Want to know the secret to a long life?

My 92-year-old grandma had her theory, and I have mine...

As my grandma moved into her 90s and continued to live fairly independently, I asked her what she thought might be the secret to a long life.

“Everything in moderation,” she said.

For her, this meant one small glass of red wine in the evening - she’d been told this was good for her heart - balanced meals, enough exercise and keeping herself busy, but not too busy.

It makes sense that not overdoing any one thing will be good for your health.

We know that drinking too much alcohol can have a detrimental impact, likewise taking too many drugs, staying up too late and anything else in excess.

And yet I couldn’t take her advice, because I am a very different person to my grandma. For me, moderation is boring. And so I don’t live a moderate life.

If I like something, I do it all the time. 

That has included drinking several cups of instant coffee a day, for years, because I like how it makes me feel.

I ignore the messages about how too much caffeine isn’t good for you and focus on the ones about how it’s good for your brain.

You can find evidence of almost any ‘bad’ thing also having a pro (even if it’s sometimes rather tenuous, like cider being good for you because it’s made from apples).

But mostly, I just listen to my body, mind and soul, and whether I want to be doing/inhaling/ingesting/experiencing something.

If the answer is yes, I do it. And I do it a lot.

Adolescence

When I was a teenager, I started drinking alcohol and enjoyed the confidence it gave me, so every time I went out, I drank.

I also smoked, though fortunately I knocked that habit on the head after a few years.

I partied hard, stayed up all night every weekend and had a debauched - and very fun - adolescence.

But then I moved to the countryside in my early 20s and saw that there could be a different type of life.

Long runs through the countryside, playing guitar by a log-fire, cooking up jams made from locally-foraged blackberries.

I liked this new life.

I was young, in love and living a quite idyllic existence.

Of course I didn’t just tentatively test out countryside life. In much the same way that I do nothing in halves now; I did nothing in halves then.

I went IN.

We had chickens in the garden and ate their eggs for breakfast; bought walking boots for coastal walks and to climb mountains in the rain; I baked, stewed and made cordial; wrote poetry and played piano.

But all our friends were still in London partying hard and going to festivals, and after a couple of years, we got sucked back in.

I returned to that party lifestyle.

It all slowed down a lot after I had my first baby, but there were still late nights and hedonistic weekends away.

Career

There is a flip-side to my ‘all in’ way of living, which is that when my career as a writer started to come together, I was able to channel my obsessive energy into that.

If you want to be published as a writer, whether as a journalist or an author, you have to come up with a lot of good ideas, do a lot of pitching, deal with a huge amount of rejection and then keep going.

Because my nature is one of everything in excess, nothing in moderation, I have been able to carve out the exact career I dreamt of.

I just had a book published that I feel proud of, and I so enjoyed the process of researching and writing it.

I’ve now been offered another book deal, but this time I’ll be behind the scenes.

Alongside this, I’m writing a novel and working on a new non-fiction proposal.

Focusing hard on my goals, working my arse off to prove myself, pitching relentlessly and never giving up has - at last - paid off.

Big time.

But I’m starting to see that some of my lifestyle choices are making me feel tired.

Some of them might be considered healthy, like going for a run every morning.

But when I say every morning, I mean every single morning of the year; never ever a day off.

Also, the breathwork practice I’ve been doing has been incredible, but even that I’m doing too often and for too long.

I love the rush of doing conscious connected open-mouth breathwork but doing this every single day for 40 minutes could be one of the reasons I’m getting heart palpitations.

The weekly sessions I’ve had with a practitioner are amazing - and enough. 

I shouldn’t be also doing this every day on my own.

But like with everything else, when I’m enjoying doing something, I do it religiously and obsessively.

So while I’ve been going through this period of starting to feel not-so-good, even though I’m doing a lot of things that should make me feel good, I’ve been reflecting.

My love of ritual and routine is not going to change. It’s always been there and it always will be.

But there are parts of my daily routine that do need to change.

Today, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn’t start my day with several instant coffees.

Instead, I grated fresh ginger into a mug and added hot water.

I didn’t get that amazing caffeine hit that fills me with energy and ideas, but I did enjoy drinking something that would be good for my gut.

With this different energy - slower, considered - I decided to do a walk instead of a run.

I noticed beautiful flowers in the hedgerow that I’ve missed until now because I’ve been running too fast.

I started to see that sometimes doing things slowly can be good, too.

(It can also be boring. So, actually, I’m not going all-in on the ‘slow living’ thing. Just trialling a few aspects of it. But we’ll see … maybe I’ll suddenly adopt it and turn into an actual snail.)

I decided to stop drinking alcohol for awhile. I don’t drink excessively but I do drink more often than is healthy.

And I’m a bit fed up with it.

If something stops being fun, or stops adding to your life, it needs to go.

What I’m adding in is a new obsession with cooking vegetarian meals made from whole foods.

I read that we should be eating 30 different plants a week and that includes spices, so I’m making vegetarian curries and bean chillis, as well as salads and grilled veg on toast.

A long life

I don’t know how long I’m going to live - none of us do, really.

But I do know that instead of doing everything in moderation, I will continue to cram my life with things that I love and let go of the things I don’t.

To enjoy just living while evaluating and recalibrating, when necessary.

I’ll eat lots of the foods I enjoy and that make me feel good and shun the stuff that doesn’t.

I will obsess over something and build it into my routine, but if it stops working, I’ll quickly drop it.

I believe that my grandma may well have lived a long life because she did everything in moderation, but I also believe that we are all different.

Perhaps her energy came from consistency and moving at a slower pace, but mine comes from change, spontaneity, experimentation, quick implementation and regular adaptation.

You get to decide how you live your life.

I think that as long as you aim for feeling as good as possible in body, mind, and soul, you will thrive in your own way.

Annie x