By Di Westaway OAM
Chief Adventure Chick, Wild Women On Top | Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner | Health Rebel

Ten days before Christmas I woke up to find two kilos of fluid under the skin of my abdomen. As the day progressed, gravity forced the fluid, known as edema, down to my pubic area, where it sloshed around like a water balloon.

I couldn’t work out if I had a life-threatening illness or if I was losing my mind. Turns out it was a drug reaction to an autoimmune disease I didn’t have – but that’s another story.

There’s nothing quite like ruminating on dying to get you thinking about aging. Especially given we live in a world expertly designed to poke at one of our deepest female fears.

And nobody is immune.

Our fear of aging often starts young. It has us worrying about our frown lines at 20, our grey hair at 30, our laugh lines at 40, our belly rolls at 50, and, let’s be honest, our saggy knees at 60 (why did nobody warn us about the knees?!).

And alongside every new fear comes a solution neatly packaged in a bottle, jar or syringe – from Botox and Ozempic to creatine, retinol, ingestible collagen, chemical peels, liposuction, or a cheeky little face lift.

All backed by “science”, apparently.

All profiting from our feminine fears.

Our social feeds are flooded with it. And even those of us who know better – hi, guilty – still feel the pull. Would a little bit of filler make me feel better about my neck? Would injecting salmon sperm into my eye bags make me look less tired?

But what if we ditched the aesthetic narrative around aging completely and started thinking about challenging aging from the inside. Because true longevity is less about wrinkles, grey hairs, saggy knees and droopy eyelids and more about running around the park with your grandkids and not waiting to die in a nursing home.

What’s actually going to improve your quality of life and keep you young is how you feel. And that’s more about your ability to prevent aching knees, a dowager’s hunch, arthritis, incontinence, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, social isolation, anxiety and depression.

If you want to age with youthfulness, energy and joie de vivre, free of age-related diseases, read on. Because getting your upper bleph done might improve your reflection, but studies show it could also make you feel worse. And dosing up on drugs, supplements, and GLP-1s might give you lifespan, but they won’t give you healthspan.

What actually works? Hiking. Yep, if you want to age like a goddess, you need to stop looking for longevity in the mirror and the medicine cabinet, and start looking for it in mother nature. Here’s why.

Longevity research highlights eight key pillars that impact the length, and quality, of our lives. We need to be eating nutritious food, doing regular exercise, reducing stress, getting good sleep, avoiding toxins, having a sense of purpose, feeling connected socially, and spending time in nature. These simple behaviours, when combined, create a lifestyle that bolsters you against age-related decline, both physical and mental.

And hiking boosts almost all of them.

Why hiking is one of the most powerful treatments to keep you young

When you go hiking with friends, you’re ticking your exercise box, obviously. Forget the weighted vest and put on a backpack to get your strength training, cardio and mobility in one powerful session. You’re in nature, tick. You’re getting your social connection, tick. Research also shows hiking both reduces stress and improves sleep. Tick, tick. And anyone who has taken on a big hairy audacious goal like climbing Mt Kilimanjaro knows it gives you a bloody good sense of purpose. Tick.

Add to that a diet of real food and avoiding toxins like plastic, nicotine and excess alcohol, and you’ve hit the mother lode.

But there’s more.

When you go hiking, you build confidence, strength and power by doing hard things like climbing mountains, navigating weather and surviving without a phone, a mirror, a shower and Uber Eats. You might have to build a fire, cross an icy river, flick a spider out of your tent or outsmart a snake. These things give you an inner unshakable confidence that is an elixir of youth.

It’s the difference between being a badass bombshell and a cursed crone.

And because hiking’s addictive, it helps you avoid all the other addictions like scrolling, processed food and too many wines. We call that the cherry on top.

Why hiking is even more powerful for mid-life women

Here’s where it gets really interesting.

As we move into midlife and menopause, our estrogen levels decline – and with them, many of the neurochemicals that keep us feeling sharp, calm, connected, and energised.

Enter, hiking.

Puffing regularly. Carrying a pack. Walking up stairs. Connecting with solemates. Working your body hard enough to sweat whilst gasbagging.

This kind of movement helps restore and stimulate key brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin; the very ones estrogen used to support. Translation? More youthfulness. Hiking is a direct way to bolster your mood, focus, resilience and energy to counteract the loss of estrogen.

I’ve coached hundreds of women who have shared how hiking has helped them feel younger, defying age limits, and continuing to leap outside their comfort zones well into their seventies and even eighties. Cathy, a 72 year old wild woman from Sydney, set tongues wagging recently by taking on an extreme via ferrata hike in the Dolomites.

Friends, mostly men, said she should act her age, and avoid dangerous things. She says it was one of the highlights of her life. Despite wrinkles, worn out knees, fear of heights and a frozen shoulder, she achieved her goal and felt fabulous. Now that’s badass.

If you want to geek out on the science, I highly recommend Dr Mindy Pelz’s book Age Like a Girl, which helps us understand why we’re feeling foggy, overwhelmed, burnt out or like a stranger in our own mind and body. Dr Mindy says hiking is one of the best things we can do to rewire our brain for mental clarity, confidence and renewed energy – especially in nature, especially with purpose, especially with other women.

The takeaway

You’ve made it this far. You’re keen to give it a go.. And you might be wondering… okay, where do I start? Here’s what you can do today to feel younger, live longer and have more fun.

1. Create a goal
   If you don’t have a hiking adventure bucket list, start creating one. Do a Google search to find a hiking adventure that really excites you. Maybe you’ve always wanted to visit Bhutan, trek Nepal, hike to Machu Picchu or perhaps something closer to home like a wild weekend in Tassie, the Blue Mountains or one of the iconic hikes near home. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a day hike, an overnighter or a multi-day trek, just pick one that is challenging enough to motivate yourself to train and looks good on your Instagram feed.
2. Find your solesisters
   Reach out to your friends, family, and acquaintances who might be interested in joining you. Just ask everybody you know and you’ll be amazed at who’s up for a challenge. Ask around at your gym, your yoga studio, your book club, your pickleball community and your mother’s group. You’ll be sure to find one or two takers. And if not, there are thousands of us in the Wild Women Community Facebook Group who might be the solesister you haven’t met yet.
3. Embrace nature
   Get your diaries together to coordinate a sacred training day each week that you can catch up for a local bush track that includes lots of hills, stairs, soft surfaces and undulating terrain, then go wild. If you want more tips, join us in the Wild Women Group or on Insta or get a copy of “How to Prepare for World Class Treks” by yours truly.

Or … you can sign up to one of our trips or invite a friend to join you for a Coastrek challenge. You’ve got this.