Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - The Age-Defying Body: How to Burn Fat and Feel Incredible at Any Age with Dr Vonda Wright

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

What if the secret to ageing well isn’t about turning back the clock but powering forward with strength, purpose, and vitality? Orthopaedic surgeon and longevity expert Dr. Vonda Wright joins Women’s Health to explain how women can burn fat, build muscle, and protect their brains at any age. From lifting heavy to letting go of toxic relationships, she shares the science-backed strategies that changed her life at 47 and can change yours too. Whether you're 34 or 64, this episode will leave you informed, empowered and ready to age with power. 💪✨ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Gemma Atkinson. And I'm Claire Sanderson, the editor-in-chief of Women's Health UK. Claire recorded an episode of our podcast today with Dr. Vonda Wright. Tell me, what did I miss? Because I know she's all about empowering women to age with power. With power. Pro-Aging. It's what we want.

She's pro-aging. So Dr. Wright is an orthopedic surgeon and a longevity expert. She's American and she happened to be in London on a book tour for a new book, Unbreakable. So it was an absolute honour to have her on our couch here at Women's Health HQ because she's globally famous she's been on loads of huge podcasts

so some people may be familiar with her already millions of followers online and a globally recognised longevity expert and her whole thing is as women we need to age with power gone of the days where we were ashamed of ageing and we we shrunk away from society and we almost disappeared.

You know, it's not so long ago where women over 40 were considered over the hill and became invisible to everyone. Exactly. Dr. Vonda Wright is almost 60 and looks amazing and clearly feels amazing. And this episode is packed with tips and advice that you too can look and feel your best as we make more laps around the sun.

I've actually got her book. When we knew she was coming in, she sent me her book. and the book alone is incredible. It is. So I can imagine this is even better. And the book is a really easy read, I find as well. Yes, it's layman's terms.

It's great. Exactly. And that's how she speaks on the podcast. It's an easy read that I read these books all the time. I love reading science books. So some of them are even a bit too dense for me and then I lose my focus and concentration. But Unbreakable is a really easy to digest.

And that's how she speaks in real life. So it's a great episode to get stuck into. So on behalf of all, all the ladies everywhere listening, enjoy Dr. Vonda Wright and let's celebrate pro-aging. It's a privilege denied to many. So, tuck in and enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome to another episode of Jester's Well. I'm here today with Dr. Vonda Wright. Yes. I'm so thrilled that you have joined us today. It's a privilege, in fact. And I don't feel I can do your credentials justice. I think you need to.

to explain exactly who you are and why I've invited you on here today? Well, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for bringing me on to share my new book Unbreakable. I am by training in orthopedic sports surgeons, so I'm used to dealing with people of all ages and skill levels. But what interests me about the aging process is I'm also a researcher. And for most of my career, I've been really looking at questions. Like, how fast do we age? Can we retain our muscle, our bone, our brains? And is aging this disastrous, inevitable decline from vitality to frailty? And is there anything we can do about it? And the answer to, is it a disaster? The answer is no. And is there anything we can do about it? The answer is yes. And so that's what I love to talk about now to give people hope for the future. So you're, one of your particular areas of expertise is, it's women's health, isn't it? And aging well as women. Yes. And I love the title

of your book and breakable. I've been reading it fervently for the last few days. A women's guy to aging with power. Yes. I love that phrase. Aging with power because as you say, aging is something that's been, we've been told to be scared of it. And it's in, in, in, inevitable negative aspect to it. You know, we lose our looks, we lose our brains, we lose our place in society. And this book, well, rejects all that. It's, it, it rejects every negative aspect of age and you're saying that there are changes that you can make at any age, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond, although you do acknowledge if it's 50s and beyond is tougher to make these changes, but there are changes everyone listening today can make so they age

