The body you will have at sixty is being built by what you do this month.

Nothing dramatic happens at forty. It is simply the year the arithmetic of the previous twenty becomes visible, in the knees, the waistline, the blood pressure reading you keep postponing.

The good news runs in the same direction. Strength built now compounds quietly. People who walk, sleep and eat reasonably through their thirties are recognisably different at seventy, and they did nothing heroic.

You are not merely slowing decline; you are making deposits. Muscle, sleep and ordinary habit are the only pension the body accepts, and it does not take late payments.