From what I gather, the good news is there is a way, but the bad news is if you haven’t been keeping an active and healthy lifestyle your whole there is nothing you can do, you simply can’t cram decades worth of exercise and nutrition benefits into a few short years all at once and expect to reap benefits.
It's a bit like changing the oil on a car engine. You need to keep up with it. Sure, some neglect is partially recoverable but generally it's "wear and tear". You only have so many telomeres and many processes are irreversible.
> the bad news is if you haven’t been keeping an active and healthy lifestyle your whole there is nothing you can do, you simply can’t cram decades worth of exercise and nutrition benefits into a few short years all at once and expect to reap benefits.
I think this is bullshit. A poor lifestyle over decades will have consequences but there definitely are benefits to be had in taking up exercise and healthier eating whatever your age.
Sure, if you're 50 and haven't been taking care of yourself at all, starting right now is better than never starting. But there's likely going to be some ceiling you hit, a ceiling that would have been higher had you been taking better care of yourself your whole life.
> I think this is bullshit.
At the risk of being "that guy": can we keep the temperature down? That kind of reaction feels unnecessary and is the way we get people polarized about things. (Not saying I'm not guilty of this from time to time, but I'm trying to be better!)
What is the “ceiling” though? Sure, you’re not going to walk on to an NFL team but you will def. feel better from a more active lifestyle and healthier diet even at 50+
Doesn’t matter. Any “feeling” you get at that point is just endorphins and placebo. As soon as you stop, you quickly feel like shit again.
A lifetime of bad eating and no exercise means your arteries are clogged, nothing you can do to change that you just live with it, and physical activity could eventually give you a heart attack as your heart fails to keep up with the new demand.
You will likely have little muscle mass, most of your body will be a bunch of layers of fat covering small weak muscles, and at age 50+ your body is simply not going to build muscle the way it used to, if at all. On the contrary, if you had built a fit muscular body early when you’re young and maintained it all your life, your body in old age would be mostly dense muscular structures, and thin layers of fat. Two old people can appear the same size but have radically different compositions underneath. Even though we lose muscle as we age, the best defense is to have plenty of muscle to spare. The muscles also help in the regulation of insulin.
And then of course there’s the issue of bones. Physical exercise and lifting weights builds strong dense bones and if you’ve neglected both then you’re plunging into old age with a bad skeletal foundation. Your bones will be brittle and hollow and more prone to breakage and unable to tolerate stress. Building strong bones takes time, it’s measured in microfractures. At 50+, you don’t have time.
With bad bones, bad muscles, and a bad circulatory system, it’s easy to see how you should be in a bed “getting some rest” instead of out doing strenuous activity where you can break something easily.
