslide. Taking these steps will help you stick to a health improvement plan.
Make sure your plan is medically sound. For instance, more precautions are needed to exercise safely when you are over sixty-five. You must build up more slowly and take special care not to push yourself too hard. If you want to lose weight, the same cautions apply. Choose a diet that is gradual, health-mi, and reasonable. Crash dieting or unorthodox diets are more likely to shorten life than extend it. Consult an expert to devise a plan that fits your needs and capacities (e.g., visit a registered dietitian), or ask your family doctor for guidance. If you have gotten your plan from a book, get your doctor's blessing before going ahead.
Determine what will make sticking to your plan easiest. Devise a few possible strategies and write your ideas down. Ask yourself: "What is impeding my following through now?" Are you eating caking all day because you live alone and it's too much the trouble to fix a good meal? Is there nothing but bread in help to the house because it’s hard to get to the store? If so, would it help to buy more food less often so you can prepare a week's meals on one day and freeze them? Would you exercise more comfortably alone, to a tape or a favorite record, or along with a television program? Or would it help if you paid money and felt forced to attend a class regularly? If sit-ups and stretches are too boring to contemplate, is there a sport you might really enjoy?
Carry out each choice mentally to arrive at the best alternative. For instance, you might think, "I would feel best if I went to a class, but I would have to go to one nearby. I might have a problem if the class were filled with eighteen-year-olds. I think I'll see if the local senior center has a group."
Write down a place, number of hours, and time(s) for carrying out your plan. Make a specific, rigid schedule for following through: "I must sit at the table and eat three times a day. From 5:00 to 6:00 I'll prepare dinner and the next day's lunch." "At 4:00 P.M. I'll do twenty minutes of exercise to a tape." "On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I'll take that beginner's swim class at the Y."
Making a schedule instead of having a vague intention forces us to confront the sensation of success or failure at a certain time. Since we are creatures of habit, when we do anything regularly at the same time and place it eventually becomes automatic. The pattern takes on a life of its own, and soon we feel vaguely out of sorts, or downright deprived, if something happens and we cannot do what we always do.
Reward yourself regularly for sticking to the plan. Until your resolution becomes the mental equivalent of brushing your teeth and you are motivated to keep going just by how much better you feel, build in external rewards for not falling off the wagon. Here too, make a schedule. Do something definite every week or two to congratulate yourself: go to the theater, buy a dress, or simply enjoy an afternoon spent at home with a good book or visiting an old friend you rarely see. Rewarding yourself at close intervals is better than planning something big six months or a year away. It is too hard at the outset to contemplate following through for a lifetime, but almost anyone can stick to a plan for a week at a time.
In taking more control over your physical fate, be encouraged by this fact: there is no one-to-one relation between the results of medical tests - of vision or hearing or any other physical ability - and how a person functions. Some people with minor problems are disabled; others with more severe losses do fine. Since how we function, not our score on a test of lung function is what is important, the message is clear. Apart from extending your life, what you do today to improve your health will have an immediate payoff on the most important index of how old you are - how old you act.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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