Cornell researchers discovered the secret to lifelong happiness—and it’s not buying more stuff

Buy experiences. Not stuff. Really.

Arianne Cohen

New research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology definitively shows that spending your cash on experiences such as travel, entertainment, outdoor activities, and restaurants will improve your happiness much more than any new gadget or outfit.

Studies have previously found that people generally appreciate experiences more than things, partially because our happy memories endure while our perceived value of material items plummets. This new research closely tracked happiness before, during, and after experiences and purchases in over 7,500 adults, thereby gathering in-the-moment happiness data. Researchers at Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Austin ran two large studies tracking happiness via text message and found experiencers to be much happier than those purchasing any items, and also happier than those not consuming anything.

This last point is key: Going out and doing stuff makes you smile!

“If you want to be happier, it might be wise to shift some of your consumption away from material goods a bit and more toward experiences—that would likely lead to greater well-being,” says lead author Amit Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin.

The price of the experience is surprisingly unimportant. Experiencers of cheap outings (think a $5 ice cream cone) were even happier than the buyers of expensive items (think a $2,000 new laptop). You heard it here first: Go cheap and experiential. Have fun out there.

How long can humans live?

June 2, 2019

Humans are living longer around the world. While there have been obvious ups and downs, life expectancy at birth overall has been steadily increasing for many years. It has more than doubled in the last two centuries.

This increase was previously driven by reductions in infant mortality. But since around the 1950s, the main driver has been reductions in mortality at older ages. In Sweden, for example, where national population data have been collected since the mid-16th century and are of a very high quality, the maximum lifespan has been increasing for almost 150 years. Increasing lifespans have been observed in many other countries, including in Western Europe, North America, and Japan.

This has contributed to a rapid increase in the number of very old people—those living up to 100, 110, or even more. The first verified supercentenarian (aged 110 and above) was Geert Adrians-Boomgaard, who died in 1899 aged 110 years and four months. His record has been broken by others since. The first verified female supercentenarian, Margaret Ann Neve, died in 1903 aged 110 years and ten months, and held the record for almost 23 years. Delina Filkins passed away in 1928 aged 113 years and seven months. She kept the record for just over 52 years.

The current record holder is the French woman Jeanne Calment, who died on August 4, 1997, aged 122 years and five months. Despite the near exponential increase in the number of supercentenarians since the early 1970s, her record holds firm—but she’s unlikelyto hold it for much longer.

Surviving past 100

Although these upward lifespan trends are widespread, they are not a given. Recent improvements in Danish mortality after a period of stagnation has led to the suspicion that centenarian lifespans could be increasing there. This is rather different from what has been recently observed in Sweden, where there has been some slow down at the highest ages.

We studied 16,931 centenarians (10,955 Swedes and 5,976 Danes) born between 1870 and 1904 in Denmark and Sweden, neighboring countries with close cultural and historical ties, to see if our suspicions may be correct. Although Sweden generally has lower mortality rates than Denmark at most ages, no evidence of an increase in Sweden was found in recent years. In Denmark, however, the very oldest were observed to die at higher and higher ages, and the age at which only 6% of centenarians survive rose consistently over the period.

Denmark and Sweden are similar in many ways, yet these lifespan trends are very different. The disparity could be due to several causes, which are not easy to fully disentangle. But we have a few ideas.

Health systems

First, there are different levels of health among the two elderly populations. Recent studies have shown improvements in health as measured by Activities of Daily Living (ADL)—the basic tasks necessary for leading an independent life, such as bathing or getting dressed—in cohorts of female centenarians in Denmark. In Sweden, by contrast, such trends for the elderly have been less optimistic. One study found that there was no improvement in ADL, with deterioration in mobility, cognition, and performance tests.

The difference in the two healthcare systems, especially in recent times, could therefore also go some way towards explaining the difference. Spending on public services was reduced in Sweden in the early 1990s, due to a series of economic crises. Healthcare for the elderly was affected. For instance, with inpatient elder care, there was a shift away from hospitals to nursing homes and a reduction in the number of nursing home beds. The cost cuts left some older people at risk, particularly those in the lowest socioeconomic groups.

In addition, the two countries have since followed slightly different paths to elderly care: Sweden tends to target the frailest whereas Denmark takes a slightly broader approach. Some studies suggest that Sweden’s approach has resulted in some who require care not receiving it, with the least well-off segments of the elderly population relying more heavily on family care, which can be of lower quality.

People who reach advanced ages are a select group and are obviously very durable. Perhaps because of their inherent resilience and particular physiology, they are best able to benefit from the improvements in living conditions and technology.

