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Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge

Excellent book, readable, amusing even, with excellent advice on several levels.


Notes:

Aging vs decay: normal biological process vs optional biological process.

Choosing a "springtime" state of health vs winter/hibernation state.


Growth or decay, no middle ground... kind of like investing, you're either at new highs or in drawdown.

The need for struggle, privation, fasting, eustress, etc.


First Rule: exercise 6 days a week for the rest of your life.

Exercise as a "master signaler"


Second Rule: do serious aerobic exercise 4 days a week for the rest of your life.

The concept of "kedging": doing something really hard or way outside your comfort zone. Salience, growth opportunity... "BOOH" (breaking out of homeostasis) too.


Third rule: weight training, two days a week for the rest of your life.

Power is a function of strength as well as neural coordination.

Fall risk is massively reduced by weight training.

Coordinated strength sports: skiing, tennis

Proprioception

Yoga


On mindset: not getting grumpy, on staying "modern" in dress and demeanor, in your metaperception and meta-proprioception.


Fourth Rule: spend less than you make.


Fifth Rule: quit eating crap

Your body was not designed for overabundance or idleness. Our modern diet is outside our body's design parameters.

Alcohol: "You get another shot in retirement at being an alcoholic."

"In retirement, normal eating will make you fat; normal drinking will make you drunk."


Sixth Rule: Care

"Teddy doesn't care" On caring/having something to care about.

Keep a log. "Keep a log or lose your command."


Seventh Rule: Connect and commit.

Limbic brain and its play/love/connect and work together circuitry.

Humans as pack animals.

Limbic resonance

"Default to yes" and also organize stuff for others.


"I believe I am going to have an interesting life. I'm not going to pass my last years in idleness, petulance and anxiety."


"Exercise is absolutely the most important message of this book. Movement *is* life... most of what we call aging is decay, and decay is optional."


Metaphor about career paths for the young as superhighways: carefully marked, with huge, legible signs, while the paths of retirement are more like back roads, country lanes, with no signs to tell you where to go.


Levels of fitness:

1: 45 minutes of long, slow aerobic exercise at 60-65% of max heart rate without discomfort

2: 45 minutes at 60-65% of max heart rate four days a week with 2 days a week of weight training

3: 1-2 days at 60-65% of max heart rate and 1-2 days at 70-85% of max, plus interval training at 85-100% of max, plus 2 days weight training. Can combine aerobics and weights on single days. Add in a extra long workout at least one day a month.


Reading List:

Precision Heart Training -- Edmund Burke

Serious Training for Endurance Athletes -- Rob Sleamaker and Ray Browning

Long Distance -- Bill McKibben

Why We Run -- Bernd Heinrich

Successful Aging -- John W. Rowe and Robert L. Kahn

Never Cry Wolf -- Farley Mowat

How the Mind Works -- Steven Pinker

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