Chris' Blog

The point of this blog has always been bone simple and it's worked pretty well: We wanted a place where I could talk a little about the ongoing struggle to get and stay Younger . And - more important - where you could comment and talk a little about what YOU are doing in the same Sacred Struggle. It is a community...that's what! So chime in.
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OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD
On Tuesday, to Orlando for a speech. But the big excitement is that on Thursday/Friday I go to see Caldwell Esselstyn, author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. I sense that he may really be the wizard in this tricky field. Plenty excited about that.
More experts
Off to New York today to set up to meet with two very different strength experts. This IS fun, this business of interviewing - and being tortured by - all these high end trainers and physical therapists. They do not really agree, but there is a Center of Gravity, which is what I am looking for for the book...some core behavior that you can know is good for you and works and does not hurt you. Sounds about right.
DOING THIS STUFF TOGETHER
Got up reasonably early the other day. Went out the door into the freezing cold and new snow, toward the barn/gym. Good kid.
But here's the nice thing: there were tracks in the six inches of new snow....Hilary had gotten up, un-noticed, and was out there ahead of me. SO MUCH nicer. SO welcoming. Plowed ahead...the barn lights all on, the heat starting to take over. We dug in together.

We're doing that a lot lately, and it is so much pleasanter. If you can possibly talk your spouse or your lover or your golden retriever into doing this stuff with you, do it by all means. Cozy.
RESOLUTION...EARLY DAYS
Still in the dreamy early days of Resolutions...behaving pretty well and recording like crazy. But also tryijng to come up with a new log-keeping format that will last me all year. (See recent blog comments...maybe post your own thoughts) No major defeats yet so great fun. See you in a month.
HERE'S MY RESOLUTION...WHAT'S YOURS?
Be interested to hear some New Years resolutions. Here's mine:

Write more stuff down for one and a half months. That is, do a detailed, daily write up (on the computer, not a form) of exercise and food and drink...in an effort to a) try out a much more plant-based diet...see what's possible for me, b) maybe lose as much as ten pounds and c) strengthen the core and the smaller muscle groups that protect the hip...the rotator cuff and so on. Also, get better on the dreary STRETCH. Joints are an increasingly scary problem area as one gets to my age and I want to fight back...hard. I think that strengthening the core AND the little muscles (not so little actually...just short) that hold the joints together will help.

One effort that may or may not survive the first week: write down a plan for the next day at the end of every day...and (the next day) write down how i did. That means two trips to the computer on this stuff every day, which may be too much of a bother. But I am doing all this without a trainer, up here in the hills; it is SO hard to do resolutions without feedback. So this writing plan is to be a sort of Self-Feedback. We'll see.

There's mine. Show me yours. C
DRINKING THE KOOL AID WITH DAVID BLISS
Hilly and I are off this afternoon to spend the day and night with a full-bore YNY fan (and a GREAT success story), David and Peggy Bliss, a graduate of both Aspen Immersion Weeks. He has lost forty pounds (and just bought some 34" waist jeans!!) and radically improved various vital stats. He had also been a wise adviser on diet and the new book. I anticipate that we will work out hard, eat rationally, drink well and maybe a bit too much and have a major good time. Maybe learn some stuff too. This is Connect and Commit at the high end.
LIMBIC FEAST...CAROLING
We had a major limbic feast last night, in the Berkshires...might be an idea for some of you.

We had a Sunday night supper for about 30, with caroling. There was no advance planning and the whole thing took shape in less than a week. We were inviting pals we bumped into on the street as late as Sunday afternoon.

The meal - like all the meals I cook - was a little hectic and not wildly complex. But the house and tree looked awfully cozy, the fires were bright and the singing was a joy for us all. There was no piano, sadly, but I did have 20 sets of sheet music and there were a couple of us who had decent pitch and knew the music, which is all it took. There is something special and unique about singing, and we mean to do more of it...not just at Christmas. We entertain a lot but this was the best party of 2009. Happy Holidays to us all. Chris and Hilary.
Christmas in New York
This doesn't really go to YNY issues but I must say that Christmas in New York is awfully sweet and fun...despite the ruins of the economy and all that. Maybe I'm just appreciating it more these days, but the familiar Christmas parties - fancy and not fancy - are more satisfying than ever. I am gladder than usual to see those faces you only see once a year.... Some of them have been once a year for a lot of decades. Feels cozy. MAybe there's a rising tide of sentimentality at my age. I hope so...feels nice .Merry Christmas
GREAT NEW YORK CITY SPIN CLASS
Gotta love New York, man...so much energy...so many wierd pockets of this and that. This morning Hilary and I toddled off to an all-spin place she'd heard about. Amazing.
It's a small space on the third floor of an east side business building, there are 40 spin bikes and the place is packed. We are lucky to get in - some people did not show up because it's so cold this morning.
The owner and best teacher, MIRIAN (or Marion, maybe) comes over and explains that these bikes are a little different. They sure are: they are on some wild platform so that they tip and bank and bob all over the place. They don't actually fall over but they feel as if they could. "Tighted up your abs," Miriam says..."you'll be more stable." It takes a long time to get the hang of it but it sort of works.