Our comparative study suggests some interesting things for other nations, particularly where there are developing and emerging economies. These findings demonstrate that it may be possible to lengthen lifespans further if improvements in health at the highest ages can be realized and if high quality elderly care is widely available. Indeed, if this is so, then the human longevity revolution is set to continue for some time still.

This article is republished Read the original article.

A Practical Guide to Ikigai, Your Reason for Being

Jason R. Waller

By now, most of you have seen or heard of this beautiful word ikigai (EE-kee-guy). In brief, ikigai is a Japanese concept for someone’s direction and purpose in life. It’s their reason for being.

The ikigai concept and framework have gotten a lot of attention for their association with happiness and longevity. Indeed, the idea comes from Okinawa, where residents have some of the highest life expectancies in the world.

But I’m more interested in its value right here, right now. I love ikigai as a tool for my clients when they’re thinking through what’s next. I love ikigai for me and how I think about purpose in life. Here is what the ikigai model looks like:

In the ikigai model, there are four main areas of inquiry:

What you’re good at
What you love
What the world needs
What you can be paid for

Which lead to four intersections and outcomes of:

Passion
Mission
Vocation
Profession

I find this approach to be just an amazing entry point to a lot of self-discovery and awareness. I think about it often. It defines in clear, compelling imagery that there is no single factor that defines our reason for being.

So how can we start practically asking the questions that lead to this understanding? Here are 12 ideas on digging deeper, 3 for each area of inquiry.

What you’re good at

“Accept yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your truths, and know what tools you have to fulfill your purpose.” — Steve Maraboli

This is the starting point, beginning with self-awareness. For some of us, this is the easiest part of ikigai to figure out. For others, we are either blind to our strengths or choose to push them out of sight and out of mind. But this is a critical area of our lives.

Awareness of our strengths not only helps us to focus on the areas where we can make the biggest impact, but it also helps us find more joy in what we do. When we leverage our strengths, we’re more successful and productive. We are more likely to enjoy what we’re doing.

Below are three ways to mine for your own strengths.

Search inside. Journal and reflect on your core strengths. What are you good at? Where do you shine the most? Write down as many ideas as you can, then look for themes. Approach it from different angles, too. What has helped you succeed? When do you feel strong? What have you heard from others?
Solicit feedback. This is one of the most powerful things I ask my clients to do. Feedback is a gold mine of awareness, and I’ve never met anyone who has reached their limit on feedback. We could always benefit from more. Set up a half-dozen 30-minute conversations to share feedback on strengths. Don’t just ask co-workers, get supervisors and direct reports. And don’t just ask work people, ask loved ones and friends.
Take an assessment. It can be a nice entry point into self-awareness to take an online assessment. There are a hundred options here, but I’d steer clear of personality tests. Focus on more practical tests, like the CliftonStrengths 34 (formerly StrengthsFinder). Or a free option like the HIGH5. Don’t take the results as gospel, but do take time to reflect on what they mean to you personally.

What you love

“Do what you love; you’ll be better at it. It sounds pretty simple, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t get this one right away.” — LL Cool J

These days, finding your passion is the focus of many a self-help book. It’s deeper than that, though. What are your values? What lights you up and brings you joy? These seem like abstract questions, and at some level they are. But they’re also fundamental questions.

I wrestle sometimes with the idea that our grandparents didn’t seem to have this same idea of passion and joy. They didn’t seem to wring their hands worrying about finding their bliss. But really, they did, in a lot of ways. It’s just that today we have so much more complexity in almost every way, that there are a million more choices (and mistakes) to make.

We live in a more complicated, complex world than ever before. With more chances than ever to be reactive, it’s important to take stock of what really, truly matters.

Look to the past. Our values are built over time, from myriad experiences. I believe that an important first step in clarifying what we love is reflection. Try the Life Map exercise. Take 20 minutes to draw out your life’s ups and downs from birth to present. And don’t stop there, reflect and ask “What did this bad experience give me?” “What did this great part of my life give me?”
Imagine the future. Visualizing the future can be a powerful way of shaking us out of our comfort zone. Give the 80th Birthday Party exercise a shot. It’s pretty quick, but a powerful visualization exercise where you imagine what your 80th birthday would be like. Who would be there, what would they say about you? What mark would you want to leave on them?
Mine for your values now. One final exercise, the Who Am I exercise. It’s my favorite because it’s focused on the right here, right now. And it’s one of the best ways of mining for value and purpose. It takes a bit more effort, but it’s worth it. All you need is 30 minutes and 10 blank sheets of paper.

One Powerful Tool to Clarify Who You Really AreSpend half an hour doing an exercise that’s worth a lifetimemedium.com

What the world needs

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“What the world needs” is usually the part of passion-finding exercises that are left out. And you can argue that it’s not completely necessary to think through this when asking what career you want or what your next job should be. But I would offer that we are more than that.