with power. Absolutely. And part of what I'm trying to do is change the narrative for women in aging. When we think of the public notion of longevity, when we think of men living longer, we use the words longevity. And it's grand and it's great temples and it's distinguished. When we think of women living longer, we often flip to the vision of anti-aging and even frailty. And while it's true that men and women age differently, and we can talk about why that is, the reality is that no matter what age you are, if you know the science of aging, which we teach you, if you know the types of things you can do, you can step in front of what I call the time bombs of aging

and really change the way you age. So you talk about the critical decade being 35 to 45. That's the time when you really need to focus on yourself to achieve future positive outcomes. What is so special or particular about that age? I call 35 to 45 the critical decade because, you know, we reach peak body, many areas, peak brain, peak bone, peak muscle, around 30. And at that point for many of us, we're to a point in our careers, where we're out of school, we've begun in the early part of our career, and we're just rolling along. But the good part of 35 to 45 for women in particular is that we have our full complement of hormones.

estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, which will decline rapidly when we're in our mid-40s and beyond. So I call 35 to 45 the critical decade to, if we've never paid attention to our health before, to really set the standards of nutrition and activity and lifestyle, even social and relationship, because that's so important as we progress in life, to do it in that decade so that as you enter midlife because frankly midlife we think it starts in our 60s midlife is actually 37 or 40 no it can be so amazing because I'm going to tell you what's amazing about being midlife and beyond I'll tell you that but but that's why 35 to 45 is critical we're more stable than we were when we were 26 per for instance and we still have all our hormones

and can really make profound changes. So is it the case that the misbehaving you might get after in your 20s? In your early 30s, I had my first child when I was 34, and that's when I finally grew up. You can kind of get away with it a bit. The bigger of youth. You know, you can go and play all weekend and then get up Monday morning and do your things. Yeah. You know what, as we age, it takes a little more recovery than that.

So as we come out of those really youthful years where we got away, away with everything. I think what we need to do first, and we talk about this and Unbreakable, is really pivot our mindset to say, you know what, 26 was fun. But midlife and beyond can be the most productive, the most stable, the most healthy that we have ever lived, and perhaps the most wise, because we're bringing with us the wisdom of all the things we've experienced. And I think for women in particular something that's helpful is to remember that women figure a lot of things out. We have figured out how to do everything from job to social to a relationship, and every one of those successes and failures builds our confidence, and we've accumulated enough of those

to bring with us into midlife. So let's break it down. What changes or adaptations to lifestyle should you be making from 35 and beyond? So I think we need to step in front of how are we eating? Our bodies are not garbage cans, not everything needs to go in them, to build muscle and bone and to maintain great brains. We need a diet that's anti-inflammatory. We need a diet that is high in protein, that we're paying attention to the type of carbs we're eating

so that they're more fiber carbs than they are just simply. sugary carbs. It's a time to consider the volume of alcohol we drink. In our youth, we may not feel it, but the reality is in midlife and beyond, for women in particular, alcohol can completely disrupt your sleep. And without sleep, you can't do anything the next day. And you eat more. That's right. You slip into those habits. You're eating lots of sugary foods. So from a nutrition perspective, those are the standards to start setting at 35. and beyond. Can I just ask you what you mean by an anti-inflammatory diet? Yes, of course. So inflammation in our body is a normal process when we get hurt. Our body increases inflammation,

but we need to then quench the fire when we're no longer hurt. When we eat high sugar foods, lots of fried starchy foods, when we have high levels of synthetic foods that come in boxes, we main high levels of inflammation in the body, meaning it's always turned on hot and red. Our body is always trying to correct the chemical imbalances versus what I love about the UK is that there are so many markets that have fresh vegetables and just everywhere, right? And so if we stick to that kind of fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meats, it's so much more healthy than the processed food diets that are easier. And what symptoms would someone display if they were inflamed?

Because I'm sure it's not as simple as if they look red. No, no, it's actually, yeah, exactly. They might feel puffy. They might feel a little hot or sore. Akey is a sign of inflammation. You know, your skin might not be vibrant. You might still be breaking out in your mid-30s and early 40s when you're like, oh my gosh, I thought I was done with that when I went through puberty.

