Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond

At the office, a kid is looking at you as if something's wrong -- the EJECT button has been pushed but you're still there.

At a party, an attractive woman passes by -- and just doesn't see you.

That's when you're start to think: My God, I am old.

But that's absurd. 'Old' is what your parents were at your age. Hell, at your age minus 10. You? You're okay. Could weigh less. Could be more buffed. Could eat better. But no real complaints.

Great. Think that will last? Try this quick test:

1. Do you do aerobics for 45 minutes four days a week?
2. Do you lift weights two other days each week?
3. Have you stopped eating crap?
4. Outside of your job, is there something you deeply care about?
5. Do you have a life partner who really cares about you -- or a bunch of good friends?

If you can say yes to those questions, you have no need for "Younger Next Year" (or its counterpart for females, "Younger Next Year for Women").

But if you can't, please read on, because if Lodge (a doctor) and Crowley (his 70-odd-year-old patient) are right, they can help you live to a ripe old age, with your wits intact and your body ready to romp.

This idea -- live long and well, then die fast -- is very much in the air these days. Andrew Weil deals with it at length in Healthy Aging. It's the Grail. No lingering disease. No chronic conditions. You run the machine at a fairly high speed for eight or nine decades and then make a quick trip to the junk heap. To die in your own bed at 90 -- sweet.

Lodge and Crowley bluntly tell you that the final third of your life can be just that satisfying -- that, if you do what they tell you, you can be 60 years old and "be functionally younger every year for the next five or even ten years." Why? Because "70 percent of what you feel as aging is optional. You don't have to go there."

How do you stop aging? You suspect the answer is "a lifestyle change," and it is. Lodge and Crowley believe that "50 percent of all illnesses and injuries in the last third of your life can be eliminated by changing your lifestyle in the way we suggest." Which is a euphemism. "The way we suggest" is almost certainly a total change for nearly everyone.

I work with a trainer three days a week, for an intense hour a day. To warm up and get my heart pumping, I spend 30 minutes -- okay, 20; okay, sometimes just 15 -- on the elliptical trainer. In three years, I've converted lots of fat to muscle. I'm in damned good cardio shape. And I could, if necessary, lift a car off a loved one.

But I am nowhere near what these guys call fit. What they want from me is nothing less than a second job: six days of hard work, without fail, each and every week. They don't apologize for this. Or sugarcoat it. They say: "Be a guy; suck it up... six days, serious exercise, until you die." Until you're 50, you may be too busy for a six-day commitment; they'll consider four or five for you. But "after 50, six is mandatory."

They explain why. Our bodies are gifts from our ancestors, they say; we're hard-wired to run all day to find our food. Our bodies don't know that we sit at computers 60 to 90 hours a week; they want to move. And they want to be fed as if we were still roaming the Savannah. So have one more Big Mac with fries, and then cherish the memory -- that part of your life is over. Ditto more than two glasses of wine a night. Ditto... but you get the idea.

For every negative, Lodge and Crowley offer a positive. You will feel great. You will look better. You may even lose weight. And, the ultimate -- you'll be alive.

I'm of an age when people are starting to fall around me. It's not pretty. These guys say it's not necessary. If you were me, what would you do? Damn right. You'd surrender to Crowley and Lodge. You'd start pounding down the cardio and loving the feel of steel.

Which is exactly what I'm about to do. In fact, I started yesterday. Is it a bitch? Oh, yeah. But I buy the mantra: I'm saving my life. Because nothing less will get me out of the house.

What about you? Want to live long and hard and happy? Know someone in his 50s or 60s who's starting to feel creaky? Please consider investing in this readable, tart, funny, profane and ultimately exhilarating book.

Jesse Kornbluth is the editor of HeadButler.com, a free cultural concierge service. In prior incarnations, he wrote for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine and The New York Times and published seven books.

To buy Younger Next Year from Amazon.com, click here.

To buy Younger Next Year for Women from Amazon.com, click here.

For daily tips, the recipe of the week, weight tracker and workout calendar, visit Crowley and Lodge's web site: YoungerNextYear.com.

Copyright 2006 by Head Butler Inc.