Author: kathyagilbert

My Journey from Treadmills to Dumbbells

A number of years ago, I was diagnosed with osteoporosis. I knew very little about bone density at that time. But I was approaching 70 and knew I needed to take it seriously.

Women lose significant bone mineral density with hormonal shifts during menopause years. Fractures are a major cause of morbidity in postmenopausal women, and bone density is the big factor here.

When I got my diagnosis, I was handed the typical prescription. Doctors provide invaluable service to us, but I also think they can be shortsighted when it comes to solutions outside of pharmacologica. I began by following the protocol, but also started researching alternative pathways so I could get off it.

I learned that muscle mass is directly tied to bone strength, and muscle mass decreases as we age. For many years I had been aerobically active but not necessarily strong. I had run a marathon and taught aerobic classes for years. It was a formula for disaster as I was getting older. 

The weight section of the gym always intimidated me. But this past January, I was in Palm Springs with my daughter. She wanted to find a gym so I went with her.  As I stared blankly at all the weights and machines, she stepped in and began helping me. 

After that, I had the courage to continue the journey on my own. As I gradually increased the weight, I began to see small changes in muscle. The picture above is not going to win any awards for muscle but, compared to where I was, I am happy about it. Motivation comes as we see the effects of our hard work.

So “lift heavy things” became a mantra for me. Below are some recommendations I implemented to address bone density. It is never too late!

Start small

  1. I bought a 10-pound weighted vest and began wearing it for short intervals around the house. Then I took it for a walk. I was amazed how heavy an extra 10 pounds felt. Some people have found change by doing nothing other than that.
  1. I purchased some light dumbbells, (3, 5 and 8 lb weights to start) and began with some basic exercises. Tricep extensions, bicep curls, and shoulder presses were where I started for upper body. I also did body weight squats and lunges for lower body. I have since added much heavier weights (I’ve added 10, 15 and 25 lb weights) and purchased a barbell, but it has taken time to get there.
  1. Whenever I wasn’t sure, I would google “how to do a proper” whatever. I discovered many free YouTube programs, and after getting familiar with the exercises, landed on Caroline Girvan’s Iron Program. It is definitely challenging but very adaptable to beginning levels.

Supplement

  1. I started regularly taking Vitamin D3K2 as it is essential for bone density. It helps the body absorb calcium, which is crucial for maintaining strong bones.

  2. Creatine helps build bone density and muscle mass, especially when combined with resistance training, so I added that to my daily supplement routine.

Eat for strength

Protein needs go up as we age because muscle mass is declining. I aim for 1 gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. Because that is a high number, I have to be intentional about it. It’s not a number I always hit, but if I aim for that, my numbers are higher than if I was just hoping for the best.

Just move

The whole “motion is lotion” is true. We do not stop moving because we get weaker, we get weaker because we stop moving. Aim for whatever is possible and go on from there. When I was at my worst with Rheumatoid Arthritis, I could only walk to the mailbox. So I did that. 

Let’s not just hope for the best and wait to see what happens. I have another dexa scan next month and am hoping I see improvement. But either way, I am getting stronger.

We are not only getting older, we are hopefully also getting wiser. That’s our portion. Let’s lean into it.

Rating Our Health

I was at the doctor’s office with a form asking me to rate my health from poor to excellent. That’s always a tricky one.

The obvious choice to me is excellent. But then I wonder what the doctor would think. I have a couple of “conditions” which might suggest otherwise.

  • High blood pressure since I was pregnant with Hunter, my fifth born son who turns 30 this year

  • High cholesterol and a scan confirming I have a bit of arterial build up
  • Ten years of living with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease involving a lot of pain and a long healing process. And many life changes.
  • Osteoporosis, which the doctor said requires drugs. “You’re a small framed older white woman. It is inevitable,” she said.
  • Three melanoma moles, gratefully discovered early and removed. Thank you New Jersey shore and baby oil.

Knowing those conditions would be revealed on the form, I still checked “excellent.” 

When I check excellent, I do it because I am the one that gets to decide what my health looks like. Not the doctors, not the labs, not the test results. I get to decide.

