Your cholesterol is creeping up and it’s just a matter of time before the doc prescribes statin therapy. Can foods fortified with plant sterols help?

The short answer is yes. Plant sterols—which are found naturally in vegetables, fruits, and seeds, and which are being added to a growing number of foods—lower cholesterol by keeping it in the digestive tract and out of the bloodstream.

“Research is pretty clear: Adding two grams of plant sterols to your daily diet can reduce LDL cholesterol by 8 to 15 percent. Importantly, you get quick results (within two weeks) and without compromising the taste or texture of your favorite foods,” says holistic pharmacist and author Sherry Torkos, who practices in the Buffalo area of New York.

Happily, it’s easy to find sterol-fortified foods in regular grocery stores. Look for Cargill’s CoroWise logo on labels of pasta, margarine, orange juice, granola bars, chips, and oatmeal squares. One serving of these foods typically provides 0.5 grams of plant sterols, or ¼ the FDA-recommended amount for cholesterol lowering.

“To get your 2 grams of sterols, take your pick of Minute Maid HeartWise orange juice or Smart Balance milk. Then have a serving of Corazonas torilla chips or my mother’s favorite: oatmeal squares topped with dark chocolate,” suggests Torkos.

Future research will focus on the role of sterols in preventing heart attacks and strokes. “Long-term data aren’t yet available to confirm these foods promote heart health. Nevertheless, I encourage my patients to consume them as part of a healthy diet,” says leading cardiologist and Post contributor Douglas Zipes.

Photo credit Cargill.

Eat for Health The Saturday Evening Post

A man asks his doctor how to live to be 100.
The doctor asked the man, “Do you smoke or drink?”
“No,” he replied. “Never.”
“Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or fool around with women?” inquired the doctor.
“No, I’ve never done any of those things either.”
“Well, then,” said the doctor, “why do you want to live to be 100?”

It was a question that might have occurred to pollster George Gallup as he concluded his 1959 study “The Secrets of a Long Life,” for The Saturday Evening Post. (Read the full story here.) For the report, the Gallup Organization had spent months interviewing 402 Americans from across the country who had all lived 95 years or longer.

When all the data was collected, Gallup drew two surprising conclusions.

"I'm not a salad eater or a fruit eater, and if it were true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I'd be dead long ago; I don't eat an apple a year," 96-year-old Dr. John Edward Rhetts of Salem, Indiana, told the Post. The cane, he said, was to make him look distinguished.

First, if you wanted to live to a very ripe old age, it didn’t matter what you ate or drank or how much you exercised.

Second, you’ll live a lot longer if your life is dull.

Nothing helped the human body reach a ripe old age better than an unexciting life of regular habits, little  variation, and low stress. The interview subjects weren’t motivated by driving ambitions. They hadn’t even tried to achieve a long life. (Only 9 percent of the group had ever expected to reach their 90s.) “For many,” Gallup wrote, “their only outstanding accomplishment is that they have lived longer than most other humans. … Living to be old is probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to these people.”

They were admirable people, Gallup argued: honest, hardworking, law-abiding citizens and parents. But these elderly men and women had shaped their lives for contentment, not achievement. They were not risk-takers. When the great tide of migration swept westward, they remained where they had been born—usually in a small town.

In their lifetimes, stress wasn’t the buzz word it is today. They might have talked instead of discomfort, worry, nerves—whatever the word used, these subjects had figured out how to avoid it.

“If this still sounds dull,” Gallup concluded, “the chances are that you’ll never make 90.”

Gallup had commenced his research by asking subjects if they could attribute their long lives to any one factor. Fully one-third of the subjects said, “I don’t know.”

Others offered these explanation:

• God’s will (22 percent)

• Adaptability and a good sense of humor (17 percent)

• Hard work (16 percent)

• Good genes—parents or siblings who lived into their 90s (11 percent)

• Keeping regular habits (9 percent)

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that most of the interview subjects lived lives of moderation—they didn’t eat or drink to excess, and they didn’t smoke. But a significant minority broke these rules.

