On Active Aging. How to Transform Your Fitness at Any Age According to Dr. Vonda Wright
Show Snapshot:
Thinking about upping your fitness game? Today’s guest, Dr. Vonda Wright, an elite sports doctor and leading authority on active aging, shares a simple framework that can dramatically transform your health at any age and any fitness level. Learn more about the five pillars for a healthy, fit, joyful, and vibrant life. Plus, the fascinating science behind the body’s wondrous ability to regenerate and retain vibrancy. And bonus - learn a fitness hack that will change the way you brush your teeth. Seriously.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. How to lock in more active aging.
2. The five pillars of health.
3. The simple type of exercise that is a bone health superhero.
4. Why aging does NOT need to equal decline.
5. How to transform your fitness at any age, any fitness level.
6. Why modeling healthy, active aging is a generational imperative.
7. Reframing fitness as fun versus a chore.
8. Ideas for exciting your spouse, partner, or family about joining your fitness transformation journey.
Quotable:
I want people to recognize that there is never an age or skill level where they cannot dramatically transform their health.
You do not have to be a lifetime athlete to transform your health. But at 50, we must do it differently than we did when we did it when we were 20. We must harness the wisdom of our age.
Snackable Smarts:
Did you know that 70% of aging is determined by your lifestyle choices and only 30% by genetics? And when we think about the fact that we get to choose our lifestyle, this means that our future is incredibly hopeful.
A common misconception about aging is that we are destined to a decline from the vitality of youth to an inevitable slide to frailty. But here's the kicker. Even the 30%of aging that doesn't seem like it's under your control (because it's due to inherited genes), even that 30% can be modified by behaviors through something called epigenetics. Every gene in our body is programmable by the choices we make in our lifestyle. So, we can turn genes on and off by eating broccoli instead of French Fries, by running, instead of sitting in a chair.
We can choose to prioritize the 5 pillars of health: exercise, nutrition, sleep, remaining engaged in life, work, new experiences, and detoxifying our bodies.
There is never an age or skill level where you cannot dramatically transform your health. So, if you find yourself still sitting on the couch, or maybe you never got up, you can still completely transform your health.
You can build and maintain lean muscle mass and improve bone health until your 70’s through smart choices.
If you can do weight-bearing exercise, running, jumping, leaping off the tall buildings in a single bound, that is better for your bones. But if you can't do that, build lean muscle mass--because every muscle attaches to a bone and as it pulls the bone, the bone becomes healthier. Impact exercise and building lean muscle mass give your bones longer survivability. Both can be as effective in maintaining bone density as factors such as age, gender, or an inherited predisposition to osteoporosis. Exercise is a powerful force.
We have a health crisis in the U.S. Today, we have the first generation of children who are going to live shorter lives than their parents because of the general population's health. It's so important for 50-year-olds (and older) to get on the bandwagon of living better because children will do what they see their parents doing. Our health is going to continue to affect the health of generations two or three behind us. So, it's our responsibility. We're in the seat of power right now. It is our responsibility to change the health of this country.
To be fit at 40, 50, and beyond we need to focus on F.A.C.E. -- the four components of fitness: flexibility, aerobic exercise, carrying loads (like groceries or grandchildren), and equilibrium – exercises that hone balance so we don’t fall and break our hips.
Word of Mouth. Vonda Suggests:
I would love for people to keep track of me on social media at @DrVondaWright. I share ideas on living longer, pivoting to resilience, and how to build physical and mental hardiness after 50. Every day, I share content to remind you that the future is bright.
More Resources:
Dr. Vonda Wright’s website
Vonda’s podcast: Hot for Your Health
Vonda on Instagram
Vonda on Facebook
Vonda’s non-profit: Women’s Health Conversations
Vonda’s books:
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (00:03):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50, who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host. Katie Fogarty.
