Midcoast Maine, from the perspective of Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, comprises Waldo, Lincoln, Knox, and Sagadahoc counties. It is home to diversified pursuits, from lobstering and construction to education — including woodworking, film and photography and boatbuilding — to farming, health care, restaurants galore, and landscapers, stoneworkers, furniture makers.... Drive down any road and you are sure to discover someone creating or crafting, or lost in thought over a project.

People work hard, and most enjoy living here year-round. Some have been on the Midcoast all their lives, others more recently. Many are in tune to healthy lifestyles, as if the beautiful landscape demands it. They intentionally seek a state of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being.

But it demands work and practice. We asked several individuals who have decades under their belt how they maintain their own personal well-being. They had a few thoughts in common:

1) Don’t just sit there. Move!

2) Keep engaged intellectually and socially; and

3) Don’t eat too much.

Here are some of their answers:

Steve Raymond

“I went swimming at Popham, yesterday,” said Steve Raymond, who is director marketing and community outreach at the Lincoln Home, an independent, assisted living and memory loss facility in Newcastle. “It was nice.”

He relayed that information in mid-April, and sure, the weather had finally turned warmer, but swimming in the Atlantic, already?

Steve is 64, and feels stronger and in better shape than he was in his 40s. He is paying attention to his lifestyle, nutrition and overall state of health, because he wants to live fully and contentedly, every day that it is possible. Quality of life is the intention. Longevity is fine, but with good health and happiness.

“I’m making my own physical health a hobby,” he said. “So that I can live with the highest possible quality.”

Steve has worked in healthcare since he was 23, first as an RN and now in administration. Every day, he is with people in their 80s, 90s, and older, and he knows the aging and dying process. Steve is a repository of knowledge and he shared his insight:

1) Keep your legs going, he said, and build core strength. Core strength defines the stomach, back and pelvic muscles and keeps a person upright and moving.

2) Avoid metabolic syndrome, that cluster of conditions, including high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, extra weight, and high blood sugar. The latter is what he concentrates on, after watching his own father die from Type 2 diabetes complications. “I take active nutritional steps to make sure that doesn’t happen to me,” he said.

3) Build and maintain muscle. The muscular system is the organ of longevity (plus telemores, those caps at the end of DNA strands that protect cells), and keeping fit with weight training is key.

“Even people in their 80s can benefit from weight training,” he said. You want functionally strong muscles working in proportion to your body weight, he said.

He’ll be back in the ocean soon, because in addition to doing weight training four days a week, he regularly swims almost miles or more in the ocean. Head to Popham Beach, and you might find him in the swells, enjoying life to the fullest.

“We are all unique souls traveling this journey,” he said. With happiness and quality of life, we hope.

Rita Elliott

“I don’t have all the answers,” said Rita Elliott, sitting in a wicker rocker on her porch, surrounded by vases and small statues of soothing blues. “I try to be as positive as possible.”

She has seen and done a lot since she was born — had children, married twice, sailed oceans and explored countries, taught handicapped children, and lived for short periods of time in different states and in Maine. Now she is home where she was born, in Camden, and really, there’s no place like home.

“We don’t have tornadoes and mudslides, and our climate is pretty darn good,” she said. “I was always glad to come home.”

Rita walks every day, and eats the foods she did as a child, when she and her family ate fresh vegetables from the backyard garden.

“You have control over what you choose to eat,” she said.

Longevity may run in her family, but it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, unless you make an effort to live well. 

“It doesn’t always mean good health,” she said. 

In that lies the work, but there are some core principles.

Rita is portrait of Old New England. She speaks with the crisp, disciplined Maine accent (think Margaret Chase Smith). She gets up at 6:30 a.m., volunteers at the Congregational church, walks a lot, and visits with friends, old and new, over coffee. Some of her children, grandchildren, even “great grands” live nearby.

Being involved with the community and mixing it up socially with various groups and family strengthens her social connections, and she can slip away whenever she chooses for privacy.

“I’m not much of a sitter,” she said.

But when she does, she reads historical fiction and nonfiction, and she loves maps and word puzzles. It’s important to keep the mind working, which isn’t always easy. She has a computer, but even more convenient, an iPad.

In the early 1990s, she and her husband agreed they needed to get a computer.

“I’ve always been thankful we did,” she said.

Walking, reading, socializing, eating well and getting good rest. That, to Rita Elliott, is the essence of well-being. If stressful thoughts begin to build, and the brain gets going in the middle of the night, “you just say shut up,” she laughs. OK, maybe not so easy, but worth a try.

Rita Elliott is home, and while the area is nice for tourists, “it is a great place to live,” she said, smiling out of her porch window, toward Camden.

Eva Smith

Eva smiles as soon as she opens the door, and the scent of barley soup fills the hall. She steps quickly around her place, full of energy and enthusiasm for what’s on hand: a talk about how one approaches aging.

It’s in her bones to keep moving, and that perhaps, is most elemental to staying healthy at any age. She, of all people, knows the difference.  She spent 36 years as an administrative assistant in GE offices.  She was born in Germany in 1934, she arrived in the U.S. in 1957 to attend a Business College for two years, returned to Germany to work for the US Embassy at Bonn, and emmigrated to the U.S. in 1963. She found a job she loved, but which often required her to work long hours, even overnight, helping to get budget presentations ready for the next morning.

She married, and with her husband settled in Berkshire County, Mass., on three acres, cultivating gardens and fruit trees. It was a little slice of heaven. But come retirement, they wanted to move to a place by the ocean. Eva found Camden on the internet, and when she mentioned to her husband that a ski mountain was in the same community as a harbor, he said, “That’ all too good to be true, we better go have a look at that.”

They landed in Camden in 2004, and have not looked back.

But ailments loomed, and Eva, fed up with doctors’ mediocre advice, began researching solutions. She determined that good nutrition, coupled with exercise year-round (outdoors in the summer, indoors at the YMCA in the winter), and reading all serve as baseline common sense. Doctors are good to have around, but living a healthy lifestyle comes first.

Steve, 89, has taken up walking.

“He walks faster than I, now,” she said.

 They don’t take medication, other than high blood pressure for Steve, and some vitamin supplements.  They have soup for supper - lentil, pea, bean, barley or chicken noodle, all homemade. Breakfast, dinner, and snacks incorporate lots of wholegrain, fruit, vegetables, and some meat and fish.

“We love pasta,” said Eva, “but everything in moderation. We love chocolate, and have one piece of dark chocolate a day. Ice cream? Maybe three or four times a year.”

People think that once you retire, you get to sit around, she said.

“But you have to exercise your muscles, or you cannot open jars,” she said. “If I sit for two hours, my knees hurt.  If I go walking, my knees don’t hurt. I don’t need to build a lot of muscles. I need to maintain what I have. As we get older we tend to lose muscle tone; therefore, we must try to minimize this loss with regular exercise.”

Eva goes to the YMCA twice a week and walks one hour daily weather permitting.

They keep up with the news with a computer. They do not own iPhones, but have cell phones to be used in an emergency. Eva maintains some flower beds and serves on Quarry Hill’s Grounds Committee.

“I’m still digging holes to plant trees,” she said.

As for stress? 

“Know what stresses you,” she said. Cultivate self-awareness. She works in the garden, where, she said, “I work it out.” She has always done that, turning over the dirt, watching the foxes and chipmunks, and gazing at the beautiful trees. “You need to have a chance to work the stress out.”

Then, it’s time for a good bowl of soup to boost one’s health, and spirits. After that, sleep.