The 2 health choices that keep Christie Brinkley super fit at 70

I’m always on the hunt for healthy lifestyle choices that can slow aging, and last week I came across an article about the seemingly ageless Christie Brinkley.

At 69, Brinkley could still pass for 49.

Now some of this is genetics of course — you don’t get to be a supermodel without generous gifts in that area — but when I looked more into Brinkley’s diet, I was like: “Yes, this is for me.”

Diet, I have come to learn, is by far the most important contributor to staying fit late in life.

As I wrote in this piece about how Bruce Springsteen stays cut at 70, his focus has gradually shifted from heavy exercise to dietary discipline.

According to the Boss:

“The biggest thing is diet, diet, diet.

“I don’t eat too much and I don’t eat bad food, except once in a while when I have some fun for myself.

“So I think anybody that’s trying to get in shape, exercise is always important of course, but diet is 90 percent of the game.”

Dietary disaster

At 42, I’m finding this out the hard way.

I’m on a bit of a low right now, coming off some lengthy obligations that have pushed my diet and exercise routines to the wayside for close to a month.

After three consecutive weeks of hotels, endless pizza and wing meals, and little time for exercise, I’m feeling and looking as crappy as I have since before I quit drinking alcohol last summer.

My weight is pushing the all-time high I hit during the last COVID lockdown in early 2022.

It’s not so much that I care how it makes me look — I do benefit from skinny guy genetics which keeps things under control to a certain extent (though being the skinny guy with the pot is not a road I want to explore) — it’s what outer deterioration signals about what’s going on inside.

It does cause me to worry about what would eventually happen were I to just say “Ah screw it, I’m too busy to eat right and work out.”

The demands of full-time work, full-time parenting and coaching, and part-time entrepreneurship are making their pitch for me to give up in that way.

So, I’ve really been making an effort to research how I can tighten up my diet as my exercise time has been reduced.

Recently, I wrote about the 5 healthiest foods in the world and how I’m trying to build them into a new diet.

I’m heartened to learn that both line up pretty well with the ageless Brinkley’s food intake.

The Brinkley Way

It’s not just diet, of course.

Health Choice 1 that keeps Brinkley fit is to lead a very active, outdoorsy lifestyle.

As with Springsteen, she had to adjust her workouts to compensate for her age.

The Boss had to quit running as the stress was too hard on his body, and so too did Brinkley. She also needed a hip replacement after a helicopter crash (!), so that can be somewhat limiting.

But Brinkley hasn’t let any of that stop her from staying outside and active. She evidently spends a ton of time on her bike, tooling around the island where she lives.

She’ll also throw in a spin class here and there when she needs a drill sergeant to push her a bit more. Gardening and other activities keep her moving as well.

But what fascinated me the most was how she eats. I aspire to the same strategy.

The Cheatin’ Vegan

And for Brinkley, a lifetime of following a certain type of plant-based diet has obviously paid off as she approaches age 70.

Here’s what she told The Cut:

“I became a vegetarian when I was about 13. I started reading books right away because I knew that I had to replace the protein and figure out what to do.

“Over the years I’ve been a vegan, I’ve been a macrobiotic, I’ve been a lacto-ovo.

“The one constant since the day I stopped eating meat was that I haven’t eaten any red meat or fowl.”

HOWEVER, unlike most vegans, she will allow herself to cheat a tiny bit when her body is trying to tell her something.

There is something to this for sure.

In my article about the healthiest foods in the world, not a single animal product made the top 10.

She continued:

“Fish has come and gone in my diet, there have just been times when if I didn’t eat a fish, I wouldn’t have anything to eat. If I’m in the Seychelles, everything has got fish tossed into it. It’s natural there.

“I’m sort-of-ish vegan now. Sometimes my body just tells me that I need an egg. But I don’t enjoy them, I kind of feel weird about them.

“The big thing that always gets me is mozzarella cheese. Life is too short. If there’s juicy mozzarella cheese and there’s a piece of pizza under it … why not?”

I love this because I’m finding, as I try to make a gentle shift over to a primarily plant-based diet, that sometimes my body is just screaming for something more.

For example, I recently switched my lunchtime wraps (one turkey, one egg) to a veggie one: guacamole, tomato, lettuce, and cucumber, along with a bowl of oatmeal.

But I found something was missing. One slice of medium cheese was enough to satisfy whatever that craving was, and it’s helped me stay on a primarily veggie path.

So, I think that this Cheatin’ Vegan approach is probably the best way of going about it for me.

I mean, what’s the point of eating a certain way if you totally despise it?

Better to lose a small battle and win the war, right?

Got any tips and tricks of your own for living this way? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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