About a year ago, a friend suggested I start playing pickleball. So, I joined the nearest club and started playing. I had no idea how much that little decision would change things. I’ve lost some weight, and my cholesterol dropped from 237 to 178.

I’ve also discovered that I’m apparently much more willing to exercise when someone puts a paddle in my hand and tells me there’s a game going on.

One of my patients recently told me something interesting, too. She had a DEXA scan showing osteoporosis. Two years later, after regularly playing pickleball, her follow-up scan no longer showed osteoporosis.

I’m not promising pickleball is a magic cure for osteoporosis, but there is something pretty remarkable about what happens when we start moving our bodies regularly.

And last night gave me another reason to be thankful I started playing.

The girls had an event in Boca, so the boys and I decided to have a guys’ night.

The menu was simple: Cheeseburgers, chips, root beer, ice cream and pickleball.

Basically, everything your doctor would recommend not eating immediately before exercising and these weren’t exactly health-food cheeseburgers.

They were monster burgers…about a pound each.

After dinner, I asked my boys, “Shall we digest our food before playing?”

The answer was a resounding, “No way, let’s go to the pickleball courts…NOW!”

I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they had in mind when they invented the warm-up.

But once we started playing, I noticed something that had nothing to do with the burgers.

My younger boys are finally getting old enough to compete with their older brothers.

And they’re not just participating anymore; they’re scoring points and sometimes making their older brothers look bad…really bad.

There was some inside joke bantering going on, a few “controversial” line calls, and a whole lot of laughing, but as I looked around the court, I realized something…

For years, my younger boys were the ones trying to keep up with the older boys.

Now they’re becoming the older boys and my oldest boys aren’t really boys anymore.

They’re young men with jobs, responsibilities, wives, families and lives of their own.

The days when we could play all evening until mom yelled from the front porch, “Dinner’s ready!” are gone and I have to admit that sometimes it’s a little sad to watch it happen.

There’s a rhythm to raising kids you don’t fully appreciate while you’re living through it.

First, you’re teaching them the fundamentals.

How to throw, how to swing, how to play, then they get a little better, then a little better.

Eventually, they’re keeping up with you, then they’re beating you, and before you know it... you’re the one trying to keep up with them.

I’ve always loved playing sports and doing things with my kids, but now that they’re older, I enjoy it in a different way. I’m not just Dad to the kids anymore. We’re peers.

We’re competing, laughing, joking, giving each other a hard time, and enjoying the fact that we’re all out there together.

Today, my 21-year-old son invited me to play pickleball with him again, followed by a cold plunge, then the steam room. Apparently, spending time with Dad now requires increasingly creative forms of putting me through the ringer, but we had a great time.

And that’s really the point. I’m incredibly thankful to God for the health and ability to still participate, because I don’t want to be the dad sitting on the sidelines watching his sons play.

I want to be out there with them. I want to compete with them, laugh with them, get smoked by them, and watch the smile on their faces when they do something better than me.

These moments don’t last forever. The kids grow up, the games change, the responsibilities increase, and the opportunities to do things together become fewer.

Which makes the times we do have more valuable.

This is one of the reasons I believe taking care of your health is about much more than avoiding pain or adding years to your life.

It’s about being healthy enough to participate in the years you’ve been given.

What a blessing it is to be able to say “Yes” when my kids ask: “Dad, want to play?”

So yes, last night we ate one-pound cheeseburgers, drank root beer and played pickleball. Was it the healthiest meal I’ve ever eaten? Absolutely not, but the older I get, the more I realize that health isn’t just about what you eat, what you weigh, or what your lab results say.

It’s about having the health and ability to participate in the moments you don’t want to miss.

So maybe a one-pound cheeseburger isn’t the ideal pre-game meal, but if the choice is between sitting on the sidelines, or eating the burger and playing pickleball with my boys...I’ll take the burger and the game and the time with my boys.

Those are the things I don’t want to miss.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Dr. Derek “Still in the Game” Taylor