[d3vnull]

It's all probability, not guarantees.

Leading a healthy lifestyle increases your chances, eating like a pig decreases them.

Looking at the outliers and saying "See?! It's all a lie!" is like looking at a lottery winner and concluding that lottery tickets are a sound investment.

[bamboozled]

What's interesting is the people who are "unfit" and especially obese seem to fair the worst.

Most of the people I spoke of, drank and smoked a lot, but also active to very active, and exercised regularly even in their 80s. Swimming, walking, playing tennis, yard work, gardening. They all seemed to share these things in common.

Being Obese and sedentary seems to be a dangerous undertaking.

[IAmBroom]

I think you may have hit on something there.

Grandpa gave up cigarettes at age 75 or so. Only made it another ten years.

Could outwork teenage me at age 75.

[bamboozled]

I honestly don't think people realize how unfit they are, like 90% of people in modern countries do almost no exercise. No resistance training, no weight training, no cardio, just drive to work, sit at a desk, then drive home. For some people who work form home, it must be even worse.

Until you meet someone who is fit, it's hard imagine how unfit a 30 year old can be.

A few years back I did a back country avalanche safety training course. My instructor was 72 years old, anyway we had to skin up a decent size mountain, and here I was in my 30s, actually struggling at times to keep up with him.

I am definitely above average fitness as I do hikes like that regularly, but I work as a programmer and at the time, was doing less cardio than usual, and of course, siting on my ass a lot, but I was witnessing what a lifetime of being outdoors and hiking up mountains in the snow for an occupation did for this guy. It wasn't just the hiking either, the dude could dig his ass off, he has huge forearms and when we got to the peak, dug pits for 10/15 minutes, zero stopping. Again I struggled to keep up with him. Then when it was all over, we had to ski home, which was about 30-40 minutes of descending and traversing. I was pretty gassed at the bottom, he was ready for a beer.

I know that most people my age would struggle, hard, to even keep up with me on that trip, because I've taken people on smaller hikes and seen what happens.

It was stupidly impressive. He is still going strong to this day, probably at 75 now with a girlfriend in her 50s.

Fit people like that are really hard to come by these days.