What's Your Plan? No Really. What Is It?

It's National Women's Health Week!  Quite frankly, I have no clue who decides when it is going to be National Anything Week. I found out about National Hamburger Week after the fact. And I got in on National Yogurt Week just in time to enter a contest for a case of Greek yogurt that I did not win. But National Women’s Health Week…that’s right up my alley! Especially being a woman over 50 (and 60) who totally understands that to be healthy, fit, and dynamic after 50 requires more work, action, perseverance, research and dedication than being healthy and awesome at 30…or even 40!

Being healthy (and awesome) after 50 requires a plan. It does. There is no way to eat everything you want, avoid regular exercise, fill your life with stress, ignore menopause and ignore aging…and just BE healthy. Nope. If being healthy in this second season is your goal, you need a plan.

So. What’s the plan?

We make plans for just about everything else. We create “to do” lists that schedule out the minutes of our lives. We plan vacations. We write short term and long term career goals.  We have business plans and dinner plans and know exactly what we’ll do with our income tax refund for the next 5 years. But we don’t always have a health and well-being plan. And the glitch is that if we don’t have a health plan, there may be no point in developing a long term anything else plan…

When we use the word “health,” most often we think of diet, nutrition, exercise and sleep.  All of those are components of being “healthy.”  However, we often forget that there are other pieces to our health that are equally important – such as our emotional, mental and spiritual health.
 

Here’s the deal. We are uniquely designed – and you really cannot isolate your emotional health from your physical health, nor can you separate your spiritual health from your emotional health, or your physical health from your spiritual health.  Compartmentalizing the pieces of our health is a disjointed view of health and an incomplete plan that will still leave you…unhealthy.
 

Our soul (mind and emotions), our spirit, and our physical body are uniquely and intricately woven together – and they absolutely affect each other.

For example – there is evidence that living with bitterness and resentment can affect the joints of the physical body.  In fact, various forms of arthritis, especially in the back, have been linked to negative emotions stored and ignored.  Anxiety can raise blood pressure and heart rate.  Prayer and meditation can bring heart rate and blood pressure down and help with stress.  Chronic lack of sleep can cause hallucinations, depression, and weight gain.  This list goes on and on.
 

And I know it sounds infinitely more holy to focus on spiritual matters vs. exercise or giving up the soda that you already know is detrimental to your health.  However, a physical body that is breaking down from too much sugar, too many processed, chemical-laced and hormone-injected  foods  – will cut short your ability to carry out the mission or calling for which you are destined. Again - you just can't separate the components that define our overall health.

So, what’s your plan?  Because as a woman over 50 (or close to)…you need one.  And if you’re a woman under 50…you pretty much need one, too.  Because the brutal truth is this:  You’re getting older,  you’re approaching menopause where great hormonal and metabolic shifts will happen (whether you like it or not) – and you’re living in an increasingly stressful, overly busy, chemical-laden culture.

What are you doing right now to maximize and protect your health and quality of life when you’re 60, 70, 80, 90?

Take a moment to answer the following questions:

1.        What am I doing right now to protect my bone density from decreasing as I get older?

2.       What am I doing right now to protect myself from Type II diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer?

3.       What am I doing right now to maintain/gain muscle mass and maintain strength and balance?

4.       What am I doing right now to protect my mind and memory from disengaging?

5.       What am I doing right now to balance my stress?

6.       What am I doing right now to protect myself from depression and/or anxiety?

7.       What am I doing right now to maintain a healthy weight or lose excess weight?

8.       What am I doing right now to find peace in the midst of stressful, difficult circumstances?

9.       What am I doing right now to let go of unhealthy habits, emotions, routines, addictions?

10.   What am I doing right now to enhance, gain, maintain healthy social relationships?

If you answer “Nothing” to two or more of these questions – it is time to lay down any defensiveness, any excuses, any tasks you’ve deemed more important than your overall emotional, spiritual and physical well-being…and balance yourself out.
 

Walking from the car to the store entrance doesn’t qualify as exercise.  I became quite aware of this 8 years ago when my doctor looked at my high cholesterol and high blood pressure and asked what I was doing for exercise.  I answered: “I walk really, really fast through airports because I travel on business 5 days a week and am always in danger of missing a plane.”  She laughed because I can be somewhat of a comedienne at times.  And then she got serious and told me that the only thing I accomplish with quick dashes through airports to catch almost missed planes is….added stress…which produces extra cortisol (the stress hormone) which causes extra weight gain.  As opposed to 20 minutes or more of consistent, planned exercise that produces stress relieving, metabolism revving endorphins!
 

So, yeah – it requires a purposeful plan to be healthy after 50. For motivation, start thinking about the rewards of your plan.  There are many!  And start imagining how wonderfully awesome it will feel to tell a very surprised acquaintance that you are 65 – when that person was pretty sure you were in your early 40’s with all that vibrancy and healthy glow you give out!

So consider your goals, make a plan, and if you’re like me – writing down the plan helps.  Then check in with yourself regularly!
 

Now, whether or not you’re a fan - Suzanne Somers has been on the forefront of purposeful health for many years now.  She is over 60 in this video (she is currently 65 years old) – and here she speaks about some of the purposeful work required to be healthy in this current culture!  She has done so much research - so enjoy this wealth of information!

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Happy National Women's Health Week!
Cheryl