It sneaks up on you. One day you think you’re pretty fit, and the next, a beer gut is staring back from the mirror. The slow, slippery, downward slope of your health happens without you truly noticing. As we get older, we tend to move less but still eat like we’re in our 20s. If that goes on too long, it doesn’t end well.

My energy levels are likely 30 to 40% lower than they were a decade ago. It’s not funny. You wake up one day and realize that because fitness was too far down your list of priorities, you’re paying the price. What you took for granted is now just gone.

I’ve been blessed with a high metabolism and my abnormal 6’6” Darth Vader height. Any weight gain gets spread out, making it less visible—or so I tell myself. But now that I’m in my 50s, the weight comes quickly, and it takes longer to turn the tide.

Typically, to get back-ish to my target weight, I’d eat extremely healthy for a few weeks—only non-processed foods with no snacking between meals. If it doesn’t grow somehow, don’t eat it. Add in exercise (which I hadn’t been doing), and I’d get back to the weight I wanted. My philosophy can be summed up best by:

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not” – Mark Twain

I can do it for about a month before bad food or beer sneaks back into the diet. I’m also fooling myself: just because I’m a good weight doesn’t mean I’m truly fit or healthy.

The older I get, the faster the weight comes back. Losing it takes longer. That one month of eating well needs to become two, which often doesn’t happen because my willpower doesn’t last that long. The cycle continues, and my weight plateaus a little higher each time.

The Fading Vision

I had a vision for my later years: I’d be that slim, fit, gray-haired guy on the bike, having the energy of much younger men. I’d be out every day playing basketball, maybe some tennis, and keeping up with my teenage kids.

Well, the hair disappeared years ago, but the “slimness” started to fade a decade ago. I don’t have the Jabba the Hutt like beer gut yet, but I can feel a disturbance in the Force. If I keep making the wrong choices, Jabba it could be in a few short years.

I’ve seen many friends my age turn the wrong corner and start the slide into unhealthiness, most of them putting on weight in their 30s and 40s. Like me, they naturally slow down. The fitness level of the average 50-year-old is not where most of us pictured ourselves being but here we are.

The vision of what we think our “future self” will be can be part of the problem. Our younger self had a vision of our older self, but it was always in the future. We ignore today. We don’t work on our future self – that is for later.

Somewhere in our 20s we sit in a chair for work and physical “play” dropped in priority on our to-do list. Life caught up. We changed in a unhealthy way.

Health as the Ultimate Investment

For that healthy vision to be true in retirement, the best approach is to set a goal for now, not the future. The mantra should be: “If not now, then never.” Maintain your fitness and health today, because it only gets harder as you age. Fitness in a way is like money. Good habits compound. So do bad ones. A pound this year turns into two next year. Less exercise this year turns into even less next year.

What is the second best time to catch up on your health vision? When you have time. When do you have time? The day you retire. Time is practically the definition of retirement.

And this is my big point: Your health is the number one investment you can make as you get older. It should be at or near the top of your list of why you should retire early. If you are unhealthy, it should be the top reason.

At a certain point, spending time to earn more money pushes up against the law of diminishing returns. We’ve been aggressively chasing FIRE for more time. What is the best investment to secure and maximize that time? It’s not an extra $100k in the investment account; it’s more health.

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver” – Gandhi

A true Dark Side vs Light Side contest

People chasing FIRE or early retirement likely have more money than they need before they retire. They may not have more health. In our 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, it’s no longer a money game. It should become a health game.

We all chase our number. We all chase enough. I would argue we don’t consider our health as part of the “enough” focus. Money does no good if you can’t walk up a flight of stairs, travel to exotic places, go on hikes, or just play with kids or grandkids.

If your younger version of you had a vision that has slipped away, I suggest money needs to fall down your priority list. For me, I’m eating like I am suppose to, scheduling appointments with a physical therapist for the aches and pains, and putting exercise at the top.

It is hard. And that is okay.