Have you noticed how “living longer” is starting to feel a little stressful? In this episode, I’m calling out something that’s been sitting heavily on my heart: the rise of longevity as the next version of diet culture. While I deeply believe in living a long, healthy life, I’m starting to see familiar patterns that we can’t ignore.

I break down how industries are already beginning to latch onto this powerful concept and turn it into something fear-driven, profit-focused, and rooted in external validation. From biohacking and supplements to fasting and “anti-aging” messaging, I walk you through how quickly something good is becoming harmful.

Most importantly, I help you reframe what longevity should actually look like, so you can pursue health from a place of empowerment, not fear.  If you are already feeling the pressure to optimize everything about your health or fear what your numbers might say, this episode will completely shift how you think about healthy aging.

Conclusion:

Longevity should be about living well, not chasing youth or perfection. When you focus on becoming the healthiest version of yourself from the inside out, everything else becomes a byproduct and not the goal. Stay aware, stay grounded, and don’t let fear drive your choices.

In This Episode:

00:00 Is longevity becoming diet culture?

01:48 How healthy trends get hijacked

03:35 My biological age wake-up call

05:08 What longevity really means

06:51 Longevity supplements and biohacking hype

09:35 Fasting as a new diet

11:30 The trap of looking younger

17:12 Overcoming pressure to optimize constantly 

20:22 A balanced longevity blueprint

Mentioned in the Episode

Carrie’s Live Event in Nashville in October (2026):  https://www.disruptivenutrition.com/liveevent2026

Episode on the Dangers of Intermittent Fasting: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-dangers-of-intermittent-fasting-women-over/id1507293016?i=1000758417721 

The Consistency Code, Book by Courtney Townley: https://a.co/d/05w9J90N 

Previous Episode With Courtney Townley: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-truth-about-midlife-health-the-real-reason-you/id1507293016?i=1000737242175

Join the waiting list for Carrie’s upcoming book, From Corset to Crown!

Sign up here: https://www.carrielupoli.com/corsettocrown  

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Other Related Episodes: 

Looking for more tips to optimize your health? Listen to these episodes:

• The Dark Side of Keto: What’s Really Happening to Your Body?
• My Labs Say I’m 38 (But I’m 51) — 3 Habits That Reversed My Biological Age

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: Okay, I am calling it right now. Longevity is about to become the next diet culture and no one is talking about it yet. And listen, I love longevity. I talk about it all the time. I literally just shared how my biological age came back younger than my actual age. So this isn't coming from a place of someone who's against longevity.

[00:00:15] Carrie Lupoli: This is coming from someone whose spidey senses are going off because I've seen this pattern before. We take something that's actually good for us, something rooted in health, and then slowly the diet industry, the weight loss industry, the supplement world, the pharmaceutical space, they all latch on. And before you know it, it's no longer about your health.

[00:00:34] Carrie Lupoli: It's about what you can buy, how you need to restrict how you look. And I'm starting to see it happen with longevity. Start subtly. Live longer, look younger, optimize everything. Reverse your age and just like that we've gone from how well you live to how young you look doing it. So the real question is, are we actually pursuing longevity or are we just afraid of dieting and replacing it as another [00:01:00] fear mongering tactic that the weight loss and the diet culture has this believing.

[00:01:07] Carrie Lupoli: Well, my spidey senses are going off diet disruptors because I am sensing a new diet trend and it might surprise you as to why I am being so kind of, uh, on top of this one. What am I talking about? The longevity trend. Wait, what Carrie, you, I, I mean, you just did an episode on how you are 51, but your biological age is 38.

[00:01:36] Carrie Lupoli: Yes. Yes I did. And Carrie, wait. You talk about wanting to become the healthiest version of yourself so you could live as long as possible with a high quality of life. Yes, I do, and I stand by all of that. But my Spidey senses are going off because I have seen this before. We get onto a new trend that people start to latch onto, and then the [00:02:00] diet industry, the weight loss industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the supplement industry, the food industry, it all starts to latch on.

[00:02:09] Carrie Lupoli: They latch on to something that's good and then distort it into something that becomes. Another diet. We've seen this, we've seen this, we've seen this with the gluten-free trend, right? And we, we see all the time, if you go into the grocery store and you see gluten-free, well. Like gummy bears are gluten-free.

[00:02:31] Carrie Lupoli: Well, sometimes, sometimes they're not. But you can make anything sound healthy and all of these industries are going to latch onto our newfound belief system and whatever it is, and then try to sell us a whole bunch of bologna. And we see it with the plant-based, right? So yes, plant-based living. Okay, you're eating [00:03:00] plants, but you're not, if you're actually turning it into a diet trend.

