lou holtz interview40. your maximum goes down no matter what; even if you work out like a crazy...

Lou Holtz Interview

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Be Younger Next Yearby Chris Crowley

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Chris Crowley – Be Younger Next Year

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Chris Crowley: And I don’t do jokes, which I think is probably a mistake. I’m here to learn. I do, however, have a Martha Stewart story. She’s up in Maine a lot, and I got to Maine some. And for some reason I found myself being Martha’s dinner partner three times in one week. I was assigned to Martha. Not a restful job by the way, she’s not an amusing woman. She’s a very able woman, but she has no sense of humor at all.

And I was working hard, Harvey, I was working hard. On the third

night she turned to me, very serious and said, “You’re funny, right?” Anyhow, it didn’t work very well. She’s something.

We’re going to talk about the revolution in aging, and you’re all so

darn young, except me and Harvey. Well, Harvey’s pretty young. You’re all so young that you’re going to think this doesn’t apply to you, but they may not be quite right. Aging starts – as Dave Winfield may remember – aging starts at 32. By the time you’re 40 it’s dug in hard.

Second, the stuff that we’re going to talk about that helps a lot on

aging, makes a profound difference on quality of life, energy, optimism, effectiveness, in general. Regardless of how old you are. It makes sense at any age. The sooner the better, but dig in any old time.

There is a revolution in aging, and it is a big deal. It’s been going

on for a while, and the science is building up. This is a science based phenomenon. It comes out of a new understanding of how we age at a molecular, biological, and evolutionary level. I know squat about all that, I assure you.

But I was smart like Harvey, and I hired people. They weren’t

hired, but I found this wonderful guy Harry Lodge. Harry Lodge is a fulltime doctor in New York; he’s a fulltime professor at Columbia Medical School. That’s a very rare combination. Practicing doctors don’t get to do that. He does because he’s got absolute polymath, lovely manner, and polymath. He reads 1500 words a day, and hasn’t forgotten one of them, scary guy. He’s the brains of the first book.

The second one – and you’re all going to get copies of both of

these courtesy of Harvey. We’re going to mail them out to you. Thinner, this didn’t do as well as the first one, although it’s a wonderful book. I did it with a professor at Tufts, who is a




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nutritionist, and a muscle physiologist, and other smarty pants stuff.

So I’ve had two tutorials. It’s a wonderful privilege, one on one.

Talk about one on one, Harvey. These long tutorials for two separate years on the science of aging, and growth, and non-aging, and so on and so forth. So I know a little bit about it. I’m not going to talk an awful lot about that this morning, but a little bit; just the core parts.

The most interesting thing I learned about was the signaling system

inside our bodies. You may know about this, but I bet you don’t. Each one of us is sending billions and billions of signals all day long. Every cell in your body’s got all of these signals all the time. It is astonishing.

Some of them are sort of hard wired, they come from neurons.

Others come from chemical messages in your blood; very, very busy body, lots of stuff going on. Very subtle system very complicated. But the messages tend to be kind of simple in the end.

Most of the time, the message to every cell is one of two things,

grow or atrophy. Grow or die. When you’re a kid the default signal is to grow, which is nice. So that no matter what, every day you get, cuter, stronger, bigger, more coordinated, sexier, better company. It’s good to be a kid, healthier. It’s good to be a kid it sets up this tide of youth that sweeps you along. Everything just gets better no matter what.

Then at the age of 32, you look up and you think, “Huh. That’s

funny.” And the tide has gone slack. The following day you wake up, the tide is on your kisser. What has happened is the default signal has flipped over to decay. Now, no matter what you do, for the rest of your life, every day you get a little slower and more pain racked, fatter, less amusing, grumpier, worse looking, crabby apple. Until finally you go over the waterfall at 75 or something like that. Saddest thing in the world, I hate to talk about it.

And that tide of aging which is sweeping you along, sweeping you

along under the rocks where the gulls and the crabs are waiting to eat your big, fat gut. Take the goo out of your ears and make a nest. It’s not too good. That tide is so remorseless that it seems irresistible, there’s nothing to be done.




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Here’s the good news, here’s why we’re here this morning, the tide is not that strong they discovered. The tide is not that strong. It’s remorseless 24/7, but you can overcome it if you do some stuff. If you send counter signals over the same signaling system you’re going to overcome that tide of aging to a considerable extent. Not 100 percent, Lord knows, but like 70 percent, which is astounding. And it’s in our hands, in our own control. Very interesting phenomenon.

Two big things from this business of sending signals over your

signaling system, one, you can stop aging, put off aging until near the end of life; 70 percent of aging. Some stuff is on a biological timeline and you’re just stuck with it. Your maximum heartrate goes down, which is why athletes in most fields don’t go beyond 40. Your maximum goes down no matter what; even if you work out like a crazy person. Your skin gets goofy looking, and your libido tails off; saddest thing in the world. All of that is on the biological timeline, there’s not much you can do with that.

But the other 70 percent is pretty much in your control. That’s

pretty good. And here’s the other number that’s even better in a way, 50 percent of all serious illnesses and accidents – weirdly enough. 50 percent of all the serious illness and accidents that the other kids are going to have happen from 40 until the day they die, you can skip all together. Not put them off to the end like aging, but just plain skip them. We’re talking heart attacks, and strokes, and adult onset diabetes, and a bunch of cancers, and Alzheimer’s. The one I always forget.

That is amazing stuff, believe me. That is extraordinary. There

isn’t a medicine in the world that comes – medicine’s wonderful, but there’s not a medicine in the world that comes close to that. The statin drugs are pretty good, and they reduce your risk of heart attacks by maybe 25 percent; a miracle. I take them, congratulations. But 50 percent – and they have side effects and blah, blah, blah. You have to get the right dosage.

This stuff works with no side effects, and has 50 percent.

Extraordinary! Big, big deal. Okay, so what do you have to do? What’s the signal? What’s the secret? That’s why we’re here to talk about secrets. If I had set up the system, the counter signal that would offset aging and all this stuff, and keep you young, and cute, and interesting all the way out, would be sitting in semi-darkened room drinking bourbon out of a jelly jar, and watching football on TV. Sadly, I was not given that responsibility.




