11 Things That Are Aging You (And How to Stop Them)

In this solo minisode, Lauren Bernick explores the surprising factors that accelerate aging and shares actionable insights on staying vibrant.

What You'll Learn:

Physical Factors: How your posture and facial expressions impact how you look and feel over time.

Lifestyle & Habits: Everyday decisions about nutrition and physical activity either support your longevity or quietly add years to your appearance and health.

The Emotional Connection: Why negative emotions and chronic stress don't just affect your mood, they leave visible marks on your body and accelerate aging from the inside out.

The Power of Connection: The critical but often overlooked role of community and friendships in maintaining youth and vitality, and how social isolation can be as harmful as poor physical health.

Good news: none of this is permanent. Making even a few adjustments can help you feel better and slow down the aging process.

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Transcript

Lauren Bernick (00:01.634)
Hi friends, welcome to another little mini-sode. This one I'm going to do about, these are just my observations, this is not scientific, but things that I think age a person. And this is not meant to shame anybody, I do some of these things too. But these are just my observations. So the first thing that I think really ages a person is bad posture.

I am so guilty of this, but I've really been trying to work on this, but it's so easy to just slump over. But you know, it's really good to just stand up straight, pull your shoulders back, pull your shoulders down. I like to wear my shoulders for earrings because that's where I carry my stress. But you know, it's really good to just sit up straight, kind of hold in your core and work on that.

If you catch yourself slumping over, just try to pull yourself up. That's a big one. know, sometimes you see old, like really old people walking down the street and they're just like hunched over like a little ball. So really try to work on that. I think that that's a huge thing that ages people. Holding your face in a frown. You know, we've all heard of resting bitch face, but this is just...

like the natural state of the way some people's faces are. And I think mine is too, but I just try to think about it and kind of try to hold my face up a little bit. I don't know if that makes sense, but just to pull it in a slight smile state and walk around like that, it's again, it's kind of training yourself. So you don't wanna have resting old person face, so try to...

Try to train yourself up from that. And this is one, this is certainly not meant to shame anybody, but wearing the same hairstyle that you had when you were like 20 years old. And for me, this is especially difficult because I have curly hair. I don't straighten it very often. And when you have curly hair, there's only so many options, but I did definitely have different hair when I was 20. Sometimes I had bangs, sometimes I like really just

Lauren Bernick (02:27.106)
scrunched it instead of now I try to like curl it in curls when I dry my hair. But back then I used to more scrunch it. So I definitely had different looking hair. But that's something I've noticed like, sometimes people get caught in an era. And it's when they were happy. And I understand that. I used to have a friend whose mom this is when we were teenagers. So was in the 80s.

and she wore her hair like she did in the 60s. And it made her look older than she was, because she actually was only probably about 18 years older than us. So that's something to be aware of. And I know it can be really hard to change. And sometimes you just don't know what to do. like you look through magazines, if they even have magazines anymore, you look online for hairstyles. And it's not always the right style for you. So it's...

It's one of those things where you want to take into account the shape of your face and maybe Google some styles. Sometimes they even have these websites where you can try styles on your head. like sometimes, like if you've ever bought eyeglasses online, they'll have a virtual try on and you can do that with hairstyles too. So look for that. That way you can kind of get an idea. And the same goes for makeup. If you're wearing your makeup in the same exact style as you did when you were 20 years old,

Again, try to like look and see what's current and what you should be doing. Just, you you don't have to be like up to the minute and wear those crazy coffin style nails or anything like that. You want to tailor it to how you feel, but you want to have a version of it that's fresh. Something that I think really ages people is being unhappy with your own life and not being happy for others, being jealous. And this is

This is a really hard one if that's where you are. Some people are just in a bad head space and it's really difficult. And I get that. Again, I'm not trying to shame anybody or, you know, tell you your life should be different than it is because sometimes it's really hard to break out of where you are. But I think that that's something that's very aging is not being happy.

Lauren Bernick (04:51.31)
and not being happy for others. And you know, my best advice is just trying to go easier on yourself. I've talked about this a lot. When you're unhappy, you beat yourself up and you have, well, it's such an important thing not to beat yourself up. You deserve kindness. You deserve your own kindness. You deserve to say sweet good.

things to yourself. And you have to think good things about other people. We've talked about this a lot. I've talked about, I think we've discussed like the stop, collaborate and listen. I think we talked about it last time actually. When you catch yourself thinking something bad about yourself or others, you immediately need to stop. And then I always say the next words that follow in my mind are collaborate and listen.

