You are not spending more time to be healthy. You are spending time differently.
Be an Ageless Beauty Part 2
Hello Beautiful,
Growing older is a privilege. Aging is mostly optional. Our daily habits decide our experience of the passage of time. Most of aging is the cumulative result of neglecting to notice and respond to our body’s needs.
We can only go so long before the wine at night to relax + insufficiently restful sleep + coffee to get going + eating on the go + over packed schedule + the not enough energy to exercise cycle collapses into a health/mental crisis. And it also starts taking its toll on our appearance as well.
This usually begins in the 30’s, intensifies in the 40’s, and is undeniably frustrating in the 50’s. Healthy habits are the foundation of living well. Nothing you can buy, inject, or put on will effectively counter the results you create in your way of living.
Here are the foundational pieces of a healthy lifestyle:
We need 7-10 hours of sleep. During sleep, our body repairs and our nervous system regenerates. A pre-sleep routine and a consistent sleep and wake pattern all optimize the body’s ability to fall asleep quickly and rest well, so that you can wake up refreshed.
10,000 steps per day are needed. A sedentary lifestyle increases anxiety, depression, and slows metabolism. We need a minimum of 5,649 steps a day just to avoid feeling anxious, depressed, and dissatisfied with life! Walking is a low impact, free, and effective way to keep physically fit and mentally healthy. It is a terrific foundation on which to add other fitness activities.
3-4 Liters of water per day is optimal. Drinking purified water, not from plastic containers, and with electrolytes added, is essential for well being in every system of the body. Being dehydrated can cause multiple issues, including brain fog, reduced ability to focus, decreased endurance/strength, slowed elimination, and weight gain (resulting from confusing thirst cues for hunger cues).
7-10 servings of organic produce each day is essential for meeting your needs for fiber, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Nothing creates a youthful glow like a diet rich in fresh produce. Nothing. Aim for 3 servings per meal.
Clear purpose in life and spiritual vitality are the bedrock of the light in your eyes. Without a daily experience of God that vitalizes you and a clear sense that you are making steps each day towards fulfilling your purpose, your focus and fulfillment will dwindle.
Excess coffee is aging you. It’s dehydrating you, weakening your adrenal glands, and masking the overwhelm and lack of sleep that is begging you for a lifestyle overhaul. If you don’t drink coffee-don’t start. If you love it, drink it after you have hydrated and eaten a mineral and protein rich breakfast (rather than drinking it on an empty stomach). Have no more than one glass a day, and not after 2pm, so your sleep isn’t affected.
Alcohol is aging you by slowing your metabolism, damaging your liver, and hurting every system in the body.
Andrew Huberman’s podcast on the effects of alcohol on the body went viral a few years ago and many people are eschewing even “moderate” drinking. There is no upside to alcohol. And, as we age, the cost of imbibing goes up. Alcohol is the fuel that grows the middle age belly. It is not doing you any favors in the health or beauty categories.
Portion control is key. With age, many people find themselves less active and hungrier! When, in truth, we actually need to move more, not less, with age. We also need to watch our portion sizes and not go back for seconds.
Whether you choose to count macros or calories, it’s a good idea to start getting some objective measures of what your body needs (vs what you feel like eating). In America, portion sizes are skewed and norms are not normal for what a body does best with. Too much, too little, and just right are all real amounts. Find out what you need to thrive and create normative portions and proportions of the food groups to consume daily.
Moderation and routine are friends of the body aging well. Cheat days just cheat you of feeling well, and put you behind on your goals. Fasting must be practiced cautiously in the second half of life, where we are more prone to loose lean mass in extreme caloric deficit.
A moderate, constant approach to eating and moving will help you maintain your best weight and be free from injury over time. We want to protect our long term frame: prevent movement reducing injuries and build/sustain muscle and bone. These are both done with consistency, a solid strategy, and moderation.
Most women are healthiest when their BMI is 20-21. Maintaining a lean, muscular body is the goal for aging well. We need to prioritize building and maintaining muscle for metabolic health, bone health, and long term capacity. Furthermore, diet shifts and exercise refinements that help reduce visceral (abdominal) fat are key for optimal wellness.
