RETIRING THE RIGHT WAY
Regular activity is essential to a long, healthy retirement
How active do you need to be when you retire?
According to the latest Canadian guidelines, you’ll need about 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week — or just over 20 minutes a day.
That can be divided into 10-minute chunks, says Allana LeBlanc, certified exercise physiologist and physical activity expert at ParticipACTION, though she cautions that those 10 minutes have to be more than a leisurely stroll.
“For moderate intensity, you should feel like you’re starting to breathe a bit heavier,” she says, “but you can still carry on a conversation.” If you’re aiming to hit a more vigorous intensity, your activity should make having a conversation difficult.
Whichever level you choose, regular physical activity can make all the difference for your long-term health and a happy retirement. “Meeting the activity guidelines is not only associated with better cardiometabolic health, but it helps with mental health, it helps keep your muscles strong, it helps with balance — so reducing falls as we get older,” says LeBlanc.
Improving your quality of life in your retirement years can be as easy
as a brisk daily walk. Exercise has a powerful effect on your heart, helping lower your risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol. It helps you maintain muscle strength and keep your bones strong, and it has other benefits, including helping you sleep more soundly and boosting your mood — according to the Mayo Clinic, exercise helps to alleviate anxiety and depression.
The dangers of sitting
On the flip side, while sitting around may seem like a relaxing way to spend the day, the negative impact on our health says just the opposite. “Sitting is the new smoking,” says LeBlanc, adding that inactivity may lead to premature death. “With people who are sedentary, you’re going to see such health issues as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes,” says LeBlanc, “and these are really going to hurt you in your later life. It will make it harder to do activities, or make you more restricted in the activities you want to do.”
The good news is that even if you haven’t been active through most of your adult life, you can still gain health benefits in your retirement by adding exercise to your day. “There’s not a tipping point of when this is especially beneficial or when all is lost,” says LeBlanc. “If you’re 45 or 55 or 65 and you decide you’re going to start a walking program, you can reap the benefits of physical activity throughout your life.”
She acknowledges that if you’ve been largely sedentary all your life, the biggest hurdle can be just getting started — especially if all that inactivity has lead to weight gain. “Your habits are a bit more set,” she says. “But even without weight reduction — even if you can start with 10 minutes a day of brisk walking, which is a pretty easy, accessible activity for most people — you can improve your health.”
Plus, hitting that moderate-to-vigorous intensity zone takes less effort as we age. “You don’t have to work harder as you get older,” says Dr. Dina Brooks, Canada Research Chair in Rehabilitation in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. “In fact, you can hit even a lower level because your maximum heart rate goes down with age.”
Find something you like to do
The trick is to find a physical activity you enjoy so that exercise doesn’t feel like a chore, be it walking, biking, swimming, golfing, even yard work — anything that gets you moving. “It’s great if you just start walking, as long as it’s a moderate level of activity,” says LeBlanc. “Walking is easy to do and you just need a comfortable pair of running shoes.”
Plus, once you get in the exercise mindset, it’s easy to add 10-minute chunks of activity to your day. Consider meeting friends for coffee, but then taking that coffee along with you as you go for a walk and catch up on each other’s latest news. “If you’re going somewhere, get off the subway one stop early and walk,” says Brooks. “Don’t take the escalator up the stairs, walk up the stairs. When the weather’s great, go up and down the street. It doesn’t have to be a whole hour — anything is better than nothing.”