Danny Davis
Defying The Aging Process
Aging is an inevitable and natural process that creeps into every aspect of our lives. The seasons pass and aging rears its ugly head. The Fountain of Youth may be one giant lie, but there are plenty of preventative measures that can help keep you proactive about your aging.
This does not mean that you should want to be 28 again, but how amazing would it feel to age with vitality, great health and to live longer and be disease free. You can maintain high levels of zest, wellness, and energy no matter your age. Recapturing those assets is an essential part of leading a happier and healthier lifestyle, as you get older.
It is an absolute fact that you do not have to take aging lying down.
If you consider successful aging to be the absence of infirmity, disability, and disease, where you enjoy a high quality of life and general wellness, then this is certainly within your reach.
Premature and accelerated aging is the opposite, often caused by poor lifestyle choices. Know that what you do now will pay off (or not) later down the line.
When you start to exercise, eat right, and avoid bad habits like smoking, and excessive drinking, your brain and body is properly nourished, allowing you to maintain a high level of health, wellness and stability well into the older years. In a similar fashion, taking care of your mental and emotional health will further allow you to maintain the highest level of wellness throughout the aging process.
There’s nothing like turning back time to boost your happiness. Did you think it would have the opposite effect? Not true, according to a study from Harvard University.
When people find themselves in an environment resembling their youth they experience improvements in their overall health, including vision, memory, and happiness. So, enjoy a throwback to the music and movies that you loved once upon a time. Because, positivity is vital to your happiness, a lot can be said for seeing the silver lining in every cloud.
45 Diet and Lifestyle Mistakes That Make You Age Faster
Mistakes in General Wellness
1. Failure to get enough sleep – As we juggle the stress of family obligations, careers and the general stressors of life, getting enough sleep can be difficult. You should be getting at least 7 hours of sleep every night, and not getting enough will affect your mood, energy levels, food choices, and your willingness to exercise and of course, all of these contribute to how well you age, or not.
2. Putting yourself last – It’s really common, you’re so busy prioritizing your family, children, careers, and a host of other obligations that you lose sight of your own health and wellbeing. If you want to do right by others, you should be committed to self-care, the better you take care of yourself now, the more your body will take care of you in your older years.
3. Ignoring stress – We often see stress as an unavoidable side effect of our busy lives, many have actually accepted its consequences as unavoidable facts of life.
Fast-paced lifestyles result in stress. If you don’t acknowledge it and manage it, it can take a serious toll on your health, including increasing your blood pressure, and leaving you with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke, especially in your older years. Stress can also increase risks for mental health problems, such an anxiety, and depression.
4. Poor posture – According to the Economist, in aging populations around the world the most common source of disability is back pain. Back pain is commonly due to bad posture. Keep these three tips in mind if you want to keep your back healthy as you age:
- Strengthen & Stretch – core training and yoga are a great way to build strength and resist poor posture.
- Varied movement – change your position throughout the day, it will realign your spine, relieving pressure on your back or neck.
- The perfect-seated posture – To find the perfect alignment for your head and spine lift your chest and pull your abdominals in. Imagine that your head is being tugged by a string, and pulled straight up – that’s the perfect posture.
5. Too much sun – According to The Skin Cancer Foundation, 1 in 5 Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer, and UV rays cause over 90% of skin cancer cases. Sun damage also accelerates aging, so you should always wear sunscreen (even if you have no plans to sunbathe). 80% of sun exposure is a result of everyday outings, so even if you are only walking from your front door to the car door that sun adds up.
6. Shunning technology – It’s time to give into or better yet embrace technology! There are plenty of apps that can help you stay fit, including those made for exercise and/or diet. Having said that, don’t get too caught up in screen time as this can affect your sleep and stress levels. It’s all about letting your smartphone work for you.
7. Ignoring multivitamins – You might think that eating a healthy diet is enough to get all the nutrients you need, and that you won’t need any vitamin supplements. That’s not always true because the majority of us are lacking in certain nutrients. You should choose a multivitamin that fits your needs and health concerns, ask your doctor.
