Shelly's Shares: Longevity Series #4: The Hidden Longevity Killers

Most people chase longevity through big, flashy answers like supplements, biohacks, or the “best” diet, then wonder why they still feel stuck. We go in the opposite direction and look at the quiet, everyday patterns that can speed up aging and drain your energy without you even noticing. The goal is simple: build awareness so you can make small, healthy choices that add up over time.

Shelly continues the "Longevity Is..." series with four hidden “longevity killers” that show up in real life, not just in wellness headlines. We talk about sitting too much and why a single workout does not erase a day of being sedentary, plus easy ways to add more movement without turning your schedule upside down. We also dig into chronic stress, how it impacts sleep, blood sugar, immunity, digestion, heart health, and mental health, and the practical tools I return to when life feels heavy like walking outside, deep belly breathing, prayer, gratitude, and time with people who nourish your spirit.

From there, we get honest about poor sleep and why it affects nearly everything: cravings, patience, focus, workout performance, recovery, and overall wellbeing. Finally, we cover ultra-processed foods, why they can crowd out real nutrition, and how to aim for progress by building meals around foods close to their natural form while still enjoying treats with an 80/20 mindset.

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In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

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Awareness And Small Daily Choices

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Again, awareness is the key. That's the first step. So we can kind of start to really be thinking about what we're doing and just making healthier choices daily. And again, the small habits, the small daily, healthy choices that we make add up over time.

Welcome And The Wellness Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Do you get confused by all of the information that barbards us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing? What foods you should or shouldn't be eating? How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today.

Longevity Series Context And Goals

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Hi my friends, welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is our Shelly's Shares episode, and I am your host, Shelly, and I'm excited to have you. Thank you for those of you who've been listening and following along. I so appreciate you. And if you are new here, I want to welcome you. And I am going to continue my longevity is series. And today I am on series episode number four. And I have been sharing each week in these episodes about a different segment of longevity. I am doing a longevity is series, and so far I have talked about the clarification of what longevity is. So I'm going to focus on four areas in today's episode, and then I'll share four more next week's episode. So there are different things that we do that can affect our longevity in a negative way that can cause us to age faster, cause us to just lose our energy and our motivation and our zest for life. There are just different things that we do or can do that can negatively impact our health and our longevity. So when we think about longevity, a lot of times the questions that come up, people will ask, okay, what supplement should I take? What is the best diet? What's the best thing I can do to biohack my health? And you know, I think that these are all good areas that we want to think about and implement. I'm uh I'm pro-supplementation. Um, I can share what the best diet is for longevity. And I don't even like to use the word diet, it's more about our nutrition, our day-to-day nutritional intake. But some of the things that we can do, our everyday habits can be small, simple things. And again, longevity isn't just based on one big decision. I always say it's all the little things that add up. It's all the small choices that we make daily, the small habits that we have daily. And, you know, gosh, don't you feel like, I don't know, I sometimes feel like if I could go back to my 20-year-old, 30-year-old self and just let her know, hey, what you're doing today for yourself is going to pay off 20, 30, 40 years from now. Or it could be the opposite, right? We could be doing some negative things with our health that could be negatively impacting us from years later to come. Now, thankfully, I personally, I think for the most part, have been pretty good about my health through the years. It's never perfect. And again, I always say it's never ever perfect and never too late to start. So I don't want any of you to feel like the, you know, discouraged if you feel like, oh gosh, in my 20s and 30s, I was not doing really healthy things. I don't want you to go there. I don't want you to even like regress or regret. That's not what this is about. However, it is about here and now today. What are we doing today? And what changes maybe can we make to help us in the future? So, again, today I want to talk about some of these hidden longevity things that we do that are negative, that can have a negative impact on our health today and in the future. And I want to share what these are. I'm going to share what we can do about them because, again, my whole goal and purpose with all that I share with all of you is to increase the awareness. It's not meant to, again, discourage us or or make us feel like we are not doing all that we can for ourselves. It's meant to empower us, to educate us, and to increase that awareness. And so that's what this is all about.