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As it turns out, that the master signal for the great life – and I hate

to tell you this, but the master signal for the good life is serious exercise. What could be worse? Serious exercise six days a week until the day you die. Which day you want to take off, that is up to you, you do what you want. But until that time it makes a world of sense to work out pretty hard, for you, six days a week. Oh boy.

I know that sounds a little bit – I see all the dead eyes in the room.

I’ve seen this before. It’s a little hard to believe that, but maybe by the end of this time it will make a little more sense to you. It makes a world of sense to do a couple of things. It makes a world of sense to do aerobics and strength training. Aerobics, getting your heartrate up, keeping it there doing something for 45 minutes to an hour. You’re sweating some; it’s a little hard to talk. But running, rowing, swimming, whatever it is. Biking in my case, it’s good for you.

If there were a silver bullet in this life, and there’s not, but if there

were it would aerobic exercise. It does amazing things. Bear in mind, we are fundamentally designed to be endurance predators. We’re designed to trot along in the forest, or whatever, along these enormous herds of buffalo, or one thing or another. We weren’t as fast as they were, but we had tremendous stamina, and great focus. We could pay attention. We would go on beside them for four or five hours, and one of them would get tired or his attention would wander, and we would hit him on the head and eat him. That was our job. That’s what we were built for.

A lot of us – it’s a funny way to make a living, but we were all

doing it at one time. A lot of you have quit doing that. I understand it. But unfortunately, as an evolutionary matter, our body doesn’t get that message. We don’t know that we’re not doing that anymore. We think we’re still designed to go out there and run along beside these herds for ten hours a day. Oh boy. Oh boy. Luckily, the answer is not that you ought to go and find a herd, and run along beside it for ten hours a day. That’s not going to happen.

The miracle is it only takes about an hour a day, maybe 45

minutes, to get most of these effects. We were designed for doing all this stuff. We’re internal combustion engines just like your car. Only instead of having a big engine in the middle like a Chrysler, or your BMW, or whatever, we’ve got millions and millions of them out in muscles. Mitochondria they’re called; these little guys.




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But it’s the same basic notion, eat stuff, it turns into goo, it gets

mixed up with oxygen, it goes out to the mitochondria, burns, make a little fire, boom! You move, and someone has to come and sweep up the mess afterwards, just like your car. We tend to think that it’s like the car, that you only have so many revolutions before you start to wear out the piston walls. You only have so many turns. Mercifully, that’s not true. We’re not like a car. It’s a living organism, and the more you do it, the stronger you get.

There are five miracles about aerobic exercise. One of them is that

when you do it, you rebuild your aerobic base. You get more effective as an aerobic athlete. You get millions of new mitochondria; you get miles of new capillaries. It’s as if you could add significant horsepower at different stages of your life; maybe a cylinder or two. Huge deal! Huge deal!

If you read these books, and I hope you all will, you find out that a

lot of people start out going – the impact of aging is ferocious, and most people by the time they are 40 or 50, not to say nothing of 60 or 80 – we don’t talk about that – are walking slow, and they’re not doing the stairs. They’re waiting for the elevator in maybe their walker, or the chair, and so on and so forth. But you can reverse all of that to an amazing extent. You can rebuild your aerobic base. We’re designed to move. It’s what we are. It’s who we are.

If you can’t move effectively you get kind of pushed out of the

herd. You’re no longer part of the gang, and that isolation, not being a regular person, that’s a big deal. So that may be the biggest thing, it restores your aerobic base; it keeps you moving the rest of your life if you do this stuff. It’s an amazing thing.

Second one, even more important – this is Harry type stuff. Back

up for a second, talk about inflammation. Inflammation is one word for a very complex bunch of stuff, but inflammation is the great Satan inside your body. Inflammation is the mother and father of heart attacks, and strokes, and diabetes, and all kinds of God awful stuff. There’s good inflammation, but mostly, chronic inflammation, which is associated with stress, and sickness. Chronic inflammation is the stuff that gives you the heart attacks, and the strokes, and the cancers, and God knows what all.

In the normal course, your own precious blood is mildly inflammatory. When you’re sitting around with that glass of bourbon watching TV, which I so enjoy; your blood is making things a tiny bit worse. But here’s the miracle, when you do




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aerobic exercise – and for a long time after – when you do aerobic exercise you change the chemistry of your blood, and it becomes anti-inflammatory. It becomes this wonderful bomb circulating around inside your body making things better in a big way.

That’s where all of the stuff – this 50 percent change in your health

prospect – and by the way, that number is not exaggerated. That number is absolutely true. Harry, my beloved Harry, who is a full professor at Columbia Medical School, he says that number is conservative, and no one disagrees. It’s all a matter of this dreary aerobic exercise. Do that stuff, change the chemistry of your blood, and you’ll radically reduce your risk of heart attacks, and strokes, and adult onset diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, Harry. Er, Harvey. Hello, what could be better? How perfect that is!

Anyhow, the third one, mood is tough. A lot of depression in

America, we do a lot of stuff, we’re having a nice time, we’re lucky, but there’s a lot of depression. Luckily, there are wonderful antidepressant drugs. They work like a charm. Well, not quite like a charm. They’re a little bit tricky. It’s hard to get exactly the right one. When you get them it’s like Alice with a cookie, eat a little bit more, a little bit less. It can get goofy, you can get too much, too little, and just right, and darned if you don’t change.

Here’s the nice part, aerobic exercise is the single best thing you

can do for mood. It’s not in the book because this is new stuff since the book first came out. The single best thing you can do to improve your mood overall, is do aerobic exercise. We’re not talking just about the runner’s high, which is a ton of fun. We’re talking about raising the water table of your mood in general. Oh boy, oh boy.

