Chapter 3

Step 1: Eat Right - Long-Term Insurance for your Body

Physical fitness is more than just exercise and proper nutrition. It's a lifestyle, attitude, and mental commitment as well. Whatever your age, you don't have to be a "use-ta" person, someone who always says, "I used to be able to dance," "I used to go swimming or play tennis every day," or "Things used to be better in the old days." We're going to give you a simple program to help you enjoy life more and be the happier for it. Make no mistake: This isn't a "30 days to fitness or your money back" program. This is a new approach to your lifestyle that can change your life, and maybe even your lifespan.

Fitness is about today and tomorrow, and creating a life and lifestyle for the future. You're not going to starve yourself with mini-portions or rob your taste buds of the enjoyment of food. Just the opposite. You can have your cake and eat it too, if it's the right kind of cake in the proper amount. Just don't lose sight of the fact that what you put into your mouth today is walking and talking tomorrow, and has a great deal to do with how you look and feel.

Remember the little experiment in Chapter 1 in which you bent your finger back until it hurt, and then imagined what it would be like to make a financial decision while in pain? Enjoying life without worries and making the most of every day starts with good health so that you don't experience discomfort or pain in any of your activities

Eating Right

One of the most important aspects of a physical fitness program is good nutrition. Fad diets come and go, and return yet again. But the basis for physical fitness remains constant: eating right.

Eat right and you can't go wrong - Jack LaLanne

My wife, Elaine, and I – along with tens of thousands of others we've helped throughout these seven decades-plus of fitness – are living proof that a healthy diet is the back-bone of any fitness regimen.

When I first met Elaine, 27 at the time, she was a junk-food junkie, a cigarette smoker and an addict hooked on chocolate doughnuts and jelly danishes. She paid little attention to my warnings that tomorrow she'd be wearing the foods she ate today Until one day, she noticed that certain body parts were sagging. Not too long after, she realized tobacco was sapping her energy. So Elaine woke up and decided to take charge of her health. She joined my fitness class, quit smoking, broiled foods she used to fry, and cut white sugar and flour products from her diet. In one month she re-proportioned her body. Her skin became smoother and tighter. Even her vision became more acute, because smoking had been constricting the blood vessels in her eyes. Elaine had become a convert.

We eventually married and became a team that spread the philosophy of exercise and proper nutrition as essentials for life. Today, at age 81, Elaine still works with me to do that.