Turning Point: Use your training Table for anti-aging

Training Table and Retirement:

We have our turning points in life, a decisive moment and watershed events along our life-journey.  Learning to walk, learning to drive, turning 21, perhaps marriage, birth, funerals. Events that let us know we are embarking in a new and significantly different phase, or stage of our life.

 I reached yet another such exact point in time, In March when I turned 65. As the marker birth year approached, torrents of Medicare information deluged my home. Our society let me know that a major turning point is approaching.

Week 1 of retirement: Turning effect:

You’re old, it’s now and it’s real. The Training Table philosophy uses milestones as a pause for reflection, celebration, and healthy growth.

As an anti-ager, the 65^th birthday threshold is a time to reap the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. As of 7 days ago, I in fact retired from a 44-year teaching career and hence am at the threshold of a new phase.

So how do I feel?

I celebrate that the time is here, I’m a retiree and I’m fit and healthy. Achieving wellness at the time of retirement is no easy feat and that is a major goal accomplished, not to be taken for granted. The rules of the Training Table are serving me well now.

So, I make it a point to revel in the fact that I am youthful in body and older in phase of life.

Intellectually, I knew I was inevitably getting to that phase of retirement, but it rather stunned me to reach birthday 65. Everyone has been asking me if I have a "plan” and how do I feel?

Well, actually, I don’t really have a detailed one. I don’t know if I’m moving, down-sizing, and all that. I’d say my feelings are a combination of joy and anxiety. But I do have The Training Table and that the health tips and wellness information are certainly a huge part of the “plan.”

RETIREMENT RULE #1: Schedule out movement throughout the day:

Now that I am no longer in a classroom, running around all day after kids, walking up and down halls, or walking to campus spaces, my first goal is to find ways to displace the natural movements that are in a work setting, with a life that does not immediately incorporate movement. I have begun by putting together day schedules that incorporate fitness activities and have begun exploring my fitness options.

• ·         I’ve scheduled in:
•        walks around my neighborhood
• ·          Exercises on my spin bike
• ·         weights training sessions with a trainer
• ·         I stretch while I watch T.V. (I’ve left a small mat and stretch ropes in front of the TV to cue me in to move while I watch.)
• ·         Begin and end each day with some form of movement[LC1] 
• ·         Search and discover classes for yoga and stretch that fit my needs to be included in my weekly routine.         

  

BUMP IT UP; lay out some rules

So, week 1, RETIREMENT PLAN has been to pump up my exercise activities and to make a pact with myself that I will not become sedentary. Sorry, (me) no excuses about too much work- staying healthy is my new job description.

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 [LC1]