Those can all be signs of inflammation. Okay. So we've talked about nutrition and the importance of sleep in this decade as well. You know, sometimes we think of sleep as just we're passed out and we're not aware. We're cognitively not aware, but the reality is sleep is regenerative. It's the time when your body is taking out the waste, the trash. It's the time when down to the cellular level you're regenerating. So while you may not be aware of what's going on with sleep, your body craves it. And so when I was younger in training in medical school, I would say silly things like,

oh my gosh, you know, I'll sleep when I die. The reality is I'm going to die if I don't sleep. And so you have to pivot your mindset around that. Yeah, it's like a bad job on it when you're younger, isn't it? Oh, yeah. I can go out and go straight to work the next day. That's right. No break.

No sleep, et cetera. But now, as you get older, I'm 47, sleep becomes quite elusive. You have to really work hard, I think, to get good night sleep. And part of that that you're describing has to do with the changes in estrogen. Estrogen is critical for sleep. And as our hormones fluctuate, many women experience that. The good news is you can get your good sleep back. It's not forever.

we'll come on to that yes yes everybody's going to want to know but if we go back to the 35 and 45 decades we've talked about the key things people should do in that day and we talked about nutrition we talk about working on their sleep and reducing alcohol what else should they be doing two things um we should develop our physical standards of fitness meaning let's make cardiovascular fitness part of everything we do and it sounds As I lay it out like this, it sounds like a lot of behaviors. But what happens is it just becomes the way you live. And it becomes a little effortless. It's not, oh, I've got to do all these things. It's like, I just order this way off the menu. I walk every day. I lift weights

twice a week because while we have our hormones, it's the easiest time to build muscle to maintain our bone, to get in shape from a cardiovascular standpoint. So that we're starting into our true midlife, 45 and beyond, from the best place possible. You mentioned there was one more thing, or is muscles and cardio? Muscle, cardio, nutrition, sleep. What's interesting, however, is the fifth pillar of health has to do with relationships. And, you know, we can be inflamed not only from the things we talked about, but from toxic relationships. And sometimes in midlife or early 30s, it's the time to really think about what

relationships are feeding us and what relationships are draining us. It is okay. Maybe I'm, I hope I'm not the first person that it will have said this to people listening, but it's okay to let go of relationships that are so toxic that they're making you unhealthy. Whether it is girlfriends who are just not on the same page with you anymore, short-term relationships. It's harder if you're already in a long-term committed relationship, but it's time to really try to get it right. I think it's also a decade where you need to nourish the relationships that really work for you, because I'm guilty of letting good friendships go to the wayside because it's also the busiest decade. It's when you're pushing on in your career with a chance, you know, you maybe have young children. I certainly

did at that age. I had my daughter when I was 30, sorry, my son when I was 34 and my daughter when I was 37. Yes. And you're so busy. So busy. And you're married to someone who has a successful career as well. And you end up just going through life almost like on a factory wheel. That's right. Of just getting through the day today and making sure the kids are going to school in clean clothes. And exactly. Just trying to survive the day to day. I completely identify with that because at this time in my in my mid-30s, I was finishing my surgical residency. I had a baby at 40. I could barely stick my head above water to breathe. So I totally agree with you nursing relationships. And I'm so thankful,

it's easier now in the digital time. So even if you can't physically meet for coffee, which is I still get, I mean, not that I wouldn't, but when people want to meet for coffee, I know that I should stop and go meet, but at least I can communicate with them by voice text or just check in. I'm just checking in. I wish I could see you, but I'm just checking in. Even that little bit of effort can bridge the gap. And sometimes you have to push yourself out of your comfort tone because my default is to say, no, I don't want to do that. Yeah. But I often, don't regret it when you go that's true um yes the sofa and a nice cup of cocoa is calling with your PJs but but sometimes that human connection is so important it is and I always

