People who still look young in their 60s and beyond all avoid these 10 common things – VegOut

My neighbour  Sarah and I met for coffee after a decade apart. She’s 68. She walked in looking maybe 48—that particular glow that comes from health, not highlighter.

“It’s not what I do,” she said, stirring her coffee. “It’s what I don’t do.”

This sentiment echoes through conversations with those who seem to have negotiated a better deal with time. They haven’t discovered magical serums or revolutionary treatments. Instead, they’ve identified the everyday habits that accelerate aging and quietly eliminated them from their lives. These aren’t dramatic lifestyle overhauls—they’re small subtractions that compound into visible differences over decades.

1. They skip the sugar marathon

The people who look youngest in their sixties treat sugar like a sometimes food, not a constant companion. This isn’t about never eating dessert—it’s about breaking the modern pattern of sugar at every meal, in every drink, hidden in every sauce.

Glycation is what happens when sugar molecules attach to proteins in your skin, creating compounds that make collagen stiff and inflexible. Think of it as caramelizing your skin from the inside—except instead of creating a delicious crust, you’re creating wrinkles and sagging.

The quietly young-looking among us read labels with the dedication of scholars. They know that pasta sauce doesn’t need 12 grams of sugar, that “healthy” granola can pack more sugar than a candy bar. They’ve retrained their palates to find sweetness in actual fruit rather than fruit-flavored everything.

2. They don’t worship the sun

There’s a particular type of person who spent the 1980s basting themselves in baby oil, chasing the perfect tan. Their skin now has that specific texture—like an expensive leather handbag that’s been left in a hot car. Meanwhile, their sun-avoiding contemporaries could pass for their children.

This isn’t about vanity. UV damage accumulates like credit card debt—invisibly at first, then all at once. Every sunburn, every tan, every “just five more minutes” adds microscopic damage that emerges decades later as spots, wrinkles, and that telltale leathery texture.

The young-looking sixty-somethings weren’t necessarily hiding indoors. They just made friends with shade, wore hats without irony, and discovered that SPF is less expensive than any anti-aging cream on the market.

3. They refuse the cigarette invitation

This one seems obvious now, but remember: today’s 60-year-olds came of age when smoking was sophisticated, when ads featured doctors recommending cigarettes, when you could smoke on airplanes. Those who resisted that cultural pressure, or quit early, gave their skin a gift that keeps giving.

Smoking doesn’t just cause premature wrinkles—it fundamentally changes how your skin ages. It narrows blood vessels, reducing oxygen flow. It destroys collagen and elastin. It creates those vertical lip lines that no amount of lipstick can hide. The “smoker’s face” that dermatologists describe isn’t just about wrinkles; it’s a whole constellation of changes that announce your habit decades after you’ve quit.

4. They don’t diet dramatically

The eternally youthful sixty-somethings never did the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, or any plan that treated entire food groups like the enemy. They understood early what research now confirms: dramatic weight fluctuations age your face faster than a few stable extra pounds ever could.

Rapid weight loss doesn’t give skin time to adjust. When the weight returns (and 95% of the time, it does), skin stretches again. This accordion effect breaks down elastic fibers, creating the kind of sagging that makes people say “you look tired” when you’re not.

Those who look youngest maintained relatively stable weights throughout their lives. They ate actual meals instead of replacing them with shakes. They understood that sustainable beats dramatic every time.

5. They skip the midnight marathons

While their peers wore sleep deprivation like a badge of honor—pulling all-nighters for work, staying out until 4 AM, wearing “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” t-shirts—the young-looking ones were home by 11, in bed by midnight, treating sleep like the biological necessity it is.

Chronic sleep deprivation doesn’t just create dark circles. It triggers a cascade of hormonal changes that accelerate aging at the cellular level. Cortisol rises, breaking down collagen. Growth hormone drops, slowing skin repair. The result isn’t just looking tired—it’s looking older, faster.

