Your Body Is Not Holding You Back: A Framework for Healthy Aging

Your body is not holding you back; it is preparing you for the life you still want to live. In this chapter of life, it isn't about slowing down, but about becoming the person you were created to be. I am Coach TJ, and I want to share how the pillar of the body fits into our framework for living with purpose after 50.

What if the next chapter of your life isn't about slowing down, but about becoming the person you were created to be? Hey, I'm Coach TJ. Welcome to the Mind Body Faith Over 50 podcast.

Before we get started, I want to share a next step for some of you. If you're ready to start the journey toward becoming a new you, go to mbfpodcast.com forward slash new to schedule a complimentary call with me. That's mbfpodcast.com forward slash new. Now let's get back to the show.

The Purpose of Our Physical Strength

I'm really excited about today's episode because I have something to share with you that can truly help you look and feel younger. In our last episode, we talked about the first of our three pillars for the show, the mind, and how what we think can determine the outcome of our lives. So this week, let's expand on the framework for the Mind Body Faith Over 50 podcast and talk about our next pillar, the body.

When you think of your body, what do you think of? Is it just a bunch of parts that work together? Is it one big piece that you control with your mind and your actions? Or do you think of it as this physical appearance that other people see?

I care about my body because it's the only one I've got. I know once it starts to wear down that I'm gonna have a harder time accomplishing the things that I want to do. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. Not just what our bodies look like on the outside, but what our bodies allow us to do.

I remember a commercial from a while back. It was this guy that was a little older than me. And he started waking up early in the morning, maybe in the middle of the year. Every day he would drag himself out to the garage and then pull out this heavy weight that he had in there and like practice lifting it.

Except at the beginning of the commercial, you see his neighbor watching what he's doing, right? She's like, "What's this guy up to?" And he's trying to lift this weight, but he was barely able to lift it at all. It was more like he was using it to support himself just to crouch up and down, you know.

But he kept doing it. Day after day. He would go out to the garage and drag out this weight. And of course, his neighbor continued to watch from the window. And slowly he got to where he could pull it up to his chest, like deadlifted. Actually lift it up with the strength of his legs.

Later in the commercial and several weeks or maybe months into his daily routine, he could actually lift the weight up to his chest, which was pretty impressive. And then it was neat to see the progression that you know was probably like I say, weeks, if not months, because at the end he was able to lift the weight all the way above his head. And you're like, well, that's cool. But then what's this commercial about?

You see him go into his family's house at Christmas, and his granddaughter wanted to put the star, or I guess it was an angel, on top of the Christmas tree. And he was able to lift her up so that she could put it on top of the tree. And he gets this big smile, and you realize that's what he had been working for this whole time, just for that one moment.

Because that was such an important moment for him. He wanted to be able to participate in that and he wanted to be able to do that with his granddaughter, right? And now that I have grandkids, man, I get it. I definitely want to continue to be able to lift up my grandkids and play with them.

Not even just now when they're young, but when they get older, I want to be able to go and have adventures with them to go rock climbing and even downhill skiing, because I haven't done that in a while. In fact, I would love to move to Colorado and downhill ski a lot more often than I've been able to do, living here in Florida, obviously.

So what is it that you want to accomplish? And what role does how you take care of your body play in that? Because that's the question I want you to think about. What do you want your body to allow you to do?

A Biblical Framework for Your Body

The Bible doesn't present a modern nutrition and longevity plan, but it does give us a strong biblical framework for caring for our bodies, especially through what we eat, self-control, stewardship, rest, and purposeful living. In fact, in First Corinthians, the Bible says, "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You are not your own, you were bought for a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies."

Now taking care of your body isn't just about looking better and living longer, it's stewardship and using what God's entrusted to you. In fact, the Bible says that physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

Nourishment Over Indulgence

The biblical diet wasn't based on processed foods, refined sugars, or ultra convenient meals. Many foods specifically mentioned in the Bible are whole, minimally processed foods, the way our bodies were designed. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds and fish. You get the picture.

In Daniel, there's an interesting story in the Bible because it talks about him saying to God, "Please test your servants for ten days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink." After that test before the king, Daniel and his companions appeared healthier than those that were eating the king's food.

But that's not to say that the Bible tells us we should just be vegetarians. I'm certainly not. I do think though, that it provides an interesting example of how intentional eating and choosing nourishment over say indulgence is meaningful. Basically, we should be taking care of our bodies in a way that can allow us to live and do so with strength, with energy and with purpose.

Health from the Inside Out

Let's think a little differently now. Instead of just the expression of the outside of your body, because we all have a perception of what that looks like on the outside, right? Let's talk more about health inside, because, and I'm not just talking about ligaments and bones and blood vessels and that kind of stuff, but I want you to think about the inside of your body in a different way.

If you close your eyes and listen, if you're driving, don't close your eyes. Didn't say that. Just think with me for a moment. Think about the inside of your body. Because what you do to keep the inside of your body healthy will be shown externally. Does that make sense?

