Extending Our Warranty Isn't So Hard

By Lisa SugarmanI’ve always figured that if we treat our bodies like we treat our cars we should get a good few hundred thousand miles out of them. A lube here, a knee replacement there and you can keep just about anything running.You've seen the Toyota ads with the Corolla that still runs like new after 595,000 miles. We should be able to apply the same philosophy to our bodies, shouldn’t we? I mean look at Jack LaLanne. What’s he now, 150? And the guy's still knocking off 200 knuckle-ups a day.The way I see it, if we just take care of our stuff it should last. Bodies included. But it takes some follow through.I guess I’m thinking about this a lot more lately because I seem to have way too many things to tell my chiropractor to fix whenever I see him. And that freaked me out for awhile, until I came to the understanding that this aging thing will happen in spite of us. So why not embrace it?Clearly the older we get the more important it becomes to just keep moving forward. It’s that whole inertia idea: objects in motion stay in motion. So the more we keep moving the better off we are.I do think we all hit our own threshold where things just start to sputter and stall a little but I think that just means we have to make more of an obvious effort to keep things running. So instead of putting our dental check-up off for three years (I'm pointing at my husband on this one), we actually need to go. The mammograms. The annual physicals. All of it.I think people have this incredible misconception once we round our 40s it’s like the day after your car warranty expires when parts start falling off in the middle of the road and the next thing you know you’re hitch-hiking home carrying your front bumper.Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this aging thing happens, whether we want it to or not, it just depends on how we handle it. Just look at metabolisms. Can any of us eat the same way we did in college and still close our button fly? Uh, no. Now most of us over 40 have to run about 80 miles a week just to digest a clam plate. And I don’t even want to discuss what I can’t eat anymore. That conversation is off the table. The point is, we need to tweak things a little as we go. Eat a little less and walk a few extra miles. Problem solved. It’s really not that hard. We really don’t need complete reconstruction when things start to sag. It’s called gravity and inevitability.We've got to keep in mind that “we get what you get and we don't get upset.” If we're overweight, stack the deck in our favor and go join a gym; if we hate our hair get some highlights; if we’re not flexible, do some yoga. There are always options. And they don’t have to be extreme ones.Stiff joints aren’t a signal that we should head straight for the elephant graveyard, it just means we need to switch things up a little and try something different. It may take us a little longer to get where we’re going but it doesn’t mean we’re out of gas.I really do think aging is way more in our head than we think. Attitude goes a long way. If we’re convinced that just because our cartilage is shrinking a little that we're one step away from assisted living well, then, I guess we’re done. But if we embrace the fact that our aches and pains and varicose veins are preordained then we can just do our best to work around them and work with what we’ve got. But it takes work. There are no free rides.Remember, a little duct tape and some WD-40 goes a long way.Lisa Sugarman lives just north of Boston, Massachusetts. Read and discuss all her columns at lisasugarman.com. Or, find them on LittleThings.com, Hot Moms Club, BeingAMom.life, GrownandFlown.com, Mamalode, More Content Now, and Care.com. She is also the author of LIFE: It Is What It Is and Untying Parent Anxiety: 18 Myths That Have You in Knots—And How to Get Free available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at select bookstores.