The well-preserved sixty-somethings protected their sleep with the ferocity of new parents. They said no to the third drink, the late meeting, the Netflix binge. They understood that beauty sleep isn’t a luxury—it’s maintenance.

6. They don’t stress professionally

There’s a subset of sixty-somethings who chased every promotion, answered every email within minutes, treated their careers like a competitive sport. You can see it in their faces—the permanent furrow between their brows, the tight jaw, the stress-aged skin that looks like it’s been marinated in cortisol for decades.

Chronic stress literally shortens your telomeres—the protective caps on your chromosomes that determine how quickly you age. It shows up as inflammation, which manifests as puffiness, redness, and premature aging. The body keeps score, and stress always collects its debt.

The young-looking ones learned to compartmentalize. They left work at work. They understood that no email is so urgent it can’t wait until morning, that success without sustainability is just delayed failure.

7. They avoid the beige food diet

Walk through any grocery store and notice how much of our food has been processed into uniform beige—crackers, cookies, chips, bread, pasta. The sixty-somethings who look youngest made friends with color early—the deep reds of berries, the dark greens of leafy vegetables, the bright oranges of sweet potatoes.

These colors aren’t just pretty—they’re antioxidants in edible form. They fight the free radicals that break down collagen, cause inflammation, and accelerate aging. Every colorful meal is a small investment in your future face.

The young-looking ones didn’t become health food zealots. They just noticed that real food doesn’t have ingredients lists, that things that grow from the ground tend to help you age more slowly than things made in factories.

8. They don’t become their couch

The sixty-somethings who could pass for forty-five never let convenience eliminate all effort from their lives. They’re not gym obsessives or marathon runners. They just kept moving—taking stairs, walking to the store, dancing in their kitchens while cooking dinner.

Sedentary living ages you inside-out. It slows the circulation that delivers oxygen to your skin. It shrinks the muscles that hold everything up. Eventually, gravity wins by default, creating that characteristic sag that no cream can lift.

Movement doesn’t have to mean exercise. The best-preserved sixty-somethings simply refused to let convenience eliminate all physical effort from their lives.

9. They skip the anger addiction

Some people collect grievances like stamps, nurturing old wounds, rehearsing arguments from 1987. You can see it in their faces—the permanent scowl lines, the tight mouth, the way their default expression looks like they’re perpetually smelling something unpleasant.

Chronic anger triggers the same stress hormones as any other chronic stress, with the added bonus of creating specific facial patterns that become permanent over time. Forgiveness, it turns out, is a beauty treatment.

The young-looking ones learned to let things go—not for others, but for themselves. They understood that holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to age faster.

10. They don’t chase youth desperately

Ironically, the sixty-somethings who look youngest aren’t the ones desperately trying to look young. They’re not getting excessive procedures, wearing teenage fashion, or pretending decades haven’t passed. They’ve accepted their age while refusing to accelerate it.

There’s something aging about the desperate pursuit of youth—the too-tight face from excessive procedures, the inappropriate clothing that highlights rather than hides aging, the exhausting effort of pretending. Authenticity, surprisingly, is more youthful than any attempt at reversal.

Final thoughts

Looking young at sixty isn’t about discovering secrets—it’s about avoiding the obvious mistakes we’ve normalized. The people who seem to age in slow motion haven’t found the fountain of youth; they’ve simply noticed which everyday habits are fountains of aging and walked past them.

None of this is moral judgment. There’s beauty and value in every face, regardless of how many years it shows. But for those curious about the gap between chronological and visible age, the answer rarely involves expensive interventions. More often, it’s about what you didn’t do—the sugar you didn’t eat, the sun you didn’t worship, the stress you didn’t nurture.

The real insight might be this: we spend fortunes on products to reverse aging while actively participating in habits that accelerate it. It’s like pressing the gas and brake simultaneously, then wondering why the journey feels so rough. Sometimes the most powerful anti-aging strategy is simply lifting your foot off the accelerator.