Meet The Iron-Willed Architect of Healthy Living
Story by Judy Goppert
We all know that getting out of our chairs to take a walk or run a mile takes energy, along with a bit of gumption. Judy Torel, a health coach and fitness trainer in Albany, New York, has unique knowledge of how the body is affected by all this.
With an MS degree in Counseling Psychology and the title of Nationally Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Torel walks the walk for sure. And her foray into earning her PhD in Lifestyle Medicine and completing 13 Ironman races sweetens her advice. She is my friend, and as you see, we share that same wonderful JUDY name! I asked her take on exercise and recovery, which she was happy to share!
“Right now, we are living in a culture where we’re all filled with stress and anxiety, with cell phones telling us about all the terrible things in the world, managing our own lives, and personal health changes that are unfamiliar,” Torel noted.
“My entire career, I have pushed my body, participating in triathlons, and more. It has not been an easy road, and now, my legs hurt and I’m tired like everyone else. What I say back to myself, from a mental health perspective, is that what I do releases stress and relaxes the sympathetic nervous system, while producing brain chemistry that is more effective than pharmacology. Any form of exercise improves brain health and keeps healthy blood flowing to the brain, which can keep memory loss and Alzheimer’s from manifesting. If I could inspire somebody to do this, I would be happy. It’s my number one motivation! Yes, I want to look good and have a long health span, but my number one reason to keep moving is stress and anxiety management.”
How do we prepare our bodies for an activity?
Number one, you need to be doing something before you go and do your choice of activity. People think they can just do a quick warmup, but that is when they can get hurt. As you age, in your 50s and up, you need to be on top of the balance in your fitness life.
Compare how many times you trained this week, even though it’s moderate or it’s something you are doing all the time, to how much you recover. I use this analogy: if you didn’t sleep well for four days, you need to sleep the fifth day or you’re susceptible to injury. In this same sense, balance your recovery time and activity.
Don’t be a weekend warrior. Remember, you may once have been able to play five games of pickleball, and now you can play three or four. Change your operating formula as you age. Tune into your body, along the same lines. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate over 24 hours before your game. And during, hydrate with electrolytes.
Torel also stressed that eating inflammatory foods the night before that 5k run race is a recipe for a tendon pull. Just because you are going to burn calories doesn’t give you the right to splurge.
The quality material you are putting into your body needs to go along with your activity to break it down. Drinking beer and wine with dinner the night prior can be a setup for inflammation. Take a panoramic view of what you’re doing, not just an hour before, but 24 hours before. We have a reductionistic approach in our culture. We need to have a more comprehensive approach.
How does exercise affect our bodies as we age, from youth to 60 to 70 plus? And what can we do to maintain a youthful stamina?
Right out of the gate, I want to express that as you age, you must be mindful of doing too much. On the flipside, be equally mindful of doing too little. Doing too little leads to the same muscle ache and sprains as doing too much. You think, “I’m not going to get hurt because I don’t do that much”. However, as you age, you must be more mindful of the intensity. People don’t realize that by doing too little, they can get injured when they do decide to get out and exercise.
What recovery advice would you share?
After you exercise, you want to do the same things you did to prepare. Eat quality material, like whole food proteins (think chicken or egg whites), grains, and deep colored vegetables. You need to think that you just did some damage to your body, and you have a holistic approach to repairing it.
Just as you wouldn’t use rusty nails and bad wood when building a house, you wouldn’t replace your system with bad stuff. It is a scientific fact that those protein powders and bars are processed foods. They don’t come with essential fiber, water, and nutrients. You need to ingest vitamins and minerals from a holistic approach. In other words, just because you burned some calories, it’s not a free ticket to eat pizza, chips, and such.
In this same vein, recovery should involve the return of metabolic waste throughout the circulatory system. Massage guns are your own private personal massage tool! More traditional are massage sticks. Both are handy to have around the house and are easy to travel with. With these, you’re working to squeeze the metabolic waste out of the muscles and bring more blood into the kidneys, liver, etc. In so doing, it expedites recovery and sends oxygen and fresh nutrients back to your muscles for repair.
Torel’s overall approach is to age gracefully in all areas of life. Be it thinking, exercising, family, social life, or eating. Her holistic approach is the reason she has found joy and satisfaction in helping and training her clients to find peace in doing. Not sitting!
Click Here for Judy’s Video on Relieving Joint Pain
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