feel refreshed afterwards even if I I'm like oh I need to do one more thing when I before so I want to talk in detail about muscle yes bone health because that is your your DNA you're an orthopedic surgeon. Explain to me exactly what an orthopedic surgeon is before we move on. So an orthopedic surgeon is responsible for your musculoskeletal system, which is muscle, tendon, ligament, bone, fat. Interestingly, they're all within our area of expertise. So what that looks like practically is if you have shoulder pain, you would go to your orthopedic surgeon. If you have an injury to your knee, your hip, your ankle. If you break a bone, you would go to an orthopedic surgeon. And within orthopedics, there are seven subspecialties. So there are surgeons who just take care of children or just take care

of bone tumors. I am a sports surgeon. So I've spent the majority of my career on the pitch with elite sports teams, taking care of active people, and even people with arthritis who want to maintain their own joints and not get a metal joint. Because I was surprised when I heard you previously described what an orthopedic surgeon is, because I assumed it was strictly bones. You mentioned that it was muscles as well in a previous podcast I listened to. That surprised me. Now, I've been reading Unbreakable, and I love how you talk about muscles.

You call it the longevity factory, and muscle is the engine that drives health span. So it is the panseer by the sounds of it. If you can build muscle, you will overcome a lot of the frailty and ailments that are coming your way. But you talk about, and you mentioned it just now, we hit peak muscle at 30. So to stop that decline, you have to lift weights. But I know that you are a proponent for lifting heavy. Can you explain that to me? So the caveat to that is you can build weight.

more muscle mass after 30, but you have the most equipment to do it before that. Now, bone is different. Bone is we reach our peak mineralization by 30, so we want to build as much bone young as we can because it's harder to build later, although you can do it. So when we talk about muscle as the longevity organ and also bone, it's because they're not just structural. They're not just for moving around. Muscle and bone are metabolic organs, meaning they produce hormones that travel to different places in your body and tell those organs what to do. For instance, muscle is so metabolically active, it helps control blood sugar. It helps

produce longevity factors such as a protein called Clotho, which it's called the longevity protein. Every organ needs it. Your body will produce this protein just by skeletal muscle contraction and it will keep your brain younger. Every organ it interacts with. So while we think of muscle is just what we see in the mirror, it's actually doing so much more. It is so critical for glucose metabolism that without a lot of muscle mass, we can become something called insulin resistant, which means we can develop diseases like diabetes, which is a devastating life sentence for many people. So a healthy amount of muscle, healthy quality of muscle is critical for aging. But muscle and bone work together. They are both master communicators,

Bones do the same thing. Bones secret hormones, one's called osteocalcin, one's called L-C-N-2. They go to the brain and help build better brain. They go to the gut and help control absorption of food. So who would have thought that what we see in the mirror is so critical to metabolism? So how do you go about building muscle and bone mass? I think I know how to build muscle. it's lifting weights in the gym.

That's right. But I never realized they were quite so interlinked. And how do I go about, as a woman in my 40s, perimenopausal, on HRT, how do I go about increasing my muscle mass and my bone density? Yes. So there are many ways to lift weights. I'll start back. So in Unbreakable, I talk about the four components of a mobility or exercise regimen

that are critical for midlife and beyond, just to stay structured. F, I use an acronym called face. F is flexibility and joint range of motion. We don't want to get stiff. We don't want to become hunched over and shuffling. A is for aerobic, we can talk about. But C is carrying a load, which means, to your point, we must lift weights. Now, there are many ways to lift weights, but you have to ask yourself, why?

what are we trying to accomplish in midlife and beyond we are working for strength and power meaning strength to be able to do all the activities we want lift things in our house get up off the floor or never fall to the floor so to lift weights for the most strength we do not lift I always say the mamby-pamby pink weights, the little bitty hand weights. You can lift with those. Many women are told to lift with those. But no matter how we're lifting, we're trying to lift to failure, meaning we can do one more rep, but not anymore.

