16. Longevity Habits For Your Twenties That Last A Lifetime

You don’t need to feel “old” to start caring about longevity. The choices you make in your twenties are quietly building the body, brain, and resilience you’ll live in for decades. We explore a grounded, doable approach to aging well that centres on vitality: strength you can feel, energy you can trust, and habits that survive real life.
Ready to build the foundation your future self will love? Follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and leave a quick review to help more women choose vitality over vibes.

I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week!

- Alita <3

https://vitawithalita.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Longevity In Your Twenties
• 1:36 Word Of The Week: Vicissitudes
• 2:52 Vitality Over Age: Why It Matters
• 4:09 Strength Training As A Cheat Code
• 5:06 Mobility For Movement Freedom
• 6:23 Adopting A Longevity Identity
• 9:31 Daily Habits That Build Longevity
• 13:43 Common Mistakes Women Make
• 17:58 A Simple Weekly Longevity Blueprint
• 21:06 Imperfect Action And Parting Reminder

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

Hey my love, welcome back to Vito Folita. Today we're talking about something that might sound far away, but honestly starts right now. Let me tell you, my birthday was a few weeks ago, so this is honestly on my mind at the moment. Young girl just turned 26. So what am I talking about? Today we're talking about longevity, aging well, feeling strong at every stage of your life. And before you're like, whoa, I'm only like whatever, 23, why are we talking about aging? Hear me out. I promise you're gonna take a little something away from this episode. So you're 20, or you can think of it as like your foundation decade. What you do now shapes how you'll feel later. And this is true for your energy, your metabolism, your strength, your confidence, everything, all of it. Every single thing you could think of, you're gonna start you're gonna start now. So let's talk about what you can start doing today that your future you will literally thank you for. But first, you know I've been into sharing a new word every episode, and today, today is a juicy one, and I think you're gonna like it. Today the word is vicissitudes. V-I C I or S S I T-U-D-E-S. Vicissitudes. Vicissitudes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how you say it. Uh basically, it means the ups and downs of life, the ebbs and flows, the unpredictable changes, the plot twists, the fluctuations you didn't exactly plan for. And honestly, this word fits today's topic perfectly. Because longevity is not just about like your physical health, it's about having the strength, the habits, and the mindsets to move through all the vicissitudes. The stress, the schedule changes, the hard seasons, the low energy days, doing all of this without actually losing yourself. So that's your little vocabulary globe of the week. Anyway, let's get into the juicy good stuff, the reason we're all here. I'm gonna take a nice sip of tea, and let's get into it. Alright, so why uh longevity matters even in your twenties? Real talk. You don't feel old, I don't feel old most days. No one listening hopefully feels old. We're all young at heart. But longevity has nothing to do with your age or actually being old. It's about vitality. And this is energy, strength, mobility, confidence, and truly feeling capable every single day. And the truth is your bones, your muscles, hormones, metabolism, all that is going to be shaped right now. You're never going to have any more free time or more control than you do right now in your 20s. So take advantage of this because future you is being built in this exact season, in this season where you probably have the most freedom and time. And strengths, that's gonna be your longevity superpowers. So let's start with my favorite thing that I have discussed before, and that's strength training. Yes, my ladies, muscles is where it's at. If you're a young woman in your 20s, I really want you to pay attention here. Strength training is the closest thing we have to a longevity code, or longevity cheat code, I should say. You build your peak bone density before you're 30. And muscles protect your metabolism, strength supports your hormones, your posture, and your joint health. It just honestly makes your daily life easier, and you just feel powerful. Like I cannot describe there's no better word than powerful, that feeling when you know you're just strong in your own body. And I'm not saying, yeah, go be in the gym every day. I know we're all busy, I know we got other things going on, but just two or three sessions a week. Keep it