Aging Backwards_10 Years Lighter and 10 Years Younger in 30 Minutes a Day Read online

  Just as in the physics maxim, “The longer the lever, the heavier the load,” eccentric exercise allows your “lever” (muscle) to easily bear more resistance while in its lengthened position. The result: simultaneously lengthened and strengthened muscles.

  Once we realized eccentric exercise was the principle at work in Classical Stretch, suddenly we understood why people were losing weight while following our program. Muscle cells burn more calories, so when you increase the difficulty of the load on the longer muscle, you increase the mass of your muscle, you increase your body’s metabolic rate, you burn more calories, and you lose weight. At this point, we didn’t realize something even more amazing about eccentric exercise—something that wouldn’t be revealed for years, something that helped us to understand what it is about ESSENTRICS that makes it such a powerful antiaging program. As the scientific community began to shed new light on how our DNA ages, we learned that eccentric exercise specifically, directly, and powerfully communicates with our cells to reduce oxidative stress on a cellular level—in other words, to directly combat aging.10 And this powerful weight loss and antiaging component, eccentric exercise, was in virtually every minute of every Classical Stretch routine.

  Even after we solved the mystery, our ideas took a while to catch on. Instructors had never come across a workout based on eccentric strengthening, and the results people were finding in our program flew in the face of many theories they had been taught to believe. In fitness circles, the idea that flexibility could increase strength and help in weight loss seemed absurd. But as skeptical as our colleagues in the fitness industry were, we continued to receive an overwhelming number of weight loss testimonials from viewers and students around the world. Classical Stretch—now known as ESSENTRICS—was clearly a very powerful technique for both weight loss and strengthening.

  In addition to fitness-seekers’ stunning weight loss, we have continued to see good results in many other groups of people as well, everyone from new mothers to baby boomers to retirees, giving us endless proof that the ESSENTRICS method increases flexibility; rebalances joints; relieves back, knee, shoulder, hip, and foot pain; and does much more for a wide spectrum of people. We see it heal injuries and alleviate and reverse arthritis and osteoporosis. We see it straighten out severely rounded backs and give participants wonderful posture. We are thrilled when it helps athletes win Olympic medals and championships. All along this journey, we have seen countless people following Classical Stretch or doing ESSENTRICS who easily lost weight and shed inches in their so-called problem areas, making their body shape longer and leaner—all of this from a method that can be done in as little as 30 minutes a day. This is the kind of full-body transformation that I would like to share with you.

  AGE BACKWARDS, STARTING TODAY

  I know you are busy, juggling a full schedule of competing responsibilities in your work and in your life. The ESSENTRICS method helps you maximize your exercise time investment by helping you achieve all of your strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and weight loss goals simultaneously. In this book, I will explain exactly how and why the ESSENTRICS approach is so powerful and how you can use it to slow down and reverse your own aging process.

  In Part I, “How and Why We Age,” we’ll talk about the startling physical changes that can pop up around our forties, some of which can suddenly make us feel “old,” and how we can respond to fight them. I’ll reveal how mitochondria of our cells hold the keys to many facets of our health, and how dozens of recent studies suggest we need to change the way we look at aging. In Part II, “How We Stay Young and Healthy,” I’ll discuss all the benefits of the ESSENTRICS approach and how it works to keep us young, limber, and disease-free. In Part III, “The Eight Age-Reversing Workouts,” I’ll share easy-to-follow 30-minute workouts for specific conditions and goals, including losing weight, relieving pain, increasing balance, and reversing osteoporosis and arthritis. In each of the workouts, you’ll see me; my daughter, Sahra; and James Gadon, an ESSENTRICS instructor, in step-by-step photos with clear descriptions that explain the finer points of each exercise. I will explain how the ESSENTRICS technique not only reconnects you with your body’s innate strength and grace on a daily basis but also reconnects you with the joyful pleasure of movement in every aspect of your life, increasing your energy, smoothing and firming your skin, and bringing a sparkle back into your eyes.

  I’m in my sixties—over forty years have passed since I danced Swan Lake—but I still feel great! I am pain-free, energetic, and strong. I have a spring in my step and I look forward to every new day with happy enthusiasm. When I get sick, I recover rapidly. I really value being full of energy and leading a pain-free life. I know how I have achieved this gift, and I want to share how you, too, can easily achieve it.

  Whether you are a 40-year-old working parent needing a quick home-based workout, a 50-year-old executive who needs to de-stress and rebalance between meetings, or a 65-year-old who is looking for new ways to stay fit and vital, I hope that Aging Backwards provides you with the inspiration and understanding to feel and look stronger, healthier, and happier—for many years to come.

  Enjoy!

  Miranda

  PART I

  HOW AND WHY WE AGE

  CHAPTER 1

  WHAT IS AGING?

  Your body wants to move.

  Your body was designed to stay strong, vital, and pain-free for the full duration of your life, no matter how old you get.

  Your body was programmed with the ability to continually repair itself after damage. Whether your living machine is mending broken bones, torn muscles, cuts, and burns, or fighting off invading forces with its immunity soldier cells, its primary objective is to heal. And the more you move, the more you fuel this amazing cellular regeneration and these positive, adaptive responses to challenges.