If you should happen to get to be 80 years old, you’re very apt to

get a little grumpy. People talk about grumpy old men, crabby old women. There’s a reason to be that. There are a lot of grumpy old men, and crabby old women, I think it’s because we hear that damn waterfall all the time, and it scares the dickens out of us. Anyhow, you get grumpy. So there’s something out there which can raise the water table of your mood, oh boy. It’s aerobic exercise that does that; super-duper.

Here’s the last one. This one sounds a little bit goofy. No there are two more, Harvey stop it. Stress, and we’ll talk a lot about stress, but stress is like a cousin to mood change. Stress is the businessman’s sickness, and it’s much more serious than people admit. It makes you less effective, your life is less fun, you don’t




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make good decisions, you’re not as optimistic, you don’t want to go for it as much because you’re stressed out man. You’re a little bit depressed. The single best thing you can do for stress is aerobic exercise.

Business guys tell me all the time, “Listen Chris, you’re a hell of a

guy, but I don’t have time for this crap. I just don’t have time. I’m too busy.”

Wrong! That is so wrong! Do this stuff, and you will have a lot

more time. You’re effectiveness will crank way up. Make time to do this stuff six days a week. You will be a more effective guy or more effective woman; you will have a better life in every way.

The last one may make it all worthwhile. It’ll make you smarter.

This is when people eyes start to roll, “Make you smarter? What are you talking about?” We were all taught at one time that we were given a certain number of marbles at the beginning, and you want to use your marbles when they’re still fresh and juicy. Get your Noble Prize work behind you before you turn 32 because then you will start losing your marbles; saddest thing in the world.

You’re sitting in your kitchen, you hear this rattling. It’s one of

your marbles rolling across the floor. It’ll break your heart. By the time you’re my age, you’re sitting in the same kitchen, and your wife is coming over, and wiping the goo off your kisser. Because you sir, have lost your marbles; chronic problems, just awful.

Here’s some fairly good news, that’s not true! That’s an old wives

tale, it doesn’t work that way! You get new marbles all the time. They come from back here. I don’t know exactly the details, but they come from back here. They work a little differently. They come up and look around, and if you’re watching daytime TV they say, “Whoa, boring. Out of here.” They do not like football, they die. But if you’re living an engaged, active life they jump right in, and act like the other marbles. It’s very interesting.

They did some tests of intelligence. They took a bunch of kids, 25

to 28, and a bunch of people in their 70s, and they gave them IQ tests. They timed them. The kids did a little bit better, sorry to say. But if they weren’t timed they did just about the same, and of course the older people had perfect judgement. So the suggestion for me is, if you need a bad result, right away, get a kid. If you’ve got a few minutes, hire Harvey or me. Get something right.




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That’s an awful lot of stuff about aerobic exercise, but I’m sure

you’re still thinking about it. The idea is to do aerobics four days a week. You’re thinking, “Four days a week for aerobics? That sounds crazy.” Let me read to you just for a second just so you know that I at least know how goofy that sounds.

When Harry and I started down this road, we were sitting here

thinking, “Well, what’s the rule here? We’ve got to have a rule. We’ve got to have rules here. Six days a week, four days a week. Well, okay.” We agreed to that. By the way, that has held up. There are a lot of people who say you can work out for 30 seconds a day and you’ll be much better off. No, that’s not true. Six days a week for 45 minutes to an hour is a good idea. Do a two hour stretch on a Saturday or a Sunday just for fun. That’s a great idea.

This was new stuff then. I was fairly active for my age, ten years

ago when we were doing all of this stuff. But now, six days, is whoa, what will I do? I like to bicycle. I’ve never been to a spin class, but I thought maybe a spin class would be good. So I went off the spin class.

“So here I am at the gym, I signed up a year at shocking cost, and I

have the spin class schedule. It’s 6:30 a.m., and I’m feeling very shy because I’m very old, I’m 40 pounds overweight, and I do not look becoming in my bicycle costume. The instructor, an alarmingly attractive woman, with a slight euro accent sees me looking helpless, and she comes over and explains about the fly wheel, the special shoes, and all this crap.

The room fills with beautiful creatures in their twenties and

thirties. There are one or two old numeros, but no one vaguely as old as I am. The music starts with a heavy, compulsive beat. The instructor has a microphone, and she’s telling us how fast to pedal, how much resistance. My hearing has gone to hell, but I follow as best I can.

“Speed up! Slow down! Tighten up the resistance! Out of the

saddle she screams!” They all stand up, and start pumping like lunatics.

“Resistance!” she says. They all take a hard turn on the knob. My

quadriceps, which I thought were strong, start to scream. How many seconds can this go on? It actually goes on for about three minutes, but I do not.




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Did I mention that the walls are all mirrors? Well, they are, and

I’ve just caught sight of myself, and I sit down hard. Because my face is purple, and it’s a bad purple, and I am sweating in a way that suggests the onset of illness, not good health.

After that I only do some of the stuff that she says, but I hang

there. I’m in for the whole 45 minutes. Finally it’s over. People are doing stretching exercises, and so on and so forth. My color is still peculiar. As I totter out of the room, the instructor comes over and says, “Nice going. First time?”

“How could you tell?” I give her a smile. She just nods and says again, “Nice going.” I stumble home, bath,

and go to bed. It is now 7:45 a.m., and my day is over. It is good that I’m retired, I could not go to work like this.”

But here is the thing; you can build your aerobic base just by doing

it. You don’t have to do any stairs, you don’t have to do intervals – it’s a good idea, we’ll talk about that a little bit, but just doing this stuff. Put in those four days, put in your 45 minutes, and you will rebuild your aerobic base. You just plain will. It isn’t hard. You have to sit there, you have to have the discipline, but you will rebuild your aerobic base with almost all the health benefits.

If you get into fitness, which is a little bit harder, now we’re

talking intervals, and stairs, and all that kind of stuff. If you get into fitness there’s a plus that we’ll chat about, maybe. But for the health benefits, just go at 60 percent of your max, if you know what I’m talking about. You know, the heartrate monitor, that means you’re working pretty hard, you’re sweating some, but you can still talk. It’s not that hard once you get used to it. Do that and it will have amazing consequences.

