Month: July 2019

I just returned from a multi-generational vacation, but just learned the term for it. We spent the past week in Montauk at a rental house owned by my friend’s family for generations. The “we” included me (the only grandparent), my daughter and daughter in law and my 8 year old grandson Jesse. Also included were my son, his girlfriend and her two teenage sons aged 13 and 18.

Multi-gen trips are a rising trend and that makes sense. A vacation between grandparents, their adult kids and grandkids give extended families time together without expectation of holiday gatherings and with so many vacation schedules to juggle with quality time, Families are finding it easier to simply see each other while they relax.

Choosing the right location is key to a stress free memory making trip. The key to choosing a location is to focus on a place that provides just the right amount of time together balanced with enough space to keep everyone sane.

Remember that toddlers, like grandparents, get grumpy if they have to walk too far or wait to take a nap. Kids thrive on recreation and independence; teens need privacy and extra sleep; college kids enjoy lavish meals and personal luxuries like spa treatments.

Budget, activities for all ages (because not everyone wants to do the same thing), and convenience all play a big role in determining the best multi-gen vacation options. If grandparents pay (research shows 33% of the time), they typically look for a structured, more comfortable vacation where everyone can spend time together. Cruises, all inclusive resorts and guided tours with supervision for kids are good options. When parents pay, they may bring grandparents to babysit; city getaways are popular with this group. When participants share, the options expand.

Roadscholar.org offers more than 260 inter generational and family programs from Washington D.C. and Mount Rushmore to Cuba or Paris, France. Another article I read suggested a safari in South Africa as one of the most organized vacations a family can take. “It offers a daily routine which allows children and adults to relax because there are no big decisions to make but also enough diversity, wonder, and down time each day to keep everyone excited”.

Our budget was more Montauk, than South Africa. I can honestly say that our trip was fabulous. My daughter in law planned it taking everyone’s interests into account. Monday we drove out to Sag Harbor, had lunch overlooking the harbor and walked around the town. My son’s group of four was not arriving until Tuesday night which worked out perfectly as Tuesday was a rainy, dismal day.

However, we four enjoyed the Lion King movie (Jesse’s choice), a delicious Italian lunch along with homemade coffee and Oreo ice cream at Johns Drive In, a Montauk institution. My daughter and I taught my grandson to play checkers that evening. It was a fun, busy day which may have bored the teenage boys.

Wednesday was an exciting day for all. My daughter in law had hired a fishing boat with a captain who took us over to Block Island to fish. The sea bass were biting and plentiful and were barbecued by the boys for our dinner—yum!

Thursday brought a beautiful beach day, pizza in town and a perusal of the farmers market, and an early dinner at The Lobster Roll where the tv show The Affair was filmed. Best lobster roll ever!!

Friday morning we visited the Montauk lighthouse, had a hamburger lunch in town, then on our way. While traveling with family always carries some degree of tension, the trip was relatively smooth and stress free with not too much pouting or tantrums, even by the teenagers, and you know how they can be!

Remember too that family holidays are valued by children both in the moment and for long afterward in their memory. According to experts, trips with families are the gift that keeps on giving……

“You are connected to your family through more than blood. You are bonded by ideas, culture, values and your cherished memories. Nurture, develop and embrace your family. Love those closest to you as you love yourself”.

Aging Beautifully cards by Margaret Manning

Resources

Myfamilytravels.com

Family Vacations Have Long Lasting Impact on Kids Happiness by Hollee Actman Becker parents.com

Best Multi-generational Trips Family Friendly Vacation Ideas by Candace H. Stapes Frommers.com

The very word “fasting” scares me. I love to eat and consider myself a foodie. (It also conjures up the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur when we cannot eat or drink for 24/hours, always a challenge for me!)

But for as long as I can remember, I have been on a diet, fluctuating between a size 10 and 12, maybe once a 14. I have visions of my mom and me in our kitchen in the 1960’s preparing the Weight Watchers coffee shake with instant coffee, lots of ice and sweet and low, while my sister would have an ice cream float (always thin, she never dieted). She also made cheerleading and I didn’t but I digress. I would also snack on Weight Watchers baked apples made with diet cherry soda. Yuck!

The idea of Intermittent fasting piqued my interest when a friend tried it with good results. What is Intermittent Fasting (IF) anyway?

IF is an umbrella term for various eating plans that cycle between periods of fasting and eating over a defined period. It’s a pattern of eating or a way of scheduling your meals so that you get the most out of them. You change when you eat, not what you eat.

Let me give you an example. The most popular type of IF is the 16/8 Method where you eat your meals for an 8 hour period E.g. from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm and fast for 16 hours. It can be whatever 8 hours suit you best 10:00 am to 6:00 pm etc. There is no snacking in between meals. This one is considered to be the simplest, most sustainable and easiest to stick to and the one I have chosen to follow. This is circadian rhythm fasting as our metabolism has adapted to daytime food and nighttime sleep.