basic: squats, deadlift, rows, presses, lunges. Just stick to the basics. If you build your strength now, that's gonna equal your mobility and energy decades from now, and your body literally thanking you, and you thanking yourself. You're just building yourself a very strong foundation, and and that's what we're here for. Alright. Now, mobility. Oh girl, let's talk about mobility, and I'm here talking to myself in this conversation, so it's not just on you, but anyway, mobility is basically you can think of this as movement freedom. This is your ability to bend, twist, reach, squat, sit, walk, and just live without any stiffness or pain. And maybe we're not thinking about it right now. We're still so young and everything kind of moves really easily, but think of tasks of daily living. And okay, have you ever done a workout and then you were just super, super sore afterwards, and things like even just sitting down became so miserable? Well, when you age, that's naturally going to happen. So just we're trying to prevent that. I don't want you to be grumpy when you're older, okay? We're trying to stay in our beautiful positive little bubble. So mobility is that thing, it's gonna prevent the like, oh my god, why does my back hurt? I'm only 30 moment in our life that I really don't want us to have. So mobility will support better workouts and it'll keep our joints happy as we age, which is which is always a bonus. And I implore us, you and I, to just start with five to ten minutes in the morning. Spin rolls, hip openers, ankle mobility, some gentle rotations, just something to you know get the body warm and ready for the day. We don't have to complicate anything, just as you're naturally stretching and getting out of bed, include a few extra stretches here and there just for that mobility work, and your future body will thank you and will be obsessed with you. Alright, the next little tidbit is about mindset. And now I want us to kind of get this mindset where we are shifting to a longevity identity. So, longevity is honestly more of a mindset thing than I would say like a physical body muscle thing. It's not about being perfect, it's just about deciding and making the active and intentional decision today. Tell yourself I take care of myself because I respect myself. And let me tell you this in real time, okay? So, right before I was sitting to record this episode and I went to make my tea, I opened the freezer. There was a little bit of ice cream in there, and I'm not against any types of food. That's not where I'm going here, but you don't know the weekend I had. The weekend I had was full of treats and desserts, and just I was really enjoying my life. We had a bunch of birthdays to celebrate. It was a really good time. And I told myself that I wanted to kind of get back to my routine because my stomach's feeling a little bit queasy. It's not sitting right at the moment. And I opened the drawer and I was like, okay, I see the ice cream. I'm very tempted to eat the ice cream, and then I literally remember telling myself, like this was literally half an hour ago, I said, Alita, you don't eat that. You respect yourself. And you might be thinking this is a bit of an extreme, like, it's not like I'm never gonna eat ice cream again in my entire life. But in that moment of you can call it human weakness, whatever you want to call it, I just needed a little reminder that right now, that's not for me. I respect myself. Instead, I had a tea, I put a little bit of honey in it, and that's what we're drinking right now. While we're talking about our tea, I'm gonna take another little sip. So I take care of myself because I respect myself. There is no better form of self-respect than taking care of yourself. And I'm not mean this in a conceited way, I mean just when you take care of your body, your health, and your mind, it shows that you truly value yourself and your time and the way you show up in the world. And that in turn will make people more likely to respect you. So just a little tidbit there. I take care of myself because I respect myself. So take this time to to shift, okay? We're shifting here from things like aesthetics to function. And look, I'm not gonna lie to you, when you take care of yourself, you're gonna look good, you're gonna glow. But if that's your only goal, you're probably not going to get all the benefits that you can be. So shift to functionality, to longevity, and then I promise you, by doing that, you're just gonna, it's gonna be a byproduct that you look good, okay? So, aesthetics to function, or shifting from just relying on motivation to relying on discipline and building consistency. Move away from that hustle, okay, it's always about