What Youth Looks Like After 40: How to Age Well with Confidence, Strength, and Intention

The Preservation of Youth

As my wrinkles deepen, and the grey hairs start to show, I struggle with preserving my youth.

We live in a society where youth reigns supreme. As we strive to stay young, we douse our bodies in lotions and creams, we inject our wrinkles, our lips, our cheekbones. We dye our hair. Some of us even go under the knife to tighten and tuck.

But why do we do it?

Do these signs of aging confirm that our youth is slipping away?  Do we need to go to extremes to try and turn back time?

What if we changed the narrative around aging?

What if we stopped seeing wrinkles, silver strands, and soft middles as something to fix and started seeing them for what they really are: evidence of a life well lived.  Because aging is a privilege, it’s a gift not everyone gets to receive.  Would the people we’ve lost trade belly laughs and beautiful memories for smoother skin or tighter thighs?

What if preserving our youth had nothing to do with turning back time and everything to do with how we choose to live right now?

What if real preservation of youth came from within?  What if we identified as women in the “prime of our lives”? Living by our own personal standards for living well? Creating habits that define us as women thriving, not women aging into obscurity.

What “Youth” Looks Like to Me Now:

This chapter of life isn’t about chasing how I looked in my twenties.  It’s about building a life that reflects how I want to feel, and what I want to do and what I want to keep doing into my 80’s and 90’s.

So I’m…

• Skipping Netflix and a glass of wine for a good book and warm bath. A good night’s sleep is invaluable to me.
• Suggesting a walk and talk instead of a sit-down visit with tea and cake (even though I do, and will always love a good piece of cake).
• Swapping toast and peanut butter for eggs, cottage cheese, and spinach, because I know protein and fiber set me up to feel better all day.

None of this feels like restriction or sacrifice.  It feels good.  It feels like a woman who is in control of her life and is doing everything she can to preserve her “youth” from the inside out.

These choices are investments in both my present and my future. They help me stay strong, steady, and ready for what life brings next.

Want to see if your habits are helping you to stay strong and healthy for your future?  Take my habits quiz right here. 

The Real Work: Shifting How We See Ourselves

The truth is, how we see ourselves shapes how we age.  If we start identifying as “old,” we’ll behave in ways that reinforce it:

• We’ll move less.

• We’ll stop challenging ourselves.

• We’ll let others do things for us in the name of “being careful,”

When really, those behaviours accelerate the very aging we’re trying to avoid.

Being youthful isn’t about holding onto how we looked in our 30s. It’s about behaving how we did in our 30’s. And to be clear, I’m not talking about late nights and tequila shots (been there, done that).  It’s about how we live today. I'm talking about;

• How we nourish ourselves
• How we prioritize sleep and boundaries
• How we move with purpose and to quote Stacey Sims “lift heavy shit”.
• It’s learning to say “no” to what doesn’t serve us and “yes” to what keeps us strong, steady, and curious.

This isn’t about chasing youth it is about choosing to live a life with “youthful” standards and that starts with who you want to become.

Wrinkles, Wisdom, and the Woman You’re Becoming

So no, I may not look like a fountain of youth.

But I’ll dance with my adult daughters.
I'll say “Let’s Do it” when my friends propose a 200km bike ride.
I'll keep new learning new things, currently it is tennis so that I can play with my husband.
And when (and if) I have grandchildren, I’ll crawl across the floor as a grandma playing “monster”and still be able to jump up to catch them when they run.

This isn’t about going back.  It’s about moving forward with energy, with intention, and with confidence in who I’m becoming.

And I hope you’ll join me, because this next chapter is too good to miss.