Other methods involve fasting for 24 hours once or twice a week or consuming 500 to 600 calories on 2 non-consecutive days of the week, but eat normally the other 5 days. These 2 are too restrictive and difficult for me.

A 2014 study found this eating pattern caused a significant weight loss (3 to 8%) and more important, people lost 4 to7% of their waist circumference (significant loss of harmful belly fat that causes disease.). The same study shows it causes less muscle loss than standard calorie restriction and may aid in growth of new brain cells and protect against Alzheimer’s.

In fact, Harvard Medical School published an article on the 8 hour eating, 16 hour fasting version of IF noting “a growing body of research suggests the timing of the fast is key and can make it a realistic way to lose weight and prevent diabetes.”

Four ways to use this information for better health:

Avoid sugars and refined grains. Eat fruit, vegetables, beans, lentils, whole grains, lean proteins and healthy fats, e.g. a sensible Mediterranean-style diet.

Let your body burn fats between meals. Don’t snack!!! (If we don’t snack, our insulin levels go down and our fat cells can release their stored sugar to be used as energy and lose weight.) Be active throughout the day. Build muscle tone.

Consider a simple form of Intermittent Fasting – you choose the 8 hours.

Avoid snacking or eating at night.

I had always believed and followed the popular nutritional recommendations which assert that small, frequent eating, grazing, is the best way to control your appetite. And I worried that not eating enough would cause lethargy, dizziness and brain fog. Or was that an excuse for my eating bigger meals more often (combining the two methods). Not a good idea!

Both IF and grazing share this important feature: we are controlling energy (calorie) intake. When we consume less calories than we burn, we lose weight and ideally most of that is body fat. Whether you take in less calories by eating frequent small meals or infrequent larger meals is up to you.

Because I have been snacking especially at night, I decided to try eating meals during an 8 hour period from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. I also have throatburn a form of Reflux which prescribes no night eating. I have been eating this way for 2 weeks and am feeling good. I never believed I could make it to 11:00 am without eating. However, I am okay, not keeling over from hunger after my 45 minute morning walk. It’s kind of not a bad thing to feel hungry and not rush to get a snack. The better you can manage hunger, the less likely you are to act compulsively toward it!

So if you are looking at this IF stuff and not sure where it fits in for you, what should you do? Learn the essentials of good nutrition, things like eating good quality food in the right amounts at the right times. Things like learning to prepare healthy foods in the first place. Let me know what you think. XO Penny

Resources

Intermittent Fasting: Surprising Update by Dr. Monique Tello Health.harvard.edu

Beginners Guide to Intermittent Fasting jamesclear.com

Experiments with Intermittent Fasting by John Berardi Precisionnutrition.com

“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints on your heart”. Eleanor Roosevelt

A recent experience with one of my closest friends of 35 years, prompted me to write about the importance of friendship in our lives. I had been feeling sorry for myself after my second wrist surgery with not much improvement and felt neglected by my friend. However, she had been going through a lot in her life, tending to grandchildren, her ninety year old mother and a husband beginning a new career. It was important to me to reach out because I felt we were growing apart. We are back where we should be and agreed to make time for each other!

Friends, the very best kind are special beings. They pop up in our lives and spark from an assortment of situations and places. Our friends are instrumental in supporting, easing and brightening our way. They influence (without always meaning to) our thoughts, ideas, and lifestyle choices and help shape us into the people we are or aim to be. Friends offer wise counsel, a positive spin and make you laugh. We share our deepest, darkest secrets and even tell each other when we have spinach in our teeth or our blouse is on backwards.

As we age, the quality of friendships become more important to many women. We look for a relationship based on the goodness we find in each other. It encompasses the values many of us want to give to and receive from our closest friends including respect, honesty, trust, empathy, warmth, humor, shared experience, and compassion.

As we age, we have more spare time, but value it and may not want to waste it on the wrong people anymore. Maybe we select and refine our friendships as we become more aware of our mortality. We may prioritize quality over quantity and see fewer people more of the time. However it is good to remain open to interesting new experiences and people, like my book group members, for example, who have introduced me to new ideas.

Aside from supporting each other in times of major life changes (divorce, retirement), comforting each other in times of loss, and helping find the humor in growing older, female friendships can be the key to happiness in older women. Research at Michigan State University demonstrated that valuing friendship was related to better functioning particularly among older adults (from surveys taken by 280,000 people).

Moreover, an article in Healthywomen.org, Keys to a Long Life noted “it’s important to develop resiliency, the ability to confront challenges sometimes terrible ones and maintain some sense of equilibrium”. One of the best ways to build resiliency is to develop a strong social support network.