Aging is a natural, inevitable part of being human, but does aging have to make you... old? Today, I'm joined by a leading authority on active aging, who knows that it is possible to live a healthy, fit, joyful, and vibrant life at any age. So, if better fitness and vibrant aging is a 2021 goal, settle in and listen up. Dr. Vonda Wright is a double-boarded orthopedic surgeon, elite sports doctor, author, speaker, and innovator who specializes in optimizing personal and professional performance at every age. She's the first-ever chief of sports medicine at the Northside Health System in Georgia and has written four books on topics surrounding active aging and fitness. She's the founder of the non-profit women's health conversations, which ignited a national conversation on women's health. And is the host of the Hot for Your Health podcast. She is married to two-time Stanley Cup champion Peter Taglianetti and lives in Atlanta with their blended family of six children. Welcome, Vonda.
Dr. Vonda Wright (01:11):
Thank you so much for having me today.
Katie (01:13):
I love that when I found you on the internet, as one does, and got on the phone with you, that you were a yes. And that you said you want to talk about active aging. I'm so excited. I got on your website. I spent a little time to prep before this conversation. And I want to ask you about a statistic that jumped out at me. Right on your homepage, it says 70% of aging is determined by your choices and only 30% by genetics. So, talk to me about this. What are the choices that we can make to lock in more active aging?
Vonda (01:44):
You know, I love those statistics because 70%, due to the lifestyle choices we make every day, means that our future is incredibly hopeful. You know, sometimes we think that there is a decline from the vitality of youth down some inevitable slide to frailty, which dooms us. But the fact that 70% of our health and aging is due to our choices like this. Do you pay attention to the five pillars of health? What are those? Well, we need to move. I think the word is out that exercise is good for you, but it's not just the blood-curdling exercise. You're sweating up a hill. You hate every step of it. It's every movement you make adds up to better health. There's smart nutrition. We can choose what we put into our body. You know, we only get one body, right? But the good news about it is that it is dynamically turning over every day. Even our skeleton becomes new every 10 years and we can affect how we build a better skeleton. It's the company we keep. It's the amount of sleep we have. It is the way we detoxify our body by avoiding bad things.
All of those choices add up to a better future, but here's the kicker. You know, that 30%, that doesn't seem like it's under your control? Because it's due to the genes you inherit from your parents? Well, even the 30% can be modified by behaviors through something called epigenetics. Every gene in our body is programmable by what? By the choices, we make in our lifestyle. So, we can turn genes on and off by eating broccoli instead of French Fries, by running, instead of sitting in a chair like a mushroom. So, there's really no excuse for taking control of our aging process. And you can hear even in this very short amount of time, how excited I get about the whole thing.
Katie (03:57):
Yeah. I feel optimistic myself actually. Because when you said that there is this sense that there's this inevitable, you know, slipping, sliding down to frailty. I'm like, "I believe that." I definitely feel like I've absorbed the marketing messages that you're eventually going to fall apart. So, I personally am excited to hear that I can control this in some way. So, it's diet, it's nutrition, it's exercise. I am astonished to learn that we get a new skeleton every 10 years. That's mind-blowing! How do we take care of our bones? And like, make sure that we're doing the right thing with this new skeletal system?
Vonda (04:38):
Well, you know, when I started this work, I don't know, a long time ago, back in 2005. I really started doing my research on it. I didn't want just to be another opinion in the media, right? I wanted to actually do the original research that would prove that we can be healthy, vital, active, and joyful throughout our lifespan. So, I started a series of original research pieces looking at what age do we really slow down? Can we build and maintain our lean muscle mass? What happens to our brain? And what two studies that I did actually looked at bone density. And I study all kinds of master athletes, but a lot of my work has been done in a group called the Senior Olympians. You must be 50 and older. You must win your state competition. And there are 18 events in what literally looks like an Olympics every two years. And when I studied that group, I found that number one, they maintained their bone density into their eighties, which is not what we see in the general population. And number two, when I really dug deep to say, "Well, what does it actually take?" Well, in summary, it takes bashing your bones. So, what does that mean?
Katie (05:51):
Tell me. I'm like, “What?!"