Sitting Too Much And How To Move

SPEAKER_00 6:53

So, number one, number one is sitting too much. How many of you feel like you sit too much? I can I'm I can raise my hand right now and say, I think that I have been sitting too much these last few months or this last year. Not intentionally, but I'm starting to kind of look at my day and go, okay, I get up, my morning routine, I come downstairs, I do my electrolyte drink, I do my protein, I get my coffee, I go and then I sit on the couch with my Bible, with my fur babies, I sit there for a little bit, and before I know it, you know, an hour has gone by and I need to get myself up and move. And it's something that I've noticed. So I want to kind of point that out to all of you. Our bodies are meant to move. And I really, really do believe that for many of us, when the country got shut down and we were all in our homes, we got used to being home. We got used to doing our work, our business meetings on Zoom. And we probably got used to sitting more than we were used to sitting. And let's face it, you know, if you're not physically going to a place of employment and your home, a lot of the time is sent is spent sitting. And so again, our bodies, our bodies were designed to move. So if you think about how much you're you're sitting, whether it's on your couch, at your desk, in your car, even if we're exercising regularly, we still need to really be aware of how much we're sitting. And this really hit home for me. I forget where I heard this, but I run or I walk daily. And I had heard this statistic that even if I was to go, and this is in general, not just me, but if someone was to go out and go for a 30-minute run or go for an hour walk, that's excellent exercise, right? But if we still spend the majority of our day sitting, that one 30-minute, one hour bout of exercise isn't enough. Our body needs more movement. So I I know I've always recommended to clients who maybe have a corporate job or they sit at a desk, you know, the recommendation is to get up and maybe even set set an alarm so that you're getting up like every 30 minutes or an hour and walking or doing some stairs or doing something. So you're breaking up that time that you're sitting is really, really important. Even if, again, you exercise regularly, that the long periods of sitting that can affect your circulation, it can affect your blood sugar, your joints, their mobility, and then just our overall health. So it doesn't have to be simplified, it doesn't have to be complicated, my friends. It's we can simplify it, right? We can get up, like I said, stand up, move around a little bit every hour, take meetings. Maybe you can walk and talk at the same time. I know I do some of my best thinking and talking when I am walking. And I heard someone recently say that that's when they do their coaching with their clients, is when they go out and they walk. And I can tell you from experience, and maybe you have experienced this as well, that when you're moving and talking, there's something about that flow that really, really works well. So that's something to think about. Um maybe stretching a little bit if you're watching some TV. If you have like a favorite, favorite show you like to watch, maybe stretch while you're watching, park a little further away from your destination so it forces you to walk. Take the stairs. Take the stairs as much as you possibly can. Take the stairs. And again, those small movements that we we do each day, they add up. And you know, the exercise is important, but again, it's that movement, that movement that we that we are doing every day that really, really makes such a big difference. So that's number one sitting.

Chronic Stress And Simple Relief Tools

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Number two, another hidden longevity uh killer, as they call it, chronic stress. Now, stress is not always the enemy. There are there's positive stress that we can experience, but there's also negative stress. But our bodies respond in the same way physiologically. So the trick is being able to manage stress effectively so that it does not take its toll on our body physically and physiologically. So the real issue comes into play when stress is chronic, when it's something that's occurring over time and it's constant. So when we have constant chronic stress, it can affect our sleep, it can affect our blood sugar, our immune system, our heart health, digestion, and just our overall mental and emotional well-being. So I think it's important too that it can also influence our choices, the choices that we make on a daily basis, like what we're eating, how much we're moving, how much we're resting. It just kind of interferes with the flow of our daily normal routine. And again, we can't remove stress. We're going to always have some degree of stress, but the key is being able to be resilient and being able to manage it effectively in a healthy way. So for me, like personally, I know the exercise is huge. Getting out and walking, taking deep breaths, walking outside and just taking some really deep belly breaths in can really calm the nervous system. Um, prayer, opening up my Bible, getting outside, practicing gratitude, and then spending time with people I love, you know, people that are going to nourish your spirit, your soul. That is such such an important part of this. And again, you know, the stress is it's a part of life, but we don't have to live in a constant state of stress. It doesn't have to be that way. And again, it doesn't mean we're not going to be faced with very stressful times, but it's again how we are dealing with those times and how we're managing those moments that are going to really pay off for us in the long run. Okay, number three.