In 1959, William Perry, 106, of San Francisco had ham and eggs, beans, fried fish, and coffee for breakfast.

Take the issue of drinking, for example. Over half of the people interviewed had never touched liquor in their lives, which might seem like an argument for abstinence. And yet, there was 115-year-old Uncle Charley Washington who, throughout his life, had drank “as much whiskey as he (could) afford.” Also, there was the testimony of 101-year-old Mrs. Marie Renier. For 80 years, she had drunk a quart of whiskey, and in many decades, as much as a gallon of beer a day.

As for food, there’s no consistent answer, either. Some ate lean, others ate richly. Meals tended to be heavy on the starch and protein. If a vegetable made it to their table, it was usually overcooked. Half of them had eaten fried food regularly all their lives.

Overall, there was enough contradiction among the subjects’ answers, aside from the uniform dullness, to rule out any other “secrets” for extending lifespan.

Even adopting a healthy pattern of living—regular hours, healthy diet, regular exercise, etc.—was no guarantee. As Gallup noted, “the only apparent value of their testimony is to give some sort of comfort to those of us who do not conform to the pattern and who covet long life.”

In other words, no matter what rules you lived by, you still had a chance at long life. And if you had followed all the generally accepted rules for good health, you still had no guarantees you’d make it to 100.

Americans today have a one-in-6,000 chance of living 100 years, which is probably why there are more centenarians living in America than any other country. We of the modern age still believe we can improve our odds with a better diet and more exercise. But if the real secret is living a life that is horribly, painfully dull, would any of us truly want to live to 100?

The average lifespan was 70 years
when the Gallup articles were published in 1959
and 78.5 in 2012.

Do You Really Want To Live To 100? The Saturday Evening Post

The story, recounted in a 1911 book The Bacillus of Long Life, describes healthy bacteria now called probiotics. Today, probiotics—defined by the World Health Organization as live microbes that confer a health benefit—are one of the hottest consumer health products. Last year, according to research firm Euromonitor International, more than 63,000 tons of probiotic cultures were consumed worldwide.

Americans are turning to probiotics in part to counter the sanitizing effect of modern food processing, which minimizes risks of pathogens in food but also kills natural flora which some scientists believe have health benefits. Live bacteria, originally marketed mainly in yogurt and dietary supplements, are now being added to breakfast cereals, juices, sports drinks, muffins, chocolate, and even pizza. Potential health benefits range from better digestive health to prevention of colds and flus.

Consider Herald Hollingshed, a 44-year-old technical director for a computer-services company, who felt his digestion started “slowing” when he hit middle age. He was frequently uncomfortable and bloated, but found relief with a Procter & Gamble product, Align. The pill “helps everything flow as it should,” says Hollingshed, who also switched to a healthier diet. “I feel in my best shape ever.”

For Cheryl Richardson, a 67-year-old retired lab technician from Chestertown, Maryland, probiotics over the years have helped balance the negative effects of antibiotics. Several years ago, after becoming ill from restaurant food while on vacation in the British Isles, a doctor prescribed an antibiotic that seemed to throw her digestive system out of whack. High doses of probiotics put it back on track.

“This replaces all the bacteria and helps your system digest food properly,” says Richardson.

For consumers, it’s simultaneously a cornucopia of choice and a confusing cacophony of marketing messages. The consumer “goes into a supermarket and has no idea which product to buy,” says Gregor Reid, professor of microbiology at the University of Western Ontario’s Lawson Research Institute. Despite the potential for confusion, scientists say probiotics hold great promise for human health. The evidence lies, in part, with the beneficial effects of breast milk. Beneficial gut flora called bifidobacteria are higher in breast-fed infants than in those fed by formula, says Glenn R. Gibson, professor of food microbiology at University of Reading in England, adding that the breast-fed infants have lower incidence of asthma and eczema. Good bacteria drop after babies are weaned, then remain stable through adult life until they drop precipitously around age 60 to 65. “They don’t go away completely, but they decrease and make us more prone to infections,” Gibson says. Low levels of good gut bacteria, he says, is likely at least part of the reason why the elderly suffer most during food-poisoning outbreaks.

