How are you doing with your 2024 weight loss efforts? Or your fitness regimen? Eating more vegetables and fruits? Taking your supplements regularly? Is it going smoothly at about three weeks in, or not so much? I know I’ve slipped up. Based on Dr. Barabási’s research, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to failure. Remember what he found: it isn’t your age that determines your productivity, it’s your creativity.

Not Your First Rodeo

If you’ve been successful at changing a health habit, losing weight or getting fit, particularly when you were younger, you found a way to do it. Over the years, especially with weight loss and fitness, life happens, and your body changes; you go back to old habits and gain back weight or lose fitness.

There’s a tendency to try to recreate that experience again. In other words, you’re going to try the same workout routine, the same way to lower calories, whatever helped you achieve that goal. But life isn’t static and maybe it doesn’t work the same way. You decide to try another type of diet, such as the ketogenic diet, and that worked great—for a while. But you slowly returned to your old habits and gained back the weight. Because you’re older and with the change in metabolism that seems inevitable, you lose the passion for trying.

You just get tired of trying. You may be saying something like, “You’re just not into it,” or you make up some other excuse. But whatever the reason, you quit trying.

Never Stop Trying

At the end of his TED talk, Dr. Barabási’s said: Creativity has no age; only productivity does. What that means applies as much to health as it does to being a successful scientist or attaining any goal. Keep trying to find that one thing, that one way that will work for you. It doesn’t matter what diet you use, what aerobic workout you try, or what method you use to gain strength. The only thing that limits you is not your age but your willingness to keep trying until you figure it out. No matter your age, no matter your limitations, that way exists. You just must find it and make sure it’s sustainable for life.

The Bottom Line

Near the end of the movie “City Slickers” the character played by Jack Palance tells Billy Crystal’s character he knows the secret to life. Billy says, “Well, what is it?” Jack tells him that’s what he must figure out. Find that one thing and nothing else matters.

Whether it’s changing your weight, getting fit, lowering your blood pressure, or any other health goal you want to attain and maintain, that’s what you must figure out. No gimmicks, hacks, or short cuts. Find your way. I remain committed to helping you find it.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Ted Radio Hour. Late Bloomers. 9-1-2023