There are many ways to begin. What you choose to do depends entirely on you. What you should not do, is nothing. Yet that’s what almost everyone will do. Have the courage to begin. I know that you cannot know where that will lead you. That’s why we chose the tunnel image for the health coaching part of this website. You can’t see what’s at the end of tunnel. If you can’t begin the journey, you can’t control your own outcome.

I did exercise and train in my 50’s, but through my 60’s I did much less and slowly lost fitness and later my health. In my early 70’s I determined to recover my health, and I’ve been successful. BUT life is uncertain, negative events happen and at my age a sudden step down in health is likely. So, for me keeping up the amount of physical exercise I’m doing (about 12 hours a week at the moment) is important. You need to make your own plan. Can I suggest the Fitify App as one way to begin. Or train so that you can join parkrun in your district. The difference in capability of people who have made an effort to be fit, and those who are unfit is about 20 years superior. More power, more speed, more energy and less pain.

For my wife Carolyn and I ballroom dancing has always been important, but we have also embraced long hill walks, cycling, and TaiChi. Carolyn has a basketball hoop in the yard and tries to shoot 100 baskets every day.

For more than 30 years, I’ve regularly written in various exercise books, about what interests me, and sometimes about my life and my fitness. When you are thinking about making changes in your life then keeping a journal, even for a short time is a sensible strategy. If at some stage you need to discuss your progress with a doctor, physiotherapist, dietician or a health coach, you have prepared the ground for success. You’ve built a foundation of knowledge. I strongly suggest you begin to build your own knowldge in your own book.

One of the most contentious issues has always been “What is the best human diet” and then for yourself, “What should I choose to eat.” The Dietary Guidelines for America became a standard for “what to eat” around the world, particularly in English speaking countries. However, we are getting sicker and less healthy since then, and type II diabetes, obesity, cancer and cardio-vascular disease are plagues in our society. Many of us have discovered that the “healthy diet” that we tried to eat as young people is not a healthy diet when we get older. Not sure why? I seem to have identified a pattern, as young people we ate a lot of rubbish and seemed to get away with it, then as our health declined, we tried to be vegetarian. That worked but later it failed. Finally, we end up eating many more animal foods, and far less fruit and vegetables. Maybe as we age, the quality of the protein we eat become more important.

There are two pages on this site about this topic. In the past I’ve found that it’s very difficult to get people to even look at the population data for older people, and to think about what that says about one’s final years. Not wanting to know is common. George Vaillant with the Grant Study is a psychiatrist and he made some interesting observations about aging 30 years ago, that others are today confirming.

There are many people today who are seriously studying ageing. The science is improving. One of the serious problems is that George Vaillant was several years younger than his subjects, and he thought they were “over the hill at 55” when in fact the best part of their lives was ahead. Dr Peter Attia, has a lot to say about physical fitness and ageing. He is also much younger than the people he is talking about. What he says may be nonsense, or maybe not. His advice is to become strong and to work hard to maintain your strength all of your life.

I’m not fully qualified as a Health Coach yet. As a student member of the HAANZA I am required to abide by strict ethical guidelines.

However, I do need to practise my coaching skills, so if you like what you are reading here, and you want to contact me, we may be able to work something out that suits us both.

By all means feel free to wander about the Main Open Future Health website. It has several parts: It begins here, and it has options for desktop, tablet and phone devices.

There is an introductory front end of about 15 URL’s that are a general introduction to the health I’ve been learning about over 10 years.

Behind that there is a website with about 300 URL’s. It has four main parts, plus a blog.

The main parts are:

The Lecture, over 8 years old, it takes about two hours. But it’s in eight parts and over a week it’s doable.

There’s a workshop; I’m not sure if anybody uses it, there’s a Nutrition Science Section, and a Section about Banting.

For People interested in Health System Bias, the TRIAL of Prof. Timoth Noakes might interest you.

There are two blogs: an old one with over 50 entries. It remains because there is useful stuff there. And a new one built on WordPress.

There is also a very long list of notable health experts I’ve discovered over the years, (At the moment a bit dated. 1 November, 2024) It’s a good place to explore and by the end of January 2025 it should have more recent material added.