5 Baby Steps to 10 Years Younger

This is my Toastmasters Speech #7 on research. I love my Toastmasters Club because I get positive feedback and I’m becoming less and less anxious and nervous about speaking in public. I have two more speeches to go for my Competent Communicator award. This speech won the blue ribbon. I love winning.

After I had my second child I logged on to RealAge.com and told it about my lifestyle. It calculated how much I exercised, what I ate, and how many friends I had. It told me that my health was that of a 38.5 year old. Which wouldn’t be bad, except I was only chronologically 33.

I wanted to be 10 years younger.

Now I want you to tell me – could I get completely across this room if I took only baby steps and no leaps or jogs? Could I climb an entire mountain, taking only baby steps?

Of course I could. Anybody could. Right? But, if I attempted to get to the top of the mountain in one leap I would fail. Right? So it is with lifestyle changes.

I want to suggest five baby steps that anyone, regardless of their current health can do. Five changes that will make you both younger and healthier.

Pass around an essential oil called peace and calming. . .
If everyone would put this on your wrists, close your eyes, turn off your brains and begin taking very slow deep breaths. Walk around with Peace and Calming to their wrists.

1. Meditate. It’s difficult to believe that doing nothing, that will maintain brain cells, preserve memory and prevent depression and anxiety, lowers blood pressure and drastically reduce stress. Taking 1 – 5 minutes in your day to meditate makes you years younger, according to YOU, The Owner’s Manual.
2. Change Your Mind. In The 4-day Win, Martha Beck says you must change the beliefs that are keeping you fat, unhealthy, out of shape or invested in a bad habit. She calls them The Lies We Live By. Some of mine were, “I look like my mother so I can’t be thin, I hate exercise and I can’t afford health foods or the gym.” I had to change my mind.
Please take a chocolate
3. Eat Healthy Chocolate. In The 4 Day Win Martha Beck states, Allowing yourself to become ravenous and denying yourself forbidden foods will make you fatter. She sites an Ancel Keys study they took normal people and put them on restrictive diets. The result was Famine Brain making them obsess about food, hunt it, hoard it and steal it and eat 10,000 calories at one sitting. So, allow yourself healthy, dark chocolate. Anything above 60% cocoa is an antioxidant and has many health benefits, which is why your body and soul crave it., Eat This, Not That breaks down the health difference in different brands of foods. The idea being that you can cut 100 calories a day by simply buying another brand of potato chip, granola bar, or box of cereal.
4. Move More. Whatever movement you’re doing now – do a tiny bit more. Go for a walk during your 2 15 minute breaks at work. I ride an elliptical machine during Oprah or The View. When your comfortable and getting a little bored, add another baby step. Never, ever, ever start a new year with a mountain climb or a 5k. Start with something you know you can do like a walk around the block.
5. Sleep. I can’t imagine why children don’t want to go to bed or why my husband stays up until 1 am. According to You The Owners Manual 40 million people have sleep problems. Lack of sleep increases risk for heart attack. You also release less serotonin, the pleasure hormone. Beck also sites studies proving that sleep has a connection to eating. If you want to eat less, get more sleep. Humans need 7 hours a day. It will make you years younger.

The key to becoming 10 years younger is to make permanent baby step changes. Nothing drastic and doing only things you can perceive as a kindness to yourself.

Using this method I have chronologically aged 3 years, having just turned 36, but my Real Age is now 33. That makes me 11.5 years younger than I would have been had I kept my original habits and 3 years younger than my current chronological age.

To find out how you can be 10 years younger visit realage.com and it will personalize baby steps for your own body and lifestyle.