“Exercising right, eating right, trying to sleep the proper amount every single night. Those things are more important to me now than they ever have been in my life because I know this aging thing, all I can say to everybody, it’s real.”
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Phil Simms, age 68, is a former pro football quarterback; he spent 15 years playing professional football.
“I enjoyed every moment just about, you know . . . the playing part was awesome, and I feel very fortunate in my life that I was just happy to be part of two teams that won the pro championship. I think about this all the time—about players who were good, played for a long time, and then never won a championship because you think about that all the time. And so we were very fortunate to win.”
Phil shares that his most memorable experience in playing pro football was the first time he ever ran onto a pro football field. “It was in Pittsburgh. They had just won, I think their fourth pro championship at the time or the third, they were going on to win their fourth, and the experience was great because when I finally got to play that game as a preseason game, I got under center and went, ‘Oh my gosh. . . . All these famous great players are literally there.’ And it was incredible. It was like a dream come true.”
Phil says pro football is much rougher and harder than anything you could imagine.
He explains, “It’s like every day is just a brand new day in your life and you got to prove yourself one more time. And the physical part of it, the great thing is you learn to take the physical part because you slowly are graduating to the next level from youth football to high school to college to the pros. So it’s not an extreme.”
All in all, Phil says he enjoyed all those years in pro football, the ups and the downs.
“Injuries were part of it for sure for me, and I know about those injuries. I think about it almost every day because there’s always something with your body, but we were fortunate enough to win two pro championships,” he shares.
Phil also won a few awards throughout his career. “You know, it’s not a game of perfection. You’re going to make mistakes—and don’t dwell on a mistake. And that was always a good mindset. Not that I didn’t do that in my career, but for games, and when I played well, I wasn’t thinking about, ‘I could make a mistake to really hurt the team.’”
Passing the Football to the Next Generation
Since retiring, Phil says one of his favorite things in life is throwing footballs with kids and whoever wants to learn.
Phil shares, “I have some neighbors; their sons want to be quarterbacks and they’re a little shy and you can see—they’re not introverted—but they’re just not having fun at what they’re doing, and we teach them. My son, Matt, does it, but I have a few that I work with, just I’m the only person that works with them. And as they start getting better, I see their personality change and they feel better about themselves and they smile. Then when I make little comments, they laugh and they also become my buddies, and I’m very proud of that and it makes me feel good.”
Phil has taught kids since around the time he has been out of football.
“Many years later, I’m going, ‘Man, if I had known this and could have done this when I was playing, it literally would have changed my life,’” he says. “I’d have been more successful. . . . There were probably some offseasons I had 200 kids that I would work with. . . . I’d say over 500 or 600 easily. It’s been a lot of years, talking about 30 years ago now.”
Phil’s Secret to a Happy Life
Phil says the secret to having a happy and healthy life is feeling good and having a great marriage.
He shares, “I want to wake up every day and feel [good], like I always tell my wife I want to feel younger than I actually am. And feeling good and just living a good life, eating right, getting a little exercise, you know, great social environment where you have friends, and I have a lot of—not a lot of kids, just a few—but a lot of grandkids, so having a good life is trying to survive them sometimes. But, you know, that’s the way I look at life and it works well and it gives me a peace of mind. . . . We feel good about what we’re trying to do in our world right now as we get older.”
Phil says if he were giving somebody advice on how to live a better life, he would suggest they first start with eating right. However, he admits that sometimes that is hard to do.
He also says you need to learn to enjoy exercise. “You know, because once you get to a certain stage, you do a little bit of it. That’s what I’ve always found in my life. It makes me happy, and I know that sounds funny to some people. ‘Oh, exercising makes you feel happy?’ No, I feel really happy. It’s truly—besides my marriage and my kids—it’s the next most important thing to me in my life right now,” Phil shares.
Aging Is Real
Phil shares that it was an exhilarating feeling to win in pro football, but what gives him that feeling now is living as well as he can.
Phil says he wants to be healthy, feel good, and not be limited in the things he wants to do in life.
“Exercising right, eating right, trying to sleep the proper amount every single night. Those things are more important to me now than they ever have been in my life because I know this aging thing, all I can say to everybody, it’s real. I mean, no matter what you do, you try to counter it—which I’m trying to do all the time now, even more than I ever did when I played or when I first retired—it’s a great challenge, and I love challenges. And I love something to work towards, and that’s what I do right now,” he shares.
Practicing Healthy Habits
Phil says once he retired, his food habits changed.
“When you’re playing at any level, high school, college, the pros, all food was good, you know, you’re always starving,” he explains. “You’re always eating and you can’t get enough food. And, unfortunately, it changes once you get out.”
Phil tries to eat right, but admits he doesn’t always do that.
“I love food. . . . And so I try to balance that with taking the right supplement and exercising, you know,” he says. “That’s kind of how I live my life.”
Phil says a couple of years ago, he told himself he really had to change his life. So he began working out more, eating right, and looking for things to support him in that endeavor. He found Balance of Nature supplements along the way.
“I could feel all the aches and pains from . . . growing up, playing all that football,” he shares. “So I was working out more, trying to eat right, all this, and I just saw the [Balance of Nature] commercial on TV. I go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting’ because I was taking six and seven different vitamins at the time; I’m just taking whatever I can get . . . . I saw it and I believed the person that was talking on the TV, and I said, ‘Let me try it.’”
Sharing Balance of Nature
Phil says he has referred Balance of Nature to friends and other people he runs into such as trainers at the gym.
“Well, the advantage of . . . taking Balance of Nature, a supplement that has whole fruit and whole vegetable [ingredients] in it, is it just makes you feel like you’re doing the right thing instead of taking something synthetic.”
Phil says he knows he is still going to be taking Balance of Nature supplements 10 years from now. “That’s been a very good supplement for me . . . and I think the other thing is I hope I’m almost close to where I am right now in 10 years. . . . It really is one of my major [lifestyle] goals just to be younger than my age tells me that it should be.”
Life with Balance of Nature
Phil says he can’t say enough good things about Balance of Nature supplements.
“Don’t we all get bogged down and stuff? . . . What I really live my life on is to overcome the fact that I played football so long with the right exercise, the right diet, the right supplements—everything I do. That’s what I try to do every single day.”
Phil says he likes that Balance of Nature supplements are real. He doesn’t look at the label and see ingredients he can’t pronounce.
“I love to read about everything. . . . And when I found Balance of Nature [supplements], it was awesome. And I take it every morning and every afternoon after my lunch.”
To start your journey and learn more about Balance of Nature supplements, visit our home page, BalanceofNature.com, and get a wide variety of fruit and vegetable ingredients.