[00:03:05] Carrie Lupoli: I recently did a reel. When I went to the grocery store, I went to Wegmans and I went into this whole plant-based section and I'm like a plant-based section. It was literally processed food over processed food, over processed food. Just touting the idea that this was. Healthier and it turns into something that is around profits over our health and gets us believing things that are just not true and not good for us.

[00:03:32] Carrie Lupoli: And I'm seeing it with the longevity trend. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of longevity. I talk about it all the time. I literally just did a podcast on how I'm 51 and my blood work came back that I was 38. I remember opening the app. I was, I did the function, health blood work, and I opened up the app and I said, your biological age was 30 and eight.

[00:03:52] Carrie Lupoli: Eight. And I was like, oh. Oh my gosh. Last year. My biological age was 43. This was a huge win. It was a [00:04:00] huge victory. It was so incredible. But after I did that episode, I got a ton of questions, a ton of responses. People were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Dah, dah. And then I got a message from somebody that said they really wanted to do their blood work, to really learn their biological age and where things were were, but they were so scared.

[00:04:22] Carrie Lupoli: They were so afraid of what that number would be that they didn't feel like they could actually go ahead and do the blood work to be able to get that number. And it made me think about. Uh, are, are all of our, our, our mindsets about the cultural conditioning, about diet, culture, all the things that I'm trying to disrupt and longevity, I feel like might be turning into that if we're not careful.

[00:04:48] Carrie Lupoli: I always say self-awareness is health, and we just have to be aware that this is happening and then we can be in front of it, but we're not gonna let them jump into our lives. We're not gonna let. The diet, the weight loss industry, the processed food [00:05:00] industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the supplement companies all bamboozle us into buying what they're selling.

[00:05:06] Carrie Lupoli: 'cause it's never about us. It's always about them, right? So at its core longevity, it's this beautiful shift and it gives us a different lens, I think. Really thinking about your longevity. Living as long as you can with a high quality of life to serve your purpose for as long as possible. Becoming the healthiest version of yourself, which is a journey that never ends, is absolutely where we need to be.

[00:05:31] Carrie Lupoli: It adds depth to our health goals. It refocus what we care about. I will always say, when you have deep. Reasons why you wanna get healthy. When you're not focusing on weight and you're focusing on true heart driven beliefs and goals for yourself, you show up differently. We show up differently for someone we like versus someone we're frustrated with.

[00:05:53] Carrie Lupoli: And if we can learn to like and love and have gratitude for our body, we will show up differently for it [00:06:00] so that we can be around for as long as possible. I, I always say I refuse to have my kids have to take care of me when I get older. I wanna be able to put my suitcase up over the, in the overhead compartment.

[00:06:10] Carrie Lupoli: Without help, I wanna be able to kick a soccer ball with my great grandkids when I'm in my eighties and nineties. All of that is true. Because when we are today living, it, it, you know, when we're 80, 90, a hundred years old, it seems, so far away. It, it really allows us to think long term when we talk about longevity, longevity, when it's done right, it's really, truly about deep health.

[00:06:34] Carrie Lupoli: Your metabolic health, your cognitive functioning, your, your strength, your mobility, your emotional wellbeing, your relationships, your financial health, your quality of life over time. And it really, to me, longevity is about not just like how long you live, but how well you live. But here's why my Spidey senses are going off.

[00:06:55] Carrie Lupoli: Is it becoming diet culture 2.0? I get really [00:07:00] nervous when I start to see things become trendy because then that's when the leeches come. That's when people start asking you to open up your wallet because now you have this newfound. Focus and mission, and you wanna do whatever you can to be able to live a longer life.

[00:07:19] Carrie Lupoli: And so watch out because we're gonna start to see more and more and more of that. Ben Johnson, who's one of those, um, longevity experts, says he takes like, I don't know, 400 supplements a day. And when I hear that, I'm like, yeah, that's what we're gonna start to see People spending more and more money on supplements that are promising Longevity.

[00:07:39] Carrie Lupoli: Longevity really is at its core, a health centered movement, but we have to make sure we are in front of the question of, is this quietly becoming the new version of diet culture? I remember seeing this when strength training started to become more popular. My mom never strength trained. [00:08:00] She never knew it was like aerobics.

