Professor who says he’s the healthiest he’s ever been at 84 shares his ‘trinity’ of tips for ageing well – including choosing exercise you can do for ‘the rest of your life’ and a career you enjoy
- Professor Norman Lazarus, of King’s College London, featured on This Morning
- Has penned The Lazarus Strategy: How to Age Well and Wisely on healthy ageing
- After struggling with weight entire life, decided to overhaul his lifestyle habits
- Advised eating healthy food, doing regular exercise and doing a job you enjoy
A professor who claims he’s healthier at 84 than he’s ever been has revealed his ‘trinity’ of tips on how to age well.
Norman Lazarus, from Surrey, who is a Professor at the Centre for Human and Applied Physiological Sciences at King’s College London, struggled with his weight for most of his life before overhauling his lifestyle habits in his fifties.
After embracing a new healthy lifestyle, which involved cycling rigorously and eating 1,800 calories a day, Norman has no age-related diseases, is medication free and has written a book.
His self-help memoir – The Lazarus Strategy: How to Age Well and Wisely – offers advice on how to remain healthy as you age, and on This Morning today, Norman laid out his top three tips.
They include eating the right amount of healthy food, regularly working out and ‘enjoying what you’re doing’ during your day-to-day life because you’re putting yourself into the ‘correct mental space’.
Norman Lazarus, from Surrey, who is a professor at the Centre for Human and Applied Physiological Sciences at King’s College London, appeared on This Morning to share his tips on ageing well
‘The three points about lifestyle, I call them the Trinity,’ said Norman. ‘The three points are, you have to eat properly and the correct amount.
‘You have to exercise, I’m sorry there is no way around that. Call it movement, call it exercise, call it physical training.
‘The third very important aspect, you have to enjoy what you’re doing, because if you enjoy what you’re doing, you’re putting yourself in the correct mental space.
‘When you have those aspects of the trinity, you can take this non-disease trajectory all the way through decades of your life.’
The professor explained that while he offers guidance on embracing a healthy lifestyle, it is down to the individual to want to make a change.
His self-help memoir ‘The Lazarus Strategy: How to Age Well and Wisely’ will offer advise on how to remain healthy as you age
He went on to emphasise the importance of finding a form of exercise you like, insisting that for his method to work, you’ll be undergoing it for the ‘rest of your life’.
‘Like everything it has to start with you,’ said Norman. ‘I can only offer the strategy, which you must adopt in order to age well and wisely.
‘But you have to want to, you can’t kid yourself, before you embark on this you have to make sure you want to do it.
‘Then you must pick any physical activity you are going to enjoy. If you pick physical activity just because you want to exercise, it will grind you into the ground – you have to do it for the rest of your life.’
Norman has always battled with weight issues and after turning 50 had began to think about his mortality, fearing he would develop an age-related disease.
‘I’ve had trouble with my weight most of my life’, said Norman. ‘And I reached 50-something and I had inclinations of mortality surfacing in my head, and you get to the age you realise you’re not young anymore.
‘Age changes your perspective entirely and… I knew from my medical training anyway, if I carried on I would get one of those diseases that come with age.
After embracing a new healthy lifestyle, starting cycling rigorously and eating 1,800 calories a day, Norman has no age-related diseases and is medication free
The professor explained to hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford (both pictured) that while he has offered a guide to embracing a healthy lifestyle, it is down to the individual to want to make a change
He went on to urge others that ageing doesn’t mean you have to ‘go down that path getting all those ageing diseases’ because they can change their trajectory by transforming their lifestyle habits.
The professor said: ‘It always happens when you begin to realise, you’re not going to remain young forever and it’s quite funny how we tend to put age aside in everything we do.
‘But from about our mid forties, as we get into our fifties, age begins to creep in and we may not like it, but we have to accept it.
‘There’s nothing we can do about age, but what we can do is control the trajectory of our ageing.
‘We don’t need to go down that path getting all those ageing diseases and we can avoid them by changing the lifestyle.’
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