To lift with little bitty weights, you usually have to lift 25 to 30 times to get to failure. And what you're building there is endurance. Yeah. In midlife and beyond, I'm not that interested in endurance. When another way to lift is for hypertrophy, meaning to lift the, make the biggest possible muscle mass. To do that, we lift in a middle range of reps and weight, so 10 to 15 reps. But in midlife and beyond, when we want to be as strong as possible, we have to learn to lift heavier with fewer reps.

So instead of 25 reps, instead of 10 to 15 reps, we're lifting four to five reps to failure, so that means the weights are heavier. The caveat is if you've never lifted before in your life, which many women are in that boat, we start with body weight, and we may take six months, nine months to work up to lifting heavy, but then maintaining a heavy lifting practice is critical for being strong as we age. And how often a week do you say that we should be lifting? If we're doing total body, meaning upper and lower body, twice a week, minimum, that's the literature says.

But if we have half an hour a day, we could lift four, five, six times, but for short periods and do one body part, legs with squats, legs with deadlifts, arms with bench press, that kind of thing. But the type of lifting that you're describing is the type of lifting that intimidates women, some women, not all women. Sometimes. But, you know, gyms can be an intimidating place to go, especially if you go in with all the racks are and the barbells. And it's for equipment and you don't know how to use it. And you know what? Even if you did it, I felt that way because I lifted heavy in high school with all the racks.

But I hadn't lifted heavy since high school until perimenopause when I started again. In between, I had just done the machines, which, you know, put the pin in and lift it. So I completely understand the intimidation. This is a great time to either hire a trainer. Save your money. Don't buy a new purse. Don't, you know what, whatever it takes. It doesn't take a ton of lessons.

Or instead of skipping the gym orientation when you get a gym membership, let the person lead you around and show you, right? Sometimes it's easier to go to a big gym with a lot of racks with a friend. So that's two against the bros. And I don't say that in any kind of way, but men are very comfortable under the racks. And sometimes it's easier to go with a friend until you feel comfortable. Eventually, like any new behavior, you'll feel comfortable. And you'll go own your space.

And I think don't let ego get in the way. And go from nothing to trying to backscot 50KG or something. No, no, no. You could risk injury. You can be injured. So you have to build it slowly if you're aiming then to be. And you should. You know, doing a deadlift, which is in excess of your body weight.

You need to build up to that slowly. Oh, please build up. Mm-hmm. That's right. And so that benefits bones. Because I always thought that to build bones, you had to have impact. You do. But bones are built several ways.

the basic way bones are built is biomechanical signals, meaning some kind of movement, is translated within the bone into a biochemical signal for a cell called the osteoblast to build more bone. The biomechanical signal can be jumping. I'm teaching women to do a lot of jumping these days. It can be hopping and skipping and jumping off a step. But you also get biomechanical signal from the tension of muscle pulling on a bone. So as you're building your muscle, the more muscle you have, the more tension you're putting on the bone. And you will also stimulate the bone to be built.

That's interesting. And a way for someone to establish their muscle mass, if it's not particularly visible, you know, some women don't have visible abs, except most women don't have visible abs. you can just use one of those scales. I don't know what they called where you... Body composition scales. So they're pretty accurate to tell you where you're at. The ones we can get in our homes are not that accurate. They're about 10% off.

But what you would be doing is looking for trends. Is the work I'm doing trending in the right direction. If you want to know the absolute amount of body fat percentage and pounds or kilograms of muscle, you have or even how many calories you're burning based on how much muscle you have just sitting so you know how do I work in deficit how do I work by to build muscle the best ways to do that body composition are with something called a dexas scan which you can get you can google where to get a dexas scan or a machine that most gyms have called an in-body yes I'm using of those yeah and a

you the report, isn't it? It's under your water. And it's more accurate. Yeah. But is it correct that some women just do find it harder to build muscle than others? You know, could two women follow the exact same plan and get the exact same results? Or if you are someone like myself, in fact, who's just naturally quite curvy, you know, all boobs and bum, you know, what's not to love? But someone like myself will find it trickier to build muscle than say someone who's, lean and athletic yes now everyone can get lean but genetically you are exactly right there are some women who are curvy there are someone who build muscle easier I'm a mussely girl I weigh a lot more than you would think for my stature but it's because I'm a very muscle building person