Poor Sleep And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Here's number three, hidden longevity killer number three. Poor sleep. How many of you feel you get adequate sleep? The recommendation for adults is anywhere from seven to nine hours. How many of you are getting seven to nine hours of sleep? It really isn't a luxury. You know, sleep is necessary for our bodies, for our brain, for just repair. Uh, it's so important for repair and recovery. You know, your body, when you sleep, it's repairing tissues, it's supporting your immune system, it's helping regulate hormones. And I know we all have experienced this at one point or another where our sleep has been not the best. When our sleep suffers, almost every other part of our life can suffer as well. And I don't know about all of you, but I can remember one specific night. This was probably, I don't know, a couple, two, three years ago, maybe longer, because I was teaching at the college in person at the time. So this was a while ago. Um, and I remember, I think it might have been a Sunday night, but I'm not entirely sure. But I remember I just, I didn't, I hardly slept. For whatever reason, I did not have a good, restful night's sleep. And I knew, I knew that honestly, it would not even be safe for me to be driving. That was the honest truth. And I ended up calling in sick that day because I'm like, there's just there's no way. And thankfully, that is completely like I remember that happening one time. So it's very, very rare. But the point of it is our sleep is really critical. And some people can do okay on a low amount of sleep. I'm not one of those people now. Sometimes when we travel or we have to get up really, really early to catch a uh flight, some sometimes that works some way or another. And a lot of times I think it works because we're going many times to a different time zone that's that's later. So it kind of works in our favor. So that that always kind of helps. But the most part, your sleep is really, really important. So if your sleep suffers, you might notice you have more cravings, you're not as not as patient, right? We tend to be a little bit more irritable. Um, we're not able to focus as well, we might have lower energy. That's just normal things. Workouts might be harder because our energy is lower and it might take us longer to recover from our workouts. So, again, protecting our sleep, I really think is one of the most important, healthiest things we can do each day to the best of our ability. Again, never perfect. There's going to be moments and nights where we don't sleep well. That's part of the deal, it's part of life. But for the most part, if we can get really good sleep, really, really important. Okay, and the last one that I'm going to share today, number four, and I'm going to share another four next week's

Ultra-Processed Foods And Better Defaults

SPEAKER_00 17:06

episode. But today, the last one I want to touch upon is ultra-processed foods. Now, we've heard a lot about this in the last year or two, year or two, and it's unfortunate that many of these processed and ultra-processed foods are designed to be appealing to us, but they provide usually very, very little, if any, nourishment. So if they are the main food that we are consuming, and they are they are contributing to our caloric intake and our daily intake, it makes it a lot harder for us to meet our nutritional needs. So again, we're not striving for perfection, but we we really want to aim for progress, and we want to aim to build our meals around foods that are close to their natural form as possible, most of the time. So we want to focus on adding nourishing foods to our daily intake rather than obsessing over eliminating every treat. And you know, I talked about this a little bit in the second part of this series. I talked about just nutrition as a whole when it comes to our longevity. So if you want to go back two episodes ago and listen to that, I talked about nutrition as a whole when it comes to our overall longevity and how it impacts us. So I think it's important to just kind of take into consideration these different hidden longevity killers, as they might say, or areas that can be very detrimental to our health, and we might not even realize it in our day-to-day routine. And maybe these are some areas that we haven't thought about, and I'm just trying to bring them to our attention and bring that awareness forward so that we can, again, awareness is the key. That's the first step. So we can kind of start to really be thinking about what we're doing and just making healthier choices daily. And again, the small habits, the small daily, healthy choices that we make add up over time. And again, my friends, this is not to discourage us in any way. This is to encourage us and to empower us. So, one last thing on this last area of processed foods. I want us to focus on again, like I added that question not too long ago in the episode. How can I nourish myself the best way? Is this choice that I'm choosing to consume this food? Is it nourishing my body? And also on the flip side of that, we also want to enjoy ourselves and maybe enjoy our little treats once in a while. We don't need to obsess over eliminating all the things that we enjoy. That's not what this is about. We are to enjoy our lives, make healthy choices 80% of the time, and then maybe have those treats 20% of the time. So it's not ever an all or nothing, my friends. I want to remind you of that. But I also want to remind you that it is a journey and it's a daily, daily journey. And some days are better than others, and that is part of this journey, and it is a part of life.

Progress Over Perfection Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 20:39

So, with that being said, I will continue. I covered the first four areas today: sitting too much, chronic stress, poor sleep, and consuming ultra-processed foods. I will continue next week with the final four in this category of areas that can be detrimental to our longevity. And with that being said, I hope you take time for yourself and your wellness and your longevity on this day. And have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week. We'll see you next time on Words of Wellness.

Flourish For Life Coaching Invitation

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Hi, my friends. Just a quick, quick message for all of you. I wanted to let all of my listeners know that I have an upcoming special Flourish for Life 12-week coaching program. And I couldn't be more excited. It's going to be a one-on-one program. I'm going to be opening up just a select few spots, and the first five to ten moms or women who register will be my founding members. And you will also receive a very special discounted rate. So please reach out to me on Instagram at WellnesswithShelly J or click on the link in the show notes below for more details. And I cannot wait to work alongside you.

Share The Show And Send Questions

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.