8. Too many changes, too quickly – When you have a long-term goal, you should break it down into short-term steps. It’s better to avoid too many drastic changes at once, and start small. For instance, making dietary changes gradually and starting exercise at a beginner level instead of performing advanced moves. If the changes are too extreme you will struggle to make them stick.
9. Doing too much and doing it all – Your schedule is full and have a massive to-do list, so you stay up late and get up early to fit everything in. Soon, that hectic over stuffed schedule begins to catch up with you causing burnout, and emotional and physical distress. Build a schedule that is realistic and balanced.
10. You Sit Too Much – Take a minute and add up the hours you spend sitting in one day (this includes time spent sitting at work, and at while watching TV) then multiply that by 7 days and then multiply that by 365 days, is the result shocking?
Sitting disease is a serious problem that can make you age faster and result in preventable lifestyle diseases. One study (Associations of Accelerometer-Measured and Self-Reported Sedentary Time With Leukocyte Telomere Length in Older Women, Shadyab, et al), determined that women ages 64 to 95 who did not counteract sitting for 10 hours a day with a minimum of 30 minutes of any type of movement or exercise had cells that were biologically eight years older as compared to women who were more active.
The reason for this is that these women had suffered from shorter telemores (caps on DNA that protect chromosomes) and while telemores naturally shorten with age, this process is accelerated by lifestyle choices, such as a lack of activity.
11. Shunning accountability – Accountability is the key to succeeding at everything. You should adopt a program that focuses on education and accountability, as well as helping you achieve your nutritional, weight loss and exercise goals.
12. Comparing yourself to others – It’s easy to become caught up in envying the success of others. Don’t allow that to get you down, maintain your focus on you. When you are stuck on comparing yourself to others, you only bring yourself down and increase your stress.
13. Ignoring your own happiness – Happiness is something that seems to elude many, as people go through life, from job to home like zombies, never stopping to enjoy or smell the roses.
In fact, happiness has been linked with much improved mental, emotional, and physical health, all of which promote successful aging. Entire books have been written on the subject of happiness. Happiness is a relative condition, meaning that you need to find those things that make you happy and fulfilled and make time for them.
14. Chronic multitasking – If your life was represented as a pie chart, what would it look like? Sure, you’d have career, family, chores, and social life on there, but unlike a pie chart, it wouldn’t add up to 100%. Chances are those responsibilities would be stacked high adding up to an insurmountable list of expectations.
This type of multitasking leads to overwhelm, and is a recipe for disaster. You won’t get anything done well, you will just feel stressed. As you stress and rush to get jobs finished then your brain produces excess amount of the harmful stress hormone cortisol. Stress has severe consequences, affecting your mental and physical health. Some studies have found that multitasking actually ages the brain at an accelerated rate.
Mistakes in Diet
15. Getting caught up in fad diets – People are quick to try new fad diets but typically, they will get you nowhere fast. You may see results initially, but they are unsustainable, so when you revert to a normal diet and lifestyle you gain weight back, and often more. Not to mention that fad diets often leave you lacking important nutrients.
The only effective formula to control your weight is through exercise and permanent healthy diet habits. The best diet for health and weight loss is to eat clean, which means choosing real whole food, and watching caloric intake. Focusing on making lasting habit changes, such as breaking junk food habits and replacing them with new healthy ones is the only way to succeed for the long term.
16. Underestimating the need for protein – People underestimate just how much they need protein. A deficiency can result in a weakened immune system, weight gain, fatigue, and unclear thinking. Your body needs protein to build and repair tissue. It also assists in curbing appetite.
The typical woman needs between 40 and 50 grams of protein every day. That is the equivalent of around 5-8 ounces of lean chicken breast. For active women, however, that need is greater. Men need more.
17. Too many “low” foods – “low” foods are those processed foods marked as low fat, low fat, or low sugar. If it’s telling you it’s healthy, there’s a good chance that while it’s low in one thing, it’s high in something else. If you’re choosing vegetables and fruits then it will be difficult to overeat calories, but it’s the foods made in factories such as cookies, fat free this and low calorie that, which really add up.