that to be said everyone can build muscle mass it just may look different so you talk a lot in your book and in your in your previous books because you've you've written five books now haven't you so you're very well versed in this space about mobility and I wanted to and pick what you actually mean by mobility because my understanding of mobility is doing sort of stretching and making your body mobile. Is your understanding of mobility actual movement and exercise? So I love that you ask this question because My approach has evolved over time. When I wrote my first books, I used the word mobility to replace the word exercise. And here's why. Because many times when you say the word exercise, people's face gloss over. Like very few people love the word exercise. Seventy percent of people don't do any exercise. And they stop listening when you say that. So I was using the word mobility like that then. Now I differentiate mobility from cardio. from lifting. And when I use mobility unbreakable, I'm talking specifically about making sure our

tendons, ligaments, and muscles are stretched out to a proper length and that we maintain full range of motion through our joints. Because it is a reality that as we age, the bonds, you know, ligaments and tendons which connect our bones and muscles to bone, are made out of collagen fibers. and they become more tightly bound with age. It's just natural that that happens. And so what happens is you'll get a stiff shoulder or stiff knee and you won't even notice it, or you'll start hunching over. As we see so many people on the street,

we want to make sure that doesn't happen by devoting time to maintaining our joint range of motion. And it is stretching. It is some specific joint mobility exercises. But it's one of the critical components of a whole body program. So explain to me what a whole body program should be. So weight, strength training is the priority. Two full body sessions a week.

Or you can break it down into splits, push, pull, etc. And then you can break, you know, we're all busy. So 30 minutes a day is more doable. But what does the rest of a whole body program look like? Perfect, perfect. I was introducing the framework earlier in our conversation of face, F-A-C-E, and I say, let's face our future. F is flexibility and joint range of motion that we just talked about. That's where Pilates and yoga fits in, actually.

Many, many women love those practices. I hate it, I'm afraid. I'm just... I do, too. I don't do them, but yeah, yeah, yeah. The only way I do yoga is if it's hot yoga and it feels like a marathon. But many women love it. They do, but I feel like someone's sold in an hour of my life away from you.

I really hate it. Well, that is a good point because it is tiring, but it's not going to build enough muscle to save your life, right? So, but that's where I fit it in because sometimes I have women who do so much Pilates. They'll say, I've done 2,500 classes, which is an astronomical number of whatever. Do you not work? So go do your Pilates, but now we've got a pile of. on top. So flexibility and joint range of motion, number one. F-A is aerobics. Now, listen, we were raised in the generation where aerobics were queen. You were running, you were Zumba-ing, or whatever the brand was,

stepping, and fine. Aerobic fitness is important because the number one killer of women, period, is cardiovascular disease. People are surprised when they learn that, because they think it's breast cancer. It is not. It is cardiovascular disease. And in fact, here's the interesting thing. Many women who have breast cancer die of cardiovascular disease, not their breast cancer. So it's not that I don't value breast cancer. I was a cancer nurse. It's just that people are surprised, genuinely surprised. So aerobic is done in a different way in midlife and beyond. And the method that I teach is based on the science of a very famous endurance coach named Enigo San Milan, who has a lab in my building. So I've learned a lot about we're going to do 80% of our time at low heart rate base training

or zone two. I don't like to use zone two because then it gets very technical. But in low heart rate base training, which for many people can be a brisk walk, rower, elliptical, any apparatus works, or the street. works if you're going fast enough, 80% of the time, we are most metabolically efficient. Our little powerhouses in our body, our mitochondria, are very flexible then, meaning they can use any food substrate to make your energy, and it's when we're burning fat. 80% of the time here, 20% of the time, we are all out sprinting, meaning getting our heart rate