For example, I go to spin class all the time now. I live in New

York, and it’s the easiest, quick exercise thing you can do. I do it all the time, and I don’t even feel it. They have a power thing that keeps track of how everybody is doing. I do not like to boast, well actually, I do like to boast. Harry urges me too, he says that it fits in with my character, and it’s good for the book. I now do this all the time, and I do not notice it. I am usually about the fourth strongest girl in class, which is pretty good.




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May I also say that, in general – let me stop and say I’m very careful not to mention my age anymore on my website. I was so tickled when I turned 80 last fall. I’m 80, it’s very scary. When I turned 80 I had a huge party; black tie, 150 people, and we never ran out of caviar; very, very good party.

So I was boasting on the website. My speaking, which has been

going on to a pleasant, high level, stopped and just plain went away. I never talk about my age there, but once you’re in the room you just can’t help yourself. So, I am 80, and despite that enormous age, I’m still skiing the double black diamonds, and there are all these skiers around. I’m skiing the double black diamonds, not terribly well, but I never was that good. I’m biking 20 miles a day, four days a week. In the summer, I can do 50 or 100 miles when I have to. Rode the Head of the Charles, I was talking to someone about that this morning, which is a demanding race. I do all of this stuff.

I took a test ten years ago. I don’t want to take it again because it

may not work out as well. I took a V02 max test. Does anybody know what that is? It’s the gold standard for testing your aerobic fitness. Very unpleasant experience, you’re standing on a bicycle, in my case, and it takes forever. They take blood every 30 seconds, and you’re wearing a mask, not any fun, and you’re working very hard. Finally it’s over, so I get off the bike and say “So how did I do?”

In Aspen, they’re very laid back, not much impresses them, and

they say, “Yeah, you were pretty good. You were in the top 10 percent for men aged 40 to 49.” Well, that tells you three things. One, I’m a hell of a guy. Two, everybody else is in God awful shape. Three, you can build your aerobic base just by doing it. And you just plain can. You may or you may not want to go out the door and do aerobic exercise. Some do, some don’t.

I’ve gotten so I love it. Aerobic exercise is addictive. It’s

interesting, it’s – I’ve tried various addictions, this is the only one that’s good for you, and it’s a peach. You wake up in the morning, you want to go out the door, you want to throw your leg over the bike, you certainly want to go skiing, cross country, all that stuff. It’s wonderful stuff. If you don’t want to do it, do it anyhow. It’s just too amazing to skip.

If there’s one lesson – there are a couple of them this morning. If

there’s one lesson to remember, do aerobic exercise four days a




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week until the day you die. Not a bad idea. By the way, as long as we’re on it let me just mention, if you hate it just stay with the 60 percent. Go along, put in your time, get off, and go home. That will do all of the health stuff. But fitness is a little bit different.

Fitness is more fun, much harder to achieve. Fitness, you lose

more weight, this is a good thing for weight in general, that you lose more weight. You get more energy, a little bit more higher highs, life is just more fun. The way you do fitness is two of those four days you kind of have to go for it. Do you all know what intervals are? I’m sure you do, I don’t have to go into it. Intervals mean you go on and off. You go as hard as you can for a while; you go up terrible hills, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Do what you want. Doing the 60 percent, doing the health part

alone it’s a miracle, it will change your life. But if you do the fitness part too, it’s even better on the mood, and on the energy, and on the optimism. I think for people in a business context that is so important. I think fitness it worth it. Besides I find it fun, but you may not.

Okay, that’s bad enough. I’m asking you to do all that, but that’s

not it. There’s a little more. It makes sense not just to do the dreary aerobic exercise, which is hard. You ought to do strength training too. I hate this part. Strength training is picking up heavy stuff, looking bad, but here’s the thing strength training is more important for quality of life, even more than the aerobic stuff. It’s very interesting.

Strength does a bunch of wild things that you wouldn’t think

about. I’ve got to talk about it for a second. First of all, it makes you stronger. But how important is that? Think about this, in the – how many people know the word Sarcopenia? Isn’t that terrific, not one – yes one; one person in this room. Every one of you has got a bad case of sarcopenia, and it’s making a hash out of your life, and you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Think about this, sarcopenia is the disposition to lose muscle mass at the rate of 10 percent a decade after the age of 40; maybe after the age of 30.

You’re losing muscle mass at 10 percent a decade. By the time

you’re my age you’ll be a mess, you won’t be able to get out of a chair, and you won’t be able to get out of a tub. There’s a huge business of tubs with gates in them because people can’t get out of the stinking tub. I asked; it costs $15,000.00 to $20,000.00. People getting out of the tub because they can’t get clean on their




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own, poor boogers; walkers and stuff. You lose muscle mass, and you don’t have to be a bad human, you don’t have to be a drug addict, you just sit there and you turn into a mess; sarcopenia, awful.

Here’s the deal, do this stuff and you can offset that almost

completely. You don’t have to lose much muscle mass at all. You’re going to lose some; I mean you won’t be playing for the Yankees anymore. Which I think is good; I’m a Red Sox fan. I don’t want you playing for the Yankees. You can be minimal. You really can.

There are going to be three pictures in this new book, which you’re

all going to get. One of them is an MRI of an 18-year-old girl’s leg, very cute, it’s no surprise. It shows a little bit of subcutaneous fat, this happens all the time, and then a wall of dark muscle mass then the bone.

The next picture, is of a women in her 60s, where there’s nothing

wrong with her, she just hasn’t been active. It’s the scariest thing you ever saw in your life. It’s like the worst steak you ever saw. A third of her leg has turned to fat, and the rest of it – a big row of fat with entrails going into the muscle. It’s like the worse sirloin steak you ever saw in your life. That woman can’t get out of the tub, she can’t get out of a deep chair, and it just plain happened. She didn’t have to be a bad human being, it just plain happens. You don’t have to have that.