I definitely have not ignored doctors, labs, or test results. On the contrary, I have taken each one very seriously.  But I recognize the responsibility I have to be involved in my healing process.

It’s certainly not the case I have it all figured out. Or that I won’t be affected by any of them. Or that I’m never in fear about them. I just want to be assured that I have done the best I could with the one body I have been given.

Getting older takes a lot of work. It might be “easier” if we just let life happen and accept aches and pains and conditions as part of it all. But my philosophy is to believe we don’t just get older, we also get wiser. 

I’m going to be looking at what I’ve learned from each condition, beginning with bone health and muscle loss. If there is one person that can benefit from this, it’s worth putting it out there. There are principles that apply to more than just a diagnosis. They apply to life.

Older and wiser. That’s our portion. Let’s lean into it.

January’s Quieter Voice

January can be pretty loud. For many, it seems demanding. Get a resolution, a word, a challenge, a life. Make some damn changes, it yells. After all the excess of the holiday season, we often welcome this voice. I have heard it for years and usually stood at attention when it spoke. I needed some directional change.

But this year, it sounds a lot like a selah, a sigh. Have a seat, it says.

For so many years, January’s demanding voice led me to agree with the “New Year New You” theme. And I made lists and came up with words and set intentions. After all, how do we make changes if not intentionally?

But this year not so much. There’s a boatload of things that get harder as we get older. But there are things that get easier, more uncomplicated, as well. 

So if I had to choose a word, it would be one that didn’t demand anything. It would be the quiet, softly spoken word, CONTINUE.

Continue what you’re doing. Continue to put love as your highest priority. Continue to laugh, encourage, and be kind. Continue to eat well, lift heavy things, move. Continue writing.

I am realizing it’s time to enjoy the fruit of all those resolution years. Being content with where we’re at doesn’t mean we stop growing. But when we’re happy with who we have grown to be, we can be assured that “we can stay in motion with the same speed and direction,” Isaac Newton (in his not really written book), How to Enjoy the Aging Process.

So at this start of January, if we are prompted to make a change, we can trust that it will move us more fully into who we want to become. But if we don’t hear anything, maybe we simply accept who we have become and add it to the list of “Benefits of Growing Older.”

Maybe it’s time to focus on making THAT list bigger.

Going Deep

“There is nothing more intimate in a life than
the secret under-territory where it anchors.”
~John Donohue

Even when I didn’t understand it, I’ve always known about secret still waters. When playing in the ocean as a kid, I would often go deep when a big wave was coming. If I went deep enough, I wouldn’t feel the intensity of the wave. 

Sometimes big waves scared me a little. When riding a bigger wave, I was visible. I got bounced around a bit and heard the crashing sounds. But going to the depths, I was alone. It was quiet. I wasn’t afraid.

One way to get past anxiety when “big waves” come is by learning to go deep. We picture the stillness of the deep water. We sink down and be still. Maybe we recognize that God is with us, or we meditate on the small present moment we find ourselves in.

We breathe in deeply and hold it for a moment. Then a slow exhale. This can be repeated for as long as it takes to find stillness, or for as long as we have time for. I read an article that encouraged practicing deep breathing every time we stop at a red light. Instead of being frustrated at having to stop, we can appreciate the built-in pause to give our hearts some rest.

When coming up after a big wave, there was always a big exhale. I would look around and see things were calmer. Lightheartedness would come back. Another big wave would likely come, but I figured out how to “survive.” Just keep going deep. 

Let’s Lift

As we grow older, we are hopefully becoming stronger— physically, emotionally, and mentally. While we likely have glitches in all three, it’s possible to become stronger in big and small ways.

On I can hear everyone arguing about the aches in joints, the constant trying to remember where we put our phones, the fatigue brought on by loss and pain. 

I have the same arguments. But I’m challenging the notion that it all points to getting weaker. I think most of us would acknowledge we have made much progress in our thinking. Maybe we have set boundaries where there used to be none. Perhaps we refuse to beg for acceptance when we feel unwanted. We have learned when to say yes. And no.

