My life after 50

“WELL,” said the doctor, “let’s look at the numbers.”

“The numbers,” an indecipherable series of test results from my recent exhaustive physical, filled half a dozen pages, each of which he scanned soberly before flipping to the next.

As I waited for the verdict on that afternoon last autumn, I wondered whether all this recent concern about my health was worth the trouble.

It had begun three years earlier, when I turned 50, and my wife insisted I have a colonoscopy. (Having been a Hollywood screenwriter for many years before switching careers, I suppose I was used to such indignities.) The results of the colonoscopy were fine. But now my wife suggested that it might be a good idea to have a complete physical. The works.

Dutifully, though reluctantly, I spent half a day being pricked, prodded, drained and wired up. Various fluids were sent to various labs. When the results were back, I expected to thank the doctor for his trouble and free him to go treat really sick people.

So much for expectations. I was stunned to learn that my cholesterol was high, and my glucose tests showed I was “what we call pre-diabetic,” my doctor said. Having had retina surgery years ago, the specter of impaired vision, or worse, loomed in my mind.

I left his office with strict instructions to change my diet, begin an exercise regimen and learn how to test my glucose levels at home. I realized that, when it came to assumptions about my health, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Not that weight loss and fitness were new concepts to me. I’d been struggling with extra poundage ever since a reporter described me as “avuncular” in a magazine article a few years ago. Besides, I live in L.A., the land of Pilates, power yoga and plastic surgery; of extreme makeovers and celebrity diets.

Now the stakes were higher. This wasn’t just about appearance; it was about how long I was going to live, and the quality of my life. I had a family for whom I wanted to be around for a long time. And I wanted to be in relatively good shape for as much of that time as possible.

Suddenly I was remembering how many aches and pains I’d been feeling lately. How long it took to recover when I’d banged up my knee during a recent game of touch football. How I seemed to huff and puff just climbing a flight of stairs.

As I thought about it more, I realized that attending seriously to one’s health, especially at midlife, goes straight to the heart of issues vital to everyone: choices they’ve made about career, lifestyle, even where they live. It’s basic quality-of-life stuff, mercifully masked during the rush toward achievement and security in our 30s and 40s, now much less mercifully pushed to the forefront when we reach 50.

Was there a way, I wondered, to lose weight and get fit that took into consideration who I really was, and what I could be expected to do? In other words, what does fitness mean, what does it look like, in a relatively sedentary person older than 50? After all, we live in an era when men are getting pectoral implants, for God’s sake. When health magazines promise Olympian-like bodies, perpetual youth, eternal sexual vigor.

In the face of such over-the-top claims by fitness gurus and self-help authors, there’s the reality of me: a 53-year-old professional man, suburban husband and father, who would have to challenge lifelong behavior patterns when it came to meals and motion. An Italian-American child of the ‘50s, raised on the East Coast, my idea of dinner usually involved red meat, bread and a fair amount of pasta (which we used to call spaghetti, but now seems more commonly referred to as a carb). Then, after polishing off dessert, some rigorous manipulating of the TV remote would provide my only allotment of physical activity.

Obviously, all this had to change. Theoretically, I was all for it. But in fact my medical condition demanded it.

You’d think that would make it easier. You’d think.

*

But first, a plan of attack

In retrospect, I believe it was this awareness that change would be really hard that led me to approach the whole fitness issue systematically. I needed a plan.

The first step was finding a dietary program I could live with. Wading through the pile of diet books on my night table, I settled on a variation of the Zone Diet. It sounded a little less hysterical than Atkins (“Go on, have three or four steaks! Only wimps worry about clogged arteries!”), though reading cheerful descriptions of the Zone’s suggested late-night snack gave me pause. A slice of turkey, strawberries and three peanuts? The image of those three forlorn peanuts rolling around on a plate, my culinary reward at the end of a hard day, was disheartening, to say the least.

For exercise, I decided to start small: 30 minutes on the treadmill while I watched CNN, the cardiovascular benefits hopefully outweighing whatever the day’s news did to my blood pressure. After that, 30 sit-ups and some stretches I vaguely remembered from an aerobics class I’d taken 20 years ago.

Finally, in keeping with tradition, I’d start on a Monday.

As I learned over time, these particulars were not important. Whatever program of diet and exercise one uses, the most important new habit to learn is being conscious -- of what you’re eating (and how much), and of how your body reacts when it’s moving. Most important, you must be aware of what you’re feeling. This means paying attention to emotions that seem to trigger the need to eat; noticing, for example, which foods you use to self-medicate in times of distress and noticing whether you’re really hungry at all.

I didn’t know any of this then, in those early weeks after the doctor’s visit. That awareness would come later, after a protracted, up-and-down slog through my own psychological landscape, grappling with deeply ingrained behavioral habits.

For now, as I warily began Day One of my fitness program, all I knew was that I’d taken the tentative first steps on a new path. And that despite the promises of fitness experts and diet doctors, despite the wealth of scientific evidence touting the necessity of exercise and the antioxidant properties of blueberries, I had no idea whether my new-found determination would last. Would I, I often wondered, nibbling my three peanuts and sipping from my water bottle, even last a week?

It was then that I recalled the words of philosopher Antonio Machado, about having too much faith in highly touted plans. “Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.”

So. I stepped on the treadmill, cranked up the TV volume and started walking.

*

Next week: Life without bread, sugar and potatoes -- or, “If it’s white, don’t bite.”