The third picture is another MRI, and you’ll be stunned at this

point in the talk to discover that it’s a picture of my leg. It is adorable, not quite as cute as the 18-year-olds, but not much fat. It is terrific. Not much sarcopenia. Do this dreary strength training and you don’t have to lose muscle mass.

Think of how important that is, they are the shock absorbers of

your life. We are designed to move, we move on our legs. People, men especially, love to do their upper body. Spare me. They want to build guns for the beach; childish. When you get old you’re not going to be walking on your hands kids. Build up your legs. Build up your quads. Build up your glutes. Work on your legs; big, big deal. They are the shock absorbers.

One of the things that nobody knows, I said at the beginning,

you’re going to reduce your risk of falls by half. Wow, how does that happen? Here’s how, a bunch of reasons, but one of the




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reasons is if you lose the strength in your quads, they are the shock absorbers; down you go, there’s no fall back. You don’t have any margin for error. Kaboom! Off you go! When you do fall, you’ll fall like a pack of sticks. Not pretty. If you build up your strength you don’t fall anywhere near as much, and when you do fall you don’t fall like an idiot.

I was walking with Harry one day, we were going down and icy

place and I fell down. I got up and said, “Harry I’ve been doing all this horseshit forever, and I still fell down.”

Harry says, “Yes, but you fell like a 40-year-old.” Strength is enormously important. For quality of life, strength

matters a great deal, and you can do it just by doing it two days a week; big time. Next one; bone loss. It’s like a – what’s that word again? What am I looking for? What’s the word for bone loss?

Audience: Osteoporosis. Chris Crowley: Osteoporosis is one of the great curses; women more than men, but

men too. Everybody is losing bone mass at one percent a year women after menopause maybe two percent a year. You’re sucking your bones out of your bones, how awful is that? With dreadful consequences, you don’t feel it, you don’t see it, but your bones are turning into lace, and when you fall down, oh boy, oh boy. The classic older woman’s fall; you fall down and break your hip.

Here’s the numbers that aren’t as much fun as the ones I just told

you. You break your hip; a woman in her 60s some place. There’s a 50 percent chance that she’ll never walk unaided again. It’s the walker, the cane, and the chair, and a 20 percent chance that she’ll be dead within a year. Think about that. Think about that, bone loss. Muscle loss and bone loss.

Older women tell me, “I don’t want to go to the gym. I’ll look

stupid in lycra.” I say, “Please. Spare me. You’re not going to get dates. You’re

going to save your life.” It makes a world of sense just to do it. Next one. I talked about the signaling system. A lot of it’s growth

and decay. The way our bodies work are such a miracle, just standing here like this there are billions and billions of signals,




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tiny, tiny adjustments going on all the time. You can take a ladder and stand it up, and try to balance it. Good luck, it won’t happen with a two footed ladder.

But we can stand here forever. The reason we can are there’s these

little micro adjustments going on like crazy. These cascades of signals to muscles making tiny adjustments all the time. And then, heaven help you, you scratch your nose. Whoa, the place lights up like Christmas! And then if you happen to go skiing, and going around those moguls or racing around those flags down the hill, it looks like Yankee Stadium. It’s amazing! Signals going off like crazy!

But here’s the deal, the signaling system, just like everything else,

if you don’t use it, it rots. If you don’t use it, it rots, and your coordination goes, your balance goes, your pro-perception – your sense of where you are on Earth – all of that stuff goes down the rat hole. You fall down more, you don’t have the strength to keep yourself up, and your balance is done. Well, guess what? You can fix it that too! It’s surprising, but you can. Strength training, to my surprise, is the answer to it. Do this dreary strength training.

By the way, this book, which was not very successful; I don’t

know why. The back part of it – you’re all going to get this. The back part of it is the exercise part. Read it closely. It’s a little bit dry, but never mind, read it anyhow. There’s wonderful detail here about how to do strength training. We all think we know that, and some of you do, but most of you don’t. Most of us don’t, we’re still back in the days of Arnold Schwarzenegger when you’re isolating muscles and stuff. That’s bodybuilding, and what you want is whole body movement. You want to be using your core, stretching your glass box.

Strength training wakes up the signals. It wakes up the little

muscles. It does all kinds of magical stuff. Talking a little bit about the machines, on the machines – take the bicep curl machine – sit there like this. It does all the balancing, and it’s wonderful to build up those big muscles, but there are all these little muscles that hold you place. Same with your legs, when you’re doing the leg press machine; which I happen to like because I’m good at it. It takes the balancing out. It takes the little muscles out, so you can get strong as a horse with the big boys, but the little guys are atrophying still because they’re not getting a work out. Do whole body exercise.




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Well, I’m jumping around here, but in general, when you can, go outside too. Do real biking instead of the bike machine. I love the bike machine. I do spin class all the time. It’s great for you. But when the snow melts, which it may in a month or two – around here, oh boy. Go biking outdoors; you’re balancing all the time.

I was skiing – we went skiing for six weeks this year. We were

very spoiled. It seemed like coming down there, you’re flying down, and the thing is you’re hanging by your quads. So those big boys you have to work out. But you’re also exquisitely sensitive all the time to just where your balance is on each foot, how far forward, how far back; exquisitely attentive to that. And you’re going over an uneven surface, and you’re making tiny adjustments all the time. Those little muscles are getting a massive workout; the big boys too.

But doing stuff outside, doing real exercise where you don’t have

the machines doing all the balance for you; boy, oh boy, is that a good idea. If you don’t have a sport you like, too bad. Pick one up if you possibly can. But you know, real tennis, anything. Golf does not count unfortunately; it’s bad for you, but any other exercise.

People hate to hear that, they love golf. And golf is a good thing,

it’s good for making friends and connecting with one another, but it is not exercise. And people say, “Oh, yeah? Well if you carry your own, blah, blah, blah.” Please. Put on a heartrate monitor, and get back to me. They never get back to me. It’s not exercise. Do it, but not for exercise.

Strength training is one of the great miracles, overall. We’re going

to talk about some other stuff. Some very important stuff, in my opinion, but exercise is the flywheel of the good life. If you have a taste for it, by all means go for it. If you don’t, do it anyhow. It will make a profound difference. You notice it as you get older.

