Episode 19: Stop Blaming your Age - Strategies for Health and Wellness That Transcend Age
Oct 04, 2023
Kathy Mead Fronheiser
Think age is the ultimate barrier to your health and wellness goals? Let's debunk that myth together! I'm here to guide you through the labyrinth of wellness as we age. Your age doesn't have to be a hurdle when it comes to maintaining health and being fit. Instead, it's all about the strategies you employ and the knowledge you arm yourself with. Let's discuss how resistance training and protein-rich diets can be your allies in leading an active, fulfilling life. Moreover, stress management could be the game-changer you never knew you needed. As a bonus, I'll also be revealing details about my free five-day protein challenge to give you that extra boost.
Think age is the ultimate barrier to your health and wellness goals? Let's debunk that myth together! I'm here to guide you through the labyrinth of wellness as we age. Your age doesn't have to be a hurdle when it comes to maintaining health and being fit. Instead, it's all about the strategies you employ and the knowledge you arm yourself with. Let's discuss how resistance training and protein-rich diets can be your allies in leading an active, fulfilling life. Moreover, stress management could be the game-changer you never knew you needed. As a bonus, I'll also be revealing details about my free five-day protein challenge to give you that extra boost.
Hey everyone, welcome to the fun over 40 podcast. This is your host, Kathy. I'm so happy you're tuning in today. I really feel like I have been getting on a soap box lately on my episodes. I'm not really sure why. I guess I'm a little fired up, and when I get fired up and on my soap box, you guys are the ones that reap the rewards. So get excited.
Speaker 1:
Today, you know, I'm just feeling in my core the need to impress upon all of you amazing ladies out there that you're enough, that life is not over when you hit 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80. Literally, life is never over till it's over, right, basically, if you are still alive and kicking, you are worthy of taking up space, you're worthy of being healthy and you're worthy of having some fun. And the older I get, the more I feel this inner drive to like live my life to the fullest. You know not to be morbid, but as I see people around me aging and dying, I am reminded constantly that we only get to live this life one time. So let's enjoy it.
Speaker 1:
I will have a future episode on the importance of having fun, but today I want to talk about something I hear a lot of the time, and that is blaming your age. So I'm gonna expand on this, but I'm guessing if you're a woman over 40 and you're listening to this podcast, you can either relate to this or you've heard it a lot as well. So what do I mean by this? Well, specifically in the health and wellness space that's where I'll try to stay I hear age blamed for gaining weight, poor strength and or cardiovascular fitness. Age is blamed for no time no energy, poor muscle definition, slow metabolism. There's probably more. Those are just the ones I came up with. Obviously, age is blamed for other things, but I'll stay with the health and wellness examples because that's my wheelhouse. Okay, maybe you're in another space and you hear it blamed for other stuff, but we'll stick with health and wellness.
Speaker 1:
So here's the thing. Ladies, does age make it harder to lose weight and see muscle definition? Yes, but I think it makes it harder for most women because they don't know the strategies to implement as they age. So when we were younger, most of us moved more and just naturally had more muscle. You just naturally do when you're in your teens and twenties, but as we age, most of us are moving less. We're not walking around like a school campus all day. We're not taking recess, although I feel as though we should genuinely implement this into our lives. So, you know, shoot me a damn on Instagram. Let's discuss recess as adults. We're not playing sports.
Speaker 1:
Most of us, most of us are working at jobs that have us just sitting on our booties all day long. So you couple that with more life responsibilities that make time a big challenge for many women over 40. So finding time to meal prep or exercise becomes a chore, and it often just doesn't make it to the top of the priority list. Then there's stress. Stress can often just paralyze us or maybe that's just me, I don't know. It also increases cortisol levels, which is not inherently bad. I mean, cortisol has its place and it exists for a reason. But if stress is all the time, and therefore cortisol is up all the time as well, it can also lead us to some not so healthy behaviors to alleviate the stress stress eating stress, drinking, not getting enough sleep, those sorts of things. So again, cortisol is there for a reason, but just like we don't want stress all the time, we don't want or need cortisol all the time. So it's not so much your age that is to blame, but it's your circumstances.
Speaker 1:
So what can you do? Let me take a sip of water, because there's a lot of words about to come up next. Yes, we lose muscle as we age. You literally can do nothing about just the fact that that is the way we were created. So guess what? Resistance training is your best friend as you get older. Challenge yourself with resistance bands or hand weights or weight training machines or kettlebells or TRX or however you want to work against a resistance. Challenge yourself two to three times a week. Challenge your entire body, not just the parts that you think need improvement. Everything is connected and full body strength is going to revitalize you, I promise so. In other words, don't do a hundred crunches a day because you want to have a six pack. It doesn't work that way, and if you need more information about that again, shoot me a DM on Instagram. We can discuss, but it's all connected, okay? So full body strength training is where it's at Eat protein.