I believe that we all have a responsibility to each other and to our planet. In fact, I think that responsibility is one of the most missed qualities of individualistic cultures. What can you do to make the world a better place? What could be your mark on society, either directly or indirectly?

Ponder and reflect. Get back to the journaling. Once you have a bit of quiet in the day, drop this question into your reflection: “What is it that the world really needs right now?” Think about the pain and suffering that people and sentient creatures go through. What could relieve that? Think about the joy and happiness, too. What could amplify that? What do you believe the world needs?
Expand your perspective. Our worldview is limited by our world. What can you do to expand your world? Read books, watch quality programs and documentaries, have debates. I challenge you to find a topic that you know nothing about and dig into it a bit. The number-one best thing to expand perspective, where time and money allows? Travel. Best ROI investments I’ve ever made.
Do your research. There’s a great site I’ll recommend called 80,000 hours. It’s essentially a site dedicated to how you and your career choices can make the world a better place. There’s some pretty good research, blog material, and even a job board. Sign up for their newsletter to get a regular dose of curated info.

80,000 Hours: How to make a difference with your careerHow can you best use them to help solve the world’s most pressing problems? We’re a nonprofit that does research to…80000hours.org

What you can be paid for

This is where things get really practical. There are no real exercises that you can do to visualize your way into a job. No amount of journaling can make job postings appear. All the information here exists outside of you, and you have to go find it.

I left this step last for precisely this reason. You should try to really dig deep and look inside as much as you can before turning the lens to the market.

Note that I write this from the perspective of a job-seeker, but if “pay” isn’t what you want to maximize right now, find the question that works for you. E.g. “What you can earn value from.”

When it comes to a job, though, here are three ideas for exploration.

Look at what’s already here. Maybe you don’t need to leave your current role to find your ikigai. Maybe what you need is just a different perspective. Or maybe what you need isn’t too far away. It could be a different position in the same team or a different role in the same company. Transformational change doesn’t always mean big change.
Extend your reach. That said, we are so affected by our environment that it can sometimes be impossible to have big change inside without big change outside. For a lot of us who feel “stuck,” we need that push out of our comfort zone that comes from making a big move. Start compiling a list of the companies you’d like to work for and roles you would be good in. Build a big ol’ spreadsheet and then start reaching out to people at those companies. Be bold.
Break the mold. A third and final option is to go all out and just play with the ideas of what could be a completely different path. I usually recommend this as an exploration in the extreme, then dialing it back into something realistic. If becoming a professional musician is the big, crazy dream, what could be the middle path between that and what’s available to you? Sometimes people do realize they’re nowhere near where they need to be, and that’s scary. It can be scary to go back to school or start off a new career from scratch. Realistically, what are the options?

In closing

“I quit my job so I could focus on my work.” — Tim Tamashiro

Use the ikigai framework to help you get closer to your “reason for being.” The four questions above can help you better understand your possible passion, mission, vocation, and profession.

There are other definitions for the smaller intersections of the outcomes — those overlaps just outside the ikigai core — but I’d offer my own ideas:

Passion + Mission = Purpose
Mission + Vocation = Meaning
Vocation + Profession = Stability
Profession + Passion = Fulfillment

The importance here is more than just words. These are the qualities that come with unlocking each of the outcomes of the ikigai, which themselves come from inquiry and asking the four key questions. They are priceless.

Try the model on for size, and try the questions above as an experiment. And show yourself some compassion and patience. You might not be perfectly in the center of the ikigai, but try to move closer to it.

Good luck, and be well.

Check out more resources online. Thomas Oppong wrote a great primer on ikigai, Hamza Khan built out a short diagnostic for it, and Melody Wilding, LMSW offers a roadmap for testing and iterating on it.

The 3 Stages of Adapting to a Crisis, According to a Researcher Who Has Studied Catastrophes Around the World

It’s natural to be unproductive and sad right now. Be patient. It will pass.

With many small businesses struggling to survive (and many parents struggling to stay sane), getting back to some kind of normalcy seems imperative. It also often seems impossible. Your brain may be telling you to rescue your businesses and homeschool your kids, but all you want to do is eat ice cream, watch Tiger King, and obsessively bake.

Are you a weirdo? Will this ever end? How do people manage to adjust to major crises like the pandemic we’re now experiencing?

This is uncharted territory for most of us, but not for Aisha Ahmed, a political science professor who has studied wars and other life-shattering catastrophes across the globe.

