Key Longevity Secrets from My 93 Year Old Grandpa
In memory of my Grandfather
This newsletter is in honor of my Grandfather who peacefully passed away at 93 years old last month. My Grandpa was the most inspiring person I’ve ever met. A force of nature. Bigger than life, with a heart filled with a genuine love for life, people and nature. If you knew him in real life, he treated you like family. Every moment with him was memorable. He worked hard, played hard, and loved hard. If you knew him through my social media, then you experienced a sliver of his greatness and likely felt inspired by the way that he lived his life, prioritized his health and radiated joy.
The way that my Grandpa lived can be summarized by Clayton Christensen’s advice to Harvard Business School students in 2010: “Choose the right yardstick. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched. Don’t worry about the individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people….Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”
As my Grandpa always said: life goes by in an instant. We get one shot. May we use his memory as inspiration to live life to the fullest, make the most of everyday, love with all our hearts and actively invest in our health.
Longevity Lessons From My Grandpa
1-Make the Most of Everyday–Life is Not a Dress Rehearsal
When asked by one of my followers: what is the most important suggestion for good health? My Grandpa responded: “1) make the most of every day. Life is not a dress rehearsal and 2) stay active physically and mentally.”
My Grandpa lived his life to the fullest, cherishing everyday. You would never find him without a giant smile on his face. He found such joy in the smallest things. He would marvel over the color of a watermelon from the farmers market, the type of birds around his bird feeders every morning, and the plants and trees that we passed on hikes. He had an intense love for adventure and mental stimulation. He loved travel, skiing, boating, reading, word puzzles and connecting with strangers. His life mantra that he reminded us of regularly was: Life is not a dress rehearsal. In a letter that he wrote to all of his grandchildren he asked: what will you do with your 86,400 seconds each day?
2-You Are Not Your Genes
My Grandpa lived 93 healthy years, free of chronic disease which is virtually unheard of today. You could chalk it up to “good luck” or “good genes” but this was not the case for him. His father and grandfather both died of heart attacks in their 50s. This is what motivated him to always prioritize living a healthy lifestyle. So that their story wasn’t his story. This is the power of epigenetics. Your genes load the gun but your environment pulls the trigger.
3-Move your Body All Day Long
When asked by one of my followers, “how is he so in shape and happy?” my Grandpa responded: “I believe in lifelong sports and activity. I love dancing, hiking, swimming, planting flowers, biking, and anything to do with nature.” If you stop moving, that’s when you start to age. I like the way exercise makes me feel and its impact on my ability to continue to do things.”
He even found small opportunities for movement like countertop push ups every morning when heating his instant coffee. Every time we visited him in Asheville, he hiked with us all day–taking us to Mount Pisgah (he could still hike the first half before he died), other mountains, and local walks around the town. He would say: “isn’t this wonderful?”
4-Invest in your Family
My Grandpa and my Dad were best friends. He loved him so much. And by extension, he loved my mom, my siblings, our spouses and my kids so deeply. He only had 3 grandchildren on our side. But he had 50 extended grandchildren, who called him Grandpa T, among all of our childhood friends who spent the summers with us at his A-frame lake house that he and my dad built in the woods.
He never missed an event–graduations, engagements, weddings, or birthday cards. In the past year, he drove from Asheville to Cleveland four separate times to see my kids, his great-grandchildren. Every year for Christmas he had pictures of our family from his iphone printed on coffee mugs that he gifted to us. He also got the same mugs for himself because he said he enjoyed “having coffee with us” every morning.
5-Have a Strong Why
Choosing to live a healthy lifestyle isn’t about the 10 lbs that you want to lose. It’s about having independence 30-50 years from now, living a fulfilled life and doing activities with your kids, grandkids and great grandkids. The choices you make in your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s impact your health & functionality in your 60s, 70s, 80s, & 90s.
Change your focus, change your life. Investing in your health allows you to experience life more fully and for more years. Focus on the long game of improving your body’s organ reserve and cardiometabolic health so that you can live a long, purposeful, abundant and functional life. No diets. No quick fixes. No magic pills. No shortcuts. Just a routine that’s sustainable for decades.
6-Take Care of Your Body
My Grandpa did not think of health as something that you get from a doctor’s office. To him, health was created in his daily practices–not something that he reached for in a pill bottle. He believed in the body’s capacity to heal itself from chronic disease which is why my parents sought out a functional medicine doctor for me in 2005. And he loved investing in his health so much that it never felt forced.
He lived by all of the health pillars that I recommend: went to the farmers market every week, ate 5-6 cups of vegetables per day and a lot of fruit, drank water with electrolytes, ate virtually no ultra-processed foods, moved his body, took his supplements, spent time in nature every chance he got, did daily chanting exercises to help his snoring, did bodywork with his friend who is a rolfer, went to bed early, tapped his mouth overnight, and invested in lifelong relationships. Here is an Instagram Live that I did with him a few years ago and Instagram Story Highlights.
7-You’re Never Too Old To Invest in Your Health
Although he has been investing in his nutrition and lifestyle for decades, he still had areas to improve. His doctor told him his labs looked ok and recommended a statin. Two years ago, I ran the bloodwork on him that we run for our VIP Nutrition Clients in my nutrition business. He made several tweaks to his nutrition and within six months, he dropped his fasting glucose levels by 25 points–to 88 mg/dL, his LDL ‘lousy’ cholesterol went down 30 points to 111, and his cholesterol dropped to 182. At 91 years old, he told me his cholesterol is the lowest it has ever been. And that was with no medication–just changes to his diet.
8-Invest in your Healthspan
Lifespan is the number of years that you live; healthspan is the number of years that you live in good health. Most people live with chronic disease in their last years of life and suffer a slow decline. My Grandpa always said that his ideal way of dying was to nose dive into his grave. In the beginning of July, he was hiking with my sister and by the end of July, after getting COVID and pneumonia, he was dead. In his final days he was surrounded by family. Days before he died, Johnny sat next to his hospital bed and my Grandpa said he felt at peace if this was the end because he lived many lives in his one life.
I know that this is not the end. His spirit will live on. His legacy will live on through my family, the work that my team and I do to help you get healthier, and in you continuing to prioritize your health. Thank you for allowing me to share his beautiful life with you. Grandpa, may you rest in peace.
