Listen, I know it’s really tempting to not wash off your makeup after a night out or to have that extra side of fries with all the grease imaginable, but if you want to look like you’re 20 when you’re in your 40s, follow these little nuggets of wisdom and you’ll be a real life Benjamin Button.
- Seriously, get off your butt and start working out now. I know it’s way easier to make working out and getting healthy your New Year’s resolution, only to forget about it two weeks later. But do yourself a favor and make that promise to yourself now—and actually follow through with it. You don’t need the start of a new year to make changes and you certainly don’t need me to tell you it’s good for your body and overall health in general.
- Drink water, and loads of it. Water is necessary for every element of our body’s workings. It helps flush out the bad crap in your system, keeps you regular, helps your heart, makes your skin glow, etc. If you make drinking plenty of water a habit now, your body tends to run more smoothly when age hits. And you should be drinking pure, boring water too—none of this “coffee has water in it, so it counts right?” logic.
- Eat the rainbow. Or just simply put, make sure you eat your fruits and veggies just like Mom always told you to do. If you look at your plate and it all looks like different shades of brown or beige, maybe it isn’t the best food choice to make sure your body doesn’t crap out on you later. That doesn’t mean you can’t grab a slice of pizza on a Friday night or order fries instead of the side salad sometimes, but more often than not, you should be eating real food grown on a tree/vine/in the ground.
- Find what you love to do and do it. Nothing ages you faster than high stress and boredom. That’s why people with dead-end jobs have so much higher stress and are overall more unhappy. If you find what you love and you can actually call that thing your job, you’ll be one lucky lady.
- Learn to meditate. Meditation is a great way to manage stress and take some time for yourself. It lowers blood pressure and is a great distraction from all those awful news stories that can just hurt your soul. Again, stress is a killer, so make moves to lower yours as much as possible.
- Moisturize and for the love of God, wear sunscreen. Literally, slather lotion everywhere! It helps with the elasticity of your skin which makes you look younger in general. Sunscreen is also a must, even on cold, dreary days. Sun damage is the number one reason skin ages so quickly, from dark spots and sagging to wrinkles—not to mention skin cancer. Get with it.
- Actually sleep in sometimes. Apparently during sleep, your “cell turnover” is higher than the waking hours of the day. This allows your skin cells to renew themselves and keep your skin from looking dull and, well, tired. Not only that, but sleep is incredibly important in lowering stress levels, blood pressure, healing injuries, and basically your overall health.
- Enjoy those makeup-free days. Allow your skin to breathe every once in a while. Don’t fall into the endless cycle where makeup clogs all your pores and then you put more on to try and cover it up, only making the problem worse. And as a plus, not putting on makeup saves so much time and allows you to be lazy, which is always a good thing in my book.
- Strengthen social connections. If it was up to me, I’d never leave my house if I could help it. But research has consistently shown that having a strong social circle helps you keep emotionally and physically healthy. So when the girls want to go out for a drink, you’re really just looking out for your future, if you really think about it.
- Using a retinol night cream is nothing to be ashamed of. You’re never too young to start using a night cream, odds are by the time you need it, it’s already too late. It’s easier to prevent skin issues than to fix them later on. Retinol helps you produce new skin cells, meaning it can prevent and correct damaged skin.
- Exfoliating is your friend. You don’t want dead, old skin hanging around for longer than it has to. Get rid of all that grossness by exfoliating whenever you can. Exfoliating stimulates healthy blood flow as well, so win-win.
- Exercise your brain too. This can be anything from reading, writing, playing Sudoku… whatever gets those neurons firing. Keep the brain healthy so that you enjoy all those people being so shocked that you look so great “for your age” in the future.
- Remember your posture. I always hated when my grandma would slap my back when I was hunched over in my chair, but she was right—taking care of your bones and muscle strength now really helps you out for the future. Bone density weakens every year after the age of 40. Take care of it now so that you’re sitting tall later in life.
- Do your own thing and stop worrying about everyone else. I think this attitude naturally comes with age, but why waste so much energy and stress about what other people think? Odds are everyone is focusing on themselves anyway, so live your life and make sure it’s a damn good one.