“I am just a human, struggling like everyone else to adjust to the pandemic. However, I have worked and lived under conditions of war, violent conflict, poverty, and disaster in many places around the world. I have experienced food shortages and disease outbreaks, as well as long periods of social isolation, restricted movement, and confinement,” she wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently (hat tip to the always excellent Kottke).

Her article is directed at fellow academics, but her reassuring lessons on how people generally move through crises, is just as applicable to business owners wondering if their state of mind is normal. In it she outlines the three stages we all tend to go through when the world turns upside down.

Stage 1: Seeking out security

If you’ve felt pretty awful (and unproductive) the last couple of weeks, take heart. “It is perfectly normal and appropriate to feel bad and lost during this initial transition,” Ahmed writes. “Consider it a good thing that you are not in denial, and that you are allowing yourself to work through the anxiety. No sane person feels good during a global disaster, so be grateful for the discomfort of your sanity.”

“Let go of all of the profoundly daft ideas you have about what you should be doing right now,” she advises. “Instead, focus intensely on your physical and psychological security.” Consider that permission granted to spend “unproductive” time connecting with loved ones, stocking your pantry, or discussing contingency plans with those closest to you.

Stage 2: Opening up to new challenges

While it’s natural to hunker down in the initial days of a crisis, Ahmed’s experience suggests that eventually you will get the urge to peak your head out of your shell. “Once you have secured yourself and your team, you will feel more stable, your mind and body will adjust, and you will crave challenges that are more demanding. Given time, your brain can and will reset to new crisis conditions,” she predicts.

Which sounds lovely to those of us still working through stage one, but Ahmed stresses this adjustment can’t be rushed. Listen to your own inner voice, not the expectations of the outside world.

“Now more than ever, we must abandon the performative and embrace the authentic. Our essential mental shifts require humility and patience. Focus on real internal change. These human transformations will be honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrated, beautiful,” she writes. “Be slow. Let this distract you. Let it change how you think and how you see the world.”

Stage 3: Embracing the new normal

As grim as things seem at the beginning, Ahmed reminds us there is light at the end of the tunnel. “On the other side of this shift, your wonderful, creative, resilient brain will be waiting for you,” she reassures readers. “Things will start to feel more natural. The work will also make more sense, and you will be more comfortable about changing or undoing what is already in motion. New ideas will emerge that would not have come to mind had you stayed in denial.”

You can read Ahmed’s complete articlehere if you’d like to further soothe your worries about your state of mind. Or check out this great Twitter thread where she goes into more detail about her advice.Published on: Apr 9, 2020

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

This 10-Minute Writing Exercise Is Scientifically Proven to Make You Happier for at Least a Week

It will also help you focus on your goals.

What if there was a simple exercise that you could do anywhere in just a few minutes that was scientifically shown to improve your mood and your outlook on the future, at least for a while? Would you do it? That exercise exists. It’s called the “best possible self” intervention, or BPS, and multiple recent studies confirm that it can lift your mood and increase your optimism, at least on a temporary basis.

The best possible self intervention consists of a brief writing exercise in which you imagine your best possible self in a potential future when pretty much everything has gone right. Your business is flourishing, your family life is going great, you have a healthy bank account. Take a few minutes to visualize that life and write a description, in as much detail as you like, of how that life would be. That may not sound like it would make a big difference, but it’s big enough to have been measured in multiple studies by researchers Johannes Bodo Heekerens and Michael Eid of Freie University in Berlin.

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 34 studies (out of a possible 249) selected because they required a written best-possible-self exercise and not merely a visualization, because the best possible self was the only intervention being tested, and the test subjects were part of the overall population, not drawn from a clinical population with known mental health issues. The studies included a total of 2,627 subjects, about three quarters of them female. The result was a small but measurable increase in positive affect and optimism, the researchers wrote.

A few months earlier, the researchers had also conducted their own study, asking 188 psychology undergraduate students to either complete a best-possible-self writing exercise or, for the control group, write about their previous day. These subjects were evaluated right before the exercise, right after, and then one week later for positive affect, positive future expectations and “goal ambivalence” — the feeling that a goal may not be worth pursuing after all. Besides being obviously bad for your career and other ambitions, goal ambivalence has been associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms.

The researchers found that the best-possible-self exercise improved positive affect and positive expectations, and reduced goal ambivalence, both right after the exercise and up to a week later. They suggested that future studies should look at what happens when subjects repeat the best possible self exercise on a regular basis and see if it produces a sustained improvement in optimism over time. That might explain its known ability to reduce symptoms of depression.

Future studies are a great idea, but in the meantime, it’s smart to start using the best possible self exercise right away. It only takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and will leave you feeling better than you did before. Also, visualizing a future in which you’ve achieved your goals will make it easier to actually reach for those goals and perhaps achieve them. There’s really no down side.