Our thoughts about growing older matter and sometimes we have to push past someone else’s ideas. When I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, I was immediately prescribed medication. “You’re a female with a smaller frame. It’s inevitable.” Just the medical community’s long arm reaching for prescription drugs. Is that really the only answer?

So I did some research on how to build stronger bones. “Lift heavy things” was the biggest takeaway. So I bought a couple sets of dumbbells and started lifting. While I had to start at relatively light weight, I’ve gradually been able to lift heavier. I still haven’t had another dexa scan, which I believe will show change, but even if it doesn’t and I wind up needing to consider medication, I’m not going down without a fight. I’m getting stronger in the process.

All our collective experience, especially the hard things, has brought us wisdom so we can confront challenges differently. I had previously allowed someone to treat me poorly because of their need for power. Nope. Wisdom says never again.

And there’s so many ways to learn and grow. I love finding books that challenge my thinking. Not just clicking and scrolling my way to discouragement and even despair. But intentionally choosing what crosses my eyes.

It takes little strength to lift people along the way. Just a decision to be the reason someone feels seen. It can be a smile or a kind word to someone we encounter in our day. Or reaching out to someone we know is going through a challenge. It’s asking the question: How can I get out of my own small world?

I’m older than I’ve ever been. And I’m also stronger. I made a decision to lift: lift weights, lift thoughts, lift people along the way. One tiny degree more than yesterday. Older and wiser. Older and more emotionally stable. Older and stronger.

Let’s not allow others to define our season. What we think about our aging process matters.

Lightening Our Heaviness

An author I follow recently wrote an essay detailing how she felt out of sorts. She is in her late 40s and going through things with family and kids and career. 

Her first piece of advice to herself and others was to “empty your purse” so you can look at everything that’s in there. She was carrying heavy things and they were causing the purse to “cut into her shoulders.”

The purse analogy is a good one. But I couldn’t connect with it personally. My heart had been feeling heavy too. Why couldn’t I just empty my purse like she did?

And I finally realized that heavy things are different when we are in our 40s and mid 50s. They are often things that, to some extent, can be lightened. I used to say yes to everything. And then one day “the straw that broke it all” would get thrown in. And it became too much.

So I would sit down and figure out how to lighten my life. Maybe it didn’t get perfectly lightened, but it was a touch easier and my shoulder didn’t hurt quite so much. Everything is relative that way. 

But today? I’m pretty much doing just the things I want to do. That heavy feeling still creeps in though. Sometimes it feels like every cell in my body is weight training. 

During this season, my shoulder feels ok. But my heart? That feels heavy a lot. And I think that’s generally the case as we approach our 60s and beyond. We aren’t carrying things so much as we are carrying people. Obviously we carry people in our younger years too. But as we get older, we’re not doing 100 other things as well. 

Some of the differences:

1. We don’t just have children who are young adults; we have very adult children who are out making decisions and living their lives. And there’s often grandchildren in the mix as well. They go through all the ups and downs of life, and we feel all the bumps with them. There’s just not much we can do about any of it.

2. Our circle of friends is likely smaller, but we care more deeply about each one inside it. During this season, they are going through more personally, either with their families or themselves. There’s relational issues and maybe issues with their families. They are losing family members and friends they were once close with. We know their pain and carry it with them.

3. Fear can creep in over health, and the health of people we love. Everybody is going through something. We carry it all. Because we care.

It helps to acknowledge that this season is different. Very little is being written about how life changes in our 60s and 70s. And I doubt there’s anything much about the 80s and 90s. 

Most of what’s different today can’t be changed. There’s no purse lightening activity available. The most we can do is recognize all that’s in our hearts. I have found that getting together with a friend and just sharing life helps. Often, if it is a particularly heavy time, one of us will say, “You’re carrying a LOT right now.” 

Just having our hearts “seen” by someone who knows us well helps us breathe a little deeper. Sharing our hearts, and helping someone else feel seen by sharing theirs, may help to lighten heaviness just a bit.

Because at this season as well, everything is relative that way.