But this is really important for being happy with yourself, being happy with others. So if you think something like a jealous thought about somebody else, or you're not happy for somebody else, you have to stop that thought immediately and replace it with something kind and loving. Again, this is a practice. This is not always easy. You have to stop doing things like.

gossiping and this is the worst because gossiping can be so much fun. We're actually chemically, physically, physiologically made to gossip, okay? And this is something that makes you old and unhappy is gossiping about other people. Okay, well, that's not really true. Maybe sometimes it makes you happy, but it's something that we should not be doing. And when I say we're physically,

physiologically meant to be gossiping about other people. We're very tribal. We're tribal. Remember that. And back in the days, I mean, even now, but back in the days, that was a way to know somebody's reputation, to disseminate information amongst the tribe about this particular person. And if they were acting in accordance to how they should be acting,

Lauren Bernick (07:12.184)
they were ousted by the tribe and that meant death to them because, know, certainly when you lived amongst, you know, cave people, being ousted from the tribe meant you would probably die. So we are meant to gossip, but it's such an ugly thing. And like I've even stopped reading like People Magazine online and

Gossip rags because it's just so detrimental to think bad things about other people, even if they're celebrities. You know, I just really try not to do that. So try to be happy in your own life. Try to focus on the good things. You have good things going on. You have a roof over your head. Maybe you have your health. Maybe you have a good job. You have something that's going on that's good. Be happy for other people. Don't be jealous.

There's enough good in the world for everybody to have. There's not a limited amount of pie. There's unlimited pie. That's the good news. All right. Another thing that really ages people is eating ultra processed food, not eating enough fiber. Okay, you know how I feel if you've ever listened to this podcast. You know that I believe in eating a whole food plant-based diet. You know that I've actually reversed heart disease by following this

way of eating, you I've lost weight, I've changed my blood pressure, I've changed the size and shape of my blood platelets by eating a whole food plant-based diet. But even if you're not there, even if you cannot be there, you can stop eating ultra processed foods. And you can work on eating more fiber. That's like level one, that's just a place to start. Just try to add more fruit to your breakfast and more vegetables to your lunch and dinner and more beans.

you can work on eating more fiber and taking processed, ultra processed foods out. I mean, I used to exist on baked lays. I cannot tell you how many, I don't even know they make those anymore, they're so bad for you. But I used to live on baked lays and I was like, these can't, how bad could it be? It's baked. mean, you know, remember that and snack wells and all that garbage food that we thought was healthy? I ate a lot of it, a lot of it.

Lauren Bernick (09:38.166)
not to mention things like cheese, but just the ultra processed foods. What else did I eat? I used to love, I'm so embarrassed to admit this, I used to love Doritos also. I can't even imagine that, but you know what? That stuff is made to be addictive. There's not a mistake that the Lay's slogan was you can't just eat one or whatever it was, because it's true. They're scientifically made that you cannot just eat one.

You're gonna eat the whole bag. And so the hard thing for me is there's still some of that stuff in my house because my husband eats, he's getting a lot better, but he still has things in the house that I wanna eat. Like he has chips, potato chips. They're just like probably pretty good ones. They're probably just like potatoes and oil and salt. But I still look at them sometimes and I think, man, I'd really like to dig into that bag of chips. But if I do,

I mean, I never do because I know if I start, that's the end of it. So what I do is if I really want something like his potato chips, I bust out a potato, scrub it up, chop it real thin. I have a mandolin, but I barely ever break that thing out. It's a pain in the butt. But I just slice the potatoes real thin, stick them in my air fryer for like 10 minutes. I'll even put a little salt on them because guess what? That's.

a potato and some salt. It's better than making some, you know, eating a bag of potato chips. So there's workarounds, but just really work on getting the ultra processed foods out of your house. Like Chef AJ always says, if it's in your house, it's in your mouth. And that's generally true. So work on that and work on adding some more fiber in that will keep you from aging.