If you’re ready to give it a shot, here’s a best possible self exercise that you can try:

1. Visualize your best possible future self.

Close your office door or find a place where you will be undisturbed for a few minutes. Select a time in the future — it could be ten years from now, or six months from now. Imagine yourself in that future where things have gone right. You’ve started that company you’ve been dreaming about, and it’s already turning a healthy profit. Or you’ve landed that huge client or gotten that dream job. Your relationship and family are happy, and you’re living in a home that you love.

Please do not visualize yourself doing something like winning the World Series unless you already are a major league baseball player. The point is not to a visualize your greatest fantasy, but a best possible future that is attainable in the real world.

Once you pick your future time frame, spend a few moments mentally exploring it. How would you feel? Where would you be? Who would you be with?

2. Spend 10 minutes writing it down.

Now spend 10 minutes writing a description of that future self. Write it in as much detail as you would like, or be vague and abstract. Answer questions about your future self and future life, or simply write about how it feels to have achieved most of your biggest goals.

Don’t worry about getting it “right,” just write whatever comes to mind. Don’t spend too much time stopping and thinking about it, and don’t worry about things like grammar and spelling. After all, unless you decide otherwise, no one is ever going to see this but you.

And that’s it! If you’re like most people, this exercise will immediately improve your mood and your outlook on life, and that effect may last as long as a week. You can try different versions of the exercise, visualizing your best possible self in different aspects of your life.

In fact, this might be a good weekly ritual, maybe something to do every Sunday evening to start the week off right. I plan to give it a try. How about you?Published on: Feb 22, 2020Like this column? Sign up to subscribe to email alerts and you’ll never miss a post.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

How to keep a cool head: Secrets of people who never get stressed out

Studies of the world’s most unflappable people point to ways we can all better manage stress – and are even inspiring the first stress vaccine

Helen Thomson Mind 19 February 2020

YOU know that person. The one who uses a delayed train as an excuse to get stuck into a good book. The one who can make a joke 10 seconds after breaking their ankle. The one who loves giving presentations and never falters under pressure. They seem to float through life unfazed by the stress that can overwhelm the rest of us. What’s their secret?

Are they blessed with stress-resistant genes? Did their upbringing make them exceptionally resilient? Have they learned specific ways of coping with life’s challenges? Or do they just know how to avoid stress altogether? To answer these questions, researchers have been examining how humans and animals react and adapt to adversity, identifying those who are particularly resilient to stress and teasing apart the factors that contribute to this ability. It is a journey that has taken them from orphanages in Romania and interrogation chambers in North Carolina to fire stations in Indianapolis and humour classes in Austria.

This work is helping the military recruit candidates for high-stress jobs. It has also led to the first human trial of a “stress vaccine”, with the potential to inoculate us against its devastating effects, from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to depression. But there is a bigger pay-off to understanding the secret of stress-free living. Knowing why some people handle stress better than others, and the things we might all do to improve our resilience, won’t just help all of us manage life’s daily struggles better, it might also teach us how to use stress to our advantage.

20 Healthy Flat-Belly Dinners You Can Make in 20 Minutes

February 10, 2020

You can eat foods that help reduce belly fat and still get dinner on the table in 20 minutes or less. Instead of focusing on restriction, these meals focus on healthy foods to add to your diet. These dinners pull in foods proven to help reduce belly fat—thanks to being rich in fiber or probiotics. Foods like avocados, artichokes, legumes and yogurt may help flatten your belly and we’ve included them in these speedy and delicious dinner recipes.

1 of 20

Flat-Belly Soup

VIEW RECIPE THIS LINK OPENS IN A NEW TAB

This vegan soup recipe is chock-full of colorful vegetables. All those veggies give this soup plenty of fiber, upping the satisfaction factor while keeping calories low, which can aid in weight loss and lead to–yes–a flatter belly. Vibrant turmeric adds a golden color to the flavorful broth, while cumin and ginger give it a bright, fresh finish. And the best part? This healthy soup recipe takes only 20 minutes, start to finish! Source: EatingWell.com, January 2020

The average American life expectancy is 78 years, but our ‘health span’ is only 66—here’s why

When it comes to visualizing yourself in your senior citizen years, chances are you hope to emulate someone like Betty White or Tao (thought of as the oldest living yogi). Read: old but thriving.

