Aging doesn’t have to mean looking and feeling old, getting flabby, and losing your sex drive. Your biological age can be much younger than your calendar age with a few lifestyle changes. If you desire good looks, a hard body, and the sex life of a 25 year old, you can have it. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you are at an optimum time to start preserving what you have. If you’re 40 plus, it’s not that hard to regain everything youthful and keep it.
Here are some helpful tips:
- Take care of stress. Stress will cause you to age poorly. Not only will it affect your looks, it’s detrimental to your health. Everyone has stress at times, but chronic and excessive stress is the problem. Find ways to control stress by talking with your doctor, meditating, changing the way you cope with stressful situations, and making possible changes in your lifestyle to relieve the pressure. This will promote better health and a younger biological age.
- Get enough sleep. Give up some of that late-night TV and go to bed a little earlier, don’t take home extra work all the time (is getting ahead faster worth your health?), don’t exercise vigorously within three or four hours of going to bed, and don’t have caffeine, nicotine or alcohol in the evening.
- Spice up your sex life. As we reach our 30s, work and family pressures might increase. And in our 40s, we might assume that a high level of desire is “for the young”. Remember, if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Plan time for sex with your mate if your schedule is crazy – in other words, make sure that sex remains a priority. Sex helps relieve some stress in your life, and in turn, cutting stress in your life helps your sex drive.
- Get regular exercise. This fact bears repeating — regular exercise keeps your body young. It helps you retain lean muscle mass, keeps your lung efficiency at its max, and gives you a mental boost. It also relieves stress. Any kind of physical activity will do: go to the gym, exercise at home, cycle, rollerblade, ice skate, ski, walk, run, jog, play basketball, baseball, football, or bowl.
- Adopt a proper diet. Get accustomed to a low-fat diet loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, some protein and some carbs. This is a power-packed way to strive for longevity and good health. View food as a source of fuel rather than a reward. It’s ok to have your favorite treats sometimes, but most of the time you’ll be eating to strengthen your body and keep your good shape. Once you see how great you look and how good you feel, you won’t feel deprived, you’ll happily embrace the benefits.
- Take the proper supplements. It’s next to impossible to get the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients you need from diet alone. Most people do not have time to shop for, prepare, and eat the six small meals a day that experts recommend for a balanced diet. And even if they did, the calorie count would be over the top. Taking a multivitamin each day will give you what you need, plus it can help reduce the risk of chronic disease. Antioxidants are important as well to fight free-radical damage which can cause cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and general aging of the body.
Good health or ‘state of balance’ doesn’t magically happen on its own. It happens when we make conscious choices and decisions about: what we eat and drink, whether we get some exercise or just sit on the couch, whether we drink plenty of life-giving water or overindulge in coffee, soda, and alcohol, whether we choose to have a positive or a negative outlook on life, and proper rest.
The definition of biological age is: your age that is determined by physiology rather than chronology. Or, more simply, how healthy your body is rather than how many calendar years old you are. Research suggests that your biological age is a more accurate evaluation of your age, and the good news is that your biological age can actually become younger if you make healthy lifestyle choices.