[00:08:01] Carrie Lupoli: It was those leotards with the tights and the leg warmers. That was the exercise to stay skinny. And then we moved away from the treadmill. We moved away from aerobics and we moved into strength training. And we used to say strong is the new skinny, I think. But it turned it. Carefully Right. Turns into another diet trend.

[00:08:22] Carrie Lupoli: Right. Looking a certain way. I've had so many, like, people will go to a nutritionist and they'll say, uh, I, I wanna tone up that sort of like, code for, I really wanna lose weight and be lean and look a certain way. It, it's the same kind of. Corset that we've all been given how we look, and this is why I am seeing it in the longevity trend right now because it's anti-aging.

[00:08:51] Carrie Lupoli: Everything live longer, look younger, the pressure to optimize every part of our body, but [00:09:00] especially. The way we look. And then we've got this biohacking thing right now, right? Biohackers, biohacking. I love learning about it, and I do some of the things around biohacking, but it, it's like turning into this obsession.

[00:09:14] Carrie Lupoli: I, I've seen a reel before of, um, like a mom on one of those, those vibrating plates with a red light mask on and, uh, like, you know, all the things. And she said her husband isn't worried about her cheating on him. He's more worried about. The next longevity, uh, device that she buys. This is where fasting becomes very justified.

[00:09:39] Carrie Lupoli: I am seeing this everywhere because when women come to us in my private practice, uh, we talk to hundreds and hundreds of women. I am in front of thousands every month, and I hear constantly. I keep hearing about the science of fasting. I keep hearing about the science of fasting, and I did a whole episode on the science of fasting.

[00:09:59] Carrie Lupoli: [00:10:00] And what I am seeing is with the science of fasting, and I'm not gonna get into all that, you can go into my other episode, uh, doesn't pass the litmus test for me of any nutritional approach that I do. Is it based in science designed for my body to thrive? Can I do it for the rest of my life? What I let my children do it?

[00:10:16] Carrie Lupoli: Fasting as a justification for longevity is a way that we justify. Doing another diet because we can say it's about living longer, but we really want to look better, look different, look smaller, and so we take the science that fasting tells us about longevity and cellular rejuvenation and all of that, and then justify it.

[00:10:42] Carrie Lupoli: And I don't fast, and my test results just came out as being 38. There's other ways to get the, the same type of cellular regeneration that doesn't require a fasting. Again, another subject for another day, but do you see how fasting gets justified over a [00:11:00] longevity concept? The supplementation world? It's everywhere.

[00:11:03] Carrie Lupoli: And supplementations are the wild, wild west I own. A pro, I, I, I formulated a supplement, a digestive supplement. I know at the Wild, wild West, we spent so much money getting it certified as, um, NSF certified, which means like professional athletes and, and Olympians can take it. That was a huge, huge, huge expense that most people don't do.

[00:11:24] Carrie Lupoli: So the supplement is the wild, wild west. Your spending increases and it all feels so familiar to me. And then here's this other piece, this other shift that I am seeing, and it literally happened to me yesterday. I was on a Zoom call and I was with a, a team of, um, uh, website developers for, uh, my children's nutritional literacy program that I'm doing.

[00:11:47] Carrie Lupoli: Uh, PFC Pals, just gonna shout that out for a second. Go follow us on Instagram. It's like, I'm super excited about it. I'll do an episode on that. But anyway, I was talking to one of my website developers and I didn't really know him very well. [00:12:00] I had met with a few of his partners and I said something about having kids in college, and he was like, you, you have kids in college?

[00:12:09] Carrie Lupoli: I never would've thought you had kids in college. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, you know, and then I said something about after I turned 50, and he's like, whoa, wait a minute. I really thought you were like my age. And I'm like, well, how old are you? And he said, 40. And I'm like, oh no. And I, and it was like, thanks, thanks, thanks.

[00:12:23] Carrie Lupoli: And I get it. It's a compliment, right? But it's about how I look. To him, it's a subtle shift, right? We we're going from, oh, you look great being code for, oh, you look smaller to, oh wait, you don't look 51, you don't look 70. You don't, and that becomes this code of acceptance, this code of value we're going from be you look thin, you look smaller to oh, you look younger.

[00:12:53] Carrie Lupoli: We're talking about things like ozempic face, right? Like people [00:13:00] losing weight quickly, but having this like sunken in look that makes 'em look older, which then. Defines a judgment. Red light therapy, for example. It's marketed about appearance over recovery, and that's what sells. We're not buying the red lights because of recovery.

[00:13:24] Carrie Lupoli: We're putting it on our face because we want to look younger supplements. Now they're moving into from weight loss into longevity and youth. This is what we're seeing with peptides. We have gone like, okay, the whole GLP one thing is. Has been shifted into being marketed as a peptide and then moving into the whole peptide discussion.