The theory of how probiotics help us has for years been simple: The good bacteria crowd out the bad, resulting in better health. In recent years, scientists have learned that probiotic bacteria also take on many more useful tasks, says Philip M. Sherman, a scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. For example, scientists believe some types of probiotic bacteria help boost production of a protective mucus which lines the gut. Others, he says, produce cellular messages that calm harmful inflammation.

A growing number of scientists believe that gut microbes can change overall health. Scientists are beginning to study the use of probiotics to treat depression and even obesity. Benefits have already been shown for the digestive system, immune modulation, and dental health. There is even talk of the potential to increase longevity. “It’s exciting and there’s great promise,” says Joan Salge Blake, a clinical associate professor of nutrition at Boston University and a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Meet the Healthy Microbes: These microorganisms have been shown to boost health in published scientific studies. (Click image to enlarge chart.)

If you want the benefits of probiotics, you need to select carefully. “It’s not one size fits all,” says Salge Blake. “The one that may help with constipation is different from the one that may help with immune support. Make sure you are getting the right strain for what you want.”

For example, Dannon Activia yogurt and Procter & Gamble Co.’s probiotic capsule Align have shown in scientific studies to improve gastrointestinal health. In four published studies, Activia improved food’s transit time through the gut. Align, shown to be effective in a chronic condition called irritable bowel syndrome, is also helpful for milder digestion problems.

Post Investigates Probiotics The Saturday Evening Post

The terrain swoops and rises as I drive up North Carolina Route 86 toward the rural crossroads of Cedar Grove. By the time I reach Whitted Bowers Farm, it feels like the essence of American pastoral. I turn into the driveway on a December morning, passing trees that will soon be heavy with figs, plums, pears, and pomegranates. Goats nibble here and there. A large field looks tucked in for the winter, but underneath a woven blanket grow 20,000 strawberry plants. Further up stands an aluminum-frame greenhouse where globe artichokes have already begun their lives, bathed in classical music from a nearby boom box. I park in front of a modern farmhouse. Three dogs run up to greet me.

Rob and Cheri Bowers, who own this organic farm, welcome me with a mug of hot tea. Rob has spent the morning harvesting broccoli and Brussels sprouts from their cold-frame hoop house. When he and Cheri met in 2005—he’s 50; she’s 45—they were living in California and neither had ever farmed full-time. “Both of us were feeling a tremendous pull to walk around and get our feet dirty,” Rob tells me. They were surprised to discover a common fantasy of growing fruit through a sustainable method called biodynamics, which builds the fertility of the soil with limited use of imported materials. “Those are the kinds of coincidences that one needs to pay attention to,” he says. Within a year and a half, the couple was married with a six-month-old daughter and had found 52 acres blessed with good Carolina soil. Cheri had grown up near the site of their new home. Her mother and siblings lived six miles away.

Thriving transplants: The Bowerses moved from California to North Carolina to pursue their back-to-the-land dream. Photo Courtesy Whitted Bowers Farm.

“… energy, money, spiritually …” adds Cheri—

“… into this place,” Rob continues. “We really did want that experience of knowing what it meant to have a crop come in, and to feel what it meant to be reliant on what is basically a gift.”

If there was ever a time when consumer demand could support organic farmers like the Bowerses, that moment is now. Americans have grown savvy to the health and environmental benefits of foods produced without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Organic food sales grew 7.7 percent in 2010 to $28.6 billion, more than ten times the growth rate for all food. Organics now command a 4 percent share of the total food market, up from 1.6 percent a decade ago. At my own farmer’s market in Durham, N.C., getting the best pickings means rising early and dodging the crowds. Likewise, community-supported agriculture (CSA)—in which customers get their food delivered straight from the farm—is flourishing. (To find a CSA near you, go to localharvest.org.)

