Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond

by Chris Crowley

The keys to overriding the decay code are daily exercise, emotional commitment, reasonable nutrition and a real engagement with living. But it starts with exercise. You have to exercise all the time because

We are not tired at the end of the day because we get too much exercise. We are tired because we do not get enough exercise. We are mentally, emotionally and physically drained from being sedentary.

unless your doctor tells you to stop, never let arthritis keep you from exercising.

Remember, aerobic exercise saves your life; strength training makes it worth living.

Try this. Bang back one glass every morning, first thing, when you wake up. Maybe with that vitamin pill or your cholesterol pill or your baby aspirin. Same thing at night, when you go to bed. One more with each meal, that’s obvious. Five down, three to go.

The dreary, persistent fact is that diets don’t work: 95 percent of them fail, which is why setting weight loss as a goal is generally a bum idea. The almost certain failure can infect your whole attitude toward fitness, while the yo-yoing up and down actually makes you gain weight. So don’t diet.

You do this by deliberately driving away the modern versions of lions and tigers . . . stress, loneliness and idle worry about status. By reaching out to good stimuli: exercise, decent sleep, rational diet, love and play. Happiness comes primarily from building connections, from giving and getting love and friendship, and that just takes good old-fashioned work—hard, but deeply satisfying work.

studies suggest that men live longer in direct proportion to the frequency of sex, while women live longer in direct proportion to the quality of sex.