18. Too much eating out – Eating out is fun, and it’s convenient, especially when you’re trying to juggle a career, children, and chores. It’s easy to hop on the internet and order in, or swing by a restaurant to catch a meal or two. The problem is that restaurant food contains additional additives, high salt levels, and industrial fats. Therefore, even if you choose a meal that seems like something you could make at home, it’s going to be packed with calories. There’s nothing wrong with a treat, but make sure it is consumed in moderation and only on occasion, set a limit and stick to it.
19. A lack of magnesium – We often focus on our calcium levels, completely forgetting about magnesium. Your body needs magnesium to absorb and metabolize calcium. If you take too much calcium without taking enough magnesium, the excess levels of calcium can result in cardiovascular disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, and kidney stones.
20. Eating too little – Not eating enough is just as bad as eating too much. It may seem like a logical decision to limit your calorie intake when you want to counteract a slow metabolism and lose weight, but cutting your calories too much, though, can backfire.
A diet that is very low in calories will deplete your energy, and can cause your body to store every single calorie you do eat as it goes into starvation mode.
There is also a risk of muscle tissue breaking down and it having a negative effect on your bone density. You don’t need to starve yourself to lose weight, you just need to make heathy food choices, and eat well.
21. Always eating the same thing – You can be stuck in all kinds of ruts, and being in a diet rut means you’re missing out on key nutrients from a lack of variety. Don’t be afraid to try new foods, especially fruits and vegetable. It’s incredibly important that your diet is varied and nutritional. It should be rich in lean proteins, as well as colorful fruits and vegetables.
22. Not eating enough fats – Not all fat is bad, it is essential for your body’s functions and imperative for healthy aging in that it supports and promotes heart and brain health. It’s all about knowing what fats are good, and which ones aren’t.
- The healthy fats for healthy aging and disease prevention are monosaturated, polyunsaturated and omega-3 fatty acids found in cold-water fish, nuts, olive oil, and avocados.
- Saturated fats that come from animal foods and by products, such as steak, chicken, cheese, and eggs and should be eaten in moderation, your body needs some amount, but eating too many of them can cause heart problems.
- Fats to avoid completely include trans fats found in fried foods, typical packaged snack foods, baked goods, and others.
23. Ignoring your gut – Your stomach is a whole lot more than a food storehouse. It is also home to the microbiome, a network of bacteria that influences a variety of bodily functions, including your feelings, cravings, and even your thoughts. Your gut’s microbes communicate with your brain, signaling whether your appetite should be increased or decreased. To keep that microbiome healthy, you should eat natural plain unsweetened yogurt, and fermented food products like sauerkraut and kimchee.
24. Relying too much on cleanses and detoxes – You can’t make up for bad diet choices by doing to many detoxes, cleanses, or fasts. Juice fasts or liver cleanses are not magic. You may experience a short-term psychological effect, but it does not provide your body with any meaningful improvement. They only serve to strengthen a detrimental trend in how we relate to the needs and functions of our body.
25. Eating too much sugar and carbs –1.4 million new cases of type 2 diabetes are diagnosed each year, and The Centers for Disease Control report type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90 to 95% of all those cases, that means more than 1 in 10 adults age 20 and older have this disease. 1 out of 3 adults have prediabetes.
The best way to reduce your risk is to eat right and keep your weight at healthy levels. Limit refined carbs, such as white starches (pasta, white bread, cereal, etc.) and refined sugars (table sugar, soda, cupcakes, ice cream etc.).
26. Too many “healthy” frozen dinners – With a busy life, it’s tempting to rely on the convenience of frozen dinners. The package says they’re healthy, they provide you with protein and vegetables, and some may help you maintain your waistline. However, the majority of frozen meals is lacking in nutrients and contains unwanted ingredients. Filling the majority of your diet with frozen meals leaves you short on antioxidants and fiber that’s key sources are fresh fruits and vegetables.
27. Exercising away a bad diet – Many people are under the illusion that as long as they exercise regularly, they can eat whatever they want. You cannot indulge in high calorie and high fat binges and exercise the effects away.
Overindulging in foods high in fat and calories can increase blood sugar and inflammation, cause bloating, digestive issues, increase cholesterol levels, and cause hormone imbalances.
