Where did my energy go?

Hello, my name is Pam Strand. I'm your podcast host and welcome to the Longevity Gym. As you may know, this podcast is devoted to learning to live longer, stronger, and better.

Today, I want to talk about energy. In fact, I wanted to ask you, do you happen to know where my energy went? If you're like me, that's a question I seem to ask myself more frequently now that I'm in my 60s. I hear myself saying things like, ugh, I don't have the energy that I used to. Or, as I said in my question, where did my energy go? It feels like it got up and went without me. Quantitatively, I know that I don't have the same energy I used to have in my fifties.

My body is losing its efficiency in producing energy as it gets older. I understand that this is a metabolic fact. Metabolism does change with the aging process. All of the chemical and physical systems and reactions that maintain life in our body, which is the definition of metabolism, change and become less efficient with age. It's in our 60s when these changes really begin to take hold. And while they were beginning in our 40s and 50s, they become more obvious when we hit our 60s.

Today's episode isn't really about exploring the exact metabolic changes that occur. It's really about acknowledging that they do occur, and then helping us get strategic in addressing them.

I believe the key is to get curious and not furious with these changes. For the more furious we are, the more likely we are to disconnect with our bodies and miss or maybe ignore the messages it's sending. I admit, it's frustrating and at times very discouraging to work With what is changing in our bodies, but being furious takes us out of problem solving mode and puts us into victim mode, bemoaning the aging process, asking why is this happening to us?

Being furious can also put us into a constant state of battle with aging, being defiant about the process and fighting to keep going at the same pace and rate that we've always gone. When we are a victim of or at battle with aging and the inevitable changes, we actually may end up making things worse.

Moving from being tired to being simply exhausted, making our sleep worse, experiencing annoying aches and pains, not to mention injuries, having low moods, chronic muscle tension, and maybe worse, A feeling of absolute defeat, and we end up dropping out. Comparing our current energy with the energy of our younger years, even if that was just five years ago, is a no win situation. At least it is in my mind.

Comparisons in any form never bring much joy, nor do they bring reliable and sustainable solutions. The alternative to being furious is being curious. Curiosity turns on our problem solving abilities. It stimulates our intuition and imagination. It creates the opportunity for something new and different that gets better results than what we're getting now. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Curiosity also opens our minds and helps us see nuances we didn't see before or we couldn't see when we're being furious. It also turns off the catastrophic thinking of, oh, my life is over, and turns on our objective lens. Hey, what's really going on here?

When we are curious, We are more apt to start experimenting and exploring how we might switch things up to get better results and have more energy. We might begin to ask ourselves what we truly want at this point in our life, and what our bodies and its systems need. Or we may ask ourselves how we might change in order to meet the needs of our bodies and help them stay as efficient as possible at creating the vital energy we love to have in our lives. Don't get me wrong.

This is not an instantaneous flip of the switch. It takes some guts to see things differently and to open yourself up to changes in your mindset and in your lifestyle. I do believe though, it does come down to a choice. Do we stick with what doesn't seem to work, so we save face, with no one else but ourselves, I might suggest, or do we find new ways to take care of our energy and our body? Will our energy feel like it was in our 40s and 50s?

Based on my experience, I would say no. And also based upon what I know about the body and our physiology. But I think that's the wrong question to be asking. As I said earlier, comparison never makes Much sense it doesn't create solutions and it certainly doesn't help boost our energy I believe the more effective question to be asking ourselves is how can I have the best energy? Possible for the age I am today movement, exercise, sleep, stress management, nutrition, rest, recovery.

All of these things are important at any age, but become more important as your body gets older and experiences metabolic changes. Just because we're older and our body is changing doesn't mean our energy has to diminish. But we have to let ourselves not talk ourselves out of taking care of our bodies. There is less wiggle room as we get older.

And it's really up to us that if there are obstacles keeping us from changing up our lifestyle so we have greater energy, we need to remove them or find a way to fix them. way to navigate around them. And more isn't necessarily better. Just like in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you need to find what fits best. There are endless ways to restore, replenish, and sustain your energy. The key is to find what works for you. And that really is where the difficulty comes from.

We really want to know What do I do? What exactly do I do? Well, guess what?

You're going to have to experiment a little bit and find what works for you. Maybe you add strength training or more movement to your life. Or maybe you back off the intensity and frequency of your exercise and factor in more work on flexibility, mobility, and balance. Maybe it's time to take a little break from exercise for a while and take care of those annoying and limiting aches and pains.

It could be time to re educate and re commit yourself to healthy nutrition and make some changes at meal time. Maybe it's a shorter workday, letting go of obligations and activities that add little value to your life and really are simply a drain on your energy. Could be time to prioritize sleep and remove any obstacles and to help your body get better sleep. Maybe you need more rest and recovery during the week. Maybe a vacation, getting a change of scenery.

Making room to take care of your mental well being. Reconnecting with friends. It all counts. And it all can make a difference in the amount of energy that we experience in our 60s and beyond. As I said, we need to experiment and find what works for us. Make a list. I bet you already know the things that are draining your energy. And what might actually make a difference to have more energy? If not, seek out a coach or a fitness expert or a wellness professional.

They can help you navigate these changes. And then once you have your list, I would really encourage you just to pick one thing to work on at a time. If we have a long list of what seems like simple things we can do, trying to do all of them or many of them at the same time actually ends up creating a very complex and unsustainable situation. You are likely setting yourself up for failure. And I say this out of love and also out of personal experience. I stumble when I have a long list.

But when I push myself to pick one thing, I'm also pushing myself to make my priorities clearer. And I end up more committed to seeing that one thing through. And guess what? I'm usually more successful than I thought I would be. Because success leads to more success. I find that when I work on one thing, that sometimes just naturally sets in motion other positive changes.

Some of those changes were on my list, and others I never thought of, and actually are probably more impactful than what I thought of. So pick one thing. Then put your list away and concentrate on that one thing for at least two weeks. Make some notes along the way. And once those two weeks are up, that's when you evaluate. You identify what worked, what didn't, and what you learned. If what you tried worked, yay, keep doing it. If it kind of worked, make some adjustments and try again.

If it didn't work, well, you've now got some valuable information to use to make another selection of one thing. Remember, keep your curious mind up front and center because curiosity leads to awareness and awareness leads to new insights and new ideas and new solutions.

And oh yeah, be sure to celebrate your wins. I know it sounds maybe silly in our 60s that we should be giving ourselves a pat on the back, but even if it's a private fist pump and like, yeah, I did it, or a smiley face on your calendar or to do list, it really, really does make a difference.

Our energy may be different, As we get older, but it still can be brilliant and it still can be vibrant and it can still carry us well through life. It takes finding ways to tune into our bodies to see what they need to acknowledge the metabolic changes we are experiencing and then adapting our lifestyle choices to support our bodies and its systems in the best way we can. I know you can do it. I know I can do it. So here's to making our energy shine.

Thanks for tuning in, and I will see you next time.