Organic produce fills bins not only at self-consciously green megastores like Whole Foods, but also at traditional supermarkets and retailers like Wal-Mart. Health-conscious parents buy organic milk in cartons illustrated with cartoons of happy cows. There are organic wines, organic baby foods, organic pretzel bunnies. The Organic Trade Association, an industry group for North American producers and distributors, describes this explosion as a “cultural quickening.”

But along with this quickening come questions of what organic really means. Do strawberries from small farmers like the Bowerses fit under the same umbrella as the Surfin’ Strawberry yogurt tubes manufactured by Horizon Organics, a subsidiary of the $12-billion-a-year Dean Foods, the nation’s leading milk processor? How friendly to the environment are bagged salad greens shipped 8,000 miles from New Zealand or tomatoes grown in the Mexican desert? Are organic cookies healthy cookies? And in an era of industrial-scale production, can family farms in places like Cedar Grove survive?

Photo Courtesy Whitted Bowers Farm.

In the beginning it was more of a movement than a market niche.

Steve Gilman, a farmer in Stillwater, N.Y., can trace his own start in organics to the Vietnam War era and the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and 70s. “There was a whole generation who had contact with a counter-cultural viewpoint,” he says. “It was a sane approach and a positive approach: Instead of being anti-war or anti-everything, it was being for something.” Organic farming embodied so many values of the era: community life, clean water and air, and the rejection of large, profit-driven industries like agrochemical companies.

Of course, farmers had been growing without synthetics since the dawn of agriculture. And decades before Baby Boomers like Gilman came along, modern organic techniques were being developed by pioneers such as Rudolph Steiner (who developed biodynamics) and the Rodale Institute. But growing anxiety about the planet’s well-being (think Rachael Carson’s 1962 wake-up call Silent Spring and the first Earth Day in 1970) helped set the tone for a more widespread embrace. So did news like the Alar scare of the 1980s in which the now-banned apple pesticide was linked to cancer.

In 1990 Congress tried to regulate the organic label by passing the Organic Foods Production Act. It took another dozen years—and fierce debates over issues such as genetic engineering and sewage-sludge fertilizer—before the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) set the official standards. From 2000 through 2008 the sector went gangbusters: Organic food sales climbed 15 to 21 percent each year, and organic non-foods like cotton were posting annual growth rates upwards of 40 percent.

Photo Courtesy Whitted Bowers Farm.

“This is where things started shifting,” says Gilman, policy coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association Interstate Council. “A lot of corporations started to see that they better get something on board with organic. If you’re in any kind of business, you’ve got to have some skin in the game.”

Thus started the era of what author Samuel Fromartz calls “Organic Inc.” Kraft, Kellogg, Hershey, and ConAgra developed or acquired organic product lines. General Mills bought Cascadian Farm. Horizon Dairy, before its purchase by Dean Foods, took over an industrial-scale dairy in the Idaho desert to help supply some of the organic milk. Retail chains began selling organic processed foods: toaster waffles, frozen pizzas, and Oreo knockoffs. Large-scale vegetable growers, particularly in California, started claiming their portion of the fresh-produce market.

I talked with one of them: Jeff Huckaby, executive vice president of Grimmway Farms, the world’s largest carrot grower. In 1995, he told me, his company was concerned that tougher pesticide regulations would force it to shelve some of its most potent farm chemicals. So Grimmway set aside 300 acres for an organic experiment. “We found that, all right, we can do this,” he says. “It costs a lot more and the yield isn’t as good. But if they took every tool away today, we wouldn’t be out of business.” Anticipating the future, the company ramped up its non-chemical side and in 2001 bought a competitor called Cal-Organic.

