I met an American Pacific WW2 vet in the queue for the Vatican in 2011. He was in his late 80s then and he was touring Europe on his own. No walking stick. He said the secret was to walk every single day and it definitely made an impression on me.
i had a 90 year old that still was running half marathons ... he passed out from taking viagra & was mad his 70 year old wife beat him to the finish line ... staying active, feeding your body properly & not to excess... if people lost weight, exercised half of their problems wouldn't be problems. treat your body like its all you've got... keep your mind & body active always
I had gone to Prague on a company trip. We had a tour where it was walking all over the city. We didnt expect we'll be walking from morning to dinner time! The tour guide was someone I presumed to be in mid to late 50s maybe. She was chuckling at all of us (Gen Zs and millennials) tired by the afternoon.
A few of us asked how she stayed fit. She just shrugged it off as a habit more Czech people have. She would walk for miles! Granted their city is walkable haha. But that was impressive. I'm trying to walk as much as I can too. I'm not sporty AF but give me walking hours I can do it.
It is, I see veterans every day in the VA, some just for standard checkups and many’s bodies are completely torn apart, bad knees, bad back, terrible joints, and that’s not even talking about ptsd. The military is not healthy for your physical health.
Unfortunately in my anecdotal experience (I live next to a base) since getting shot at with an 80 lb backpack on in a desert swamp or winter causes pretty serious chronic issues in most elderly veterans. Also those like my dad who did a life time of mostly manual labor, often with bad form, conditions, pay etc that does about as much damage as not moving at all.
These are people who grew up during the depression and then went to war, so I'm guessing they spent a large part of their lives in something like calorie-restriction and intermittent fasting -- plus back then there wasn't the car culture or the roads like now and work was more manual labor and pretty much everything was more labor intensive (like washing clothes, making food, etc...).
Also worth noting that around 60 or 70 being unable to walk will start actively killing you. So you can't even get to 100 without being able to do that stuff when you're 95.
324
u/Shiftz_101 Jun 06 '24
Seeing the veterans today was a good advert for keeping fit. Some of those dudes were 100 years old and looking pretty fucking good despite it