  Yes, your body was created with complex systems that are capable of keeping you active and vibrant well into your senior years. And the sharpest, most powerful, most versatile tool for retaining this radiant ageless youth is not your heart, or your brain, or your lungs—it is your muscles.

  Your muscles have an innate ability to remain strong and flexible well into old age—a function that not only helps you feel and move better but also helps every single body system function better. When your muscles are strong, you

  •feel less pain

  •have better circulation

  •lower your blood sugar

  •increase your energy

  •enjoy better focus, stronger memory, and sharper thinking

  •grow significantly more brain cells

  •bring more oxygen into your body

  •lower your cholesterol

  •improve your cardiovascular health

  •slash your risk of diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, and other chronic diseases

  •become more flexible, limber, and mobile

  •easily maintain a healthy weight and a toned physique

  Muscles can do all that for you, and more. Even when people come to exercise late in life, and even if they have previously been completely sedentary, miraculous turnarounds are possible. I have watched in awe as people in their forties, fifties, sixties, and even seventies who do just a bit of exercise every day enjoy their ability to run a road race, hike mountain trails, go for (and get!) a challenging new promotion at work, or even just twirl their children or grandchildren around in the air.

  What unites all these people is an understanding that if you use your muscles, you’ll never have to lose your muscles—you can retain all the vigor, energy, strength, and vitality of youth indefinitely. And you can get the bulk of these benefits with just a little bit of exercise—only 30 minutes—per day.

  Working with the ESSENTRICS system, I’ve helped thousands of people learn an approach to exercise that’s exactly the opposite of the unproductive, dangerous “no pain, no gain” philosophy of yore. In fact, in contrast, I’d say ESSENTRICS is the “no pai
n, all pleasure” school of fitness. Using my program, you can strengthen your muscles, protect your body against chronic disease, gain tremendous energy, and get to enjoy a long and lean “dancer’s body” to boot—all in the time it takes you to watch one episode of a television show.

  And let’s not forget the ultimate reward: You’ll live longer.

  A recent longitudinal study analyzed data from more than 650,000 people whose medical information had been recorded for 10 years. Among the astonishing findings the researchers reported was the fact that for every minute you exercise, you lengthen your life by 7 minutes. These effects were found among people who started exercising at 45 years old for just 150 minutes a week—the same as doing the ESSENTRICS program five times a week. And that was just the start; those who exercised more often had even greater results.11

  A guaranteed 1-to-7 return on your investment—that’s an astounding ratio. You can’t beat that kind of return in any stock market. Isn’t that amazing? You don’t have to be an athlete or a professional dancer and you don’t have to win the genetic lottery to reap these kinds of health rewards. You just need to stretch—following a very specific, scientifically validated approach—for about a half hour a day. But before we learn about the program itself, let’s dig a little deeper to find out why the muscles are so important in protecting and optimizing the health of everyone’s system, and how we can capitalize on their versatile powers right away.

  YOUR GENES ARE NOT YOUR DESTINY

  Before I started exploring the subject of aging, I believed that loss of muscle mass and decrease in energy were controlled by chronological years. I always thought it was a matter of good luck or good genes that enabled some people to stay youthful and active as they aged while others did not. In fact, genes have very little to do with it. Research suggests that only 25 percent of our longevity is determined by our genes—the rest, 75 percent, is due to lifestyle and environmental factors.12 And one of the most impactful of these factors is—no surprise here—exercise, adding as much as 8 extra years to our lives. Our bones, our cardiovascular system, even our skin—every one of our body systems can stay strong and vital for the duration of our lives, simply through the miracle of a daily dose of modest stretching exercise.

  We haven’t always known this elementary fact. Many of us have had a brush with death at some time in our lives, because of either an illness such as cancer or heart disease, or, in some cases, a serious accident. We saw the brittle bones, the stoop, the shuffling walk as simply being part of growing old. Yes, it could be argued that those symptoms were “normal” and “natural”; what we were seeing was the body’s natural process of deconditioning and muscle deterioration. But the fact that a process is natural doesn’t necessarily mean it is inevitable.

  Consider the options open to any gardener: If she tends to her garden, diligently watering her plants and ensuring they get the right amounts of sun, nutrients, and water, her plants will flourish and grow. If, however, she neglects her garden, it will soon become overgrown with weeds and, without nutrition or water, the plants will die.

  Both of these outcomes are equally “natural.” These are two choices with two different consequences, both following the laws of nature. But no one would argue that they are equally desirable. Many people used to allow their bodies to age prematurely simply because they did not know any better. Do you remember how surprising it used to be, about twenty years ago, to see an elderly person with good posture and vitality, a senior who lived without chronic pain or any health problems? In the not-so-distant past, those people were seen as unusual and extraordinary.

  Now, we see many people who are examples of radiant health at 60, 70, even 80 and 90 years old. We see 93-year-old yoga teachers, academics making scientific discoveries into their eighties, heads of state governing until their late eighties. We see Betty White, still cracking people up and delighting audiences at 92. We are finally starting to understand that we hold most of the power of healthy aging in our own hands.