the grind, to a more balanced life. And move away from punishment. Oh, Lila, you ate ice cream, now you can't eat ice cream for the next month, to just self-respect. As I said, I enjoyed my weekend, I had a great time with family, friends, all the above, whatever. But today, I need a little reminder that hey, I don't need that ice cream today, a little bit of self-respect. Longevity is is an identity. And if you I if you look at people who lead like healthier lifestyles where they where like their health and their way their body functions is is like at the top of their mind, you'll see that a lot of the time it's because they just want to live longer. Maybe not longer, but you want your quality of life for the years that you do have to be good. There's no point of living to 100 if you're stuck in a bed for 20 years, between 80 to 100. Like, I would rather live good quality of life for whatever years that I do have. And that's the whole point of longevity, and the whole point of this conversation. So let longevity become an identity to you or for you. And once you become that girl who values strengths, rest, nourishment, and movement, trust me, everything gets easier, everything starts falling into place because you're putting yourself first, you're putting your body first, and when you take care of your body, it'll take care of you right back. All right, next we should get into habits, and this is this is the key. This is where longevity is really built. If you really want to know somebody's priorities, you really want to know who somebody is, look at their habits. So let's make this practical. Here are the longevity habits I implore you to build in your 20s. Have protein every meal, or I should say most of your meals. Every meal might be a little bit extreme. So most of your meals. This will again help with your muscles, your hormones, your recovery. Everything in your body is made of protein. And your body needs the building blocks to make everything in your body. So feed it protein. Try to get into daily walking. So daily walking is literally the most underrated queen of health. 10,000 steps a day is like a ballpark. Go for it. Don't. You don't have to measure if you don't want to, but just get into some sort of walking. If you've been sitting for a while, walk around your house. When I work from home, I will literally, like every whenever I remember, spend sometimes a few hours, but whenever I'm able to remember, I will make the intentional decision to get out of my chair and to go all the way to my basement and to go all the way back up to my room on the third floor and to do like a little tour around the house. That's me walking, and then I also walk my dog, and I'll also just make sure that I'm getting some steps throughout the day. So daily walking is key. Sleep consistency. We had an entire episode on sleep and the wonderful, wonderful benefits. Your nervous system will absolutely love you. That's your brain. You know, your anxiety, everything. Your nervous system will love you for it. We have a circadian rhythm that will love you for it. Your future self will love you for it. Everything will love you for it. I put morning sunlight as the next habit. It doesn't have to be in the morning. Okay, just get some sort of outdoor. I just go outside. Sometimes it's not always sunny, but it's nice to breathe fresh air. Even if you go outside for like 20 seconds, just breathe fresh air. This will increase your mood, your energy. If there's sun, even better, take advantage. Sometimes I take my laptop and I sit outside. And listen, where I'm from is absolutely freezing. I'm in Canada, it's cold, it's winter-ish right now, and I get it, you don't want to be outside. That's why I said 20 seconds. Just get outside, get some fresh air into your lungs. Trust me, it's good for you. Okay, next is balanced training. And this is a whole topic in and of itself. I think I'm gonna make an episode about this. Like it's gonna be its own thing. Because especially as women, we don't want to over-train, we don't want to under-train, we don't want to think we're training too hard, but we're not. So balanced training is key. And in like in summary, this is just strength, mobility, rest, and cardio. But I think this needs its own episode because honestly, it's it's a big topic. And for women especially, it could be hard to find that balance. Like, what do you mean by balance training? But just for now, take it as is. We want to train where you're still pushing yourself, but not too much, where you become miserable and inflamed and your hormones are off, and that's not good either. So balance training. Next one, in case you need a little reminder today, drink your water.