up as fast as we can. Again, no matter what the apparatus is, but our heart rate as fast as it can go. Here's what happens during that time. Our muscles, our muscle stem cells replicate, our mitochondria replicate. We are most, we're working hard enough that our brain and our muscles know that we're alive and are replenishing themselves. But it's not all the time. So we're sprinting, air quote, sprinting at highest heart rate only for 30 seconds. And then we completely recover. And we do that for four reps. So it takes very little time to do that. But these two ends of the spectrum, metabolic efficiency, enough stimulation your body knows it needs to get with it and be alive, is better for us than seven days a week in the middle at middle heart rate, high intensity, but middle heart

rate, where you're working hard enough that you may get injured, but you're not working hard enough for maximum metabolic efficiency. And so what I see all the time for people who work in the muddy middle is that they're more injured. They've done so many reps. They're more injured, which then they have to take three weeks off and that makes their brains angry, you know. And then they're frustrated that they're not making any progress. And you get fatigued because the type of training you're describing is what I was quite devoted to. You know, I would go to these hour-long orange theory classes. I did too and I made no progress. But you're exhausted. Yeah, exhausted. And it got to the point certainly in my early 40s that I would go to a class at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning

and genuinely feel like I had to go back to bed in the afternoon, which is not possible when you've got two young kids who need to be transported here and everywhere to their sporting. activities. And I put on weights. Isn't that ironic? You're working so hard because you were inflamed. Yeah. You're exhausted. So it's stimulating your appetite. But what I want to get to the bottom of is so I know I've had various tests. I'm very lucky in this job that I speak to wonderful experts like yourself and get to go to the clinic. So I know that my optimum training regime is four strength training sessions a week and then two sessions of high intensity no more than 20 minutes. That's what I was told. So largely what you're describing. And then I do a lot of

lists, low intensity steady stage, stage through, whatever you want to call it. But I have a peloton bike. I love my peloton bike. And I was on it yesterday actually with Cody Rigsby. Love him. But, and I was doing a hit class. But the intervals weren't strictly 30 seconds, you know, Some were 40, some were 20, some were 30. And sometimes the rest period is only 45 seconds, and then you go again. And I was doing this class thinking, I wonder what Monda would make of this. Am I doing it wrong? Should I strictly stick to your protocol?

Or is what I'm doing there for 20 minutes? Pretty okay anyway, because I am really pushing myself and then recovering, etc. Just not strictly the 30 seconds on. And complete recovery? Yes. Listen, people, I'll take anything. that gets pete you off the couch 20 minutes if during that 20 minutes your heart was most of the time at the highest heart rate you're going to do yourself some good because you're working so

hard if your heart was at the highest heart rate and you weren't recovering very long 20 seconds is not a lot of recovery so is that wrong no I don't think it's wrong I think if you were doing that for an hour at low at mid heart rate ranges you're wasting your time But 20 minutes of intensity at highest heart rate, I worry that you didn't give yourself enough time to recover. You might have been a little inflamed at the end, right? But I'll tell you the reason you're seeing progress is because the intensity that you're doing in the 20% of the time,

plus the lifting that you're doing, that's what recomposes bodies, right? And it really has with me. You describe muscle as nature's spanks. Exactly. I'm glad you said that. Yes. Yes, because women are afraid, but by lifting like I describe or like you're doing, that we're going to get big and bulky, it takes decades or many years of real effort and meticulous nutrition and diet training for the power competitors, the bikini models to get looking the way they do. For most of us who are doing sprint intervals, walking and lifting, we'll gain muscle. I gained eight pounds of muscle when I first did this. But we'll become leaner and our clothes will fit better. We will not become bulky because you know what's bulky is fat.