Harvey, he should be on the cover of this book. We both do this

stuff, and does it make a difference. We look at our little friends; the ones that are alive, God bless them, and let me tell you, there’s a fork in the road. Most kids go to left, and they don’t do this, and they’re not having a nice time. The ones who are alive, look funny, and sound funny, and they’re not amusing, and they’re not doing stuff. If you do this stuff you could be about – you’re going to get goofy looking; too bad. But you can be about – you can be yourself all the way out.




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People think this is about athletics, and sportsman and I’m the

worst athlete in the room, almost certainly. I went to a fancy prep school. I didn’t get one varsity letter in four years; unheard of. And now here I am this sports figure. Please. But it’s not about that. It’s not that you want to turn yourself into an athlete. You want to be yourself all the way out. This will do more to keep you, you all the way out, than anything else; including not going gaga, not having Alzheimer’s and all those other terrible, terrible things. There’s nothing better to fit Alzheimer’s than this stuff, especially the aerobic stuff.

Exercise is the flywheel of the good life. If you don’t have time,

make it. It will just improve – and if you’re young and too busy for it, all the more reason. Here’s a little tip, make it your job. One of the reasons that all the people in this room have been successful is we know how to go to work. You get up in the morning, you go to work. You don’t make a new decision every day. “Shall I go to work today? Yes, I guess I will.” No, you just go to work, it’s automatic.

This is one of your new jobs, especially in the third act. One of

your new jobs, just get up and do it. Don’t think about it, go do it. Make it automatic. It’s your responsibility. You owe it to yourself, to your family, your colleagues, everybody; big, big deal. Okay, that’s enough of that.

There are two more pieces in the book. I’ll talk for a minute about

nutrition. Nutrition matters enormously. My real advice to you is to read this book, which is a little bit dreary in places, and a little bit long in the rest of it. But you ought to know about Nutrition. Nutrition in this country is a curse. We eat mountains of garbage, and guess what? It’s not that great for us, nope. It’s doing a terrible bunch of things to us.

I’m just going to jump around a little bit to give you an idea. I beg

you to read the book. How we eat has a big, big impact on how we live; it really, really does. Think about a couple of things. Nutrients, nobody thinks – when people talk about nutrients people’s eyes glaze over. Well, bare this in mind, every molecule in your body requires a nutrient to work properly. And nutrients, you only get by swallowing them. Your body doesn’t make nutrients. You only get them by chewing stuff.




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Well, think about this, in this country because we refine flour, and we refine sugar, 50 percent of the stuff we eat doesn’t have any nutrients at all. It’s just dead food; dead food doing you no good. Actually it’s hurting you, for reasons we’ll come to in a second. Refined flour, which is the great staple, refined sugar, which is the other great staple; dead, nothing too them. Except that they’re bad for you. We’ll come back to that.

Another thing, all of us are marching in a firehose of pressure to

eat garbage. Giant companies – I spent a lot of time working for General Mills at the highest levels, and I had a lot fun there; wonderful people. I like Minneapolis, I like General Mills, if those guys have a single flaw – and they do – it’s the fact that they’re willing to kill you dead for money. Too bad, but they are, they’re willing to give you slop that’s going to kill you because they do better.

Nobody’s out there singing the song. This stuff that I’m telling

you ought to be on the evening news every single night. Never mind the Viagra, never mind the other stuff; the things for incontinent, old men. Never mind all that stuff. They ought to have ads talking about exercise. They ought to have ads saying, “Don’t eat garbage! Please, don’t eat crap!” But they don’t.

It makes a lot of sense if you possibly – think about that if you can

stay out – all prepared foods are bad for you. Think about that. There’s just the general – 80 percent of the stuff in the supermarket is prepared foods. Don’t eat it, its crap. Take some time, learn to read labels. It’s boring, but look at them. Everything’s got sugar in it. Everything’s got refined flour in it. It’s just scary! Hamburger rolls have sugar in them. Ketchup is laced with sugar.

Don’t eat stuff in the middle of the supermarket. Just hug the

walls, and get your vegetables and your fruit. Grab some fish, and get the hell out. Don’t load up too heavy on meat, by the way. One of the things that’s so wonderful about nutrition is that in addition to people that are lying to you for money, there are other people who are lying to you for money.

People write these stupid books. It is astounding how bad the

information on nutrition is. One of the most popular books around these days, and for a long time, is the successor to the Atkin’s books, are the Paleo books. People lose weight on the paleo diet, which is true. If there’s a single flaw, however, in the Paleo diet,




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which is urging you to nothing but meat all day long, is the fact that meat isn’t so great for you.

I’ll tell you one story. There’s a wonderful guy named Caldwell B.

Esselstyn. He wrote a book called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. Terrific guy, Esselstyn; marvelous book. In his book he points out that during World War II the Germans came in to Norway, and took every steer, every chicken, all meat; just gone. And it was pretty bad in Norway during the war, but it wasn’t because heart disease was so bad. There’s a chart that shows heart disease in Norway. The Germans come and heart disease goes like that. 1945, the Germans go away, the chickens come back, and heart disease goes right straight back.

There is a correlation between heavy meat eating and heart disease.

Do you lose weight? You bet. Does it do other good stuff? Sure. Do we say to give it up entirely? No. We’ve been omnivores for millions of years. It’s too soon to say, for my colleague and for me; it’s too soon to say we’re going to give up any basic food group. I wouldn’t do that, but I sure would end being more toward the white stuff, more toward fish, and make red meat a little more of a treat. Eat a lot less of it.

We live on this mountain or slop and despair. It’s hard to get off.

Changing the way you eat is so difficulty. I have not had much success at it. But it’s so important. One thing to bear in mind, if you’re fat, first of all, you look funny. We know about that. But there’s also a tremendous amount of pressure on your joints, and as you get older you don’t that particularly. But in addition to that, it turns out – we think that fat just sits there looking bad. Nuh uh, it’s active.