Drinking too much alcohol. Okay, I know there's a whole thing going on like Zero alcohol is the correct amount of alcohol. I drink alcohol. I'm not gonna lie to you I am NOT a perfect person This is something I really enjoy. I love a good glass of wine, but I don't drink every night I Probably limit it to you know, maybe one or two nights a week

Lauren Bernick (12:00.238)
If I go out two nights, I probably have one or two glasses each time I go out. So, you know, there might be four glasses of wine in a week for me, but I try to just keep it to one night and maybe one or two glasses. But drinking too much, there was a time in my life, this is a long, maybe 10, 12 years ago, when, you know, the thought was more like, a glass of wine is good for you.

I was like, great. And I would have a glass of wine every night while I was cooking dinner. And I loved it. And when I was a very young mother, I was in the grocery store. I've told this story before. I was in the grocery store and little kids and I really didn't drink much then. I don't know why I should have probably been drinking with all those little kids. But there were these two old ladies behind me at the grocery store in the checkout line. And one said to the other one, honey,

I'm just not a very good cook. And the other one said, well, honey, that's because you don't drink enough. And I was like, is that what I need? I need to have a glass of wine every night while I'm making dinner. And then, you know, I kind of, you know, took the advice of the ladies in line. Elder advice. Okay, so like I said, drinking too much, smoking, we all know that. I don't even have to talk about smoking. Inactivity. I mean, I work out a lot.

Not a lot consistently, but I do sometimes find myself sitting for too long working. And so I've been really, really trying to like get up once an hour. I don't have any kind of Fitbit or any kind of thing that yells at me or tells me to get my butt up and do something. But I have a clock on my phone and on my computer. like when I glance up and it's been an hour, I try to stand up, do some squats, do some jumping jacks.

I just ordered a jump rope. I'm gonna keep it in my office, although there's no place to jump. actually, you know what? It's gonna be fine. I got like a digital jump rope. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but it's like, has weights on the end. It's not a full rope. Just check it out. I think I paid like $9 for it. And so I can do it in my office, because I don't need a full rope swing around, but just check that out, a digital jump rope. was, I swear, paid like $9 for it on.

Lauren Bernick (14:24.974)
You know what website that we probably shouldn't be shopping on that we all order stuff and get it in two days. Okay, so I'm just trying more to just at least get up and do something because I know inactivity is so bad. Being inflexible really ages you. I do yoga and I've said this before that when I started doing yoga when I was in my mid 20s.

My yoga teacher who was then about 60 said, you are only as young as your spine is flexible. And that stayed with me forever. But he also said, there's correlation between your body being inflexible and your mind being inflexible. And that also stuck with me. And so you want to have that flexibility in your mind. Like, you know when they say people get set in their ways?

That's a sign of being old and crotchety, right? That ages you. So keep that flexibility in your body and in your mind, in your spirit. If you can do yoga, do yoga. If you think that you're too embarrassed to go to yoga because you can't bend over and touch your knees even, that's okay. I promise you, yoga is a very welcoming, or it should be a welcoming place, and it's not competitive.

you're not competing with anybody. If you go to any kind of yoga place that's worth its salt, they will be telling you things like, you are where you are today and that's fine. You have to start somewhere. You can do fascia work. Dreena Burton has the great fascia flow work. I do her stuff just to loosen up my body, but I also try to keep flexible in my spirit, in my mind.

It's not always so easy. Another thing is dressing frumpy or not for your body type or just wearing big clothes. And that's because maybe you don't feel comfortable in your body and you maybe feel like you're not the size you wanna be. So you just throw something big over so it's not clinging to you. And that's really not the right thing to do. It really does age you. It's better to have clothes that fit. And if you don't know what looks good on you,

Lauren Bernick (16:51.17)
You can take a friend. There's somebody in your sphere who understands body types and what looks good on you. If not, I'm sure you can Google it. I mean, I know my body type, I have long legs and a short torso. I have a kooky looking body. It's a fabulous healthy body. I don't wanna say anything bad against her. But I know that I can't wear long shirts. I can't wear long jackets. They have to hit me, you know.

at my waist, I can't like have something that covers up my butt because it just looks boxy on me because I have such a short torso. So know your body type and you know, get some things that fit so you feel good. And last but not least, loneliness. Loneliness ages you so much, we all know.

community, having a tribe like we just talked about is the most important thing. If you feel like you've lost your community, you need to call up some old friends and say, hey, I'm really sorry that I let our relationship lapse. You mean a lot to me and I'm sorry and I'd love to get together with you. I mean, that's the easiest thing to do is just to rekindle old friendships. I mean, if you left that

relationship for a reason, then leave that one alone. But surely there's people you just, you know, faded off with that you enjoyed. You know, if not, and you need to start with making new friends, that can be difficult when you're older. I really get that. But a good thing to do is, you know, try to make some new friends and wherever you are. I met somebody getting a pedicure and started talking to her in the next chair and I was having...

