When it comes to taking a journey toward a healthy lifestyle, what you eat is probably one of the most important things to consider. Embarking on our journey involves very simple modifications in your eating habits, and you can start by making just a few changes at a time. Most importantly, these changes lead you on the road to healthy living while at the same time saving you money – and it’s still possible for you to eat lavishly and luxuriously like a millionaire!

First, let’s look at what you eat. I don’t like to use the word “diet” because it implies a short-term plan, while healthy nutrition really involves a lifetime program that gives you choices based on things that you like to eat. There are many food pyramids that provide the basic framework for a balanced diet, the most notable one distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Many trust this food pyramid, but I believe that it is better suited to fattening cattle than adding years to our lives. How have we gotten to whatever age we happen to be and still not know what we should and should not be eating? Yes, schools should teach us math, science, and English, but we should also be instructed on how to live a long life by understanding food basics.

Basically, we need to eat less food. We should eat less bread and pasta, add fish to our diets, have fruits and vegetables with every meal, and whenever possible make our food choices organic. Doesn’t this sound simple? This is nothing new, but the more we hear the same advice from multiple sources, the more likely we are to have a willing and open mind about what we eat.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
John Dryden

What you are going to read in the next few pages may seem negative. It is hard to present the pertinent information in this chapter and give it a favorable spin. However, in order to move forward we need to take a close look at where we are today and examine why it is not a very good place to be. We will look back at this part of our journey and examine how and why we have gotten into this mess.

Some may say that the focus on profits rather than patient care became an addiction for many in the pharmaceutical industry. Like the ill wind of a tornado, this wrong emphasis twisted physicians and patients alike in the storm’s destructive path. I am going to call your attention to what has happened to millions of Americans caught in this health care storm.

It has taken us almost three decades to get to this part of our journey; we are here, in part, because most of us were raised to put our trust in health care providers. As we travel in our cars on vacation, we may find that there are long stretches of road that are desolate, but we know that we will reach the perfect location that we have been dreaming about at the other end.  Regarding health care, we may look back at our journey to better health and see some parts as desolate. We have been in health care desolation, and we are just now emerging on the other side.

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
Mary Kay Ash

What kind of longevity (health) plan do you have in place? Does it account for a long and healthy life? Does it anticipate that you will be playing golf or tennis on your one-hundredth birthday? Will you be playing with as much vigor as a younger player? We are not just looking to live a long life – we are looking forward to living well.

We are about to embark on a long and pleasurable journey to good health, but before we start, it’s important to know where we are when we begin. We need to check the gas tank in order to know how far we can go. It’s as if you were going on vacation – don’t you want to make sure your car is ready to make the trip? If the “check engine” light is on, isn’t it important to immediately take your car into the shop for repair?

Unfortunately, when it comes to something as important as our own health, we don?t have a “check engine” light. We have to wait until engine failure before we are finally forced to deal with our own bodies. The most important journey of all?the one toward good health?is the one that we are the most unprepared to face. In order to begin your journey to longevity, you need to find a starting point; in order to determine your course, you need to get your engine checked. Every one of us has a different starting point. Unlike trained racecar drivers with perfectly tuned engines, we all have different conditions that may require specialized attention to get us started on our journey.

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.
Richard Paul Evans

The number of people living past one hundred doubled between 1980 and 1990, and the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the number of centenarians will reach one hundred thirty-one thousand by the year 2010. The projections show a doubling every ten years, with the number reaching eight hundred thirty-four thousand by 2050. The growth in this population segment is so large that it is now called “Generation C” (the “C” here represents the Roman numeral for one hundred). Demographers are now counting the number of supercentenarians, defined as people age 110 or older.

In the past, it was an unusual feat when someone lived to what was considered to be the old age of seventy. Today, the fastest-growing population in the U.S. is people eighty-five or older. These days, with all our modern advances in medicine, treatment, and our healthier lifestyles, more and more people are living longer and enjoying their good health well into their golden years. Scientific American reports that there are currently more than sixty thousand people nationwide who are more than one hundred years old, up dramatically from just a decade ago. Many experts on aging say they are surprised every day by the number of people who are able to live without assistance well into their nineties. According to a group of scientists at Oxford University, the ability of people to live to the upper limits of 120 years of age will be possible due to advancements in modern medicine.

Life expectancy: the upward progression of this is interesting.  When the Declaration of Independence was signed, life expectancy was just twenty-three years; in the 1800s, life expectancy was still under fifty years; in the 1900s we were expected to live into our seventies and eighties. Now it is predicted that anywhere from one to three million baby boomers will reach their one hundreth birthdays, while one in ten girls and one in twenty boys born today will live to be one hundred. Figures like these indicate that life expectancy is not set in stone. In fact, we have only scratched the surface of our understanding of the elements that impact it.

If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.
Leon Eldred