KEEPING HEALTHY

Physical health

An individual is responsible for his or her own health and the need to maintain it. Fitness is how efficiently the heart works, how strong muscles are and how easy it is to bend and stretch.

• Can you walk uphill or run for a bus without getting out of breath?
• Can you walk up two flights of stairs or carry a load of shopping home without getting tired?
• Can you bend down to weed the garden or reach up to clean the windows without difficulty?
• Is your body mass index in the range 20–25? For the uninitiated the index is calculated by dividing body weight in kilogrammes by height in metres squared.

It’s never too late to start getting more exercise. Get moving, move a little more, build up gradually and keep it going. Exercise does not have to be physical jerks or jogging in a tracksuit. Do something enjoyable. Walking and swimming are very good non-impact exercises.

There’s no shortage of advice about what to eat and what not to eat. The guidelines are clear. Cut down on fat, sugar and salt. Eat lean meat, fish and fibre with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. But knowing it is one thing, doing it is another as we learn our eating habits very early in life.

Mental health

To keep happy we probably need to be with other people at least some of the time, to be involved in warm and friendly relationships, to have someone to talk to and to play a part in what’s going on inside the family and the community. As we get older it becomes more important to think about maintaining and strengthening friendships, keeping in touch with people we like and making opportunities for meeting new friends.

Stress and strain can spoil happiness. Losing a close friend or relative, losing a job, or changing familiar surroundings can make people ill. We can’t avoid stress. What we can do is be aware of how we react to it, notice our own warning signals, and take some positive action to keep it in check.

It’s important in retirement to maintain a sense of purpose. Motivation for working – whatever that may have been – at least gave a sense of purpose. Transferring energies towards enjoyable activities, or new commitments, is a way of maintaining that sense of purpose.

NEW LIFESTYLE

Men and women have traditionally followed different life and career patterns. Retirement of one partner needs to be thought about in terms of how the relationship will be affected by this change. Each person’s expectations may be different.

Whether the choice is early retirement, voluntary redundancy or retirement at the normal age or unexpectedly being in this situation there is a number of issues to explore. Any change in personal circumstances presents an opportunity positively to reassess lifestyle. To stagnate or to go forward is the choice.