Vonda (05:58):
If you can do weight-bearing exercise; running, jumping, leaping off the tall buildings in a single bound, that is better for your bones. But if you can't do that, building lean muscle mass—because every muscle attaches to a bone and it pulls the bone is better—so, it's better to have impact exercise. And if you can't, it's better to build lean muscle mass. And your bones will have much longer survivability, such that impact exercise can be as effective in maintaining bone density as have, can have an effect like our age, our gender, whether we have an inherited predisposition to osteoporosis. So, it's a powerful force.
Katie (06:52):
What's an impact exercise? So, is that like jump roping? What would qualify?
Vonda (06:57):
Yeah. Running, jump roping. Anything we were going to land hard, skipping up and down the steps. Now things like bike riding and swimming are not necessarily impact, but you know what? Those are going to build lean muscle mass for you. So, impact exercises, just what it sounds like, jump off of something, jump up and down, jump rope, run, walk, climb the stairs. All those things are fabulous.
Katie (07:28):
And those are all easy to do and relatively inexpensive. You don't need a Peloton if you can just walk and jog and hit the ground. So, this is something that, that should be easy to do and I definitely feel like I've drunk the Kool-Aid that as you get older your bones fall apart, and this is something that's hard to prevent. I mean, you have been writing and talking about healthy and active aging for your whole career, but you've written a number of books. Do you feel like the message is getting out of that? That people understand that aging is not necessarily a decline? That you can age vibrantly?
Vonda (08:05):
I think the message is getting out for two reasons. Number one, because all the Hollywood starlets are aging themselves. I can name off a whole list of people who may be listening to this podcast, that when they were young, no one paid attention to it. But as people decided that they were not going to go quietly into this good night… Which is me, I am holding up my hand, I am not, I'm going to rage, rage against the dying of the light. Everybody is thinking this way now. So, of course, we're powerful people. We're going to seek out ways to stay healthy, vital, active, joyful.
But another more serious academic reason that there's been this thought that aging is this decline. When you look at studies of disease, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and you look at population studies, the way those studies are done is they just take a group of people. Well, what do we know? In a certain age demographic. I'll give you an example. There's a study called the Health ABC. It followed a group of 70-year-olds, just a cross-section, men and women, of 70-years-old. And followed them for a group of time. Now, when you look at a cross-section of Americans in general, what do you see? You see people who don't eat well. You see people who do not get off the couch. 68% of Americans do not do any form of mobility a day, other than moving around to do their activities of daily living. So, if we're going to study those people and expect to get a picture of aging, the picture of aging we get is a picture of sedentary living. It is not a picture of what we are capable of. If we continue to maintain mobility, smart nutrition, social groups, detoxify our bodies. It is a picture of what happens when you sit around eating bad food, like a mushroom, right? So, until we started really looking at it with my studies and many other researchers do it now, we didn't know what we were capable of, but thank goodness. The word is getting out.
Katie (10:13):
That makes so much sense. I lived in Japan for two years after college, I was teaching English. And let me tell you about mobile people who age vibrantly. I mean it was not uncommon to see very, very senior citizens. You know, it was silvered hair and wrinkled skin who were, cross-legged sitting on the ground doing Tai Chi that were in positions that most American 50-year-olds could not fold themselves in now.
So, you know, you can have different types of aging. And I feel like our culture here in the US doesn't well, I guess I should sort of walk that back a little bit. Because I was going to say our culture doesn't really appreciate people as they age, but as you said, we do have human unicorns, like J-Lo or Halle Berry, who are these smoke shows at 50, and seem to be aging backward. So, we do have people that are aging really vibrantly. We have as you said, the senior Olympian, so there is some of it going on, but I don't feel like it's fully baked into pop culture yet.
Vonda (11:17):
I'd have to agree with you because when I started doing this work, not only was I a unicorn within orthopedic surgery, I mean, all my fellow orthopods were thinking, "What are you doing? There are no bones when you talk about aging, right? What's wrong with you?" But also it was just a little too early. But even in the last decade, we're getting better and better. But when you look at the statistics of what's happening—and I love that you're doing this podcast and that I'm doing the work I'm doing—because the more of us that are talking about it, the more normalized healthy aging will be, because this country is on the brink of health demise.
