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If you are a woman between 35 and 50, do you think about the quality of your life in 25 years? It's normal not to think about the future at this stage of life because you have all you can do to deal with what is happening today ' gray hair, emerging wrinkles, weight gain, your job, kids, mortgage, aging parents, your husband's midlife crisis.

If you see yourself in the future at all, you probably visualize yourself at age 75 and beyond as 'old.' You know what your elderly mother looks like and you assume you will look like her. After all, it's 'normal' to get old and decline. Besides, conventional wisdom says you cannot do much to manage the aging process ' so why waste time worrying about what you can't control?

Even though you may believe you can't avoid traditional oldness, you still want to stop the signs of aging invading your face and body. You want to keep youthful characteristics you have right now.

What are you doing to keep what you have? Do you live an anti-aging lifestyle? Or is your major anti-aging strategy limited to the purchase of expensive face and body creams? Do you exercise regularly, or just think about it? Do you know which dietary supplements promote agelessness? If you knew what they are, would you take them?

It doesn't matter what you are not doing now. Taking informed action matters. A woman between 35 and 50 still can achieve youthful agelessness as long as life lasts. However, it's important to understand the following:

Youth accompanies birth as a short-term loan. Think of youth as an interest- free loan for about 20 years. After age 20 payback time begins. Youth has done all it can do for you and then you are on your own. Youth starts to leave your body imperceptibly and at an accelerated rate.

Another thing -- enjoying that interest-free loan for so many years creates complacence. Because you cannot see youth leave in an obvious way, you imagine it will last forever and you neglect to devise a strategy to keep it. That seems to be human nature. You just let life happen, hoping for the best. The result is traditional old age. What to do?

The secret: To keep youth around for as long as you like, internalize the reality that youth is no longer free. That's they key. To keep it you must pay a price called 'effort.' You must implement a lifelong maintenance strategy right now ' next year is too late. The longer you put off taking action, the more difficult it is to achieve perpetual agelessness.

Make no mistake ' perpetual agelessness is possible. I'm doing it ' you can do it too.

The plan:

Visualizing yourself and your life in 25 years is vitally important because if you don't know what you want, and don't have a plan to make it happen, you will age traditionally.

In 25 years, you will look and feel like a senior, doing senior things with senior peers. Your identification and association with each other will reinforce senior attitudes and behaviors. If that is what you want, go for it! However, I don't know any woman who would choose oldness over agelessness if given a choice.

Pay the price to remain an ageless, independent, vital, dynamic mature woman. Resolve not to be victimized or categorized by the number of years you have lived. In our culture, we have a label everything and everyone. Rather than identify or label yourself as a senior, see and accept yourself as an ageless mature woman in a constant state of growth.

The easiest, most comprehensive program I found to kick start a plan to keep what you have or to make it better is Dov Oshri's Anti-Aging Fitness Program. It gave me all the information and motivation I needed to start and stay committed.

Take control of your aging process by educating yourself about living an anti-aging lifestyle. You can download my resources list for suggestions.

You must develop an open your mind and be ready to change completely how you think about aging and how you will live your life. There is a learning curve involved. It takes time and patience to change lifelong habits and attitudes but well worth the effort. Start now to become the ageless woman you can be.

Copyright 2006 Barbara Morris, R.Ph.