Here Are 7 Things You Must Do Daily If You're Type A And Motivated By Being As Hot And Healthy As Possible
Did we mention we’re over 40?
Image: NBC
by The Candidly Team
We know we joke a lot about the messiness of being over 40. It’s 93% of what we do here at this humble(ish) publication. We poke fun at the weird little games our hormones play on our mood, our sleep, our skin, our sluggishness, our waistlines, even our hunger signals.
Humor gets us through it. But, we admit, it can also sort of glorify a reality that is sometimes a quiet kind of hell. And that is precisely why we no longer feel like apologizing for the fact that we want to look good. To feel good. To change certain things about ourselves.
It’s not because we’re anti-feminist. Not because of medical TikTok. And not even because of the ominous billion dollar beauty industry reaching its thorny branches into our sense of self. It’s simply because we’re the ones living inside our own changing bodies, and most of the time we just want to feel more like us.
And the way to do that involves something so much less sexy than the health hacks of TikTok. It takes actions that are not easy … but they are very simple (and actually some of them are easy).
What we’re getting at is that it takes discipline. The single most boring word in our vocabulary but also the only actual effective weapon we have. We don’t want to sound too self-helpy, but the biggest thing we need to do to make a change is to figure out what sneaky little stones are plopping themselves onto our path and steering us away from doing the one thing we know would make us feel better.
And what are those things? We’ve boiled them down to 6.
1. Eat 25 grams of fiber every day. No excuses.
We start with something unornamented and utterly painless that we ought be doing daily to have healthy hearts, lower blood sugar, unbloated bellies, a detoxed digestive system, and an actual feeling of fullness after a meal. While the whole world (cough TikTok) focuses on protein, about 95% of us are falling short of our daily fiber needs. An adult woman under 50 should have about 25 grams a day, while a woman over 50 should have 21 grams. We recently wrote a whole, lovely thing about the top 10 highest fiber foods, which includes a much longer list of the most fibrous foods in general, if you need a little guide. We did.
2. Get in control of your weight because things we ACTUALLY have power over is the biggest healthy high we have.
Some of you will get very vexed with us for this one, but others will understand that gaining weight during perimenopause and menopause isn’t all that much fun, and while we’d rather not adhere to the super-skinny beauty standards that are making an ugly comeback right now, we also want to look and feel our personal best. Our editor-in-chief, Audie, recently lost 60 lbs without drugs or any particularly unusual diet plan - just a lot of patience and these five basic tools, which we’ll share here because we think they’re good and reasonable and as close to “common sense” as one can be when the words “woman” and “weight loss” come together.
Build a basic nutrition IQ: The fact that we have to burn more calories than we consume is the basic math of weight loss. But a calorie also isn’t just a calorie in the sense that if we eat 500 calories of Mcdonald’s fries, we’re gonna be hungry again in 8 minutes, versus eating a 500 calorie loaded sweet potato, packed with protein and fiber, and well, we’re set til dinner. The point is knowing the general nutrition and calorie content of our food can help us make more informed choices instead of accidentally pouring on some dressing that unknowingly has 327 calories and loads of sugar and doesn’t even taste that good. You know, things like that.
That said, counting calories and tracking macros is not for everyone, especially those vulnerable to disordered eating or who see it take a toll on their mental health - two extremely not small things for us to mention so quickly.
Lift heavy things: Did you know when a woman’s estrogen levels go down, so too does her muscle mass, which slows her metabolism, all while her fat storage, particularly around the abdomen, increases. It’s a real intersection of factors that make maintaining her weight more difficult but also more critical, because a healthy diet and body weight can also help ease the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause and aging in general. We wear THIS* weighted vest on our walks (more on that later), strap on THESE* ankle weights when we putter around the house and do THIS 10-minute routine at least 3 days a week.
Eat protein: We just went on and on about fiber but protein is key to both satiation and the health of those muscles we’re working so hard to build. Adding protein to our meals, along with fiber, is what helps us stay full over time, so we don’t fall into a bag of tortilla chips at 9:37pm. Here’s a quick, easy, and free little calculator to help you find out how much protein to shoot for each day.
Walk, walk, walk: Walking is life. We’re pretty convinced about this. We’ve written about the myriad, life-extending. mood boosting, weight loss rewards of walking HERE and HERE and HERE. We’ll talk more about this more later, so we won’t drivel on now, but the slogan should be, do it often and do it briskly, for maximum effect.