“That’s when the organic movement took off, especially Whole Foods,” Huckaby says. “We happened to have the kind of acreage they needed to get larger volumes out to fill their stores.” Eventually, Grimmway put almost 30,000 of its 100,000 acres into organic production, spread over eight growing regions to assure year-round availability. It expanded its offerings to 70 vegetables. It attracted Costco and Wal-Mart as customers. “The larger retailers like the fact that they can come to one company and know what our growing practices were like, what our food-safety programs were like. And they knew that they could count on us—we probably would not run out. They were able to call us up and say, ‘Let’s figure out how to get Romaine lettuce 52 weeks a year,’ and we were able to supply that for them.”

Photo Courtesy Timberwood Organics.

Now, when you walk into a supermarket, the organic carrots you see are likely to come from Grimmway. The bagged organic salad greens will probably come from Earthbound Farms, which grows on nearly 37,000 acres in the U.S., Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, and six other countries.

“The grocery stores don’t want to be bothered with buying from tons of different companies. So that middle part of the supply chain is really concentrated,” says Carolyn Dmitri, a research associate professor of food studies at New York University. Organics are no different. “It’s almost like your success becomes your enemy. Once you’re popular and people want organic, the only way that it’s going to happen is if it blends into our existing food system.”

For some of organic’s boosters, this concentration is just fine. “Any acre converted from non-organic production to organic—even if it’s industrial—is a victory for the environment,” says Helge Hellberg, a California consultant who until 2011 directed a farmers’ association called Marin Organic. Hellberg used to be more of a purist. But he has come to believe that the highest virtue comes from getting synthetic pesticides and fertilizers off the landscape and out of our bodies as quickly as possible. “The greatest opening right now, in terms of numbers, is the school systems around the nation. It’s the Safeways, the Wal-Marts, and all the companies that add an organic line. The quantity these companies need—that will most likely not come from small-scale producers.”

It’s hard to argue against getting healthy food to more people or getting toxic chemicals out of the soil. Organic agriculture has the potential to be transformational—slowing down global warming and providing a more stable food source as extreme weather events such as floods and droughts increase. It will never achieve that potential if it remains the sole province of deep-pocketed foodies.

But the tradeoffs that come with Organic Inc. can’t be papered over. The biggest, perhaps, is the betrayal of the original intent of the movement. “Part of why many of us went to organic many, many decades ago was because of the kind of concentration and difficulty we saw in the agribusiness-as-usual model,” says Michael Sligh, the founding chair of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which advises the USDA. “Some of that has come to organic.” The big-business model puts more emphasis on efficiency—and less on local production, animal welfare, and long-term sustainability. In December The New York Times published an article about organic tomatoes grown in Mexico’s arid Baja Peninsula, a practice that guarantees year-round availability in the U.S. but also depletes the desert’s scarce water.

Photo Courtesy Timberwood Organics.

What’s more, some large organic animal operations look strikingly like the factory farms they were supposed to supplant. The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based advocacy group for family farmers, recently investigated the organic egg industry and discovered aviaries housing up to 85,000 hens, “wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling,” with minimal or no access to pasture. “How can that be,” asks Mark Kastel, Cornucopia’s co-founder, “when the law clearly states that all organic livestock must be able to exhibit their natural instinctive behaviors and have access to the outdoors?” Last year, the USDA started requiring better outdoor access for organic cattle. It’s considering the same for poultry, though the proposed minimum standard for laying hens would be less than one-twentieth of the space the European Union mandates.

And the status quo remains slippery thanks to the industry’s political power. “The lawyers and lobbyists for big ag are in D.C. every day, influencing the regulators,” says former NOSB chair Jim Riddle, organic outreach coordinator for the University of Minnesota’s Southwest Research and Outreach Center. For example, the USDA keeps a list of non-organic ingredients that can legally be used in organic food processing. Originally it was designed for such basics as baking powder. But the list has grown lengthy, and there’s constant pressure to add more exceptions. Sometimes industry loses—as when the USDA rejected a request to allow a large bakery to spray their organic English muffins with an anti-fungal preservative. But not always. For example, organic breweries successfully petitioned the government to allow them to use hops treated with synthetic pesticides. (The USDA plans to lift that exemption in 2013.) Sausage makers can use casings made from the intestines of animals raised with hormones and antibiotics. “All kinds of things have been allowed that don’t seem to me to fit anything organic,” says former NOSB member Joan Gussow, a professor emeritus of nutrition and education at Columbia University. “This small hole that was made for things that seem acceptable has been gone through by all kinds of materials.”

