Younger Next Year

First things first: I lost 3 pounds this week! I am happy with that. I went from 249 last week to 246 this morning. Considering the meals I had Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night, I am very pleased. I did have a few excellent days, including yesterday, and lots of walking. I guess that did it. I have been alternately enjoying and getting frustrated with the Weight Watchers program. It's often hard to find the exact type of food that I ate to put in the points. I do like the part where you can plug in the nutritional facts for a recipe and it will calculate the points. Mark made a super hot and spicy Hungry Girl chicken recipe last night, and I was able to put in the protein, fat, and carbs and find out that one serving was six points. That's pretty cool. I was also very excited to program in this morning's weight and see the little chart draw a downward line. I know today's calories will be good.

Last Tuesday I said we were going line dancing at 12:30, but Mark didn't get back from shopping in time for us to go. We walked in the indoor track instead. Today, Mark has just left for shopping, so we're going to try again to get to the line dancing. We are both hoping it will be lots of fun. He is also going to his Solivita Diabetic Support Group for the first time this afternoon. I hope he enjoys it as much as I enjoy the cancer support group.

Today I mainly want to tell you about the Younger Next Year Community initiative that Solivita has started. The community has partnered with the authors of the book, Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy until 80 and Beyond. Chris Crowley and Dr. Henry Lodge wrote a series of books about health for seniors. Our community decided to take up this charge. It is a four-prong approach: diet, exercise, socialization, and finances. New exercise programs and classes will be instituted beginning June 1; new menus have already appeared in the restaurants. Chris Crowley came to give a lecture here when Frank visited, so we took him to hear it. In addition, the woman who is designing and instituting the new exercise classes spoke about what she is planning, and the third speaker talked about social security funding. Of course, all the clubs and activities keep the seniors in this community active and out socializing all the time. Mark and I are pretty excited about the program and are jumping in with both feet!

Chris Crowley, who is in his seventies, gave an analogy that we are all going to fall off the water fall at the end of life. The average American begins a slow, steady decline down that waterfall beginning even as early as the mid-40s. His philosophy is to keep your life at a steady level from that point all the way to the edge of the water fall; then fall off. I'm visualizing Niagara Falls. I want to be in the Niagara River, staying up high at the top of the falls on an even keel, right up to the edge. I don't want to be in some lazy river that slowly descends until the last little piece of water fall happens so slowly that you don't realize you fell over. Of course, I can sum up what Crowley said in his big book in just four words: eat less, exercise more. It's logical, but so hard to do sometimes. Anyway, that's one more of the topics I teased you with that is now explained! I do plan to buy the book on my Kindle as soon as I buy my new Kindle. My old one died, so Mark said he would buy me a new one for my Mother's Day gift. Nice. I'm going to do that today and the first new book I will get is Younger Next Year.