Meal prep, but only your snacks: Maybe you’re an efficiency Goddess who can diligently pack meals into color-coded, days-of-the-week Tupperware each Sunday, but if you’re like us and save Sundays for slothenly activities and actual joy, you can just limit this loathsome activity to your snacks. It’s much easier to be mindful around mealtimes, but when hunger hits at 3:22pm, and we have no time but to grab, we’re far more likely to make dumb choices that ramp up our calories and leave us feeling hungrier. Lo and behold, we have some favorite snacks like THIS (the ONLY thing we meal prep) and THIS, and we also keep a list in our notes app, and on this website, conveniently, to remind us what options are available when hunger strikes.
3. Forget step count. Just walk at a decent clip every day for an hour. Inside, outside, whatever. Do it.
Okay, you don’t have to forget step count - maybe it’s fun for you (us!) to track life like a game, and therefore, feel you (we) are winning at it. But the point is really just to move, move, move, and do it every day. Walking is one of the more realistic and affordable ways to actually do it. If you can, aim for an hour every day and walk like you’re in a hurry to get somewhere, because brisk walking holds a HUGE host of benefits. Wear THIS* weighted vest we mentioned earlier, and if you live somewhere where getting outside isn’t easy, we HIGHLY recommend buying THIS which is much cheaper than a treadmill and can completely change your life.
4. Do not walk outside of the house without SPF on your face and body.
Now, if you are walking outside, we implore you to be serious about SPF. Why? Skin cancer. We rightly have to say skin cancer first. But also … aging. The sun causes about 90% of it. So if you’re spending on skincare and makeup and procedures, please start with the most basic thing to prevent wrinks. We wrote this little recap of some of our favorite sunscreens. We also started using makeup with SPF and THIS* happens to be our new favorite under-eye color corrector while THIS* cream blush makes us look gloriously sun-kissed while protecting us from the bad parts of being actually sun-kissed.
Photo of a truck driver who spent 28 years with the left side of his face facing the sun from the driver’s seat. (Source: Daily Mail)
5. Stop feeling overwhelmed and shitty about your closest and your personal style.
Some would say we spend a lot of time writing about clothes for a wellness website. But between you and us, that’s an enormous part of what people gravitate to on our site. Wellness isn’t exclusively diet and exercise. It’s a holistic feeling we carry with us when we walk out the door each morning, an inner and outer cohesion that reflects who we show up as in our lives. We realize that’s a lot of syrupy words for a section about style, but it is very much why getting our shit together where style is concerned feels so incredibly good. Like we said, we have a whole section devoted to this. But here are some key tips to get started:
Invest in your most flattering, everyday staple pieces. This is where quality really matters and will anchor all your outfits in something you feel good about yourself in. HERE’s an example of what we mean.
Be selective and aim for classic over trends, even when you’re buying from budget-friendly stores. We explain what to look for HERE.
Learn to love a capsule collection like THIS
Use THIS flattering trick for your clothes to flatter you at all times.
When in doubt, follow an outfit template to look styled like THIS or THIS.
6. Learn how to do a simple, fast beauty routine so that you can run into anyone on earth and feel great about how you look.
We also have an entire section of our site devoted to this precise goal. Our aim with beauty is to find easy, doable, and unbelievably effective products and methods that don’t waste our time (or money). After all, we are busy humans who don’t want to be swallowed up into 26-step skincare routines, taking up time that would better be spent sleeping (which, incidentally, would probably also do more for our skin in the first place). Anyhow here are our skincare non-negotiables:
THIS is the 3-step skincare routine our editor-in-chief swears by, and we now all follow diligently.
THIS is our 5-minute morning makeup routine to achieve that stunning, natural “no-makeup” makeup look
THESE are what we turn to when we don’t have time to get a professional beauty treatment.
THESE are the things we avoid because they make us instantly look older.
THIS is our full-body beauty routine that doesn’t take us hours.
7. Do this soul-feeding activity instead of burning your precious hours scrolling your phone.
Can we all agree that social media (via out phones) is ruining our lives. And if not our lives, at least, our minds. We crave something soulful and simpler and nostalgic but also self-improving in the present, and well, here’s what that thing is. Not a surprise, but still utterly and completely life-and-self-improving.
This article is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used in place of professional advice, medical treatment, or professional care in any way. This article is not intended to be and should not be a substitute for professional care, advice or treatment. Please consult with your physician or healthcare provider before changing any health regimen. This article is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent disease of any kind. Read our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