I have like a potluck dinner at my house for new friends. And it's been so much fun. And I invited her to that. And that's good because you're not being all coming on too strong. I know that that's a weird thing when you are just meeting somebody is like, when can I ask them to come over or to go have a cup of coffee or whatever? It's kind of weird. So that's sort of a fun thing to just say like,

Lauren Bernick (19:05.208)
this I'm having just to get together with like some new friends, people that I don't particularly know well, feel free to bring a friend and let's just get together. That's kind of a fun idea. And that's worked out really well. I am lucky enough to have good friends that I've had for a very long time. And I think I've told the stories before of, well, I mean, I have a core group of friends from when I was like a teenager that I still have.

A lot of them live in Houston. I live in Austin. Some live in Austin because we have a college here and when we all grew up in Houston, some came to the University of Texas in Austin and didn't go back to Houston. I came later. So like half live here in Austin and half live in Houston, but we get together. Kim and Gina, I met when I was like 10 years old. I think it was on the playground at school, playground bus stop. I just remember they were looking at me.

And then they whispered something to each other. They were conferring about something. And then they came over to me and they said, hey, girl, you need to get a bra. I mean, I was 10 years old, but they weren't wrong. I was getting little niblets. And I said, thank you. And we kind of started talking and we've been friends ever since. And I have to tell you, I made a very good decision to make friends with girls, women who

tell the truth to my face rather than talking about me behind my back. And they're still my good friends. Kim lives in Austin, Gina's in Houston. I'm gonna go see my Houston friends this weekend. We're going out. Once a year we try to get together with everybody. I've had a slumber party here before for my birthday where I had all my friends over and I have to tell you.

There is nothing more fun than getting together with your friends that you have had forever. I mean, just there were like six of us plus my husband Andy who knew all these people, because you you know anything about me, you know, Andy's been around since I was a teenager too. So he knows it's like four girls and two guys and Andy and me. And we have been friends through everything. I mean, these people were at our wedding.

Lauren Bernick (21:28.258)
They were at our daughter's bat mitzvah. They were at my mother's funeral. Like these are my core friends that have been with me through everything. These are the ones where my mother caught us smoking in the house when we were like 15. And she said, I told this story I think last week or two weeks ago. Okay, you could smoke in the house. If you're gonna smoke, don't smoke out on the street like a common whore. But if you need to smoke,

You have to also clean my house. can't just be standing around smoking. So I'll make you some margaritas and you'll see you clean better with a little buzz. That's these people who were drinking illegally at my house when they were 15, 16 years old. And we've been friends forever. So when they came over for my birthday party, the slumber party, I have to tell you from the minute everybody walked in, the decibel level was obnoxious. We were like cranking music. We all made a playlist. Everybody.

contributed their song. had like, you know, all the, was like a mixtape on Spotify. just, everybody contributed like, what song do you want to hear? had, you know, all the good Cure, Violin Femmes, InXS, you know, everybody made their Spotify contributions and we had so much fun. We did gummies. I mean, we, it was so much fun. We were acting like idiots.

and we were sleeping on every surface of the house on blow up mattresses. Some of us were in the pool till four in the morning. And when we finally all fell asleep, you cannot believe the amount of snoring that was going on. It was absolutely hilarious. And I was just lying in my bed listening to everybody snore and thinking, this is the best fucking thing in the world. I love these people so much. And

They have been with me every step of the way. And I went to sleep with the biggest smile on my face. And you know, it means everything to have friends like that. So be a good friend, extend yourself, show up for people, be kind to them. That is what is anti-aging. And okay, that's my little.

Lauren Bernick (23:46.74)
Soapbox for the week. Again, let me know what you think. Do you have a core group of friends? Let me know about it. Let me know if you agree with me or if you have anything to add to this list. Thank you. Thanks for hanging in there with me, for listening to me, for listening to the podcast. You really do mean the world to me. When I say that, I'm not just blowing smoke. So thank you again from the bottom of my heart and we'll have a full episode next week.

Bye.