The Crescent and the Moon: Seeing the Part and the Whole

As we get older, we acquire experience and, hopefully with it, we gain wisdom. We are filled up by the lives we live. But muddled in with experience and wisdom, we have loss and pain and struggle. Sometimes that causes cataracts in our vision. We long for a fresh way to see things we might already “know.”

A band I have been enjoying, Bleachers, covers a song called “Whole of the Moon.” I love the line:

“I saw the crescent; you saw the whole of the moon.” 

We usually see in part, and there’s times when someone else sees more. When we connect with someone’s writing, whether in song, prose or poetry, it’s often something that we intuitively know but didn’t have words for. Ah, that’s it! And we get to see beyond the crescent.

Creative people don’t take us to new places. They find new pathways to places and ideas we have visited before. They take us on a “scenic route.” It’s one of the reasons we need to seek out stories, poems, essays, good fiction, and new music. So often we come across something and have that “aha” moment, not because we never knew it, but because we never saw it in that way.

A fact will burst into our lives. “I never knew that,” we say when presented with a new fact. But truth unfolds. “I see that more clearly now,” we say when presented with a new perspective. Although facts can be useful, we are all really after truth. The older we get, the more we try to whittle away the superfluous.

As we read quality books, we pick up insights that the author has gained in ways we likely have never heard before. We each carry a light within us that illuminates wisdom and guides us to truth. But reading can increase that, giving us bits that make us think and process what we already know. I love when I have to stop and think about something I have just read.

Below are some books I have read this year, with a quote from each that caused me to pause. The list is not complete and some of them have multiple quotes I could have used. And there’s not the space to mention all the poems, songs, essays, and non-fiction. Maybe another time.

If any books have impacted you in some way, made you think, or simply inspired you, please mention in the comments. We can share the ways that perhaps we got a glimpse at the “whole of the moon.”

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Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful
“How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.”

Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“Time travel is looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.”

Steven King, 11/22/63
“We did not ask for this room or this music. We were invited in. Therefore, because the dark surrounds us, let us turn our faces to the light. Let us endure hardship to be grateful for plenty. We have been given pain to be astounded by joy. We have been given life to deny death. We did not ask for this room or this music. But because we are here, let us dance.”

Hernan Diaz, Trust
“For I’ve come to think one is truly married only when one is more committed to one’s vows than the person they refer to.”

Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
“It’s not that I’m unaware of the suffering and the soon-to-be-more suffering in the world, it’s that I know the suffering exists beside wet grass and a bright blue sky recently scrubbed by rain. The beauty and the suffering are equally true.”

Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures
“In the vastness of the universe, each remarkably bright creature has a unique purpose and contribution.”

Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
“And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. A person of consequence at last.”

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”

Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women
“…women who wish to advance in their career face an insidious kind of discrimination…no response at all. It was subtle discouragement by neglect, what the author called “motivational malnutrition.”

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
“There is a light that shines in every heart….it is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life.”

I also read a number of page turners that were just fun. A few of those include First Lie Wins, Guest List, None of This is True. Because sometimes we just like a good story!

Sounds of Silence

As we get older, our lives often get quieter. Perhaps at times, even silent. What do we believe about the silence that can surround us during this season?

“Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” Hauntingly captivating or painfully paralyzing.

When we are younger, silence is often a welcome respite. I remember, raising five children, the times that I found myself alone in my home. I wouldn’t turn on music or do anything that might disturb that glorious sound of nothing.

But today, silence is often a reminder that retreating is no longer necessary. We may even be tempted to run from it, turning on music or picking up our phones. Perhaps we need to look at the quiet and get brave enough to sit with it. The question I try to answer these days is: What is silence holding in her hands? At this season in life, silence still offers us gifts.

1. One of the most important gifts that silence offers us is the space to craft a different narrative, one that will reorient our perspective and point our minds in a more purposeful and hopeful direction. We get influenced all day long by social media, news, family, drama of all types. We can get a sense of heaviness, not realizing how we even go there. It’s good to stop, identify our thoughts, and refocus where necessary.

2. Silence also offers us space to listen to our own heart beat, a heart that we can hear be full of gratitude for another day to lead our bodies in life. We allow (and sometimes force) gratitude to have the loudest voice.

