At 52, Jennifer Aniston is just as jubilant and lively as she was in her Rachel Green days. And she doesn’t credit that to a particular procedure or retinol cream (in fact, she’s not a fan of the skincare ingredient). Instead, she says her youthfulness comes from a mindset—the desire to stay healthy.

As long as Aniston feels good, age really has no meaning, which is something she learned from her mother.

“My mother was always so healthy and beautifully fit when I was a kid. I’ve always had that as my foundation,” the actress recently told Vogue. That meant she didn’t eat junk food as a kid, and when she got older, she tried pizza and Wonder Bread to “rebel,” but quickly learned that her mom’s food choices made a difference.

“I started to look at my mother, and my grandmother, and the elders in my life. They didn’t have the knowledge we have now about ingredients and exercise. Yes, it’s great to be fit and look great… but it’s about your cells, your muscles, so we can grow old and thrive,” she said.

To her, aging gracefully means energy and health fueled by nutrition, exercise, and an inquisitive mind. “I’m at the age where I’m more interested than ever in my health, and my life is thriving, but according to society this is when I should be going out to pasture. No, no, no,” she explained. “Youth is wasted on the young, I get it. But I want to keep putting information in my head that’s going to inspire me.”

In the end, her mom taught her “this is about longevity”—the privilege of growing old. “It’s just sort of been a theme in my life: to enjoy the age I am and not look at aging as a negative, but as the privilege that it is,” she said. “We all age!”

Say it again for the people in the back, Jen!