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Turning 40: Health Tips for Men

21 November 2009 3 Comments
Turning 40: Health Tips for Men

Forty is the year that a lot of people seem to believe the body starts falling apart. Is it any wonder so many people dread hitting the big four-oh?

I’ve found a list of ten things that men should be doing as they hit that milestone age. Some of them are easier than others, but all of them carry one degree of pain or another.

I’ve eliminated a good deal of “white foods” from my diet, except for sweeps months when the workload increases three-fold and I often find myself eating fast food. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it is what it is. Those super-healthy food bars only go so far.

Trans-fats aren’t much of a problem for me, either. I eat more chicken than beef and I often cook it either through broiling or pan frying with a very light layer of canola spray-oil. I’ve pretty much cut out frying chicken, so that’s progress. Still, once in a while I get my cravings for a little fried chicken, so I’ll go down to Bojangle’s. They get the order right much more often than local KFCs seem to be able to, and I have a sneaking suspicion that their chicken has less calories per piece.

My mom, just the other day, asked if I take multivitamins. I don’t, but she says I need to. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a bottle of One-A-Day for Men somewhere. If I can find it, I may try to make myself stick to it.

Speaking of sticking to it, the next few items on the list start to get very painful: losing weight, exercising, weight training. Ugh. I’m trying to work on that, and it — along with getting out of debt — is probably the biggest goal I have for 2010. I’m not going to try to set some kind of weight goal. I’ve tried that and it never works. I’m just going to try to set a goal of regular exercise and eating better every day.

And hopefully, let the fat fall where it may.

3 Comments »

  • fdtate said:

    Your link doesn’t go where it’s supposed to go, but other than that I think you’re focusing on 40 too much. But that’s easy for me to say. I passed that milestone many years ago and am now looking 50 square in the eye.

    I seem to remember a study (maybe a year or so ago) that showed that vitamins really don’t do you much good, and may in fact be harmful — that a balanced diet is a whole lot better than trying to make up for it by taking a pill. But I couldn’t figure out where to find the study again online at this late date.

    # 21 November 2009 at 4:21 pm
  • Patrick (author) said:

    Fixed the link, thanks for letting me know. It was very odd: there was an extra set of quotation marks around the link address…but why that sent it to another post here in this blog rather than to some error message is beyond me.

    I figured turning 40 might be worth a week’s worth of 40th-themed posts, so that’s why I’m doing them. I’m not particularly obsessing over it, so much as trying to be entertaining about it. As the saying goes, turning 40 definitely beats the alternative.

    I’ve heard the stuff about the vitamins somewhere as well. I think that’s more for people who try to take eighteen pills a day…one supplement for every conceivable vitamin, mineral and wives’ tale. I think one multi-vitamin a day shouldn’t be bad, and should at least take care of what a balanced diet may not provide on a day-to-day basis.

    # 21 November 2009 at 4:30 pm
  • Mika said:

    No doubt eating perfectly beats taking vitamin pills, but most people don’t eat a little from every food group on a regular basis. I remember those charts they showed us when I was a kid, with vegetables and whatchamacallits. Supposed to eat a bit of everything each day… In today’s hectic lifestyle, it’s just not going to happen. Hence vitamin pills, which are called “supplements” because they are supposed to supplement your diet with vitamins and nutrients you may be missing – they’re not even supposed to replace healthy living. I think that unless one is following a rigorously healthy diet, taking a vitamin pill is better for you rather than bad.

    As for focusing on 40, I like that it has been a kind of a theme for the last week. I can imagine it being as big of a milestone for you as 30 was for me, a couple of years ago. At heart I am still in my 20s, which makes it hard to reconcile. But 40 is the new 30, right?

    # 22 November 2009 at 8:49 am

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