Even if you manage to maintain a healthy weight, you will be missing key nutrients that the body needs to thrive, putting yourself at risk for chronic age related disease such as heart disease, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and stroke. The bulk of your diet should be a wide variety of clean whole food, with treats in small portions and always in moderation.
28. Skipping meals – You should never skip any meals, but particularly breakfast. Your body needs a kick start in the morning, and skipping breakfast leaves you more likely to binge on unhealthy junk for lunch and you’ll overeat.
Skipping lunch means you’re likely to overdo it at dinner, while skipping dinner leaves you likely to snack excessively.
29. An acidic diet – Foods that tilt your pH to the acidic side don’t need to be unhealthy. Such foods include squash, fish, berries, and nuts all of which are heavy on the acidic side. However, if your diet isn’t alkaline enough it can destroy your body’s potassium and calcium stores. If you run low on these minerals, you’re depleting your tooth and bone strength, which will result in dental issues and osteoporosis.
30. Choosing unhealthy beverages – First, foremost and most important, soda, fruit juice, and other unhealthy drinks that are filled with sugar and tons of empty calories are bad news as they contribute to obesity and disease in your older years.
Coffee has a variety of health benefits, such as suppressing your appetite, focus, and concertation, reducing risks for skin cancer, dementia, type 2 diabetes and studies find that coffee drinkers live longer than those who never drink it.
Black, green, and oolong teas are also wonderful drink choices as they contain key antioxidants in tea, theaflavins, and EGCG, which reduces the risk of skin cancer and wrinkles. Herbal teas are also good choices as they offer you a vast variety of health benefits and many that are anti-aging focused.
Vegetables juices and smoothies made fresh at home are a good option, especially for those who lack them in their diet.
It is also important to limit your alcohol intake. Alcohol is a depressant, and it can make getting a good night’s sleep a difficult proposition. Drinking too much alcohol is bad for your liver, weight, blood pressure, and can contribute to heart disease, cancer, and stroke. There is good news however, according to the Mayo Clinic, red wine (in moderation) can be beneficial to your cholesterol, and heart health.
Mistakes In Exercise
31. Ignoring exercise – the biggest mistake you can make that will hinder your aging experience and significantly increases risk factors for chronic disease is avoiding exercise. The Centers For Disease Control and The World Health Organization report that lack of exercise is one of the greatest contributing factors to the top 2 causes of death, which stem from preventable lifestyle diseases, such as heart disease that includes stroke, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, and cancer.
32. Thinking you are too old to exercise – Hmm, do you think you’re too old to workout? Think again! Plenty of people are sweating it out at the gym well past their 60’s and even into their 80’s. In fact, exercise is needed more in your older years than ever before, to promote mobility, keep the heart healthy, and prevent age-related weight gain that results from a slowing metabolism.
33. Following the same exercise routine –While routines are important and it should include your favorite workouts and activities, it’s just as important to try new things. Incorporating new workouts can provide some excitement in your daily workout and most important challenge the body so your fitness levels progress.
So, if you love to lift weights, try Pilates or yoga for a change of pace. If you’re already a dedicated yogi, try out resistance training. Mix things up by cycling, hiking, or rock climbing, or join a self-defense class. Your life is a well-oiled machine. You have fine-tuned your daily life through routine and organization. That’s all well and good, but when you are stuck in a rut in your exercise routine, your body stops growing. The key to fitness is variety, it’ll keep you engaged, and the changeup will keep results coming.
34. Failure to engage in everyday movement – As we are overrun with responsibilities, we often outsource some of the more menial chores. We hire someone to walk the dogs, clean the house, or deal with the yard. While that may help with your stress levels, those tasks are a great way to keep your body moving and totally count as exercise! Keeping yourself moving throughout the day improves fitness and improves your health.
35. Doing it on your own – There’s nothing better than having an accountability partner to help drive you in your exercise goals, and to keep you on the straight and narrow when it comes to diet and fitness choices. Find a friend who will join you in exercise as heading out for a walk with company will make time fly versus listening to a podcast while you spend an hour on the treadmill.