We have the first generation of children who are going to live shorter lives than their parents, which is the people we're raising right now, because of the general population's health. And the reason it's so important for 50-year-olds and older to get on the bandwagon of living better is because children will do what they see their parents doing. And if they see their parents sitting around living unhealthy, of course, that's what they're going to do. They want to be like their parents. But as important, we know that the health of great-grandparents is also very significantly affecting the health of their grandchildren. So, people in their fifties are either raising teenagers, have 20-year-olds, or maybe they're beginning to be grandparents. And so, our health is going to continue to affect the health of generations two or three behind us. So it's our responsibility. We're in the seat of power right now. It is our responsibility to change the health of this country.
Katie (13:00):
So fascinating. You know, you've crystallized something that I agree with when I hear you say it, but I've never actually really thought about that. And I do feel that I watched a mother who grew up jogging and staying fit. And now as a 76-year-old, she'd been doing pilates and meditation. And when COVID ended all that, she seamlessly switched over to Zoom meditation and Zoom yoga. She's really modeled being active, staying fit, but beyond just being fit being connected to her community. She volunteers, she's engaged politically, she's engaged in technology and I've really seen that. And I feel like, hopefully, I'm sending that same signal to my kids. I'm not sure. I mean, I will cop to having been like a 15-year-smoker in my early life, but by the time I had kids and hit my thirties, and forties, and fifties, I love yoga. I love playing tennis. I play platform tennis. I'm no longer a smoker, haven't been for 20 years. So, you're right. We have to model this kind of behavior for our kids.
You've written four books. One of them is younger than eight weeks, which is a very cool-looking book that you teamed up with Prevention Magazine to write about. You kind of reversing the effects of aging at a cellular level, but for our listeners right now, who are really lit up about getting fit, you know, this is the time of year where everyone's excited, they're coming out of the gate. They're hoping for a better 20, 21 than we had. If you were to synthesize for them sort of two to three actions you wish they would be taking for their health, what would those be?
Vonda (14:41):
So first, I want people to recognize that there is never an age or skill level where they cannot dramatically transform their health. So, if you find yourself still sitting on the couch, or maybe you never got up, you can completely transform your health. And I'll give you an example. When I was at the University of Pittsburgh, I decided I needed to motivate people to change their health. And I started these classes called Start. We met Thursday and Saturday nights, we invited the community. It was 45-minutes of calisthenics for lack of a better word. And then we would all go out for a walk-run. And the first class I had, the average body mass index was 51 and people were all in their middle ages. And so, what that tells you is that if their body mass index was 51, on average, there was to put it in a positive light an exceptional opportunity to transform their health.
Katie (15:45):
So, what's the optimal body mass index? I don't even know that I know that.
Vonda (15:49):
Oh, well, you know body mass index is not an extremely accurate way to quantify height and weight although we use it all the time. So, 35 is way too high, 25 is considered to be healthy.
Katie (16:08):
So, 51… 51 is a problem.
Vonda (16:12):
It was about 150 pounds of extra weight.
Katie (16:15):
Whoa.
Vonda (16:15):
But what did these people do? They met me every Thursday and Saturday. And in the course of three months time, they went from really not being able to hold any kind of plank, no sit up, not being able to walk for a long time. By the end, we're all capable of doing a two-minute plank. They all were capable of running and walking a 5k. And that was the graduation of this program was doing a walk-run 5k. And do you know what this did? It showed people that no matter where they started, there was hope for the future. So, that's the first message I want people to listen. You do not have to be a lot a lifetime athlete to transform your health. But number two, at 50, we must do it differently than we did when we did it when we were 20, we must harness the wisdom of our age.
Katie (17:07):
I like that. I like where this is going.
Vonda (17:11):
I tell people in my book Fitness After Forty, which is the first book that I…now it's 40, 50, 60, and beyond. So, it's not just for those young kids in the 40s. But I call it facing your future and what it's that dance? Whereas the four components of fitness that we must pay attention to, we need not just run out the door and work out so hard that the next week we can't move. Because we won't go out and do it again.
