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30
HEALTH: OUTLOOK
we don’t have to get old
Modern day
lifestyles don’t
require us to
hunt or nurture
the pack as we
did millions of
years ago
This question popped in to my daily thoughts recently
as I completed an online form.
I was asked to tick the box for my age category, and
was mortified when I had to tick the 41-50 years!
How did that happen??
This led me to try to convince myself positively
that although I may have graced this earth for 41
years, I certainly didn’t feel 41. Regularly running
around in mud, as an athletic, energetic, vibrant....
grandmother.....oh dear, and that’s the point it all
went downhill!
When a teenager talks about old people, they’re
referring to me!! You see, I realised I fall in to the age
category of ‘old enough to know better, but young
enough to not care!’ None of us can avoid getting
older, but it doesn’t mean we have to get old!
Age is, after all, just a number; an amount of time
we have been a breathing, living entity.... it certainly
doesn’t define who we are as people! And this got me
thinking.
My national insurance number, is just a number,
my bank account number, is just a number, my
telephone number, is just a number, although they
are all important to me, none of them have any
bearing of who I am as a person!
I recently read a colleagues study she had performed
on two 30-year-old females, both with young families,
from similar backgrounds, doing similar jobs. But on
paper, these two women, could not be more different!
The first leads a healthy, active lifestyle, participating
in sporting activities, has a well balanced nutritional
intake, brimming with positivity, happy in her skin,
and making her health and fitness a priority as she
knows the importance it has on her and her family.
The second is the polar opposite: underweight,
fuelling on caffeine and nicotine, suffering from
a range of lifestyle based medical conditions,
desperately depressed and so unhappy with her
appearance it’s starting to cause concern for her
mental state.
If they were both asked anonymously to tick their age
category boxes, both would tick the 30-35 category,
and this is my point... nothing more than a number!
When we are young adults, we are blessed with the
athleticism and energy to take on the roles of our
forefathers, as nature intended, but modern day
lifestyles don’t require us to hunt or nurture the pack.
As young adults, we are all blessed with boundless
vitality… and this is when our crucial decisions are
made!
If we chose to take a path that involves bad lifestyle
choices we put in to place the building blocks for a
fast track pass to old age, degenerative practices that
place our bodies under extreme stresses to which it
will only respond in a negative way.
But, if the right choices are made at this early stage
of adult life, a very different person will emerge!
This change doesn’t have to happen in our younger
years, we can make the choice to change our path
Age is just a
number
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?
By PT
Emz Watts