[00:13:48] Carrie Lupoli: There are multiple certifications popping up for nutritionists on peptides as a longevity supplement, or longevity I should say. Uh, like approach [00:14:00] for your clients. And, you know, I'm in all of the nutrition groups and, and you know, all the things. And it's like if you do not. J jump on the peptide bandwagon, then you are missing out.

[00:14:13] Carrie Lupoli: No, you're not missing out on helping people more, the languages you're missing out on revenue. That to me is screaming diet culture that is screaming to me, the weight loss industry and profits over people we've replaced. Like, oh, you've lost weight. Oh, you don't look your age. And it's all still rooted in this external validation.

[00:14:42] Carrie Lupoli: So the deeper question that we have to ask is, are we actually pursuing longevity? Or are we afraid of aging? Because the issue isn't longevity itself. You like, that's what I'm obsessed with right now. It's what we're [00:15:00] attaching to it, and I'm all about our identity. There has to be an identity shift in order for us to truly become the healthiest version of ourselves because we have been stuck in diet culture for so long.

[00:15:10] Carrie Lupoli: This cultural conditioning that the outside matters more than the inside. And I wanna believe that we're moving away from it. And I love the longevity conversation, but again, I'm seeing us go down this familiar path and I want us to pull in before we actually go down it. Because when longevity becomes this identity metric as opposed to.

[00:15:31] Carrie Lupoli: Wait, it will reinforce the fear of aging, just like this woman I was telling you about that responded to me about how afraid she was to actually get her blood work done because she was afraid that her biological age was gonna show to be older than she was. And that's when it really hit me. We've re replaced almost this like biological age number as a, as a [00:16:00] flex.

[00:16:01] Carrie Lupoli: With the scale. We're not talking about the scale as much. There's a lot of like, the scale does not measure health, but your biological age does and, and I kind of flexed. I, I, and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the 38, but you know what? I started thinking about what happens next year if I don't keep regressing in my age.

[00:16:25] Carrie Lupoli: And it brought me right to, when I used to stand on that scale and be happy with a number and then be afraid of if I ate that pizza, if I ate that food, the next time I, I step on the scale. It's not gonna be that same number, it might be more. And then bam, my power is gone, my confidence is gone, and all of my value is in that number.

[00:16:48] Carrie Lupoli: And if my number doesn't regress next year, am I gonna be like embarrassed to tell you guys that? It. It's really getting me thinking about [00:17:00] what it is that we're really doing here. We cannot re reinforce fear in this process of something that innately could be so good for so many. The other piece around this longevity trend that I feel like could be a trap is where it creates pressure to optimize constantly.

[00:17:20] Carrie Lupoli: And we go from this belief that we have to be perfect on a diet, restrict and uh, punish ourselves to then having to be perfect around optimization and not feeling like you can do anything. Like God forbid you have seed oil, or God forbid you eat some sort of processed. Food not because of weight gain, but because it's going to age you faster.

[00:17:43] Carrie Lupoli: We have to recognize a balance, and that's why I always say, what is the healthiest version of you? Do say, think and believe. Food serves your body. Food serves your soul. Where is the soul filling opportunities? I cannot. Ever, ever live my life in a way that I feel like I cannot [00:18:00] have something because of fear.

[00:18:02] Carrie Lupoli: There has to be a balance. We have to also live, I'm worried around this identity trap when it comes to the longevity trend, that it's gonna shift our focus from how our, how we truly feel, which is where it's go like I want it to be. It's like, how do you feel from the inside out? To how you look. Do you see how it's like moving into that direction and then we start chasing control instead of health?

[00:18:28] Carrie Lupoli: If you start like comparing numbers with the biological age and biomarkers and blood work, then what's gonna happen again? We're gonna feel proud when we're good and we're gonna feel anxious when we're not. It's the same thing as the scale. We can't let this happen. So I'm saying this to all of us so we get in front of it.

[00:18:44] Carrie Lupoli: 'cause it's starting to happen to me. And if it's gonna happen to me, it's gonna happen to you. I actually was just talking to one of my family members who's in her thirties and she's going gray and it's not because she's, it's just a genetic thing. And we know that gray hair is very much a [00:19:00] genetic thing and she and I had a whole long conversation about embracing that.