Speaker 1:
Ideally, you're getting one gram of protein for every pound you weigh. So if you weigh 150 pounds, your goal is to eat 150 grams of protein every day. Now, if you need to lose 30 pounds or more, shoot for your goal weight in grams of protein. Why? Why are we doing this? If you're lifting weights but you're not eating enough protein, your body does not have the building blocks to build muscle, which is the entire point of lifting weights. Okay, as we age, we do not synthesize protein as well as we did when we were younger, so we actually need more, not less. And as we age, research is showing us that the elderly people are eating less protein. Don't do that. Don't do that, slapping your hand here.
Speaker 1:
Protein will help keep you satisfied throughout the day as well, so it should help you. If you struggle with cravings, you know you may find that, as you're more satisfied with the meals that you're actually eating, you don't eat, you know, snacky things between meals. And if you need help, you can take advantage of the free five-day protein challenge. There's going to be a link in the show notes. Show notes I can't talk and there's always a link in my Instagram bio as well.
Speaker 1:
Now I will say if you hear that like gram of protein for every pound and you're like there is no way, and this is part of the five-day protein challenge, start with 100 grams. Start by shooting for 100 grams. Most people need at least that much, unless you're really really tiny. So start with at least that and then you can work up from there. So if you're, you know, right now sitting at like 50 grams of protein a day and you know, per my recommendation, you need to be at 150, because you weigh 150 pounds, you're like that's triple. You know what I'm eating now. So start with 100 grams Again.
Speaker 1:
That five-day protein challenge I think it's great. It's super simple. I gave give you a tip, a simple, actionable tip every day of the challenge. So really try that. I think you will like it. Just an email delivered to your inbox one time a day for five days. Okay, let's keep going with.
Speaker 1:
What can you do? Walk, walk, walk, step, step, steps. I know you hear it all the time Get 10,000 steps per day. But if that seems crazy, just start somewhere. Again, like I just said, with, like, start with 100 grams. If, if the goal is is just can't even wrap your brain around it, start somewhere. And if you don't like steps, you can do minutes, meaning, like you know, counting your steps. You can do minutes. Try walking like 10 minutes a day, then add on from there until you're up to around an hour per day.
Speaker 1:
One thing I was I got something else to say with the walking, but one thing I want to mention there and I literally was just having a conversation this morning with someone about it let's say that right now you start with 10 minutes per day of walking and each week you add one, one minute per walk. So next week it's 11 minutes, the week after that it's 12 minutes and then 13 minutes. You see what I'm saying. Okay, so literally in one year you will be walking an hour a day. Okay, and maybe you're like one year I wanna be meeting my health and wellness goals in 30 days. Well, you know what? How's that worked for you in the past? Like get real with yourself. See, I'm on a soapbox again.
Speaker 1:
But seriously, there's all this like quick fix stuff out there and so many people either try it or think that's what they're supposed to do and they're just not successful. And then they beat themselves up over it when, if you would try a new tactic, ie the slow burn approach, you might actually have some success and feel good about yourself. So just think on that. Just think on it. I know, I know it's not sexy. Again, we talked about this in a recent episode. Getting healthy isn't sexy. I I get it, ladies, I get it, but except where you're at now and start moving in a direction very slowly. So just think on that If I start walking 10 minutes a day today and add one minute per week to each walk, in a year I'll be walking an hour a day.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and it doesn't have to be done all at once if you don't have time for that. So that's probably more like the hour right, like if you don't have time to walk for an hour or 30 minutes, you know. Break it up into like three 10 minute walks or two 15 minute walks or whatever, you know, whatever works for you. You can break it up into shorter walks and, if you want extra credit, take short walks after your meals to better control blood sugar. And, of course, if you prefer to swim, ride a bike, dance, that's fine. I just want you to move your body for around an hour a day eventually, okay. So again, slow, build up to that, okay.
Speaker 1:
Also, I will say walking is really, especially if you can do it outdoors it's a great stress reliever and mood booster. I mean, that's kind of true with all exercise. So that's just kind of like killing two birds with one stone right, like you're getting exercise in plus, you're working on your mental health and your stress, because handling stress may be your greatest challenge, but it will likely give you the biggest bang for your buck as far as like return on investment. So, and it doesn't have to take a whole lot of time out of your day to work on managing your stress. If you listened recently to the podcast, I did with my friend, adriana Watt, so I interviewed her on the podcast recently and she coaches her caregiver clients to start with five minutes of deep breathing three times a day. So start there. Maybe you just start with one time per day, but five minutes, and then add on as you can. There are some great apps out there, of course, for meditation or yoga. Maybe you just need to read like a fun book for a few minutes per day, or call a friend or take a bath. Any of those are great options for relieving stress, but coming up with a plan of some kind for yourself is really what we're going for.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and that leads me to the final tip, which also relates back to the issue of time. You must make time for your health, and I feel so super cliche saying that, right, you've got to make time, you've got to make time, but it's true. You know we all have the same 24 hours in the day. So I really challenge you to audit your time and I do have a super simple time audit doc that I'll link in the show notes and in my Instagram bio again. So free five day protein challenge free time audit document that you can access to just look at your day and see where you might be.
