50 Reasons Why You’ll Age Better Than Your Parents

More exercise

Getting older doesn’t have to mean becoming frail and disabled. You can have a great quality of life well into your 80s and beyond thanks to what we now know about keeping yourself healthy—anti aging, if you will. (For example, check out these five incredible old women who are awesome at life.) The push for more exercise throughout your life can actually have benefits later on. One recent Canadian study showed that octogenarian athletes had 30 percent more motor units in their leg muscle tissue—resembling the muscles of people decades younger on a cellular level—than older people who were sedentary. So, we now realize that a decline in muscular health as we age is not inevitable. “We know the benefit of fitness at every age,” says New Jersey-based dietitian Erin Palinski-Wade, RD, CDE, author of Belly Fat Diet For Dummies.