[00:19:05] Carrie Lupoli: And not being afraid of that. And we're seeing that everywhere and this fear of getting older. So I want us to nip it in the bud. I, I see people afraid to get their blood work done, like I said, uh, or like I was doing flexing our biological age. And so I, and I will say I don't, I, I was not flexing to like show off.

[00:19:27] Carrie Lupoli: It was too. Inspire. That was what my goal was. But is that any different than saying to somebody, look, I lost 40 pounds. When we have belief systems that we start to uncover as disempowered beliefs, what we can do. Always is recognize what's underneath all of it, what's driving it, and it's almost always fear.

[00:19:53] Carrie Lupoli: It really is. And that's one of the things that we need to look for when with any new trend, but especially with this [00:20:00] one, not operating out of fear. Or operating from ego-driven goals, whereas somebody says, you look younger, you feel validated. That is what we have to be careful of. If longevity becomes about looking young instead of truly being well, then we've completely missed the point.

[00:20:23] Carrie Lupoli: So here's what I believe longevity should look like. Okay. I think it needs to be balanced, not perfection. I think aesthetics are like a side effect, just like weight loss is a byproduct of truly showing up for yourself, becoming the healthiest version of yourself. Recognizing that blood sugar is our body's love language when we go after health.

[00:20:47] Carrie Lupoli: Weight loss is a byproduct. When we go after true longevity for heart driven reasons versus ego-driven reasons, the aesthetics becomes a side effect, but it can't be the goal. We can't be [00:21:00] chasing youth. I actually have always said, I don't love the word anti-aging because anti-aging, age aging sounds like we are anti, we are against, we are rebelling on aging.

[00:21:11] Carrie Lupoli: That's not what it is. It's about aging with vitality. And embracing our age, not denying it. Like how many of us are like I, I'm turning 39 for like the 20th year in a row. We're, it's not about chasing youth, but building strength for later life. Being proud of that because real, real, real longevity is independence at 80 years old, mental clarity at 90 years old and living fully now.

[00:21:42] Carrie Lupoli: Like I want us to live fully now, not just extending later. Like there has to be a balance of living our lives today in a way that feels balanced and healthy and right while also focusing on the [00:22:00] extension later, not giving up everything now, like this is what we did with diets, right? We give up everything.

[00:22:05] Carrie Lupoli: We deprive, we restrict, we punish all for the goal of this magic number. And I know, I remember. Years and years ago when I met my magic number, I wasn't any happier. And I, and I was like, what, what? I didn't, I, I like when you have to give up so much to get something that didn't actually fulfill you, you're like, what are you doing?

[00:22:25] Carrie Lupoli: And I don't want us to be at like 90 or a hundred years old going, oh my gosh, I gave up so much of my life. Like, there's gotta be a balance here. So think about this. Courtney Townley, the author of The Consistency Code, uh, such a phenomenal book. We had her on our podcast. She's actually a keynote speaker at my live event in Nashville in October, uh, of this year, 2026 live event.

[00:22:48] Carrie Lupoli: Like I want you there. I'm so excited about my first live event. It might be my only one because it's so much work, but I digress. She actually said, picture yourself at 90 years old. What would your 90-year-old self [00:23:00] tell you? And I've thought about that a lot. Like my 90-year-old self is telling me like, don't stress about the things that are not actually going to matter in your life.

[00:23:13] Carrie Lupoli: Focus on your health. Focus on the things that are going to allow you to stay alive, living with a high quality of life later. But we can't obsess around it, and it certainly can't be around the ego-driven goals and wanting acceptance of others. It's not about being 30 forever. It's about becoming a strong, capable, powerful, 70-year-old, 80-year-old, 90-year-old, a hundred year old.

[00:23:41] Carrie Lupoli: At the end of the day, it's always gonna be about why you're doing what you're doing. Always. We could have 50 people at the gym and 50 different reasons why, and 49 of them being very unhealthy. So this longevity trend, don't just blanket it under this [00:24:00] umbrella, it's longevity. We, because be careful. If you're not really aware of your thoughts and your beliefs, you're gonna turn those actions into diet culture.

[00:24:13] Carrie Lupoli: The same systems that created diet, culture, diet, pharma, food industries. They're just gonna repackage it and sell it back to you as longevity. Don't let that happen. So I'd love to know your thoughts on this. Comment below, make sure you subscribe. Share this to me is about a new generation of thinking, really going into every aspect of our life, focused on becoming the healthiest version of ourselves, not the smallest version, not the youngest version, but truly the healthiest version.

[00:24:49] Carrie Lupoli: And that comes from the inside out. So go ahead, subscribe, share. So excited. We'll see you next [00:25:00] time.