Welcome back to Age Wise, exploring the science of improving physical health and mental wellness at every stage of life. This week, a reader’s perspective that just might change yours:
Since his teens, D.B. Sayers (that’s not him in the photo) has been lifting weights, running, swimming, surfing and snow skiing, he wrote in a comment after reading my article on the benefits of weightlifting versus aerobics.
“At 73, it still surprises people to learn my age, if it comes up,” he wrote. “And I can still surf, ski black diamond and just about anything else people half my age do...just not as fast. So it isn't simply years to life, it's life to years.”
Abe Lincoln once said similar: "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Never was the advice more apt than today, when medical advances allow us longer potential lifespans, while so many factors conspire to wreak havoc on health spans, the years one lives in good health, able and capable in mind and body: sedentary lives, poor diet and subpar sleep.
This week we learned how one simple behavioral change can improve health span: Avoid eating late at night.
In a small but rigorously controlled new study, researchers had 16 overweight and obese volunteers eat the same meals during two days-long experiments. The only change was to shift all the meals four hours later in one of the two experiment periods.
When they ate late at night, the participants’ burned calories at a slower rate for the next 24 hours and had lower body temperatures, two classic signs of slower metabolism that can lead to weight gain. Making matters worse, the next day and into the following night, the odds of feeling hungry—expressing a greater desire to eat—doubled after late-night eating.
Wrapping up your meals and snacking earlier promotes better sleep, which leaves you in a better mood, sharper, and more physically capable. That sets up a positive cycle of well-being. Now, while we’re at it…
Other research has shown that cutting just 300 calories per day—equal to about one large slice of pizza, or half a pint of ice cream, or about six Oreos—can contribute to weight loss and notably improve overall health and up the odds of hanging around several more years. Nixing those calories from your nighttime routine is the best approach, we now know.
Weight loss is best achieved not through any whacko diet but when healthy ways of eating and calorie consciousness are combined with physical activity, ideally a mix of aerobic effort and strength training. And on that note: If weightlifting isn’t your thing, no worries. D.B. Sayers offered another bit of sage advice: “In retrospect, I should have scaled back on how much weight I used (on the bench, for example) and scaled up on the number of reps,” he wrote.
Indeed, any arduous activity needs to be approached with proper technique and due caution. So I’ll leave you with this good news, which I’ve repeated many times because it’s vitally true:
Any sort of physical effort—ideally a mix of muscle strengthening and brisk walking or other aerobic activity—will improve your sleep and your health and your odds of living longer and healthier—greater lifespan and greater healthspan. Check out my no-excuses guide to physical activity for a bunch of suggestions.
Your support makes my health reporting and writing possible. Please consider forwarding this to a friend, and I won’t complain if you buy me a cup of coffee while I’m busy finishing up my book, “Make Sleep Your Superpower,” due out coming Nov. 1 (Learn more on my website). —Rob