Half the year gone

It's July 25, and the year is almost half over.

In the scheme of things, every day is precious. The average life expectancy for the US is something like 75 years (a little higher for women, a little lower for men).

Quality of life in our old age in many instances depends on the quality of life in our young age.

(This is unfortunately not always the case. You can go for the first half of your life not having any allergies at all, and then suddenly develop them. Some cancers don't start until late in life, etc - which is why once you've passed the age of 40, time to get those regular mammograms, etc.)

But there are many ways that you can ruin your health in your early years that will always reflect on you later in life.

Over-indulging in alcohol or mind-altering drugs is one of them.

Being consistently overweight is another.

And I'm not talking about being consistently 5-20 pounds overweight. 20 pounds overweight is a mere bagatelle.

But if you're 40 to 100 pounds overweight, or more, when you're young, carrying around all that extra weight will play havoc with your joints when you are older. Everything becomes more difficult when you are older, so placing that handicap on them in addition to the normal wear and tear is just a bad idea.

Now, I say 20 pounds overweight when you are young is a mere bagatelle. I mean that in the sense of what it does to your joints.

And being 20 pounds overweight is not that bad from a health standpoint either.

The problem with being 20 pounds overweight is that it just takes a little something for that overweight to start creeping up there inexorably. Because, our metabolism slows down as we get older. So if you do your exercises, and eat as much as you want, and maintain a 20-pound extra weight for ten years, that's all well and good.

Then the metabolism starts to slow down and suddenly every week an extra pound is added on, and it will be that much harder to take off. And all of a sudden you're 30 or 40 pounds overweight.

Which is why 20 pounds is the absolute minimum overweight that you should allow, and it's better to be no more than 5 or 10 pounds overweight. [And, as always, it's better and more healthier to be 5 pounds overweight than 5 pounds underweight. Being underweight is more dangerous to your health than being the equivalent amount of overweight.]

If you're only from 5 to 10 pounds overweight, when you get in to those metabolism-slowing years, it's a heckuva lot easier to catch it in time and modify - slowly- your eating habits to compensate.