How I Made A Health And Fitness Comeback In My 50s

Welcome back to my LinkedIn newsletter! In each issue, I explore the intersection of passion and purpose in business, with insights gained from working with more than a million entrepreneurs around the world. (Not signed up? Subscribe here to get fresh insights delivered straight to your inbox.)

I grew up in India, in the foothills of the Himalayas, decades before the internet and without many modern conveniences. Our lifestyle was quite healthy compared to today’s reality and the standard American diet. But health and well-being weren’t something we thought much about.??

In the summers, we visited my grandparents who lived in a small village. They grew some of their own food and tended to a cow or two. As kids we played outside, moved our bodies a lot, helped harvest produce from the gardens for our meals, and spent a lot of time socializing with friends and loved ones – IRL of course.?

But I grew up, as we all do, and life got busier and more complicated. My roles in sales and marketing, and then business leadership, led to a global nomad lifestyle. Stress seeped in, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle and less-than-stellar eating habits. In my thirties and forties, I found myself on a path that was hurtling towards a potentially lower healthspan.

Over time my childhood memories had faded, but a work trip in 2019 brought them all flooding back. I was visiting one of Amway’s organic farms in El Petacal, Mexico, and marveling at the sustainable ways our team took care of hundreds of acres of lush organic crops. In my early days at Amway, I also followed many of our health and wellness entrepreneurs on Instagram. Then the pandemic hit, and suddenly we all became hyper-focused on our health.??

While the team was working to craft an Amway vision and strategy to empower millions of entrepreneurs to help billions of people live better, healthier lives, I knew it was important that I lead the way by becoming a “product of the product”. That meant getting healthier, and eventually, it led me to develop the long-term goal to improve my healthspan.

I’m now in the fourth year of my multi-year health and well-being journey, and here’s what I’ve learned about how to make a health and fitness comeback – at any age:??

1. Start small with the basics

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the health information, products and systems available today. But we didn’t have most of those things when I was growing up. Back then, health was simple: Eat well, mostly plants. Move your body. Get outside. Spend time with loved ones. And get ample rest and sleep. While diets, supplements and workouts can be powerful, especially when shared with others, getting back to the basics with simple health habits can yield some easy wins.?

2. Nurture healthy habits to support health goals

Habits are one of the most powerful forces we can use to help us achieve our goals in life and work. But it’s not always easy to build new habits we can stick to. That’s why I’m a firm believer in micro-habits: small, daily practices that I can easily entrench into my lifestyle and routine – no matter how busy I get. For example, nearly every day I make sure to find 10-15 minutes and a space where I can sip a cup of chai or meditate. This is easy to bake into my daily routine and it helps to refresh my mind.?

3. Enjoy early wins and then paint a healthspan North Star

More than ever, we’re realizing that what’s important is not just how long we live, it’s about how long we live with vitality – free of chronic disease and ailments. As business leaders and entrepreneurs, we often prioritize our careers and businesses over everything else. But no matter how busy we get, we must make time to build a long-term vision and plan for our healthspan. This is a topic that resonates with me deeply, especially given Amway’s mission of helping people live better, healthier lives. One thing we’ve always stressed is prevention, and I believe the best way to achieve that is by setting your healthspan North Star.

4. Create short-term goals in service of the long-term

This year, I decided to write out a personal health plan along with my business goals. With my longer-term healthspan plan in mind, I sat down and sketched out short-term goals that would feed into my 2050 health goals. Knowing what I want to accomplish in the long run helps me break down bigger goals into smaller habits I can pursue now. For example, I know that when I’m 80, I want to be able to run, hike and lift my grandkids onto my shoulders. That means adding weight training into my fitness routine now so that I can lay the foundation for building (and keeping) my muscle mass.?

5.? Bring friends and loved ones along for the ride

They say we go farther when we go together, and I can attest that there’s power in numbers and positive influence when it comes to getting healthy. There are so many ways we can work together to lift one another up on our health journeys. If you find an online community like many of the ones I follow on Instagram, the accountability that provides can be deeply impactful. For me, publicly sharing my health plans and being cheered on by all of you also gives me motivation to keep going.?

I love the idea that we’re never too old to regain control of our health and wellness. And while feeling better and stronger than I did when I was younger is what originally prompted me to make a plan to get my health back, nowadays it’s all about looking forward to growing older and being physically able to accomplish my goals and enjoy life. I truly hope that by sharing these learnings, my health journey might also help to ignite yours.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments below. For more insights on taking business to the next level, be sure to subscribe to Passion and Purpose.