Fit After Duty

By Jayne Davis, DCoE Strategic Communications

Exercise was part of your routine for a long time. It was your duty to churn out miles, hammer weights and stay mission ready. And when you did, you looked better, ate well and slept great.

But, now you’re out of the service, out of your routine and … maybe out of shape. The irony is that now that you have more time to devote to your well-being, you’re giving it less attention. Why? You may not have a military mission, but you do have a mission — your continued well-being.

“It may take some new thinking about keeping both your body and your mind fit,” said Dr. Evette Pinder, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE), resilience and prevention subject matter expert. “Being physically active can take on a broader context and incorporate goals that are meaningful to your life now, like managing the tasks of daily life requiring strength and conditioning that get progressively challenging as we age,” she said.

Pinder offers these suggestions for staying fit:

■If you’re not training for an event, why keep running 20–30 miles each week? Mix in lower impact activities that cross-train your muscles and cardiovascular system. Your focus should be to stimulate and condition your heart, muscles and bones, not annihilate them.

■Strength training is still important, especially for women where the risk of osteoporosis is higher.

■Focus on functional activities — wall sits, push-ups and other bodyweight exercises that build the strength you need to pick up objects off the ground, push up from a prone position and carry loads.

■Incorporate balance and agility training to help sharpen your motor skills for continued mobility and injury prevention.

Beyond the benefits of strength and endurance and reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and obesity, being active can have a positive effect on your mental well-being.

“There’s plenty of research that points to physical activity helping you maintain or restore healthy cognitive functioning and reduce anxiety and stress,” said Dr. Jeffrey Rhodes, DCoE resilience and prevention, spiritual fitness program manager.

Based on Rhodes’ knowledge of the research, here are some tips to exercise your psychological health:

 ■Be adaptive and flexible in your thinking to meet a variety of everyday demands and challenges

■Develop coping skills for situations that are not under your control

■Be engaged, mindful, passionate and deliberate in what you do to derive more enjoyment from your life

■Practice and maintain a healthy work-life balance for all the demands on your time and energy

Regardless of when you separated from service, it’s never too late for self-assessments or to visit your health care provider to undergo screening and treatment for psychological concerns. “You never retire from building and maintaining psychological health and resilience,” said Rhodes.

Check out these physical and psychological well-being resources:

 ■Staying Fit After Retirement

■Realwarriors.net

■Human Performance Resource Center

■My HealtheVet — veteran-centered health and well-being information

■Advice on taking inventory of your mental well-being

■Military Pathways

■Afterdeployment.org