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Did you say those ads that use of such and such a product will stop aging? Of course, such claims ridiculous, because the aging process takes over our lives. But with the right fitness plan,  it is certainly possible to look and feel younger. Although we may not be able to stop the hands of time, we can certainly slow them down! Here are some tips for a 40 + fitness plan that helps you defy age:

1. A positive attitude.

Studies have shown that this is one of the most crucial factors in one’s ability to achieve success in a diet and fitness program. This is especially true as we age. Our more hectic schedules, our metabolism slows and in principle the banking potato sedentary lifestyle is all too easy. Now we reach middle age, half the battle is simply to start a fitness program. But once we do, the benefits are enormous. You’ll look and feel as one million U.S. dollars!

2. Perform a self-assessment.

Before a fitness plan,  it is crucial to exactly where you’re determined to fitness-wise. Be very honest, because to do so would not only affect your personal fitness goals. The self-assessment to pinpoint exactly where your fitness level. Of course, the key to action based on your assessment to take to strengthen your weaknesses. Make sure the following items in your assessment are:

3. Focus on your weak points.

Based on your self assessment you need a plan that focuses on improving your weaknesses. Do you have an attitude problem due to an oversized breadbasket? Do you want your upper body or lower body strengthening? Do you breathe easy as climbing stairs? Most effective plan for your condition, be sure to focus on your weak spots. It’s really no sense to focus on areas that already are your forte.

4. Do exercises appropriate for your age.

This is’t to say that you need to do”softies”"exercises, because of your age. But it’s important to keep in mind that when we age, our bodies aren’t what they used. So it’s crucial to your fitness plan for the exercises are challenging but not too strenuous. A simpler option is to variations of difficult exercises. This will ensure you a good workout, while reducing the risk of injury.

How often have you felt forgetful or seem to have lost your short-term memory? You know the feeling I’m talking about. You start losing your attention, feel spacey, and there’s a problem with focusing on the tasks at hand.

Did you know that meditation can help you cut down on “brain fog” like this? If you learn how to meditate, over time, it helps you to clear your mind and cut down on states of mental stupor. Because meditation involves learning to let go of the thoughts that run around in your head, with practice you can learn to let go of the state of unclarity that arises in your mind that meditators call dullness, brain fog or stupor. Naturally it takes some practice order to achieve this ability with proficiency. Nevertheless, it’s well worth the effort because that’s the purpose of meditation in the first place.

The cardinal rule of meditation is to let go of your thoughts, but to maintain awareness of everything that goes on in your mind while letting your mind give rise to thoughts freely. When people start to watch their mind this way, at first the mind starts to get clearer and they reach a realm of mental clarity. But after this initial spurt of progress, it actually seems like their mind is becoming busier than ever before and more confused than they’ve ever known it to be. This is not actually a step backwards but a step forwards, and people who think they are retrogressing when this happens are actually misinterpreting their stage of achievement.

What is actually happening at this point in time is that the mind is becoming clearer and you are just beginning to see its inner workings for the very first time, but you mistake that clarity for extra busyness. For instance, meditation teachers often compare our wandering “monkey mind” with a glass of muddy water. As the thoughts in the mind begin to dissipate and clarity arises, that’s the same thing as the particles of dust in the muddy water beginning to settle. Only when the dust particles begin to settle can an individual see the separate particles clearly.

That’s what’s happening when you first begin to notice all the wandering thoughts in your head. If you keep meditating with practice and determination, soon these wandering thoughts will settle and your mind will reach a state of clarity that it has never before experienced.

So how can this help you with brain fog?

Sometimes nutritional deficiencies cause brain fog such as low levels of vitamin B12, magnesium or amino acids. If you drink too many artificial sweeteners this can also cause brain fog too. If there is an overgrowth of Candida in the gut, this is also often a major culprit responsible for brain fog. In fact, that is probably the number one cause of mental fogginess other than eating foods to which you are allergic. Caprylic acid, candisol, oregacillin and other supplements can help get rid of the Candida problem for good.

Let’s put these causes aside, though of course you must investigate them and others. If we rule out these various causes and attack the problem from the basis of mind, to combat mental unclarity you need to let go of your thoughts while watching your mind and in time it will become clearer with practice. This is called vipassana in some meditation schools, or “cessation and watching.” You simply observe your mind, and in time its busy nature ceases, and “brain fog” along with it. You just detach from it when it arises, and maintain clarity until it passes.

Many of us experience a meditative state without realizing it. For example, times when we are sitting outdoors, perhaps beside a stream or in a peaceful backyard, when everything seems to drop away, including all our thoughts or concerns, and we enter into a deeply peaceful stillness… an inner quite. In this quite, we feel as if we have dissolved and are no longer something separate or individual, but have merged with everything around us. We become the trees, the birds, and the water – there is no separation, no difference between us.