So, number one: “F" is for flexibility. We need to spend 15-minutes a day, stretching, dynamically and statically every muscle group. And we just need to hold it for 30 seconds. We get most of the benefit of a stretch in the first 30 seconds.
Katie (17:57):
Wow.
Vonda (17:57):
So, what would that mean? The calf stretch, hold it for 30 seconds. The quad stretch, 30 seconds. Every stretch, 30 seconds. And it doesn't take that long and it keeps you limber because what happens with age is the bonds that tighten up our ligaments and our muscles get stronger actually. And if we don't stretch them back out, we're much more prone to energy injury. And it's what makes us shuffle as old people and who wants to do that? Right?
Katie (18:25):
Not me.
Vonda (18:25):
So "F" is flexibility. “A” is aerobic. Just get your heart rate up. I don't care if you run. I don't care if you climb stairs, just get your heart rate up to about 75 to 80% of your maximum. 20-minutes every day.
Number three is "C." F. A. C is carry a load. I purposely did not call this weightlifting because I don't think weight machines are very good for any of us. They only exercise one muscle at a time. And what we need to do is functional lifting. So, maybe that means picking up your 30-pound granddaughter and carrying around the house. Maybe it means doing free weight circuits, which is frankly how I advise people to build lean muscle mass. So "C." Carry a load about three times a week.
And “E”. F-A-C-E is equilibrium and balance. Our neuromuscular pathways that connect our brain to our muscles degrade starting at about age 20, such that by the time we're 70, many of us just fall over from a standing position and break our hips, which is a disaster. So, we can retrain our balance by standing on one leg. When we brush our teeth every morning, just practice it every day. And that's a perfect place to do it. Because if you topple over, you can grab the sink. But we need to be able to balance on one leg.
Katie (19:51):
I love that! I'm sorry. I'm like getting up tomorrow and brushing my teeth on one leg. And I can see Dave, our sound engineer nodding and he's doing it too. Because I, several years ago, playing tennis, sprained an ankle and had to go to physical therapy to kind of build that back up again. And let me tell you, standing on one leg is not easy. And I'm amazed to discover that this begins to degrade at 20. Because I have 31 years... I'm 51. I should have been doing this for a while. But I love that. It's so simple. It's so actionable. You can incorporate some of this into your everyday living. And still remain fit. You don't have to be a gym rat to do what you need to do.
Vonda (20:30):
You do not. You're so right about that.
Katie (20:33):
Vonda, how old are you? And how do you practice active aging in your own life?
Vonda (20:37):
Well, I'm 53 and I'm about to turn 54. And our family is really conscientious about the five of health. And we are a multi-generational family in this house. We've moved to Atlanta in the last few years. So, I brought my 81-year-old parents with me. And I learned to be this way from my parents. My dad has run every day of my life. And aside from a little shorter and a lot less hair, you know, his muscles look about the same because he's been active every day. My mother is the same way. She's squatted down the other day to clean up something that was on the floor. And I thought to myself, "How is that 81-year-old woman…” she was literally like those Tai Chi people you were describing, “How does that happen?” So, we are mobile people. We're very active. Some days I run, some days I don't. But every day, I am moving nonstop from 6:00 AM to about 9:00 PM. Because surgery is hard, physical labor. So, we're very careful about what we eat. Green, leafy, lean protein. You may find cookies on our counter, but that is not the majority of our food. And there's certainly no fluorescent food in our house.
Katie (21:53):
I love that. Fluorescent food. That's hilarious. I'm taking that on.
Vonda (21:58):
There's nothing natural about fluorescent food. Unless you're a poison dart frog or something. But we're just, you know, my husband is an ex-pro athlete. I preach this gospel every day. And you know what, back to the point of your children learning it, our blended family of six children, all of the older children were athletes. And the youngest, this poor 13-year-old has been inundated with eating broccoli, drinking only water, being mobile. And so she, it's now a part of her inculturation. It's not weird to her. It's just the way she was raised. Right?
