Excerpt, 'The RealAge Workout'

Chapter 1: The RealAge Promise

Lazy? No, Just Time-Challenged

"Tell me the truth, Mike. What's the MINIMUM amount of physical activity I must do to produce the MAXIMUM health benefit?" This is a great question I'm often asked by my patients who—busy with careers or family, with little free time to spare—still want to safeguard their health and their futures. Perhaps you have wondered this, too. Well, the answer is now in your hands. Whether you want to regain the vigorous health of your youth, stay feeling as good as you do today in the years to come, or get into even better shape than ever while slowing your rate of aging, The RealAge® Workout will show you how.

What is the program based on? The RealAge Scientific Advisory Board has reviewed over 35,000 scientific studies on aging, over 5,000 alone on the effects of exercise on health, and has culled the wheat from the chaff. The kernels have been tested and proven (and reproven time and time again) on my patients, and now I'm going to give them to you. I will help you create a goal of how young you want to be, and design a concrete plan that will help you to achieve your goal.
The wonderful truth is that aging is a process that you can control. There are literally hundreds of steps you can take—things you can do—that will enable you to play golf, relish conversations or crossword puzzles, travel to faraway places, dance the night away, and even climb mountains until near the day you die. That, in a nutshell, is what the RealAge concept is all about.

The RealAge System:
Allows you to know how old you really are—in biological, not chronological, terms. (To determine your RealAge, take the test at RealAge.com.)
Enables and motivates you to change your RealAge and develop the health profile of someone who is chronologically many years younger. (Today, a 75-year-old man can make his RealAge 27 years younger than his calendar age and a 75-year-old woman can make her RealAge 29 years younger than her calendar age.)

Views health not as the prevention of disease but as the prevention of aging.
Is based on scientific data that you can slow the pace of aging and actually reverse it. You can control which of your genes are turned on or off—all genes do is make proteins or regulate other genes, and which of your genes are turned on is in your control.

Research has demonstrated that lifestyle choices and behavior have a far greater impact on longevity and health than heredity. And choosing to be physically active is one of th4e most important lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, many people think they don't have enough time to devote to exercise to really make a difference. Luckily, they're wrong. I wrote this book because I want you to benefit from what the hundreds of RealAge-Partnership Medicine patients and the millions of RealAge members taught me about the minimum exercise we need to achieve the maximum health benefit. And the good news is small amounts of time can make a huge difference to your health, your well-being, and your RealAge.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? I thought so, too, until I saw the amazing transformations of patients—and some strangers—who followed the RealAge Workout plan, some for only 10 minutes at a time. (Most of the strangers became friends.)

So what is the RealAge Workout, exactly? It's simple—a program broken into four 30-day phases that build one upon the other, slowly getting you to the physical activity that will ensure the optimal level of health for you (with the minimum necessary time commitment). Once you've completed the four 30-day phases, you will be at your best possible level of health facilitated by exercise. You'll feel great and have the energy to do all the things you love and the peace of mind to know you're taking great care of your health. Best of all, the plan is easy and fun.
Overview of the Plan
Phase 1 (Days 1-30): Walk 30 minutes every day—either all at once or 10 minutes or more at a time.
Phase 2 (Days 31-60): Increase your level of activity by adding 7-10 minutes of strength training of your foundation muscles every other day.
Phase 3 (Days 61-90): Increase your level of activity by adding 8-10 minutes of strength training of your non-foundation muscles every other day.
Phase 4 (Days 91 Onward): Increase your level of activity with 21 minutes of stamina or aerobic exercises, 3 times a week.

Sound simple? It is. But don't let the simplicity of the plan fool you into thinking you can jump a phase, or shorten a phase to 15 days instead of 30. For important scientific and medical reasons, success is more likely if you follow the gradual buildup, order, and time frame of the plan.

For example, even if you're excited to get started and feel you could do more, don't skip phase 1 to start strength-building exercises right away. Your muscles must undergo two specific changes to regain youth and strength. As your muscle ages, it loses the contractile proteins (that give a muscle strength) and the proteins that make the energy factory of your cells (mitochondrial—these give your muscle stamina). To regain strength, you need to rebuild (or build) contractile proteins; to regain stamina, you need to recondition your mitochondrial functions.

By simply walking, you start doing both. If you walk 30 minutes a day for 30 days, you rebuild enough of the energy factories in your muscles to progress to safely building strength proteins. And you have to rebuild enough strength proteins so your first attempt at resistance exercise will not rip a joint or muscle apart. Therefore, Phase 1 is a necessary step. Best of all, by simply walking for 30 minutes every day, you can make your RealAge younger by 2.2 years.
Resistance exercises, which you do in Phases 2 and 3, build and strengthen muscles and bones, and keep them in top form. It's vital that you build up your foundation muscles first in Phase 2 so that you are strong and steady at your core, and less prone to injury before you start resistance exercises on your non-foundation muscles.

