Better Than My Twenties
There was a version of a woman's life that came pre-written. Home, children, a job that was allowed to be pleasant but never ambitious — teacher, receptionist, secretary. The script ended early and it ended quietly, and nobody expected much of the third act.
That script is gone. What replaced it is something better: we know more now. We have access to research our grandmothers never had, ingredients they couldn't source, and the freedom to build a life around our own health rather than someone else's expectations of it.
I have always taken care of my skin, my hair, my body — that part isn't new. What's changed in my forties is the approach. Less alcohol. Less sugar. Whole foods I cook myself. And, increasingly, science: understanding why something works before I commit to it.
I've spent the last stretch resetting my gut and folding real practices into my everyday routine — not a challenge, not a reset week, just the way I live now. And I'll say the thing out loud: I think I look better at forty-something than I did at twenty-something. Not because of any single product. Because of accumulation.
Here's what's actually in the rotation.
Meal prep, and I mean actually cooking
Not the sad container kind. Prepping means I've already decided what I'm eating, so the decision isn't made for me at 7pm by whatever's closest. Cooking your own food is the single highest-leverage thing on this list, and it's the least glamorous.
Five days of movement, varied on purpose
Yoga, lifting, running, Pilates, barre, strength training. The variety is the point — different modalities recruit different muscles, and the small stabilizing ones only wake up when you change the stimulus.
Lagree Pilates is my current obsession — the Megaformer, slow tempo, constant tension, no rest between movements. It is genuinely humbling and I have never shaken like that in my life. I take it at Sculpt Studio in MD & Carrie’s Pilates Plus in LA, and rotate everything else around it. A body that only ever does one thing gets very good at one thing and quietly neglects everything else.
Steam, sauna, plunge, sun
Heat, then recovery. Regular sauna use has some genuinely good long-term data behind it — cardiovascular in particular. Sun is more nuanced: some is necessary for vitamin D, more is not better, and the difference matters. I take mine early and I take it in moderation.
Supplements — but fewer of them
I don't know about you, but swallowing twenty pills before breakfast makes me nauseous. So I did some reading and started replacing what I could with actual food. Not because supplements are bad, but because a body absorbs nutrients more readily in the context of a meal, and because I'd rather eat something than choke it down.
Which brings me to the recipe.
Recipe | Jewel Box Jellies
If you've seen the jewel-looking thing in my stories — this is it. Fruit suspended in gelatin like stones set in resin. I couldn't call it anything else.
Fun fact: gelatin and collagen are the same protein. Collagen is wound into a tight triple helix your body can't easily break down. Add heat and water and that helix unwinds. What's left is gelatin — the same protein, made usable. That's the entire technique.
The internet is calling it nature's Botox. It isn't; Botox interrupts a nerve signal to a muscle, and this is food. But it is nearly pure protein, unusually rich in glycine and proline — the amino acids your body draws on to build connective tissue — and it has completely replaced my sugar cravings. That's not a small thing.
Ingredients
* Tea of your choice
* Hot water
* 2–4 tablespoons gelatin (adjust based on your preferred firmness)
* Fresh fruit of your choice
Make it
1. Boil one to two cups of water.
2. Steep a tea you love. Clove, a detox blend, something calming. This is where all the flavor comes from, so choose accordingly.
3. Whisk in one to four tablespoons of gelatin. I use beef gelatin — it sets firmer. Start at the lower end and adjust; more gelatin, firmer set.
4. Add fruit. I go with grapes and blueberries for the crunch against the softness.
5. Refrigerate for at least two hours, until fully set. Eat cold.
One more: protein, first thing
I keep Ballerina Farm's Farmer Protein in the house — grass-fed whey with collagen peptides and colostrum, no added sugar. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, depending on the day. Protein early changes how the whole rest of the day goes.
None of this is a transformation. It's maintenance, done attentively, over a long enough period that it starts to look like something. The women before us weren't given the information or the time. We have both. Use them.
xx,
CAA