Fat is active, it sits there, especially adipose fat. That’s a beer gut.

The adipose fat is sending signals like crazy, and they’re all bad. The adipose fat is deeply inflammatory. It’s the most inflammatory thing in your lives. And it lives right down there where there are a bunch of sensitive organs, and it’s raising holy hell with your body.

One of the worst threats to your health is obesity. I mean look at

adult onset diabetes; so scary in this country. It is an epidemic. I gave a talk down in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it was at a casino for some reason or another. I walk in, and everybody is in a walker or chair. And I finally go over to one of the guys and say, “Do you have an event for people who are buggered up?”




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He says, “No, these are the people who live here.” They all were so fat, that they had adult onset diabetes. When you

get adult onset diabetes they cut your feet off because you’re circulation has gone to hell, and you get gangrene. You get terribly – it’s an awful thing, and it’s just because you’re fat, eating bad stuff. I hate to scold, I’m fat, but not that fat. Lose some weight if you possibly can, especially that adipose fat because it is really your enemy.

Here’s an interesting thing – this is new too, this is from Jen.

She’s such a smarty pants. This is not in the old book. Muscle, which we think about as being in this game, muscle has a huge role sending signals. Jen says that muscle may be the great master regulator of signals in the body, more than anything else; maybe yes, maybe no. But what it does is it sends out anti-inflammatory signals. Lean muscle mass, used muscle mass sends out anti-inflammatory signals.

They’re fighting with the inflammatory signals that are being sent

out by the fat. There’s a war going on inside your body between fat and muscle. Pick a side. Pick muscles because you don’t want inflammation to win. Inflammation kills you, it’s a big deal. Okay there’s diet.

We’re going talk about one more thing. One big thing, we are

fundamentally emotional creatures, and we don’t pay enough attention to that. We’ve got three separate brains. We’ve got the old reptilian brain that sits down here, and it regulates all movement with your brain. Bad name, good brain. Mammals came along and got the mammalian brain; the limbic brain. And all it does is send and receive signals about emotions. It can understand emotions. It lets mammals get together and spend more time on their offspring. And then to work together and coordinate and form herds, and packs, and law firms; a huge breakthrough. I said herds and – do we have a laugh line here? Anyhow, big, big deal. It’s our great advantage.

And then of course, comes along the big thinking brain, which we

think is basically us, but it’s not. We are fundamentally emotional creatures. We really are, more than anything else. A lot of our decisions are made at an emotional level. One of the things to bear in mind, especially successful people like you, there’s a terrible




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risk of isolation in the third act. The third act is hard, and it’s harder for successful people maybe than for others.

To go from being Mrs. Wonderful or Mr. Wonderful to being sort

of out there; oh boy, oh boy. And we’re so proud of individualism, it works so well in this country, but that’s a drawback too. There’s a loneliness in that. Isolation can kill you.

There are some wonderful studies. If a guy has a heart attack and

goes home to an empty house, he’s four times as likely to have a second heart attack and die; as opposed to a guy that goes home to a family. Think about that that sounds like California. But there are hundreds of these studies that are just plain true.

Second one, during the turn of the last century they were so excited

about germ theory, as they should have been. So they did experiments in orphanages. They went in and they isolated the babies; told the nurses and nuns, “Don’t touch the babies unless you absolutely have to.” They painted everything white, and so on and so forth. And the babies died, left, right, and center; way out of proportion to the rest of the country; very interesting. It took them forever to get used to the idea that not picking them up was the thing.

The last one is big rabbit cages to the ceiling, and there was a little

woman who would go in and feed the rabbits down below. She liked rabbits; she would open the cage, pick them up, give them a pat, and put them back and feed them. The rabbits down low did better than the ones up high. So they took the ones up high, and put them down low. She picked them up, gave them a pat, and they did better. How do you like that? Here’s the message, if you can find someone to pick you up, and give you a pat once in a while, you do it. If she’s short bend over.

We’re designed to be touched. We’re designed to be in touch with

one another. One of the nice stories in this book is a woman who lived next door to us. She was in her 80s. She was a mess. She had broken her hip, and she had one of those walkers with the four rubber feet. We saw her outside one day. She was dying, it was perfectly clear. She was taking these itty bitty steps because she had broken her hip. She was tall and thin, but that wasn’t her problem. But it was killing her.




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I will tell you what happened at the end. It was very nice. Remind me Harvey, to come back that. See, this stuff is important because in retirement it makes so much sense to plan if you can. To keep involved. When you’re working you’re in this limbic stew, that people hate you, people love you, but you’re getting this attention all the time. We’re designed for it, we’re good at it. You want to make plans if you’re not going to be doing your job all the way out. You may, or may not; some guys can, and some cannot.

But if you’re not, find something to do. Find something to be

involved in. Something that you care about; be deeply involved in your kids, your wife, your husband, whatever. But make a plan for it. If you happen to get to be as old as Harvey and me, you want to get some new ones too because the old ones wear out. Making new friends, finding stuff you care about. Here’s Harvey at the age of 117 starting this new business. I love it! I love it!

Who was talking to me about some life plan? Some famous life

coach, he’s got a plan. He’s got it all mapped out, it takes him up to 110, and if he doesn’t get there, fine. If you can have a commitment, something you care about. Something that involves you with others all the way out, it’s a big, big deal.

Oh, the woman. She was dying. One day – big imperious woman,

fancy woman from Chicago. One day there’s a knock on the door, it’s a little, short guy who had always been crazy about her. He comes in, she says, “Excuse me a moment.” And she goes and throws the cane under the bed, washes her face, puts on makeup. This is woman who’s in her 80s, but she’s ben charming men since she was six.

She goes back in; they strike it up, and become fond of one

another. They spend all their time together. They get married, and they live together for the next seven years. Within four weeks, the hip, which has been irreversible for six months, is all better now, and she’s all better. Not because she started eating kale, and doing weights, by the way. It was just because she fell in love with some guy. We are mammals, kids. We are designed to be involved. When in doubt, cuddle up. It makes such a lot of sense.

