RetirePrep: Focusing on health in month 3
In month 1 of my preparations for retirement in three years, I covered financial, legal, and end-of-life issues, and then I covered all my travel plans last month. I had intended to do health stuff, a natural progression from the EOL stuff in month 1, but I was slowly getting drawn into all the info on campers and RVs. And I went with the passion.
As I mentioned in previous posts, pre-planning for retirement is about seeing if I’m making the right “investments” in the various “areas” of my life, just as you would for financial planning. The biggest one that most people talk about, even if they don’t use those words, is health: “Are you making the proper investments in your health to smooth your transition into a healthy, active retirement?”.
Now that I’ve blasted through all that fun stuff, this month’s focus on health is likely to totally suck mentally and emotionally. Part of that is my historically dysfunctional emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical relationship with health, nutrition and fitness. Part of that is optimism tempered by a reality check that will hinder my efforts. Part of that is the fear that those big travel plans I mentioned in month 2 are only possible in their current form IF I can make changes before I retire; if I don’t make them, many of my retirement plans fall away. I will have failed to invest adequately to do what I want and need to do.
But the biggest challenge is that my health planning differs from almost all the other “areas” I’ll blog about within this first year. On most of them, the goal is “pre-preparation”…for example, on travel, I didn’t have to decide yet whether I would travel in an RV, campervan or towed trailer, I only had to decide what the big options would be for later. The detailed implementation planning can happen in the first year after I retire to “start” the trip about 11-12 months later. I don’t have to DO the planning work now, I just have to come up with a viable framework. If, however, I’d discovered in there that I needed to do some advanced driving course before I even get there, sure, I’d have more work to do in the coming months or years before retirement. Instead, for the most part, most of the planning stuff is to monitor developments in the industry and options for the future, handle a bit of savings to ensure I have the money if/when I need it in retirement, and then hit it hard after retirement.
By contrast? The health stuff starts now. I’m not just building a framework for the future, I’m building the framework and full-on implementation plan now. I’m jumping out of the airplane and sewing my parachute together on the way down. I don’t have time to wait, I need to start now. And if I’m totally honest with myself, I’ve tried some of this before, and failed miserably. I can’t afford to fail this time. In many ways, it feels like my last chance.
My starting point
So how’s my health? Well, generally, it sucks. If you compared it to financial planning, I would hit retirement with very little health assets to support me in my aging years. That’s a bit overdramatic, but well, not completely.
At the moment, my back is in rough shape. I did something to it about six months ago, and it has been terrorizing me ever since. I’ll bop along for a couple of weeks, seems to be going well, and then one morning I’ll wake up, roll out of bed, and it starts twinging like an SOB. When it “killed” me the first time, I had never experienced that kind of pain from the spasms. I literally was crying and occasionally screaming. Six months later, I know how to control the pain, keep it down to a dull roar, and I have a back brace to use when I need it. Massage helped, and I thought osteo was helping too for a while, but then it stopped helping at all.
Right now, I need to focus on three things:
- Taking my over-the-counter meds to reduce inflammation…I confess I really don’t like taking pain meds of any kind, they can make me kind of foggy or loopy at times, but I need to get over my reluctance and take them regularly to reduce the flare-ups;
- Actively do my back stretches and strengthening exercises, increasing into the more advanced ones; and,
- Continue my chiro treatments.
I’ll also consider some myofascial release (after Christmas) or increased regular therapeutic massage.
After that, there’s my weight. It’s stable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. I have plans, and most of those right now are around getting a solid workout routine going. Even if it doesn’t reduce the weight for now, it will give me more strength, energy and flexiblity for the future.
And then I need to get moving again. I’d love to start kayaking next summer, but my back needs to be “fixed” first.
What comes next?
I don’t know exactly all the “pieces” yet for my plans.
- I want to look at the roll-over elements from my End-of-Life work;
- I’ll be doing a full physical this fall, including A1C numbers, BP, colon, prostate;
- I want to get hearing aids or at least have my hearing fully checked and evaluated;
- I need to get some dental work done;
- My feet have the same issues most diabetics have, so I’ll get that looked at, see if there’s anything to worry about;
- I need to work through a full assessment regimen for regular evaluation of my fitness level;
- I’ll start looking at flexibility, strength, movement, etc; and,
- I’ll need to do a bunch of work on cognitive functions as well as mental health.
I confess that I’m not fully ready for the work I need to do this month. And, as I said, it’s not just the framework; it’s the full implementation plan or at least the pieces I need to do now to support my back rehab and be ready to move into the strength and energy levels work in about three to six months.
But the hardest part will not be that part of the equation. The most challenging part will be figuring out how to harness all the rituals and enhancements I came up so that I’ll stick to the plan and make it work. As I said, it feels like a last chance to get this right before I retire.
If I succeed, I will have the health foundations to do what I want to do; if I fail, well, that is a much more sedentary and disappointing retirement than I want to contemplate yet.

Changing habits of diet and movement is hard. I have a good exercise routine but often get derailed with appointments or injury. Each time I resume though, it is easier, and whatever I have done is better than having done nothing. I wish I didn’t like bread so much!
Good luck!
Carolee
Thanks sis…I’ll be redoing most of my routines soon. I’m going to see if I can incorporate some “incrementalism”. There’s a woman who does videos that I really like…for example, she’ll say, “Do x exercise…when you can do 10 of those, try x2 exercise…when you can do 10 of those, move on to x3…and when you can do ….” So she’ll give you perhaps 5 or 6 exercises to start with to build up to a full pull-up, for example. I don’t know if my routines will be that detailed to start, I have to focus on back rehab, but I do like the overall approach. Plus I will have some fun developing my idea of a good functional fitness test. Even if my scores will suck for awhile. π