Katie (22:37):
Absolutely. Is your husband into it, you said he's a pro athlete. Is he into active aging as well? Is he's still mobile? It's hard to keep doing pro hockey after a certain age.
Vonda (22:48):
Well, you know what he's done with the intense two-a-day workouts and you know, and for a while, he was done moving at all. But he has gotten really into walking the golf course. You know, you can burn about 1,900 calories walking with your golf clubs every day. So, he's very active. He will tell you himself, he's done with the two-a-day, high-intensity workouts. He did that for about 40 years of his life, but he's still very active. And he looks that way.
Katie (23:20):
And you know, it's interesting because I also saw on your website that women make the bulk of the healthcare decisions for their families. That makes so much sense to me because I feel like I make the bulk of all decisions for the family.
Vonda (23:32):
Well, it all of that, I didn't want to put that on the agenda.
Katie (23:35):
But it's so true. And women, you know, really are...and I don't want to not give men their due, but some men are very active or maybe are making their own decisions. So, I don't want to make this just about men. But what would you recommend to somebody who wanted to encourage their partner—whether it's a man or a woman—to become more active if they're not prioritizing physical fitness? What are a handful of recommendations or stats that might ignite their willingness to get? Because I'm sure there are people listening, thinking, "Gosh, I wish, my partner, I wish my wife would take this on with me." What would you say?
Vonda (24:12):
Well, I think that one of the important attitudinal things to do is to reframe being healthy and fit and even exercise as a pleasure and not punishment, right? We think, "Oh my God, I've got to go out and exercise. If you don't exercise, you're going to be dead. Or you're going to be fat or whatever." What people use to encourage their spouses is usually very negative. But I think if we pivot it to say, "How can we spend more time together?" Or "I'm going to leave the dishes on the table because I need to take a walk with you.” Or if we do this for X amount of days, then we get to do this fun activity together." Or frankly, sometimes both people need to compromise to find an activity that both will tolerate, right? Because my husband is never going to run because he's got two total hips, but he and I can go out and play golf together. I do not have one minute of interest in golf, but if it means I go out there and I spend some time together and we're both moving, then that's a compromise I'm willing to make. So, I think the most important thing is reframing it as pleasure. Maybe honestly, do you know that, okay, I'm going to say this? You may have to edit this out, but you know, the penis is a barometer of health? And if they’re healthy, that's going to work for both of you?
Katie (25:37):
We're not editing that out. That is the biggest piece of wisdom. I mean, tell your husband...
Vonda (25:42):
It’s a macula organ. You need a good blood supply. You need vessels that are not clogged up.
Katie (25:47):
I love that. Everyone needs to take that on and share that with their spouse. That's cool. No, that makes so much sense. I love, first of all, the idea that connects... it's beyond fitness really. It's connecting it to activities that you enjoy. Be it golf. Be it tennis. Be it sex. The ability to be able to do all these things that give you pleasure, and keeping yourself healthy.
I think we talked a little bit about this on our pre-call where the idea of fitness. I think when people hear fitness, they start to think of ...in their mind, they instantly picture Jane Fonda or one of these stretchy, bendy women on Instagram. But fitness is really about being able to get out of your chair. The ability to carry your own groceries. The ability to live your life in the way that you want to. So, you have to be putting the time in, particularly now in order to continue to this sort of vibrant life.
You know, it's interesting. Because of COVID, I stopped doing Bikram yoga, which I miss terribly. I absolutely adore it. I came to it late in life, but I really love it and miss it. And so, I started playing platform tennis this winter where I am outside doing the paddle tennis. And it's hard on your back. It's a lot of jouncing, it's definitely high-impact. And so, I've had to resurrect my yoga. I do it before and after. So, I find myself being willing to take the steps to do my 10-minutes of yoga warm-up, and my 20-minute yoga cool-down, in order to make my body function. So, I think that's so smart to find an activity that you love, that gives you pleasure, and you'll be inspired than to be fit so you can do it.
