Healthy Aging: How to Add Life to Your Years

With less than a year to go before I turn 60, I am acutely aware of the importance of healthy lifestyle habits. Learning to adopt a healthy lifestyle is the best thing you can do for your future self.  What you do in your 40s and 50s shapes your quality of life for decades to come. The most important thing to know is that it is never too late to start. I have personally made all of the changes outlined below in the last several years and can tell you first-hand what a tremendous impact it has made on my overall health and well-being.

We all want to age well and stay vibrant. None of us would ever willingly choose to age poorly, but that is exactly what happens when we let unhealthy habits take the lead. It’s not just a matter of genetics or luck—our health is highly influenced by our daily habits. If you consistently consume processed foods and takeout, have a sedentary lifestyle, get by on little sleep, and don’t address your stress, you are setting yourself up for accelerated aging. The good news is that healthy aging is well within your control, regardless of your genes, and it’s never too late to start. Your genes load the gun, but your environment pulls the trigger. By focusing on what is in your control—diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, toxin exposure, etc.—you will be supporting your body and mind as you age.

The foundations of healthy aging include:

1.   Eat real food: A diet filled with whole, nutrient-dense foods lowers inflammation, which is a silent driver of chronic diseases and age-related conditions. Ditch the highly processed foods, refined sugar, refined starch, and industrial seed oils that drive inflammation. Instead, fill up on a variety of veggies, whole grains, high quality proteins, fish, healthy fats, beans, nuts and seeds. Food is medicine, but it can also be poison—choose wisely.

2.   Move your body: A lack of exercise accelerates all of the hallmarks of aging. Exercise is the key to controlling blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, improving mood and cognitive function, and improving sleep. It also improves muscle and bone health, which helps guard against frailty as you age. Ideally, you want to focus on three key aspects of fitness to achieve maximum benefits: aerobic conditioning, strength training, and flexibility.

3.   Prioritize sleep: Chronic sleep deprivation can put you at a higher risk for dementia, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, weight gain, and diabetes. It’s during sleep that the body repairs and restores itself. Most of us need 7-9 hours of sleep each night. If you routinely get less than that, it can have long-term consequences. Getting good sleep now can improve your chances of fending off dementia.

4.   Manage stress: Addressing your stress levels is a key component of healthy aging. Chronic stress doesn’t just affect your mood—it triggers cortisol release that can lead to weight loss resistance, making it nearly impossible to shed pounds no matter how well you eat or exercise. Whether the stress is psychological or physical, biological aging can result. Some simple practices to reset your stress response are breathing exercises, guided meditations, getting out in nature, journaling, yoga, and starting an exercise routine.

5.   Minimize exposure to toxins: Environmental toxins can be a significant contributor to chronic disease. Toxins damage our DNA, cause cells to age, disrupt our hormones, and can even damage our gut microbiome. Reduce consumption of foods that have been contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and hormones. Read labels to check for additives, chemicals, preservatives, dyes, artificial sweeteners, and any other “nonfood” ingredient. If you can’t find it in a supermarket, you shouldn’t be eating it. Ditch the plastic water bottles and non-stick cookware. Be mindful of the personal care products you put on your skin—many are full of toxic ingredients.

6.   Stay connected to community: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Connection cites that lacking social connection is as dangerous as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Nurture your relationships with friends and family, volunteer, join a club, connect with people who inspire you.

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. By focusing on just one or two of these behaviors at a time, you will naturally see other areas improve. Start prioritizing sleep and you’ll find you have more energy for exercise. Move your body regularly and stress becomes easier to manage. Focus on eating real food, and your sleep quality will improve. Everything is interconnected, which means small wins create momentum. Start small, keep building, and you will notice improvement in every aspect of your life. Imagine waking up feeling refreshed instead of hitting the snooze button three times. Picture how it would feel to make it through your afternoon without a 3pm energy crash. This is what’s possible when you stop letting unhealthy habits call the shots.

So here is what you can do: look back at these six areas and pick just one—not three or all six—where you are struggling the most right now. Maybe it’s the sleep you’ve been sacrificing for late-night scrolling. Maybe it’s the steady diet of convenience food, or the stress that’s become so constant you’ve stopped noticing it. This is where you should start. Give yourself time to focus on one meaningful change before moving to the next.

And before you dive in, pause for a moment. When was the last time you turned off your phone and were truly alone with your own thoughts? We’re so inundated with constant news alerts, emails, texts, and social media that we’ve lost the ability to hear ourselves. Before you can make lasting changes, you need to create space to reflect honestly about where you are and where you want to be.

If you’re ready to make changes but don’t know where or how to start, that is exactly why I created my Healthy Aging Program. I’ll walk you through step-by-step, help you to identify a starting point, and create a realistic plan that actually fits your life. Click here to learn more.

It’s hard work to cultivate healthy habits, but so is managing illness. Choose your hard.