🌄 Good morning (here), @minismallholding! ☕
Very good post, on what many (raising my hand here) struggle with wanting to accept.
"It's been accepted for a long time now that exercise and keeping active as you age is a good thing ..."
Coming up on the 1st anniversary of my own "major medical event," I can attest firsthand to what was stressed over and over in the resulting therapy afterwards. Paraphrasing:
"The benefits of exercising consistently are greater than those of all of these other medications, etc. combined!"
"If a pill had been invented, encapsulating these benefits, it would very quickly become the most valuable on the market. Probably worth as much as all of the others combined!"
So ... 🫡 As you say ... The wisdom of the old, but very simple phrase - "use it or lose it" ...
"I'll be honest, I've never seen the appeal of exercise for exercise sake and most certainly would never have joined a traditional gym."
... we (my beloved and I) had to get over this life-long resistance ourselves, as it is sad how few good alternatives there are, in our "advanced" (🤷♂️) lifestyle. We are now consistently going to our local community center, where they are equipped well enough for our purposes.
Our objective is very simple (at least, in our minds). We have no desire to live beyond our preordained "number of days." We would, however, like to be as uhhh ... "serviceable" ... during our remaining time as we can manage.
Proper exercise is a foundational part (cornerstone?) of making that possible.
Great to see you taking these steps and being able to vouch for how beneficial they have been to you. I hope others will read this post and derive some inspiration to get over whatever their inertia is keeping them from experiencing it for themselves. 👍
This exactly. I would rather be active until my end than barely able to do anything for myself as years slowly tick by, especially if I'm in chronic pain. I saw my grandmother pretty much give up on life when she felt she'd lost her independence.
I also have to admit that having not really done anything for myself for years while I raised my girls (and even beside that if I'm honest), I now love that I can spend this time on myself and with my youngest daughter to boot. If I'd just given in to letting myself go/grow old, then I wouldn't be enjoying this and may have gotten resentful that I missed out on it.
The community centre sounds like a good place. It's always more fun to do these things in company than alone, as well. Here's to us all enjoying active lives to the end.
Yes, @minismallholding, ...
... and Amen! Certainly the part over which we have any influence ...
I hope you and yours have enjoyed a nice day, on your side of the planet! 😉👋
Well we just got back from another climbing session, so that made it a nice day. 😁