The danger lies in devaluing the organic label, says Sligh, who is also a director of Rural Advancement Foundation International. “We have to be exceedingly careful,” he says, “that we don’t end up undermining the golden goose by this pressure to ever create more and more sophisticated processed foods.”

Healthy plan: Ray Christopher of Timberwood Organics bypasses long food supply chains by selling to the people who eat his produce. Photo Courtesy Timberwood Organics.

Not surprisingly, Organic Inc.’s growth has also touched family farmers. Some have seen their traditional sources of income dry up as their commercial clients turn to larger suppliers. I talked with Ray Christopher, who runs Timberwood Organics, a 12-acre farm in Efland, N.C. Until a decade ago one of his most reliable customers was a nearby Whole Foods Market whose buyer assured Christopher that his vegetables flew off the shelves. But then “it got back to corporate that she was buying from me at a high price, and they could have been making a lot more money if they were buying from California,” he says. “Because of the bottom line, it got canned.”

I heard several stories like this. “We used to have a robust restaurant business,” says Tom Philpott, co-founder of the non-profit Maverick Farms in Valle Crucis, N.C. Philpott started the educational farm—which uses organic methods but (like many small growers) is not USDA-certified—in 2004. “A couple of years in we started getting feedback from restaurants: ‘Look, we can get organic baby greens shipped in from California for cheaper.’” One national distributor promised to shave 20 to 30 percent off Maverick’s best price. So the local farm stopped supplying restaurants. “We’re not interested in taking on that type of competition,” says Philpott, who blogs about food for Mother Jones magazine.

The good news is that small farms are nimble. Timberwood and Maverick have ramped up their community-supported agriculture programs and command decent prices by delivering fresh produce to customers. Both sell at farmers markets too. This is how organic family farms will survive: by bypassing long supply chains and dealing instead with the people who eat their food. “It’s a personal relationship: ‘If you buy from me, I’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll be here next year. I’ll respond to your needs. We’re in this together,’” says Minnesota’s Jim Riddle.

That intimacy is precisely what has kept Rob and Cheri Bowers afloat since they moved to Cedar Grove, N.C., in 2006. Their biodynamic growing method goes beyond mainstream organics. They rely heavily on compost and do intensive soil preparation using herbs, seaweed, fungi, worm castings, and manure to “create a living fertility in the soil,” Rob says. They limit even organic fertilizers brought in from the outside. They use cover crops intensively. And they orient their work by lunar and astral cycles—in order, they say, to take advantage of phenomena like the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth’s water.

The Bowerses started by selling to a wholesale distributor, which in turn sold their produce to Whole Foods. “We didn’t like how that felt,” Cheri says. Nor did they like the price markup they saw at the supermarket. After a year, they pulled back, and now they sell at a farmers market and to nearby restaurants. During the spring, they open their strawberry fields as a U-Pick operation. By eliminating the middlemen, Rob and Cheri say they have kept their prices competitive with (and occasionally lower than) conventional produce sold at supermarkets. Even when they do charge more, customers remain loyal. Rob tells me about one weekend during the 2011 strawberry season when Whole Foods ran a sale on non-local fruit that undercut his price by almost two-thirds. “Ironically, that was a record weekend for us,” he says.

