Loida Nicolas Lewis: Age gracefully without botox but with inner peace and joy
During a book tour in the US, Loida Nicolas Lewis—author, lawyer, Filipino-born American businesswoman—walked into a roomful of mostly women who asked with raised eyebrows and a collective gasp, “What? Is she really 80?”
Turning 84 this year, Loida hears that flattering compliment often enough, which inspired her to write her second book, Look Younger When You’re Older (after her Why Should Guys Have All the Fun?, an Asian American story of love, marriage, motherhood, and running a billion-dollar empire).
Loida is back home from her second home, New York City, to launch her second book, never forgetting and forever cherishing how her life’s journey began in a humble town in Sorsogon filled with heartwarming childhood memories, like playing patintero under the glow of the full moon and hearing the chiming of the church bell at 6 p.m. for the Angelus, when the world stops and a whole community silently kneels down in prayer.
An empowered kid
“We were five siblings—Danny, Jay, me, Mely, and Francis—and Papa, who lost his father when he was only 12, had a furniture business in Manila, Nicfur,” Loida fondly relates. “Papa was rather strict with his first two boys, but when it came to me, it was todo bale (you can do anything). So I and my sister Mely were given a sense of empowerment—Papa wanted us to excel.”
Loida belonged to an upper middle-class family. “Our house was on the second floor with a botica on the ground floor and a lumberyard at the back,” she recalls. “Everything was connected: recreation center, bowling alley, billiards, pool, and the Loida Theater which Papa named after me when I was only seven, so people would already know me by the time I entered politics, which Papa really intended for me.”
But fate had something else planned for Loida. She never intended to marry, like her idol, Senator Helena Benitez, the trailblazing head of the Philippine Women’s University, until she met the love of her life and soulmate, Reginald Lewis, the first African American to own a Fortune 500 company. Having lost him when they were both just 50, she took on the formidable task of solely raising their two daughters, Leslie and Christina, and running her husband’s billion-dollar business.
After the sudden passing of her husband whose autobiography, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?, she went out to lovingly promote, and as the years turned into decades, she thought to herself, “Why not write my own memoir?”
Then she asked herself, “Why don’t I share my age-defying beauty ‘secrets’ so that women, and men, too, could look and feel younger than their chronological age, without undergoing Botox, fillers, surgeries, and other expensive cosmetic procedures?”
A mind-lift, not a face-lift
Look Younger When You’re Older, published and exclusively distributed by Anvil Publishing, Inc., is a compilation of Loida Nicolas Lewis’ “own personal habits and practices that go from the physical to the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of how I live my life.”
At the recent book launch of Look Younger When You’re Older at National Book Store, Shangri-La Plaza Mall, Xandra Ramos-Padilla, president and publisher of Anvil Books, said, “We’re proud to present to Filipino readers a book that feels both personal and universally relevant. Loida Nicolas Lewis reminds us that aging is not something to fear, but a chapter to embrace with intention, wisdom, and joy. She is truly inspiring and this book invites us to take nuggets of her wisdom and practice them in our everyday lives. This Philippine edition reflects Anvil’s commitment to publishing Filipino stories that inspire better, fuller lives.”
So, expect to be inspired by this extraordinary woman as she shares her life-changing secrets.
“My morning routine includes my Zen practice,” she tells us in an exclusive interview at the Rizal Library in Rockwell, Makati. “Just counting your breaths, meditating, reflecting, just being quiet. It’s that quiet time when you straighten your life, when you’re quiet and God can talk to you, and you can talk to God.”
Because for Loida, often, all you need is a mind-lift and not a face-lift.
Since turning 65, Loida has been skipping breakfast and just eating whatever fruit is in season.
Depending on her usually busy schedule for the day, lunch—cooked by her personal Filipina chef—consists of fish, maybe a sinigang, a tinola or fried sapsap.
Coffee is a no-no since she had acid reflux; no soda and alcohol, too—just tea or salabat.
Dinner is usually before 7 p.m. and never after 8. Dinner is always light, like soup. “If you eat beef, and you’re about to go to sleep, it’s like a ton of bricks on your stomach.”
Loida religiously takes her supplements and just one maintenance pill for hypertension.
Loida shares a lot more beauty/health secrets, and tips from her assorted “tribes”—friends who look younger in their 80s, or were able to put a twinkle on their wrinkle.
All told, according to Loida, what really makes a woman beautiful is what she is inside. Is she unkind? Is she a gossipmonger? Is she sympathetic? Is she compassionate? Is she greedy? Is she generous?
Because for Loida Lewis, aging may wrinkle the body but not the soul.
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Look Younger When You’re Older is available via National Book Store and Anvil Publishing’s official online stores and at select National Book Store branches.