Here’s some good news on that front: life expectancy is (albeit very slowly) going up. According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), life expectancy at birth in 2018 (the latest stats are available) is 78.7, a slight increase from 2017’s life expectancy of 78.6. “What we’re seeing with life expectancy is that it did go up from 2017 to 2018, and it followed a period where life expectancy had been falling between 2014 and 2017,” says Robert Anderson, PhD, the chief of the morality statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. According to Dr. Anderson, two of the main reasons for the drop was a decline in deaths related to cancer as well as drug overdose, although he says deaths related to suicide (another big lifespan factor) are still on the rise.

Now the not-so great news. The American Heart Association recently released their own report, saying healthspan—aka the number of years a person can expect to live in relatively good health, free of chronic disease and disabilities of aging—is currently 66 years. That means there’s a 13-year gap between living and living well. But what’s contributing to that gap, and how does the U.S. compare to other countries’ healthspan? The answer is, as you can imagine, pretty complex.

In general, Robert Harrington, MD, who is president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and chairman of the department of medicine at Stanford University, says there are a few stand-out reasons for the disparity between lifespan and healthspan. “More Americans are obese, have diabetes, and other chronic diseases than at anytime in recent decades,” he says. “The onset of these diseases, in part influenced by social determinants of health, is occurring at younger ages, which means that many are at risk for having less optimal health for a larger portion of their overall lives.” In other words, Americans are being diagnosed with chronic, life-impacting health problems earlier than in the past, which results in less healthy years.

Dr. Harrington says the AHA is committed to addressing this issue, with the goal to raise American healthspan to 68 by 2030. Some of the ways they’ll do this, he says, include investing in research related to heart and brain health as well as overall wellness, provide education to people on living healthy lifestyles, and using their role as as advocacy group to push for health-related policies at the local, state, and federal levels.

All of this is important, but Mark Hayward, PhD, a sociology professor and a faculty research associate at the Population Research Center, says addressing the healthspan-lifespan gap is a lot more complicated than educating and helping people live healthier lives.

While a healthspan of 66 and a lifespan of 78 may be the overall average in the U.S., Dr. Hayward says these numbers vary greatly based on race, socioeconomics, and what state you live in. “Foreign-born Hispanics in the U.S., for example, live longer than any other age group, but they spend an extraordinary longer time with disability—on average a third of their lives,” he says. (Disability, in this context, means “the difficulty or the inability to perform social roles and self-care tasksacross any domain of life due to physical, sensory, emotional, or cognitive limitations.”)

Meanwhile, he says Black Americans have the lowest healthspan and lifespan of any population. “Disability comes really early to Black Americans [compared to other groups], and they also tend to live shorter lives,” he says. There are a lot of explanations for this, including an increased likelihood of poverty thanks to institutionalized racism. “Many [older Black Americans] were born and raised in the Jim Crow South, which many people forget. Roughly 80 percent of African Americans over 65 were born in the South in a racialized caste system.”

In addition to race and ethnicity, Dr. Hayward says state and local policies directly affect socioeconomic factors, which in turn affect healthspan. “Most people think healthcare is what affects healthspan, but there are a lot of other important factors,” he says. “Healthcare certainly matters, but so does having long-term education and investments in education for a population,” Dr. Hayward says, citing a study showing a strong correlation between secondary education and living well into old age. “Environmental law, minimum wage law, incarceration, all of this affects healthspan and life span,” he says.

Dr. Harrington agrees. “[The reasons for the discrepancy] are complex, but include the social determinants of health—things like access to healthy foods, clean air, proximity to areas for exercise—access of healthcare, affordability of medications, among many others,” he says.

All of these factors contribute to wildly varying health- and lifespan from state to state. “Some of the states in the U.S. mirror parts of Europe, like Sweden, in terms of how we compare for health- and lifespans. But other states are more comparable to third world countries. And that is not an exaggeration,” Dr. Hayward says. In Mississippi for example, life expectancy is 74, while in Hawaii, it’s 81, according to the most recent data. In terms of healthspan, the top state is Minnesota with 70.3 years, and the worst is West Virginia, with just 63.8 years.

Basically, health doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and isn’t just determined by your genetics or your own personal habits. Your environment, your community, your job, your race and how you are affected by systemic racism—all of that can help or hinder your overall well-being and health.

The issue is complicated to be sure, but what’s clear is that a healthy life expectancy goes far beyond healthcare. Moving into election season, it’s certainly something to keep in mind. Your life literally depends on it.

The 5 Best Weight Loss Tips if You’re Over 40

Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD

White weigh scales on two tone background, space for text

Adobe Stock

Hitting your 40s has plenty of benefits, such as earned wisdom, increased self-awareness, and self-confidence. Truth be told, though, it’s tough getting used to some of the physical changes. A biggie is a downshift in metabolism, which can make weight maintenance trickier and weight loss more challenging. However, losing weight after 40 isn’t impossible. You absolutely can shed pounds at any age—and do so while simultaneously optimizing overall wellness. Here are five tactics that work for my clients. And yes, one involves a daily dose of dark chocolate!