Part of their success stems from the quality of their food. The Bowerses sent me home with a bag filled with speckled-trout lettuce, baby Romaine, and two types of bok choy. Not only was it super-fresh, but the flavors were extraordinarily complex. “We’ve had people come to the market and say: I don’t know what it is about your stuff, but it feels alive,” Rob says. But there’s also something less tangible. “In this country everybody’s disconnected with their food. Their relationship is more through packaging and marketing.” But when people pick their own organic strawberries, that relationship changes. “It reconnects people in a way that they need.”

It will take more than U-Pick strawberry operations for organic farming to radically improve our planet’s health. But as we re-imagine agriculture, one would hope small farms like the Bowerses’ remain a vital part of the mix. The money they earn stays in the community. The farmers markets where they sell their produce bring neighbors together. They provide the story behind our food, filling a primal human need. And in a country that is becoming ever more urban, they serve as stewards of a diminishing treasure.

“One of the most incredible blessings is just to be able to become intimate with a piece of land over the course of a year and to see every day how it changes,” says Rob. “I always joke with Cheri: ‘We’re not farming this land. It’s farming us.’”

The Organic Food Paradox The Saturday Evening Post

Smart Swaps! The Saturday Evening Post

At 5′ 4″ and 120 pounds, Denise Austin may seem an unlikely powerhouse. But with her trademark enthusiasm and unbridled optimism, the diminutive dynamo has inspired millions to get up and get moving, earning her the reputation as “America’s favorite fitness expert.”

Austin’s philosophy is simple. For more than 25 years, she has promoted a sensible, realistic, and positive approach to achieving robust good health.

“I’m 50 and work out 30 minutes almost every day,” says the busy mom, business executive, and wife. “I love motivating people to achieve their goals — it’s all positive.”

With people living longer and feeling younger than ever, her clear message is certainly on target.

“People my age — 50 and older — feel young,” Austin says, adding that age is not a barrier. “You’re never too old to begin, even if you haven’t exercised in years. By starting with a 10-minute daily routine, you plant the seeds of a healthier habit that puts you squarely on the path to better health.”

No specialized equipment or gym membership is required to start.

“Go for a walk, or do 10 minutes of calisthenics,” she advises. “Devote time and establish a regular routine. If possible, try to exercise the same time each day, because research shows that people are more likely to exercise routinely if performed at a set time.”

That 10-minute routine will eventually grow to 12 minutes, then 15, with the eventual goal of achieving 30 minutes of daily exercise at a minimum. Don’t think the 10-minute prescription accomplishes much? Austin hears from people all over the country who say otherwise.

“I can’t believe how many people watch one of my programs then write, ‘I started with ten minutes and ended up watching your whole show,’ or ‘I ended up going for three miles instead of just one.’ People quickly realize that it doesn’t take much time and effort to get in better shape.”

Throughout the day, Austin says you can always find ways to incorporate exercise into daily activities.

“In the car on the way to work or in line at car pool, I tighten my tummy muscles,” the seasoned trainer says. “For example, you can tighten your abdominal muscles by pulling your bellybutton in like you’re zipping up a pair of jeans. The isometric exercise is good for your abs as well as your back. Isometrics work wherever you are. I have 15 to 20 different stretches I do almost every hour whether at the computer or while out and about. At the office, you can do many exercises. While sitting at your desk, do leg exercises by moving one leg up and down—you’ll strengthen the thigh muscles. Right now, for example, I’m stretching one arm and walking while talking to you on the telephone.”

Austin focuses on strengthening core muscle groups that stabilize our backs and boost our balance—an important issue as one ages.

“We know through research that 80 percent of people who suffer from low back pain have weak abdominal muscles,” says Austin. “If you keep the abdominals strong, in return they act as a girdle for your spine. I’m a big believer in core exercises.”

Throughout her career, Austin has squarely addressed the cornerstones of fitness.

“Exercise and diet are the most important ways to lose weight and feel better,” she adds. “It’s what you choose to eat that’s so important. I’m a big believer in consuming whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and good carbohydrates. Don’t starve yourself. I don’t believe in skipping meals or fad diets. Eat every three to four hours, even if it’s yogurt with a banana, just to keep your metabolism stable throughout the day.”