One last thing – what time is it? How are we doing? I worry, I

worry, I worry. One of the things that’s interesting to me, I sent out an e-mail the other day to 10,000 people. Like I said, I’m interested in third acts. One of the great things is what the hell do you do in third act? Some people have a relatively easy time they




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can – they own the business, they cut back a little bit, the son does this and that. But most people have to stop doing what they’re doing, or think of some new thing.

And frankly, even if you can keep on going – I have a little bias in

terms of repotting yourself; doing something radically different. Anyhow, I get these wonderful answers. Here’s one point to make, one piece of advice about the third act. Take it seriously. In the old days you retired at 65, and congratulations, you were dead two years later. Excellent, you could play golf for two years. You can’t play golf for 30; you’re going to go nuts.

You’re going to live a long time. Take it seriously. Get ready in

advance. Get your lines out. Make the kind of connections that Harvey’s such a star at. Make connections not just for your job, but for that life too. Think about what you want to do, and think about more selflessness. You’re going to have a little sneak up of selflessness in the third act, so I’ve observed. But it makes a big difference. You want to be involved. You want to be engaged.

I was saying to someone today – I spend a lot of time in Aspen.

There are these enormous houses. All these rich people go out there in their 15,000 foot house, 20,000 foot houses. By these guys who are enormously successful; they’re Mr. Wonderful. They walk out the door waiting for someone to give a shit. And guess what? Nobody gives a shit. It breaks their heart, and they behave badly. Some of the worst behaved people in Aspen are these guys with these 20,000 square foot houses.

You’ve got to be doing stuff. You’ve got to be doing stuff where

you care about the other guy, and the other guy cares about you. It doesn’t matter how big that house is, you can’t build them big enough to make you feel good. Money works like a charm, but it doesn’t do everything, too bad.

One thing that fascinates me, as you get older you think about it

more. How do you keep – I think that the fundamental problem in retirement is to ramp it up. How do you crank up, and get engaged, and go for it all the way? How do you be a little more like Harvey? That’s one big – that’s the big problem for most people.

But let us be candid, there’s a ramping down problem as well.

You’re gonna some diminishing of your energies, and so on. Stuff’s going to go to hell, and you want to be at least prepared for




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it. How do you handle that? I don’t think you go and sit down; I don’t think that’s a good idea. But you want to have some sort of a sense of how it’s going to go. In general though, I would default to Harvey’s model.

There’s a wonderful, long quote in here, and I’m not going to read

it to you, but I’ll tell you the story. Ulysses S. Grant, the general in the Civil War, the President for two terms, one of my great favorites, terrific guy. He got bad press for a couple of decades, but he’s back now, and he’s just a marvelous guy. He had a hard time. He was a good soldier at West Point. He was a hell of a guy in the Mexican War. In peace time, he had a couple of drinks, and they threw him out of the Army.

And at the beginning of the Civil War, he was sitting in Cairo,

Illinois, living off his parents, and he was selling firewood at the side of the road. He had his old Army coat on, selling firewood. One of the old guys who were going to be a southern General pretty soon. There’s Grant selling firewood in his Army coat. “Hey, General Grant.” Whoa! Scary!

Then he gets in the war of course, and he’s just this enormously

gifted guy. He has an amazing eye for strategy, and he writes very clear orders. And he has these amazing victories on Fort Donaldson, and so on and so forth. In Vicksburg he runs the whole northern Army. Wins the war, becomes President and stuff.

In old age, after he’s done all that stuff, some crook steals all his money. He was a very honest guy himself, but someone made off for the day; wipes him out, he doesn’t have a dime. And his pension is gone too, and he has a little dose of cancer back here from smoking cigarettes, and all that booze. He’s just beside himself; he doesn’t know what to do.

He starts writing articles for $100.00 apiece. Good luck! He’s not

going to live that long. Mark Twain shows up. Mark Twain, this is a true story. He says, “Listen, General, you’ve got to write your memoirs here. And you don’t want to go to regular guy because they’ll just give you 10 percent. I’ll give you 50 percent, and we’re in it together.”

Grant, who’s a simple soldier, he says, “Okay.” He sits down, and

starts to work. He had always been a terrifically good writer of orders. His orders were wonderfully clear. They always said what they were supposed to do; it was one of his great gifts. He sits down, and goes to work. And in a year he’s written this whole




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memoir, and it’s terrific, and it sells like crazy. It bails out everybody. It solves all the problems.

He’s working at – there’s a wonderful photograph of him two days

before. He’s wearing this little beanie, and he looks like hell. He’s sitting there working on the manuscript. I just love it. Going all the way, that was his great gift. And he never quit. He never quit.

We’re talking about quitting; being old and quitting. Here’s the

thing about it, that’s the way he was during the war too. During the Civil War there was a great pattern, especially in the east. Those eastern generals had to go sailing down to Virginia. Lee would smack them around, and then retreat back toward Washington.

When Grant took over, he headed into the wilderness, which was

one of the bloodiest, most ghastly, battles of the Civil War. He goes in, and sure enough, they just get smacked left, right, and center. A bad, bad time; lots and lots of people get killed. And the soldiers are all packing up their stuff, getting ready to go back north. They look up that morning, here comes General Grant with a handful of staff officers, and they’re riding south.

The soldiers can’t believe their eyes. This spontaneous cheer goes

up all through the Army. There’s a change in their attitude, it’s the turning point in the war. He keeps on going; he just kept on going all the way; just riding south.

Here’s my advice to all of us, I do think you have to trim your sails

a little bit in the anticipation of age and death, too bad. But in general, in the third act things are going to get tough. There will be some major reversals, no matter what shape you’re in. There’s going to be bad stuff. My advice, and I may be wrong, get back on your horse if you possibly can, and ride south. Ride south.

There you go! There’s the morning’s advice. Thanks a lot. [End of Audio] Duration: 51 minutes



lou holtz interview40. your maximum goes down no matter what; even if you work out like a crazy...

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