Although strength building by itself contributes just 20 percent to your overall Age Reduction, don't underestimate its value. Strength-building activities boost contractile proteins and energy, lessen stress, and provide an insurance policy for your body by helping prevent injury. Doing strength-building or resistance exercises for 10 minutes a day, 3 times a week, is also one of the best ways to get an immediate energy boost.

Once you've built up your strength and endurance in the first 90 days of the plan, then—and only then—should you begin stamina-building activities (Phase 4). Stamina-building activities raise your heart rate, and are what most people commonly think of as exercise: jogging, biking, swimming, and aerobics. Through vigorous exercise—any physical activity that makes you break a sweat and causes your heart to beat faster—you can make your RealAge 3.7 years younger.

Any exercises that cause you to sweat for 21 minutes have a double benefit. They not only count toward the 63 minutes of stamina exercise per week that produces optimum age reduction (3.7 years younger for this), but they also burn extra calories (an overall physical activity goal) toward the 3,500 calories per

week that will make you an additional 3.7 years younger. Calories consumed in all three categories (walking, strength, and stamina) count toward your overall activity goal. And each of these three has a separate and different effect on your rate of aging. None alone will make your RealAge younger by more than 3.7 years, but together they can take a whopping 9.1 years off your biologic clock. Let's have a look at the numbers below.

Pretty straightforward, right? But before we start, let's map out the journey you'll be taking. Start with where you are, Point A.

Where are you?

To map a journey to a younger you, begin by plotting two important points: Point A, where you are on the fitness map, and Point B, where you want to go. "Easy enough," you say to yourself. "I'm stuck in Portlyland and I'd like to get to Fitsburg." Unfortunately, you'll have to be a little more specific.
A variety of easy tests can tell you how your physical activities have influenced your rate of aging and your current RealAge. These tests will then help you establish your personal goals. We will show you how to take each one, and then—armed with the information they provide—move from Point A, your current location, to Point B, the destination you'd like to reach.

The tests will ascertain:
Your non-stressed (resting) heart rate.
Your non-stressed (resting) blood pressure.
Your exercise capacity.
Your muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility.
Your body composition (waist, weight).

You will record the results of these five tests on the progress sheet on page 24. Later, once you're in Phase 4 and doing regular stamina exercise, you will do two more tests to determine:
Your heart rate at maximum exercise.
Your heart rate 2 minutes after maximum exercise (2-minute recovery heart rate).

To find your Point A, examine your overall health. You must decide if you should seek advice from your physician before starting. You definitely need to see a doctor before you do the tests that follow (and before you start your RealAge walking program) if:

Your doctor has told you not to walk.
You have chest pain or heaviness or shortness of breath without doing any activity.
You are unstable, lose balance easily, or get dizzy when you walk.
You take medications, especially for blood pressure. (Some medications affect your balance or exercise heart rate and could influence how you walk.)

Most adults do not need to talk to a doctor before beginning a walking plan of moderate intensity, but should see one before they start resistance or stamina training. This process can be accomplished by calling your doctor when you first start to walk, because such a preventive visit often takes 30 days to arrange.
Resting Heart Rate

Most of us have a resting heart rate between 60 and 76 beats per minute. The resting heart rates of very sedentary and unconditioned people (or people with certain diseases) can measure well over 80 beats per minute; on the other end of the spectrum, the rates of highly trained endurance athletes typically range between 35 and 50 beats per minute.

To obtain your resting heart rate:
1. Sit in a comfortable position for at least 10 minutes while listening to music or doing something relaxing. The most accurate readings are those taken first thing in the morning or immediately following a nap while you're still lying down.
2. Use the tips of your middle and index fingers, find your pulse on the thumb side of your wrist or on the side of your neck.
3. Count the number of beats you feel during a 60-second period. Record this number. It is your resting heart rate. It's a good idea to take the measurements on two separate occasions, perhaps on consecutive days, and then take the average of the two results.

If your resting heart rate is greater than 75 beats per minute your RealAge is older than your calendar age (see Table 1.2 below); a resting heart rate greater than 83 indicates a considerably older RealAge; a resting heart rate greater than 92 probably means you should see your physician soon.

If you want a more exact measure of your heart rate, buy a heart rate monitor. This device—generally composed of a monitor watch and a strap that goes around your chest—is available at most sporting goods stores or on the Internet: Just type "sports heart rate monitors" into a search engine. The monitor consists of a sensor that picks up the electrical impulse that is your heartbeat, plus a transmitter that sends the information to the watch. These monitors are accurate, last a long time, and are not terribly costly.

About RealAge RealAge, Inc., provides personalized information and solutions to help people live healthier, longer lives through an integration of media and services. Since 1999, 13 million people have taken the patented RealAge test, which is widely accepted as the gold standard for measuring individual health status. The RealAge test and over 40 personalized health assessments are available for free at RealAge.com.

Excerpted from "The RealAge Workout: Maximum Health, Minimum Work."