When my twin sister (and best friend) died at age 59 after a five month battle with cancer, I wanted to die along with her. If it weren’t for my good friends and their support and love, I would not have been able to cope with my overwhelming grief and anger. Their daily phone calls and check-ins were a lifeline when I needed it most.

Two of those closest friends moved a great distance away. While distance makes the heart grow stronger, I do need to work a bit harder to keep those connections going. But the friendships are better and stronger for it. I go to them and they come to me for extended periods. Read my upcoming blog talking about a special birthday trip planned with my friend Debby.

I never want to forget that relationships with good friends require nurturing and extends to our daily priorities and choices. As Vincent Van Gogh said, in Close Friends Are Truly Life’s Treasures,

“Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us. To share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”

Resources

Psychology today.com. Are Female Friendships the Key to Happiness in Older Women

Refinery29.com The Joys of Female Friendship Over 50.

Psychology today.com, The Importance of Female Friendship Among Women, by Kristen Fuller

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” Forest E. Whitcraft, Teacher and Scholar

Yesterday was a very special day for me. Yesterday I attended a party for a young man named Nikolas who graduated Wesleyan University at the top of his class and is now headed to a job at Google in International marketing.

Let me backtrack. Two years ago, I was contacted by Nikolas who had been trying to get in touch with me for a few years. He was in my second grade ESL class at Mary G. Clarkson School in Bay Shore.

Nikolas explained on the phone that he had written a letter to me on Facebook messenger which I finally received two years later. He expressed his gratitude for my warmth and compassion at the time when he had recently arrived from Colombia with his mom and sister and was understandably nervous to begin elementary school in the U.S.

Nikolas reminded me that I had brought in teddy bears for the class and allowed each child to name it, tell a story about it and then keep it as my gift to each child. He showed me the teddy bear yesterday, still in his room after all these years, and told me how much it meant to him.

In his earlier letter to me, he had written, “For my college interviews, I’d often speak of you, as you had such a profound impact on me. To me, you demonstrated a passion for teaching and genuinely cared for the well being of your students. You enabled me to break the language barrier when I first immigrated to the U.S. and excel academically. You paved the road to my success and I am forever grateful.”

Let me take you back to that time and you will better understand why this realization was so important to me. I had been teaching ESL in an Adult Literacy Program for 13 years. I loved working with adults and was aware and proud of the impact I made on their lives. They were able to verbalize their sentiments. I left the program to work in a kindergarten through second grade setting to earn more money as I divorced in 2003. I had very little confidence in my abilities to teach young children because my student teaching in 1970 was in a junior high school. I was as nervous as Nikolas was to start school.

In addition, I was 52 when I started the job and made 3 huge life changes that year: Moving from my own house to a basement apartment in another town, starting a new job, and getting divorced. To make matters worse, my daughter was relocating to California. I literally felt like I was in the Witness Protection Program with a new identity.

Unsure of myself in my new teaching role, I cried every night. I never really knew if I was reaching the kids as I had reached their parents at BOCES. We don’t always know whose lives we have touched and made better for our having cared. What is important is that we do care and act. Nikolas did not know that I was inexperienced with second grade ESL. He knew that I cared when I brought into school a goody bag of treats and activities for him to take on a plane trip to visit family in Florida. (He reminded me of this fact, which I had forgotten.)

His actions in reaching out to me touched me deeply. We all like to be acknowledged and appreciated. And as Nelson Mandela has eloquently stated “what counts in life is the difference we have made to the lives of others that determines the significance of the lives we lead”.

Now that I am retired, I would like to continue to make a difference in the lives of others. Volunteering can enrich our lives as retirees as well.

Researchers asked retirees what do they need to feel content and satisfied, e.g. what was important to their quality of life. The four answers were the following: having something to do, having relationships, having a stake in the future, and having a sense of continuity.

“Volunteering your time and expertise is a way to gain all of the above. When volunteering you have something to do in a social situation, while working for a common good and contributing to your community or society. It provides productivity, connection and legacy.” But it also has to be enjoyable and fulfill your needs. If not, it does not improve your quality of life.

So decide what type of activities you would like to perform as a volunteer. So many choices… Save a Pet, food pantry, Long Island Cares. I will look at RSVP Suffolk (Retired Senior Volunteer Program or AARP.org and decide.

“When we help others, we shine. When we mentor, teach or protect others, we nurture ourselves. Don’t be an island. Reach out. Become a part of the world. Give and you shall receive”. Margaret Manning, Aging Beautifully

Resources

How Volunteering Can Enrich Your Life After 60, by Stephanie Cunningham Sixtyandme.com