Speaker 1:
I don't want to say wasting time, because you know there's something to be said for like scrolling reels on Instagram, but maybe you don't do that for like two hours a day, maybe it's 20 minutes a day and then you put your phone down and you do, you go for a walk or you do something more productive. You know you throw some food in the crock pot so that it's ready for dinner. Or, you know, think about combining something that might normally be considered like a waste of time with a healthy habit. Like maybe you watch your favorite TV show while you're walking on your treadmill or just marching in place or step touching side to side, or, you know, doing squats and exercises with your resistance band. Like you can watch TV. While you're doing that stuff. You don't have to watch an exercise video. You can watch TV and do bicep curls and do lunges and whatever you know. Whatever it is, whatever your workout is, that's what I like to do.
Speaker 1:
I was in a big law and order kick for a while and I would have my. So I'd actually like have I did. I was following a video for my workout, but I'd have that going on my phone with the volume down. I'm not saying maybe this is the best, but this is what I did, and then I'd be watching law and order. Or if I was doing like my indoor cycling, I would just be watching law and order. I don't know. I was just really into law and order there for a minute. So whatever, if that works for you, that's fine. So you know again, I'm not saying you can't have some fun time on your schedule by you know watching TV or you know watching reels and stuff that might be considered kind of a waste of time, but it's just like, are you spending a lot of time doing this and also then saying that you don't have time for your health or to do things for health and wellness? So you know, just be honest with yourself. That's all I'm saying. Be honest, so okay. Okay.
Speaker 1:
In summary, and to wrap up this episode and bring it all together, don't blame your age for your poor health. Yes, age and life circumstances that come with your age definitely affect your life and your health, but there are strategies that you can utilize to see and feel results, like lifting weights or working against a resistance. I say working against a resistance and I talk about this in the lift heavy bleep episode, lift heavy stuff episode. You can be working against a body weight as your resistance hand weights, machine weights, resistance bands. There's a lot of options there. The main thing is that you're challenging yourself, right. You're not just like lifting weights and you're not even feeling anything. You really want to challenge yourself with your resistance training. Eat more protein. If you're going to lift weights, eat the protein, because the protein are the building blocks, okay, of building muscle. Figure out some stress management strategies that work for you. This could also be some kind of movement and that's just like a win-win, right? Like going for a walk or riding your bike outdoors or swimming, whatever works.
Speaker 1:
If improving your health is a priority, you have to make time for it. Time is not going to just magically appear. It just won't. I wish it would, but I promise the time is there and you probably know it too. I'm not really telling you anything that you don't know here. You've made time for plenty of other things. Maybe you're studying for an additional degree or a certification of some kind. Maybe you've got some volunteer activities that you're finding quote finding time for. It's there, and you will not ever be disappointed. This is true. You will never be disappointed that you spent time working on you and improving your health and wellness.
Speaker 1:
So again, does age make it a bit more challenging to get or stay fit? Yes, is it impossible? Absolutely not. And at the end of the day, there's nothing you can do about your age anyway. Like literally nothing you can do. So just like, set worry and complaining about your age to the side. You can do nothing about it, so just move it out of the way and dump it in the trash. All you can do is say this is where I'm at right now. I'm 46 years old. I'm going to be 47. Like this month, this is where I'm at the end. Where are we going from here forward? What's happened in the past doesn't matter. Where am I going from here forward. What are the steps that I'm going to take so that I'm setting myself up for success, so that 65 year old Kathy is real happy with 47 year old Kathy?
Speaker 1:
Do you ever think about yourself that way? Think of yourself 20 years from now. I'll be, let's just say, 67. What's 67 year old Kathy going to think about? The choices that 47 year old Kathy is making? Is she going to be pleased with those? Is she going to be glad that 47 year old Kathy is lifting heavy weights and eating her protein and managing her stress and getting her sleep and drinking water and having fun? I hope so. I hope so. So think of it that way. So just accept your age, implement these strategies and move on. All right, you got it. You can do this. As always, you can DM me on Instagram with any questions. I'm here to help Stop blaming your age. You can do it. Have a great day, ladies.