In other words, it doesn't do you any good to look healthy on the outside if inside your arteries are clogged or your heart's enlarged, or if you're a guy like me, you know, you might have prostate issues because a lot of us deal with stuff like that. And some of those things, admittedly, we can't control. And I and I get that.

But there are a lot of things that we can do and should do, especially as we get older, to help our bodies internally to be healthier. In fact, for me and a lot of listeners who are older than me, we probably remember not more than a generation or two before us that our families were farmers, or at least they had gardens and grew food naturally, right? And they used that food.

Sometimes they also used the large families to help harvest that food, but that's a different story. But that food was healthier than what we have today, partly because the soil has been worked so much today with multiple crops having been planted and then you introduce things like herbicides and pesticides and don't even get me started as a scientist about the studies of the kinds of things that have been found in our bodies as a result of all that.

Modern Nutrition and the Need for Supplements

Sadly, there's also the issue of the nutrition in the foods that we buy off the shelves in the stores, ones we've come to depend on that based on the way they're manufactured, they are not nearly as healthy as it used to be, especially here in the US. So something we might have eaten as a kid that was bread, for instance, and maybe you were fortunate enough to have your mom bake you bread.

But if you would have gone to the store 20, 30 years ago, it probably had three or four ingredients in it, right? yeast, flour. what else is on bread? I don't know. Eggs? Nope. Clearly I don't make bread, but it'd be stuff you'd recognize, right? It would be natural ingredients.

And now some foods can have twenty or thirty ingredients, including ingredients that have been restricted or banned in other countries because of concerns about bad effects, right? Now, I don't say all that to alarm you, I say it to enlighten you. And several of you know that already, I'm sure. And you could probably enlighten me, and I welcome that.

But it wasn't something that I realized until recently. I just kind of assumed that, you know, the same things we had today, if we had twenty or thirty years ago, it must be made the same way, right? So here's what I wanted to share with you guys that I'm excited about is that there are definitely ways that you can help your body so that you can, if not live longer, live with more purpose, more energy, and to look and feel younger.

Listen, if we learned anything from COVID, we learned about longevity and ways that we can help our body to be more healthy. You probably heard things like CoQ10 and vitamin D, vitamin B twelve or B complex—all are things that can help our bodies to fight off oxidative stress and things that just naturally because of our environment bring us down.

So I highly recommend you looking into some quality vitamins and minerals that can help with that and see what effect it has on you. See if it doesn't make you look and feel younger. There are supplements that I take every day and have been for a decade or more that I know have helped me to be healthier.

This is based on ingredients that are natural products that God put here on earth. Things like vitamins and minerals and stuff that comes from plants and trees that God intended us to use. And those things were abundant in the soil at one time, and we probably didn't need supplements because that's supplementary, right? Well, we do today. We do because we're not getting it naturally.

For many of us, we can try to get what we need for our bodies from foods and I hope that you will do that and eat healthy. But unless you're an organic farmer that grows everything yourself and keeps track of what you put in your body, that's probably not enough. And if you are, man, that's great. That'd be awesome.

But for the rest of us, what we do with our bodies and how we nourish them helps us. Just like the guy in the commercial, where he was working out for a specific task. He was using his core to strengthen that stability to build the ability to stand up and move around more. We can strengthen ourselves on the inside, also.

The Law of Inertia: Keep Moving

So I'll throw this in since I'm a physicist and a scientist. Newton's first law. It's basically the law of inertia that says a body that's in motion stays in motion, right? Basically, it's a lot easier to keep moving once you've started moving.

And when you've changed your habits to where you're not moving around and you're just sitting and not doing a lot, it becomes more and more difficult to get up and move around. And especially as we get older. So we can either allow ourselves to gradually become less active, or we can make the decision to keep moving.

It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't mean that you're trying to become a bodybuilder or an athlete. Listen, I am not your fitness coach, but I am trying to motivate you and in some ways using your body. What God gave you in taking care of that is an important step towards feeling healthier, being stronger, and looking younger.

So I'm gonna keep doing those things that allow me to help my body because it's important to me. And I encourage each of you to do the same on the inside and the outside. And think about what you want to do, your body to allow you to do.

Maybe it's playing with your grandkids. Maybe it's hiking. Maybe even skiing. Or it could just be traveling. Maybe it's getting up every morning and just having the strength and the energy to enjoy the life that you have. Whatever it is, start thinking about it now.

Because your body is part of the vehicle that allows you to live out the next chapter of your life. And before we finish the show today, I want to remind you to go to mbfpodcast.com forward slash new so you can book a call with me to talk about the new you, where you see yourself going, and how we can work together to get you there.

All right, next week we'll talk about the third pillar for our Mind Body Faith Over 50 podcast, which is of course faith. And then we'll talk about the foundation for this whole scripture. I look forward to being with you in the next episode. Until then, remember, renew your mind, strengthen your body, deepen your faith, and live your best life yet.

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