Cut back, but don’t cut out carbs

Carbs are fuel, and whole food sources, like fresh fruit, whole grains, and potatoes, are bundled with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants. Cutting out carbs completely deprives your body of important nutrients. This can lead to unwanted side effects like constipation, fatigue, and irritability.

But after age 40, your daily carb requirement may decline. Many of my clients find that they can’t eat large carb portions without either gaining weight or struggling to lose weight. The best resolution is to optimize the quality of the carbs you eat (say butternut squash over processed bread), and think of carbs as a smaller add-on to a meal, rather than the main attraction.

For example, one client frequently ate veggie burritos, made with a whole grain flour tortilla, brown rice, black beans, salsa, and guacamole. Despite being a walker and practicing yoga, the scale wasn’t budging. The culprit: a carb surplus. That burrito packed 120 grams of carb, and even half of it was more than her body could burn in a given meal.

We worked out that in order to get to and maintain her healthy weight, her daily calorie needs were about 1,750. I find that a target of 40% of total calories from carbs is ideal for most of my over-40 female clients who are active, but not athletes. For her, that meant 175 grams of carb per day, or roughly 40-45 grams in each of her four daily meals. This moderate carb budget does allow for carb-rich foods—just in smaller portions, paired with larger servings of non-starchy veggies, lean protein, and healthy fat.

When we swapped her burrito for a salad made with a base of leafy greens topped with fajita veggies, salsa, black beans, and guac, the carbs came down to 42 grams. She still felt full, satisfied, and energized, and the scale started moving. The lesson: carbs aren’t inherently fattening or bad, so you don’t need to banish them completely. Nixing carbs altogether generally isn’t sustainable long-term, and it’s not optimal for health. The goal is to opt for quality carbs, and aim for balance—enough to meet, but not exceed your body’s fuel needs.

Eat a lot more veggies

Start with veggies first, then build your meals around them. I often recommend including one full cup of non-starchy veggies at breakfast, and at least two cups in each lunch and dinner. A minimum of five cups a day (think five tennis ball–size portions) will provide valuable nutrients and offer disease protection. But these veggies are also going to increase fullness, add volume to meals, help regulate blood sugar and insulin levels, and support healthy digestion, all of which add up to sustainable weight management. Most of the 40+ women I work with overestimate their veggie intakes, and according to the CDC, only 9% of adults eat the minimum recommended intake of two to three cups of veggies per day. (Note: that’s less than I recommend.)

At breakfast, whip a generous handful of greens into a smoothie, fold shredded zucchini into oats, add veggies to an egg or chickpea scramble, or simply eat veggies on the side, like sliced cucumber or red bell pepper. Rather than sandwiches or wraps at lunch, go for salads or bowls, with a large base of greens and veggies. At dinner, sauté, oven-roast, grill, or stir-fry veggies, and make them the largest component of the meal.

Again, pair your veggies with a source of lean protein, good fat, and a smaller portion of healthy carbs, and you’ve created an ideal balance for both weight management and good nutrition.

Be careful with alcohol

Many of my female clients over 40 don’t see the scale move until they cut back on alcohol or take a break from drinking. Alcohol is tricky, because in moderation it may actually support weight management, research suggests. But women who drink heavily or binge drink have an increased obesity risk.

Moderate alcohol consumption means one drink a day (and no, they don’t carry over), which equals five ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer, or a 1.5 ounce shot of distilled spirits.

If you’re downing half a bottle of vino most nights, there could be several issues at play. First, alcohol tends to lower inhibitions and stimulate appetite, so you may wind up eating more, often mindlessly. Also, when alcohol is consumed, breaking it down becomes the body’s top priority. That means foods consumed with alcohol are less likely to be burned. Finally, too much alcohol can disrupt sleep—and a healthy sleep cycle is directly tied to metabolism, weight management, and belly fat accumulation.

If cutting out alcohol altogether isn’t realistic, consider committing to a specific drinking strategy. Cut back gradually, limit alcohol to weekends only, or curb your consumption to a one drink per day max.

Don’t eat diet food (or go on a diet)

A lot of my 40+ female clients remain stuck in outdated weight loss mind-sets. One involves eating diet foods, those highly processed products made with artificial chemicals engineered to be lower in calories, carbs, sugar, or fat. I recommend nixing this entire lot for good! In addition to being completely unsatisfying, diet foods can wreak havoc with your appetite, trigger inflammation, alter the healthy bacteria in your gut tied to weight management, and overtax your immune system.