Miriam has lots of energy and this is one of the toughtest spin classes i've been to in a while. And almost everyone in the room is in better shape than Hilly and me. VEry impressive. And guess what: there is absolutely nothing like working out in a group to get a great workout. You work SO much harder. And it is so much more fun.

The crowd was mostly very fit women in their 30's and 40's...and a couple of men. Including one extremely fit old gentleman named Hoyt Ammidon with whom I went to school about a hundred years ago. He has been a serious athlete all his life: If he's here this is the right place.

It was hard. For the first time in a lot of years of spinning, I stay seated for one brief "interval" to catch my breath. These people are HOT.

At the end, Hilly and I go off to a neat coffee shop (Pain Quotidien) nearby and eat healthy. We are blooming. There is absolutely nothing like a great aerobic workout to make you feel great.

I am off to Toronto for a talk tomorrow. Wonder if I can sneak in an early spin class before going to the airport.
WORKING OUT ALONE
I am back in the east...and up in the Berkshires today...which means working out alone. No magical Aspen trainers. No trainers at all. It is SO much harder to get your butt out to the barn alone. I do it but i sure do have to PUSH. One of the keys, in the new book: have a partner, have a trainer, have some structure. Or you'll fall apart.
CHASING DIET SENSE...ON THE ROAD AGAIN
I think I have the exercise part of the next book pretty much in hand. Not easy but I can see it and it'll be interesting...fun, in fact.

Harder but perhaps more urgent is the food side. My head has been spun so far by The China Study et al - and yet I have such grave, instinctive doubts about trying to promote such fundamental change (in myself or anyone else) that I am a bit stuck. My pal, David Bliss, and I are off to Boston to see one of the serious leaders in the field, Miriam Nelson at Tufts. See what we learn and let you know. She is an informed "moderate" in the great diet wars. That should help. C
NEXT BOOK OR NOT?
Here's an appeal for help and advice. I've been out in Aspen for three weeks, working with two of the best fitness trainers/physical therapists in the country...trying to see if there is a book of the How To kind.

There's lots of fascinating stuff about how to exercise better...key stuff about doing dynamic exercise (lunges and stuff that mimics life) rather than static (machines). And more about safe-guarding your joints by beefing up your core...not lifting and twisting with your lower back.... Good stuff. Finally, I am getting increasingly interested in going into some detailed diet reccomendations (in the direction of plant based but not total).
So here's the question: assuming a responsible book on all these things, would anyone give a damn?... Read the book... follow the follow-on web site? I worry it's too narrow...too specific to the already committed. Any thoughts? I'd be grateful. C
YPO TALK AT A HOSPITAL IN NEWPORT BEACH
Just back to Aspen after three days in Newport Beach Calif, giving talks which I enoy intemperately.
This time, a Young Presidents Org (all CEO's of something) but at a very good hospital (Hoag) with some input from the president of that institution.

Take-away item: this is a fairly rich hospital so they do a lot of preventative therapy for those w diabetes...diet, exercise and so on. That expense comes right out of them and is utterly un-insured. BUT if people ignore all that, gain a hundred pounds and have to have a leg amputated...that's covered.As the president of the hospital pointed out, warmly, THAT'S NUTS. It is also nuts that none of the present health care debate talks at all about prevention...the best and wisest money that can be spent in the health arena. Gotta talk it up some more.
SUDDENLY IT'S WINTER OUT HERE
Suddenly it's winter, here in Aspen, at THE SHINING MANSION where I've been going nuts over the next book. Been snowing fairly hard for two day and eveyone in town is walking around, grinning. No skiing for a couple of weeks but at least now you can conceive of it.
Hiked up toward Independence Pass yesterday...the road almost crowded with people and dogs, just rejoicing in the snow. This town has it's limitations - too much dough, too much chic and all that - but in the end it's just a mountain village where everyone loves to hike, ski and be fit. There are worse places.
Just looked at a lovely little cabin, a quarter of a mile into the woods which we may rent this winter. Two small bed rooms, a dining room just big enough to entertain ten...and the Roaring Fork River - black and fast, under a border of ice and snow - tumbling by, outside. Absolutely magical. Cheap too. I could hack that, while I pick away at that next book. But not in solitary...a full complement of wife and dog this time. Then I'm there.
ASPEN SKI WEEK...HOORAY
I am off soon to meet with my new partners in the Aspen Ski Week Jan 31-Feb 6...Joe and Nancy Nevins. Joe - a former senior exec at Apple - is the skiing star who put together Bumps for Boomers...a hugely successful program of top Aspen ski instructors who offer a customized program to keep boomers (and post boomers like me) skiing the bumps longer...keep skiing groomers for the rest of their lives. Check out their site (Bumpsforboomers.com) and my Note From Chris on the Home Page. This is going to happen and it is going to be excellent. C
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