Too busy? Too tired? How can we overcome the many excuses and hurdles we confront in our hectic world?

“No time to exercise is the main excuse that I hear,” explains Austin. “People ask me, ‘How do you find the time?’ I say ‘I make the time.’ People must make the time for exercise. Put it on your calendar. When it becomes part of daily life, you carve time out for yourself and make it an important part of your day. If people say they are ‘too tired,’ I advise them to wake up a half an hour earlier and exercise in the morning—that way you’ll stick to it. If I wait until the end of the day, I can find a million excuses to never exercise. Another strategy is to find a friend. A friend keeps you going. I exercise a couple of mornings a week with my husband in the privacy of our house. You keep your routine up that way. When you get through the workout, you want to do it the next day. That’s the key to feeling better about yourself.”

Sustaining motivation day to day is imperative.

“God gave us one body, and we have to take good care of it,” says Austin. “Get off that couch and do something for yourself—you’ll feel so much better. Exercise is such a great mental filter for anyone coping with anxiety or stress. I promote pedometers because it’s fun to see how many steps you can take in a day. A pedometer is probably the best piece of equipment anyone could ever buy to get in shape. It’s a motivating and fun way to see if you can do more steps today than you did yesterday.”

As for hitting plateaus in our weight-loss plans, Austin offers some guidelines to tip the scales in your favor.

“The key to jump-starting your metabolism is doing things differently from what your body is used to,” explains Austin. “In the course of a week, I use different workouts. Some days I run, while other days I focus on yoga, Pilates, or weight training. By mixing up your routine, you surprise your muscles, which helps make a change in the body. If you’ve been walking for fitness all the time and hit a plateau, do something different—add weights to your workout or run two minutes of a 30-minute walk. Challenge yourself. Doing something different can make a big difference.”

Turning 50 was a milestone for the fitness icon.

“One of the biggest changes I noticed when I hit 50 is that you can’t let up because, if you do, you get softer quicker,” Austin says. “It’s also harder to get back into shape if you take three or four days off. The best part is that muscle has great memory and comes back more quickly: it just takes a little longer. You’ve got to fight it all the way because muscles work miracles on your metabolism. Muscle cells are very active while fat cells are sedentary. Throughout the day, evening, and even while you sleep, muscle cells burn more calories than fat cells.”

Along with a healthy diet, Austin boosted her nutritional intake.

“Eating healthy is the most important step you can take,” she explains. “As I age, however, I’ve included more omega-3 in my diet — from flaxseed or by consuming salmon at least twice a week — in addition to taking a multivitamin, extra vitamin C, calcium, and vitamin D.”

For people living with arthritis, back pain or other ailments, exercise can become an important tool to successfully cope with the problem.

“I always stress how important it is just to keep moving,” says Austin. “Swimming is good for people suffering from arthritis, because your body weighs less in the water. For people with low back or knee problems, strengthening the muscles surrounding the joints helps keep muscles strong. For people with osteoporosis, weight-bearing exercises are very important. Everything goes back to exercise.”

On the inside track of the latest research, Austin finds that the weight-loss equation is actually pretty straightforward.

“It comes down to simple things like how many calories you’re eating and how many calories you’re burning through muscle-conditioning exercise, flexibility, cardio strength,” Austin stresses. “I’m a big believer in balance — cardio to burn fat and condition your heart, flexibility, and muscle conditioning. By the end of the week, make sure you’ve done all three.”

Like so many mid-lifers, Austin has no plans to slow down.

“I hope to be like Jack LaLanne, God willing,” says Austin, a spokesperson for Keep Going Live Healthy campaign. “He looks amazing at 94. I find new elements of health and fitness to motivate people all the time. The sky’s the limit. Look at America — I still have a lot to do.”

For more on what you can do to keep your resolution, check out saturdayeveningpost.com/fooddiary

Denise Austin: Resolution Revolution! The Saturday Evening Post