Dr. Yoho's Diet and Exercise Plan

At 53 years of age, my ability to tolerate strenuous exercise has declined, but I still manage to exercise almost daily. I like lifting weights a great deal because I can exercise most parts of my body in any given week even if I have injuries. I spend only about 30 minutes at a time in the gymnasium and I exercise only one set of any given machine at a time with 8-20 repetitions. I may perform 5 or 6 different sets on a given body part, that is I may exercise my chest by pushing various machines in several different directions, but I do not exercise on the same machine more than once. I find that this makes the whole experience a lot more fun and I do not get tired of going to the gym. I also do about whatever I feel like on any given day. If I feel like running on the treadmill for 20 minutes, that is what I do. Besides doing sit-ups about every time I go to the gym, I do not have an established routine. I have been lifting weights for many years, however, and so I am quite familiar with all the gym’s machinery.

As far as my diet goes, it is not perfect; however, I do subscribe to a meal service called Sterling Cuisine, which can be viewed at sterlingcuisine.com. They have me on an 1800-calorie ADA (American Diabetic Association) diet, which I receive every Monday in refrigerated portions. I just heat them up in the microwave during the day along with various snacks in order to keep from getting too hungry. At night, Judy cooks and she does a pretty good job, but I am not completely strict about my diet at night. I do like to think about what Alessandro Komadina said to me once. He is a semi-professional body-builder. He said, “It is all about the diet.” In other words, he felt that the diet was much more important than the exercise component of a healthy approach to taking care of yourself.

Now it is true that I do get some outdoor exercise about once a week. I may go rock-climbing for 3-6 hours and this is fairly strenuous and involves most of the muscles in my body and it is fairly aerobic. I might take a mountain-bike ride, or do some bicycle riding with my children. None of these is all that hard, but I think that you will see from my photographs that I still am in reasonable shape. I am able to rock-climb at a reasonably difficult level in this age group and I am still interested in trying to go all the way up the El Capitan "Nose" route in less than 24 hours with another individual this next summer.

My recommendation for most of my patients is that if they want to exercise, they should do less of it and do it almost every day and that this will produce the best results. My recommendation about eating is that I think that most people need to buy their own food and cook their own foods in batches every week in order to get proper nutrition. Anyone who depends on restaurants or fast-food of any kind for a significant part of their diet will be disappointed in the results that they achieve.