How to AGE quickly

For all of you – all two of you – who’ve been waiting since last Wednesday to find out if 1) I’m back on track, walking the anti-aging talk and/ or 2) I have in any meaningful way quelled the yappy little voice in my head that tells me what a bad person I am for not getting up from my computer every hour to do jumping jacks…here’s this week’s update:

*I set a one-hour timer on my computer to remind me it’s time to lift seat of pants from seat of chair (i.e., stability ball) and do something, anything, for three minutes.  Mostly I’ve been using this opportunity to chase my feline writing buddy around the house.  This silences yappy voice and entertains cat.  A two-fer.

*I have managed to eat lunch three out of seven days this past week, which is three more than the week before.  Paying attention to the protein thing.  Paying attention to the Eat Plants thing.  Attempting not to demonize fruit.  And oh, attempting to enjoy the meal.  There is that.

End of report.  Now onto what I really want to write about this week.  At a pre-publication event for the book last week, an audience member asked: “What are the worst things you can do to yourself, the things that actively accelerate aging?”  Great question.

First I’ll give you the standard answer:  If you carry around a lot of extra fat (especially around the middle), live a sedentary lifestyle and smoke cigarettes, you’ve just hit the trifecta.  But everyone knows that already, right?  If you lie out in the sun (or in a tanning bed), or stay outside without sunblock and a hat, you are actively and aggressively aging your skin, not just the top layers but the deep layers where the connective tissue lies. But everyone knows that, right?   There’s also been a torrent of stories lately about the weight-promoting, age-accelerating effects of getting too little sleep.  So I won’t hit that one again.

Here’s what I want to say:  One of the worst things you can do, one of the most powerful ways you can catapult yourself down the aging path is attitude.  If you think you are the person to whom things happen and not the person who makes things happen, if you see yourself as object rather than subject (for you grammarians out there), if you have low self-esteem rather than high self-efficacy (for all you self-help readers out there), you cease to be the engine of your own life.  I don’t think there is quicker way to age.

Obstacles become bad things inflicted upon you rather than, maybe, challenges that can test you, make you stronger.  Change becomes a negative, something foisted upon you, rather than an opportunity (maybe forced, maybe not all that welcome) to grow.  Staying excited, curious, resilient, flexible – that’s the way to stay youthful.  When you are the author of your own life, you get to create the plot.

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you here that my new book, Counterclockwise: My Year Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Choicolate and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-Aging, is due out, officially, June 4, and available online right now.