3. Finally, and possibly most important, is the space to connect with God, or Love, or whatever it is that’s bigger than us. Because if we’re the measure of all that there is, our story will consume us. It was never meant to be our yardstick for measuring joy or happiness or contentment. So we stop to breathe deeply, meditate on all that is beautiful, pray. We change perspective.

Silence allows us to hear the deep longing of our own hearts. It’s centering, painful, and hopeful all at once.

I am learning to not only accept the hauntingly captivating beauty of silence; I am learning to embrace her hallowed space. Noise often cobbles together a storyline that’s less than encouraging. Silence allows us to identify the lies we hold about ourselves, especially relative to aging, and craft a story that’s more hopeful. We need that story and so do the people we touch everyday.

“Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” There’s a lot she has to share with us.

Stories of Connection

“Sending memes, links and videos to others isn’t trivial.
It suggests that you’re thinking of them.
It’s known as pebbling, based on penguins
gifting pebbles to potential partners.
Pebbling is an act of care. Every pebble is a bid for connection.”
~Adam Grant

I LOVE this. Connecting with someone sends a message: “You are not alone.”

Talking about his mental health struggles, Michael Phelps said that he and a few friends check in on each other all the time. “I will be going through some kind of spell, spill, spiral — whatever you want to call it — and bing, my phone lights up, a text comes through. I’m able to relax because you don’t feel alone in that moment.”

I love the physical connections with friends. There are friends that I walk with, and while the exercise is great, being with them is the best part. Then there’s the, “Let’s grab coffee,” or “You free for a glass?” Each connection happens on a different level and they are all my favorite. 

But sometimes a connection is just the expression of a thought. I read a story about two older women who share a heart emoji when they wake up just to let the other know they’re being thought of. And that they’re each still there!

Every morning I play Wordle and Quortle. A friend does the same and we share our scores with each other. While we cheer each other on for the rare great score, it’s about connection. We check in with each other, and usually can tell when the other might be having a moment.

This morning, after sharing her scores, she texted, “How are you doing? I’m around all day if you want to chat.” I am not alone this morning. Pebbling.

There is a crow that comes to my yard frequently. I make sure our little fountain has clean water. I always acknowledge him and I believe he senses my care for him. We connect and I believe he “pebbles” me too. It’s important to remember that we connect to so much around us, especially when we’re feeling alone.

So let’s not trivialize the small gestures of connection. We never know if someone is going through some kind of “spell, spill or spiral.” If I happen to send a heart emoji, here is everything that little red icon means: “I’m thinking about you. I care about how you’re doing. And I love you. I’m here if you need to chat.”

Maybe they could add a little pebble to the emoji list♥️ 

It Came to Pass

If we could peek behind the air we breathe, we could see a kind of trickery taking place. It is luring us into believing that life will always be just as it is today.

We often see the daily routineness of our day as “it came to stay.” When we’re parenting young children, when we’re in school, when we’re in a challenging season, even when all is well, we think we’ll always be doing the things we’re doing today.

But as we get older, we look back on those times and know that, truly, they never meant to stay. When did they grow up, where did all those classes go, how did I reach retirement age?

It doesn’t change simply because we get older. Even though we know better, we can still see our routines as something that will always be. We still need to be reminded to look behind the scene and spot the deception.

This past weekend was challenging in a very common way. It was cold, windy, and rainy. The forecast was more of the same for the next 10 days. I was struggling. Then I thought, 10 years from now, I would probably give anything to live this cold rainy day again at the age I am today. So I remind myself to enjoy this present life, the common everyday rainy life I have today.

May we remember that this day—with all the routine and challenge it may hold—comes to pass us by. I want to breathe it in, consume all the air my lungs can hold, and live everything in front of me. Ten years is a blip.

The screenshot of today’s speeding-past-us image may be a little blurry, but let’s get a glimpse of the beauty it holds. Even if we have to squint to see it. As Seals and Croft reminded us in the 70s, “We will never pass this way again.”

Despite all that may be going on, there is something we can appreciate. Even if it’s just with one small smile.