36. Ignoring floor exercises – The older we get the more likely we are to ditch floor exercises. Focusing too much on exercise machines and ignoring the benefits of traditional bodyweight moves such as pushups, sit-ups, squats, rolling, and crawling is a mistake as these movements greatly support functional fitness, shoulder stability and build core strength.
37. Ignoring weight training – Your metabolism and hormones change as you age and this makes it more difficult to build muscle mass, and maintain it. This is why it’s just as important to focus your attention on strength training as it is doing cardio. When you lift weights, you’ll burn more fat, because lifting uses stored carbs and fat as fuel. When you do cardio exercise, your body instead uses your muscle fibers for fuel. Additionally, lean muscle mass promotes a higher metabolism helping you burn more calories and fat even when your body is at rest. Muscle mass also helps balance hormones, and builds stronger bones.
38. Ignoring rest days – As important as it is to follow a regular exercise routine, it’s just as important to take regular rest days because your body needs time to relax and repair, in fact muscle grows during rest and recovery not during the workout. On rest days, you can enjoy stretching, and just relax, as this is vital for managing your stress levels.
39. Failing to warm up – Warming up is incredibly important, you need to stretch and loosen your joints, and muscles before you begin your workout routine. Without a proper warm up, you’re increasing your risk of injury, and your body isn’t going to be able to handle exercise for any length of time. Warming up before exercise is an absolute must.
40. Wearing the wrong shoes – Wearing the wrong shoes can further increase risks of injury. Your joint health is important, especially as you age, and wearing the wrong shoes increases your risk of injury. Ideally, visit a shoe store where you can speak to a specialist who will analyze your gait, and foot, to match you with the perfect athletic shoe.
41. Relying too heavily on machines – It’s easy to focus on machines when you’re in the gym, but not always ideal. Machines target certain muscle groups, for example, using a leg press machine is great, it’s going to build strong legs, but then you try to lift something and your core doesn’t work with your legs, resulting in a nasty injury. This is why body weight and compound exercises are important, as they teach the different muscle groups to work together. Mix it up and ensure that you work on lunges, pushes, squats, and bends.
42. Ignoring balance – Good balance has always been important, but it’s even more important as we age as the majority of injury to seniors is from falls. Integrate balance training into your workout routines, a stability ball is a great tool for balance training.
43. Relying too heavily on low weights – As you age your body begins to lose muscle. If you want to maintain muscle mass, you need tension. Working on heavier strength training increases levels of good hormones, promote muscle growth and helps build lean muscle mass.
44. Following the wrong order – The majority of people start their exercise routine with cardio, and then dive into strength training before finishing off with some stretching. Instead, it should be the opposite. Start with your weight lifting routine and finish with cardio or better yet perform HIIT (high intensity interval training) for 15 minutes on a day when you do not strength train. This allows the body to have optimal energy it needs for muscle growth, instead of using those stores for the cardio.
45. Failing to feed your muscles – Once you’ve put your body through a strenuous workout you need to feed those muscles and this means you should eat some type of protein within 30 minutes of completing your workout.
If your focus has been on strength training, then opt for a quality whey protein shake. If you were heavy on the cardio, then choose a grilled chicken breast and vegetables.
Feeding your muscles with the food they need maximizes growth and repair.
Final Thoughts
The truth is that we hold the power of aging gracefully in our own hands. We have choices in how well our bodies and minds will hold up as our years advance.
Every day we are faced with decisions about diet, exercise, and wellbeing and the decisions we make have a direct impact on how we age, physically, mentally, and aesthetically.
The key to living a long and healthy life is avoiding mistakes, and instead making decisions that we know will benefit our health.
It’s fair to say that we are all guilty of some (or maybe even all) of the mistakes listed above. Some of the errors are made with the full knowledge that they’re the wrong choice and unfortunately, the convenience of making those decisions is too tempting to avoid.
It takes willpower and a desire to age better and maintain a healthy and active lifestyle that will lengthen your life. Now that you know some of the key mistakes in diet, exercise, and general wellness, you can start making real changes in your life.
There may not be a fountain of youth, but you can embrace and say yes to smart decisions that directly benefit your body, mind, and spirit.
Stay well and take care!