Vonda (27:32):
That's right. And you know, you're so smart to incorporate cross-training like that. Because when you look at the quote "old athletes" like Tom Brady or people who have lasted into their pro careers into their forties, they did not, they do not train the same way as they did when they were 20, they cross-train. They spend a lot of time on body recovery. So, I mean, you're just so smart. See, look at you harnessing the power of the wisdom of your age.
Katie (28:07):
The wisdom... I did start this conversation by saying I was a smoker for 15-years, so that was not smart. I got over it. I got over it. I grew up in New York City. New York City private school kids all smoked. I don't know... It was a thing but that was, that was in the past. That was in the...
Vonda (28:26):
You quit so long ago, you’ve got new lungs right now. Isn't that the beauty of regeneration of your body?
Katie (28:33):
Thank you so much for saying that. That makes sense to me. I guess if we're having a new skeleton set, we should have new lungs as well too. And I love thinking about our bodies as being regenerative versus decrepitude.
We're nearing the end of our time here. I'm so intrigued by your career. You've done very different things. You're an author. You're a surgeon. You're an orthopedist. You're a speaker. You're a researcher. Have you always been interested in aging? Or is this something that you came to as you yourself aged?
Vonda (29:08):
No, I got interested in active aging when I first witnessed, I mentioned them before, the Senior Olympians. Well, number one, remember my dad's like "Mister-I-Exercise-Every-Day-of-My-Life." So, it was natural to me. But then I saw my first Senior Olympics where you have to be a 50-year-old to compete. And it's funny to hear the 60 and 70- year-olds saying, "Those whippersnappers out there. They know they shouldn't be here. They're too young." But you know, and then seeing 103-year-old bowler, who's bowling in his eighties, whipping around an eight-pound ball and, or the track athletes who are more ripped than I have ever been in their sixties. And I'm just so inspired by these people. And I wanted not only to give a voice to it. But I'm serious. I think I told you in our pre-call that my mantra for my life is to change the way we age in this country, and yours is to change the face of aging. And I think that both of our work to normalize this process, because we're living twice or three times, as long as we ever have. And certainly turning 50 does not mean 42 years of decrepitude. Or whatever the word is. I am not going downhill until the very last moment.
Katie (30:25):
I'm not going downhill either. We're going to stick together, Vonda. I have so loved our conversation. You've shared so many wonderful resources. I know that I'm getting up tomorrow and brushing my teeth standing—I’m starting on my left leg, because that's my weaker side. But what's a resource or tool you want to make sure our listeners know about before we wrap up?
Vonda (30:44):
You know, I would love for people just to keep track of me, social media-wise, I'm at @DrVondaWright. And because I just post all the time about these crazy thoughts in my head, and how you can live longer. And I just feel like every day, you need to remind yourself that the future is bright. And so, get with me on social media, but you know what? You inspired me, you, in our pre-call you said, because you know, I've written Fitness after 40—it's really for everybody. And I haven't written a Fitness after 50, and you said there's not much... Totally inspired me. And I'm going to call it something about pivoting to resilience, how to build physical and mental hardiness after 50. Because that's what it's really about right. Is to be as strong as possible until the very last minute you're not here.
Katie (31:34):
I'm so excited that you're taking that on because I'm going to link to all four of your books in the show notes. So, people head to acertainagepod.com, they will find them there. They'll also find links to your social media presence. But there is not enough out there. I did a big Google search and did a big Amazon search. There's not enough content out there for being fit 40, 50, 60 plus. So, this is needed. And when you write that book or reissue one of your books with the sort of newer information, please come back on and be a guest again. Because I've loved our conversation. I know we have so much more to cover. Vonda, thank you so much for being with us today. Really appreciate it.
Vonda (32:11):
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Katie (32:13):
Well, this wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50, who are aging without apology. Next week, we're joined by another guest with amazing fitness advice. The founder of Pure Joy Wellness walks us through easy and actionable strategies you can use immediately to take charge of your health, nutrition, and fitness. If you want to feel young, strong, and sexy for life, you do not want to miss the show.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini Productions who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time. And until then: age boldly, beauties.