Research also shows that switching from processed foods to whole foods increases calorie burning, meaning that eating real food may help you lose weight even without cutting your calorie intake (an outcome I have seen many times). Instead of a low calorie frozen meal, opt for hearty lentil soup and an avocado-topped salad. In place of a few reduced fat cookies, reach for a sliced apple dipped in almond butter or a few squares of high quality dark chocolate (more on this below).

Healthy, sustainable weight loss isn’t about dieting. Deprivation and go on/go off approaches ultimately backfire. Instead, adopt a mentality of balance, meaning not undereating or overeating, with a focus on nutrition, not restriction. It may seem boring, and it’s not a quick fix. But it feels best both physically and emotionally, and this approach is maintainable.

Treat yourself to dark chocolate daily

Research backs something I can attest to myself and witness with my clients: building in dark chocolate as a daily treat helps curb cravings for both sweet and salty foods. Dark chocolate can also help reduce stress, a major emotional eating trigger. One study found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in volunteers who rated themselves as highly stressed.

Five squares of 70% dark chocolate contains under 250 calories, yet provides antioxidants, fiber, and magnesium, a mineral tied to relaxation, improved sleep, and enhanced mood.

Knowing that they have a chocolatey treat to look forward to has helped many of my clients pass on other less satisfying and higher-calorie and carb-laden goodies. Spread it out throughout the day, or enjoy an ounce or so of dark chocolate as part of a daily “you time” ritual.

Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, is Health‘s contributing nutrition editor, a New York Times best-selling author, and a private practice performance nutritionist who has consulted for five professional sports teams.

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How Journaling Can Improve Your Life

Journaling is for everyone, but especially athletes. Here are the two types of journals you should have and how to get started.

Becky Wade

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I’ve always been the pen-to-paper type, so when I was packing for a solo yearlong trip around the world in 2012, I brought along a blank composition book. Unlike the emailing, blogging, and nonstop Google Maps–ing I’d be doing on an iPad, that notebook would scratch a more personal itch: I’d use it as a diary, scrapbook, and Rolodex all in one, a place for unfiltered scribbling about life on the road and future skimming when my wanderlust returned. By the time I flew home, three full notebooks encapsulated the bulk of my journey.

With the benefit of hindsight, I now see those daily entries as far from frivolous. The act of mentally unpacking each day, especially when I was several time zones removed from the people I would ordinarily confide in, was as cathartic for me as my twice-a-day runs. It kept me clear-minded and present in a constantly changing world and helped me grapple with my role as a perpetual outsider. Three years after I returned to the U.S., those journals morphed into a published book.

The benefits of journaling, most extensively documented by University of Texas social psychologist James W. Pennebaker, read like the claims of the latest wellness fad: increased mindfulness, better sleep, reduced stress, strengthened memory, improved communication skills, stronger immune system, more self-confidence, and even a higher IQ.

Many theories about why journaling is good for us converge on the therapeutic effects of reflection and interpretation. When we take time to explore and label our emotions, we’re able to organize our cluttered minds and make sense of our experiences. A cascade of positive mental and physical effects—which include lowered blood pressure, increased immunity function, better digestion, and improved sleep—follow suit. The psychotherapist, journaling expert, and corporate consultant Maud Purcell also postulates that writing, which taxes the left hemisphere of the brain, essentially frees up the right hemisphere to operate creatively and intuitively, as it’s meant to.

Those well-being boosts are particularly helpful for individuals overcoming difficult experiences like trauma and depression, but there are benefits for athletes and adventurers, too. Purcell recommends that athletes keep two types of journals: a training log and a separate notebook for free-flowing thoughts, which together can offer a wealth of insight into slumps, progress, performance anxiety, trends, and much more.

So why not go old-school and give journaling a shot? Here are some tips to get you going:

Choose Your Medium

To minimize distractions and adopt an unhurried approach, Purcell recommends starting with a physical notebook rather than a digital log. A few of my favorite brands are Moleskine and Leuchtturm1917 for classic and bullet journaling, Rite in the Rain for outdoor adventures, and the Believe Training Journal for athletic pursuits.

Establish a Routine

Although Pennebaker argues you don’t need to write every day to reap the benefits, I’ve found that consistency is the only way for me to make a habit of it. Keep your journal in a private but easily accessible place, and try to write at the same time of day.

Empty Your Mind

Purcell suggests aiming for stream-of-consciousness writing: no censoring, editing, or overthinking. She doesn’t like to recommend a format or structure. Just let your thoughts run wild. Well-crafted sentences and proper punctuation have their place; your notebook isn’t it. Sit down with no expectations. Nobody—not even you—has to read what you write.