  So what does lifelong vitality look like? Many people wonder what their life would look like if they were to invest the time to do the ESSENTRICS program. I tell them this:

  You can maintain perfect posture for life. Perfect posture is more natural than a slouched back, as the body is designed to have and to function with perfect posture. Slouching is caused by a disintegration of the musculature through lack of use. Slouching is the human equivalent of a plant being choked by surrounding weeds, causing the muscle cells to die before their time. But good posture is the most natural and healthy state for the spine. The muscles of the torso are created to be strong and mobile. If we take care of our spinal muscles, our posture will remain vertical, and the functioning of all of our internal organs will benefit.

  You can continue to be limber and move with energy and vigor for life. Having a spring in our step is the way the body is designed to walk. The muscles of the feet, ankles, knees, and hips are created to be strong enough to easily power a light, relaxed walking gait. Neglect of those muscles causes them to shrink and weaken, but just a bit of gentle exercise will keep them strong and dynamic. If you do walk with this kind if lightness and agility, you will be less likely to suffer from any aches, pains, and stiffness, and you will feel young even as you get older. Most aches and pains are the result of stiff, atrophied muscles, and these problems, left untreated, will only worsen as we age. The truth is that there is absolutely no need for the majority of muscular-related chronic aches and pains to occur in the first place. If we exercise our muscles with an equal emphasis on strength and flexibility, they will give us a spring in our step that will last throughout our lives.

  You can stay slim and toned for life. Uncontrollable weight gain may seem like a side effect of aging, but it’s entirely avoidable if we do the correct flexibility and strengthening exercises. Weak, inflexible muscles make us look soft and shapeless, and those unnecessary body changes rob us of our self-esteem and confidence. True, we might not be running down the beach in a bikini forever. But who really wants that? We can easily retain a trim waist and narrow hips, even build muscle definition, and radically reduce the dreaded “softening” in our midsections through regular gentle full-body stretching and strengthening exercises.

  OK, I’ve made my point: The rapid decline of the human body is not an inevitability that must be accepted and endured—we now know it’s something that doesn’t have to happen at all. But the question for many of us is: How do we prevent that from happening? What do we do about it?

  WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

  You might have a regular exercise routine—but still struggle with chronic pain that derails your program regularly. Or you may be losing weight through diet, but you aren’t sure about what kind of exercise you should be doing. Or you may have gone all out on an ambitious exercise program—only to burn out, get discouraged, and fall into a habit of inactivity, waiting for the next thing that will inspire you into action.

  Simply put, many people are stuck in neutral, not knowing where to begin. We may see the marathon runners or the spin class junkies, and we know that’s not for us—but how do we get started? Is it more important to focus on strength training or cardio? Should we work out for a long time at a low intensity, or for a short time at a high intensity? We might put off starting a program until a not-so-busy time. We may spend time debating which program would be better than another. We may wander around in the bookstore or fitness equipment aisle, and wonder, “Which one of these do I do?”

  Anytime I hear people asking these questions, I can’t wait to share ESSENTRICS with them. Because I know that in this one program, they can fulfill so many of their health and fitness goals. No matter if you’re already in great shape, or if you’ve just getting back on the exercise horse, or if you’ve never been active a day in your life, the same program works for everyone. Here’s why:

  •You can do it anywhere—at any location, inside or outside, where you have one body length of space, you have
enough room.

  •You need no equipment—you can exercise in your pajamas, and you don’t even need fancy shoes. (In fact, ESSENTRICS should be done barefoot!)

  •You don’t need a lot of time—the entire program can be completed in 30 minutes or less.

  •You don’t need to be super fit—the ESSENTRICS program is progressive, starting gently and becoming more challenging to your muscles as you go.

  •You won’t ever feel “pain”—the ESSENTRICS program is relaxing and all about limbering up and stretching all of your muscles as you strengthen them.

  •You can lose weight without sweating—one amazing feature of ESSENTRICS is how powerfully it can shape your physique, helping you develop stronger muscles that burn fat while you sleep.

  All that is required to feel youthful and healthy is a little bit of help from doing this daily gentle full-body exercise. You may be surprised to know that something so gentle can be so beneficial, because we’ve been told that exercise must hurt—we have to go for the burn if we’re going to see any results. But many people dislike rigorous exercise. The truth is this: To remain strong and flexible, we do not have to push our bodies to their limits. Even modest exercise will grant an exponential return in value.

  If you have always resisted the idea of exercising, you probably tried exercises that are uncomfortable, unnatural, and exhausting. The truth is that exercising should feel natural, and the ESSENTRICS program will show you how 30 minutes of exercise can be fun and pleasant. You’ll learn how to enjoy exercise again, and even look forward to your next session. If you’re already a practiced exerciser, you’ll be surprised and delighted to find a stretching, strengthening, lengthening, and toning method that leaves you feeling so relaxed and limber while it also gives you such amazing results in only 30 minutes a day. I believe that ESSENTRICS will completely change your perspective on exercise.