unknown: 15:41

Drink it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:42

Okay, in case you need a reminder today, basics matter. Last little item here on my list is stress management. This ain't no secret, but burnout will aid you, stress will aid you. And I'm not saying don't live a life of like stress-free, which is impossible, and don't do nothing with your life so you're not stressed. But the stress management comes with the way you react to things. So you are not able to control the things outside happening, the world, whatever, but you are able to control how you respond to it, and how you respond to it is honestly half the battle. That's half the reason we're stressed is because we're causing anxiety in our own mind about I don't know what. Listen, your girl's been going to therapy. I think I'll have an episode about that too. Look at me with all these episode ideas. Anyway, and I've been realizing how important just mindset and the things we tell ourselves, like how important that is, and also the way that we manage and control our emotions. We have to keep reminding ourselves that things like anxiety come up because we want this sense of control. Things like stress come up because we're always thinking of the worst-case scenario or we're always overwhelmed. And what we can control is okay, how we're responding to it and what we're gonna do to manage this anxiety and stress that we're feeling. But we we cannot control are the outside forces that are probably causing the stress. So, and anyway, all I'm saying is stress management, find what works for you, whether that's working out, yoga, a massage, going to the sauna, writing in a journal, speaking to somebody, calling your mom. I don't know what it is, but figure out how you're gonna manage your stress because stress is is not good for our longevity. Start with one or two of these habits. Remember, we have a long time to build them. Longevity is not about being extreme, it's about being consistent. So if you start these habits now, make all your mistakes now while you're trying to learn and implement the habits. And hopefully, once they become a true habit, you're just gonna be maintaining them. And there you go, voila! You're on the longevity train. Okay, so now that we've gone over longevity, some habits, I think I like it's fair to go over common longevity mistakes that women make in their 20s. And I'm not just hey, I'm not blaming you. I make these mistakes, I'm in my 20s, so let's see maybe where we're going wrong and use this as identifier because once you identify things, you're able to beset potentially change them if you want to, right? Okay, so I made a quick rapid fire list. Some of these things might maybe not sting, but you know, I might call you out, but in a loving way. In a loving way, okay? We're here to grow together. Alright, so only doing cardio. Undereating. Training super hard, but then not sleeping, not taking any rest days, completely ignoring stress, skipping strength training, thinking that you can just fix it later, and chasing aesthetics and how you look over your health. If these sneak up on you, yeah, these are things that I think we can try to maybe eliminate, delete, but trust me, the solutions are are simple and are doable. And I really gonna I'm gonna go back here to the last one. I mentioned chasing aesthetics over health. The first thing that came to mind for me is my hair. Let's talk about my hair for two seconds. So I have been on this like journey where I want my hair to be super healthy and glowy and like just fluffy, you know, you know what I'm saying? Those like hair commercials. I'm trying to get my hair like that, right? So obviously, a girls out here get purchasing every single shampoo on the market, sulfate-free, paraben-free, whatever made from coconut oil, made from like the water from Hawaii, whatever shampoo I can find, I'm buying. And guess what? Is my hair any better? No. Let me tell you what made my hair better. It wasn't the shampoo. It was when I started eating whole foods. I started having enough fats and protein in my diet. I started sleeping well. I found ways to manage stress by you know going to jour by going to therapy, journaling, calming my emotions, practicing mindfulness. And these are not things I'm doing every single day and I'm spending like a 10-hour routine doing these things. But again, it's about the consistency of it. Once I was able to build these habits and I picked up on the fact that my inside, okay, my insides were not healthy, then nothing on the outside is gonna fix that. No amount of shampoo or conditioner or oil or whatever is gonna fix my hair. Yes, those things can help and supplement. Like now I have a specific shampoo I use, and I make sure to trim my hair every few months, and I still deep condition it and all of those things, but that's just maintaining the already healthy hair. Those things were not going to transform and make my hair healthy. The transformation was came when I stopped focusing on the outside stuff, and I was like, okay, what am I actually doing wrong? And let me tell you, it wasn't just my hair, it was my skin that got better, my nails, just everything feels like you know, bouncier. So it's my little two cents, but do as you will. Okay, so let's get into our simple longevity blueprint. I threw a bunch of information at you, and now what? Okay, so if you want a starting point, here's a super simple weekly structure. And notice that I say weekly because I want it to be flexible. I don't want to make you feel like you're strapped down to one thing, but a simple weekly structure that you can, you know, implement according to your schedule. You know your schedule best, but these are just little tidbits or a place that you can start. So two to three strength sessions, one mobility or flow day, daily walking. So make that happen every single day. Even if that means things like walking to the train station instead of driving your car, just make your life revolved around getting a little bit more physical activity. Also, one full rest day and one mental reset ritual. Journaling, breath work, prayer, quiet time, whatever that means to you. And I hope you notice that in the in all of these, it's not meant to be more than 20, 30 minutes. Sorry, it's not meant to be more than an hour, I guess, for your strength sessions, but outside of your strength stress strength, uh lita, can you speak English, girl? I'm gonna restart that whole thought there. So notice that outside of the strength sessions, which can be like just an hour, even 45 minutes, every other thing that I listed is not meant to be more than like 20 minutes. If that maybe the daily walking, but things like the mental reset ritual and the mobility day, like not meant to overwhelm you. So that's it. I hope this was something that helped you make longevity a little bit easier. So here's your reminder today: you don't have to be perfect to age well. Just ditch the idea of perfection right now, okay? Nobody's gonna nobody's perfect, you're never gonna be perfect. Think of yourself six months ago, you probably roll your eyes, you're gonna do the same thing six from six months from now. So just ditch this idea of perfection. But you just have to start building the foundation. Your 20s are the absolute perfect window, not because time is running out, but because right now you're like, you know, laying the bricks for your future self. And I want that for you. I want that for us. And do yourself a favor. You, I promise you, you will thank yourself later. Anyway, thank you for spending time with me today on Vito with Alita. If this episode spoke to you at all, share it with a friend who wants to feel strong and confident for years to come. And remember, take care of your body today for for the woman you're becoming tomorrow. I love you lots. Take care guys, see you next week.