In addition to getting in our steps each day, we need to stretch and practice mobility and balance enhancing exercises. Many injuries result from poor balance or restricted movements. Preserving our healthy range of movement is essential to staying active and feeling great.
We need to add 20+ min of weight training 3-4x week. We also benefit from 1-2x week HIIT training to build and protect heart health. To loose weight, exercise sessions can be split into 2-3 x per day. A morning walk, an after-work strength session, and a pre-bed, wind down stretch allows the movement to boost metabolism several times and to prevent burnout from one long exercise session.
Oral health is also a key. Brushing after every meal is important! Flossing 1-2x per day is key to keeping your teeth and gums healthy. Tongue scraping in the morning and evening is a good way to improve digestive health since the digestive system begins in the mouth. Re-mineralizing mouth washes to prevent decay to the lower portions of teeth where gums are receding can prevent the loss of a tooth.
Oil pulling is another way to improve the health of the mouth and entire digestive system. Many people also would benefit from getting a retainer or Invisalign to wear a few times per week, to keep their teeth from moving with age.
Most people’s teeth become more crowded and move with the years. This is less attractive but it also changes the bite and can cause the loss of teeth (crowded teeth are harder to keep clean and more likely to decay/be lost). The cost of this preventative measure is significantly less than the cost of losing teeth and getting dental implants—and far less traumatic for the body.
With age our circulation often decreases; this is largely related to the common pattern of becoming more sedentary with age. In addition to getting your steps in and working out daily, massage becomes increasingly important with each year.
Learning massage is a very good skill. There are books, videos, and mentors that can help you learn the best way to do lymphatic drainage massage for yourself. It makes a big difference in reducing water retention, speeding recovery, and reducing cellulite.
Foam rolling can be an aid in this as well. It is less targeted than manual and skilled strokes, but provides many of the flushing benefits to the fascial tissues.
A key indicator of someone’s age is their posture and, particularly, how they hold their neck. Spinal alignment, muscular tension patterns, and emotional patterns all influence our posture.
Releasing areas of habitual tension with daily stretching is an important tool for maintaining a youthful way of holding yourself and moving. Putting the effort in, to become aware of your current patterns and to attentively change them to become in greater alignment, is a worthy endeavor.
You can move your head without pain or restrictions for driving, exercise, and in daily life. Few older individuals have this freedom. It is a freedom bought for about 15 minutes of stretching per day over the years.
For the face, deep tissue fascial sculpting is a key tool for slowing the passage of time. Just like our body has habitual postures, our eyes, forehead, mouth, and jaw all have patterns. We can identify the habits (mouth breathing, clenching the jaw, furrowing the brows, etc) that are holding tension in muscles, which pull the skin into wrinkles and changes the volume in our faces.
Our ability to manually release, and consciously re-pattern our facial posture is an opportunity to change the way our face and neck age. 10 minutes a day is a good start. 20 minutes will make you feel a change. 30 minutes a day will help you see a change. The benefits of the deep work extend beyond wrinkle abatement. Increased circulation improves how the skin ages.
Decreased tension can eliminate chronic headaches, improve sleep, and reduce the overall feel of tension in the body, adding to a sense of ease. A more relaxed, and beautiful face reveals itself over time. Since our face communicates our emotional state to others, it’s important we learn to neutralize unconscious patterns so that we aren’t sending the wrong messages by accident.
When our eye sight changes, there are effective exercises we can do to restore our full function. When our sexual health changes, there are practices that can restore our bladder control, our arousal response, our orgasmic intensity, etc. Many changes in the body can be minimized or reversed. I think you are noticing a theme here!
At the core, it’s a mindset shift: do we accept the gradual decline of every system in the body-how it looks, smells, and functions? Or do we see decreased function as a sign that the body needs something different to thrive? Is our body “malfunctioning” or is it sending us a message we would rather not deal with?
The truth is that your life will either revolve around healthy habits or around the decline of your health. They take the same amount of time and energy. You are not spending more to be healthy. You are spending differently. You can decide if you want your time and efforts spent to create desirable outcomes, or you want your time and efforts spent managing undesirable outcomes. Choose wisely.
If you feel overwhelmed and need help to remodel your current approach and create your ideal aging habits, reach out here.
Cheering you on,
Rachel
ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details