This state is very joyful; however, it does not necessarily last! Our minds and senses are so powerful that we being distract by every-day concerns, pulled into our worries or personal dramas, our habits or confusion, until this feeling of inner quite seems very far away. However, the more we practice meditation, for example, specific techniques to bring purposefully the mind into a focused and still place, the more we experience an inner quite.

The practice of meditation, which may include contemplation and prayer, is an aspect of systems. If we are too externalized and busy with thoughts, we are unable to perceive the beauty around us or to receive divine inspiration. But meditation is not limited to religious practice; it also has far-reaching implications in our fast – moving and highly demanding world for bringing balance and harmony to our lives.

When they first begin meditating, many people describe feeling as if they have “come home.” In entering this quite ‘inner space,’ you connect with yourself in a more genuine way. It feels familiar, like a place you have been away from for some time. You realize how most of your time is spent distracted, and how little you really know yourself inside.

Meditation is not a goal in itself. It is not something you try to achieve. Rather, it is an awakened way of being. The meditative mind is one that is balanced, clear, and at ease, focused entirely on what is happening in this moment.

The purpose of practicing meditation is to bring about the transformation of our perception of ourselves and our world – from that of skepticism and doubt to acceptance and kindness – so we become more awake. This happens as stress, confusion, and mental chatter lessen, understanding deepens, and compassion and inner peacefulness emerge. However, this is not something to read about – it is in the experience of meditation that you will find these words begin to make sense and bear fruit.

Let us say you see a red apple, which is all that your eye does for you. It just brings you the sensory image of an apple by somehow translating the outside world into an image for consciousness, but it doesn’t provide the concept that the image is an apple nor does it make the word “apple” arise in the mind. That comes later. It somehow just gives you a mental picture image of a red apple by somehow reflecting the outside world and transmitting that reflection into consciousness. That’s what the reflective aspect of consciousness does – it gives you the shape, colors, smell, feel of the apple by reflecting the outside world and making it into a consciousness image.

Therefore, what you actually see when you see an apple is not the apple but consciousness. You are just seeing, perceiving, witnessing or experiencing an image in consciousness, but not the apple itself. The image in the mind doesn’t give you any other intelligence beyond the image, so your eyes, ears, tongue, body and nose just give you all these mental impressions which Buddhism calls images or signs. Your five senses are like five soldiers who always make an accurate report to headquarters without adding any commentary or interpretation at all. They just give you all these simultaneous images. But who interprets them?

Without being able to grasp those images and discriminate them out into parts with borders, properties or characteristics, you don’t have a clue that there is something there with a specific meaning as a specific object with specific attributes and characteristics. In other words, besides reflecting the outside world into something internal, consciousness has a function of discrimination that makes this one set of pictures quite different in meaning from another set, otherwise they’d all appear to you as the same.

Okay, let’s take our tasty apple again. A camera reflects a picture of an apple through its lens to its mirror just like an image passing through our cornea onto our retina, but without a commenting mind the camera lens or mirror just holds an image there. That camera image of the apple is something entirely unintelligible to the camera and which is the same as any other image because there’s no mind to discriminate any differences. Hence you can see what the reflective consciousness does, and what the discriminative consciousness does. One aspect of consciousness gives us images, another gives us meaning.

A mirror instantaneously and indiscriminately reflects in itself forms and images, and in the same way our sense organs provide consciousness with just such a nameless set of reflections or impressions. If you don’t have a discriminating mind, then the images on your left side will look like the images to your right. You could not tell them apart. Only discrimination can make them different from each other. This means there is a portion of consciousness that functions to grab individual objects out of the chaos to make sense of them, which we call the function of discrimination. The objective world is known to us or distinguished by this part of consciousness which distinctly determines individual forms, phenomena or appearances… and by those words I mean sights, sounds, physical sensations, smells and so forth.

You thus have a discriminative consciousness that takes this palate of indecipherable sense impressions and wraps them with words, names and labels from memory to make them into something recognizable. Discrimination, which is a function of consciousness, grasps phenomena out of the indistinguishable sensory consciousnesses, and in this grasping of phenomena discriminates an objective world. It gives you an objective field of separate objects with independent characteristics. It makes judgments or personal reasonings about this world, and has been doing so seemingly forever.

That is the first part of what Shakyamuni Buddha taught about consciousness. You have a current state of consciousness and it has two aspects. Current consciousness is made up of both a reflective and discriminative consciousness. Consciousness also has an ultimate base, and through meditation you can trace consciousness to this ultimate root. That is what Buddhist meditation is all about as its fundamental purpose.