Fat, it takes up more space than muscle of the same weight. So if you don't mind me, say, in your age, Oh, sure. 57, is that correct? I'm 58 now. 58 now. May I say you look remarkable, and I hate for your age, I'm actually not going to say for your age,

but you look absolutely a picture of health and remarkably beautiful and healthy and fit. But you talk in your book that it was not always the case and you did let it slide for want of a better phrase in your 40s, And you woke up when you were 47, which is my age now, and quote unquote, said that you thought you were dying. If you can take me back to your 40s and what happened for you to end up in that place and then how you managed to get yourself out of it. Absolutely. And I think stories are important because women often feel alone in this time.

So thank you for that compliment. You know what? I feel the best I have felt. I mean, I feel vibrant, right? I feel my brain is as sharp as I feel like it's ever been. So when I was 40, I always describe it as some of the best shape of my life. I was training for triathlon. I had 19% body fat.

I had a child. I managed to squeeze out one last egg and have a child. And I was going along in my career. It was a big time in my career. But I was paying attention to everything else except myself, really. I came in with a very good baseline, but I was taking care of everyone as myself. I was traveling with my sports teams, had a young child eating terrible food on the road with these people. You know, they would, even sportsmen, after a big game, they're feeding us fried chicken and biscuits.

I mean, what was up with that? And I was eating it in the middle of the night. So, and then what I didn't realize, because obviously it's more than a decade ago before anybody was talking about menopause in any significant way, I was losing my hormones, and I didn't really know what was going on other than I didn't feel like myself. And I started gaining weight such that by 47, I did think I was dying because not only did I have the hot flashes, night sweats. I teased my husband, I would stick my thermometer leg out the bed just so I wasn't boiling us. but I was having brain fog

which is gone but I was forgetting my nouns imagine doing your job publicly and not remembering nouns so as a surgeon I still remembered I mean I still knew exactly what to do with the surgery but I couldn't remember the names of the instruments and in surgery you say I'll take the athson and they'll hand you the instrument you ask for

and all I could do is say I'll take the thing And luckily, these people work with me. They know what comes next. And so I thought, holy cow, am I beginning to have dementia? So I started Googling early signs of dementia. And as a person whose brain is the best part of me, I was panicked. But then I started waking up with heart palpitations in the middle of the night. And having, just being awake all night worrying.

And I'm not by nature an anxious person. And then to have heart palpitations, I called my cardiologist, his name is Ricky. Menela. I'm like, Ricky, Ricky, my family dies of heart disease. You've got to check my heart. So he puts me on a treadmill and oh, lo and behold, I have a perfect heart. But I couldn't figure out what was going on. And then I started gaining weight and I gained 30 pounds and I am not a tall person. So that I was to the point where I'm like, I either go buy all new clothes or I figure out what's going on. So then this is, I described this in the book. I was, I was living in Georgia, in Atlanta, Georgia, which is in the southern part of the United States.

It's like 900 degrees all the time there. So I'm sitting at a barbecue. I don't know why you're cooking outside in 900 degrees in the southern part of Georgia with a nurse friend of mine. And I'm going on and on about all these things. And it was Kathy, the nurse who said, you need to call this secret doctor we have and figure out your hormones. but I had heard about the women's health initiative, and I wasn't sure at all what I, because in medical school, they don't teach us about menopause or hormones or anything, especially I'm an orthopedic surgeon. So I picked up a book that changed my life. It was all the data

surrounding the safety of hormones. I read it twice. I called the secret doctor to say, I think I really need to get in front of my hormones. And I started on hormone optimization with estradiol and progesterone. And I started to feel more like myself again, but for no woman, are hormones ever going to be enough? You have to implement the lifestyle. And it's when I started going back to the heavy lifting that I had learned in high school. But it had been so long that I hired a strength coach. And he re-taught me how to lift heavy without getting injured. And I re-examined my cardiovascular work, just like I just talked. to you about and I started sprinting and for me it was my hormone optimization it was sprinting

it was lifting heavy and I stopped eating trash and really focusing on the protein and fiber in my diet that makes me feel as amazing as I do now because when you say trash it's it's out of processed foods I don't think our food is quite as bad as it is in the States I think Hopefully not. No. But nevertheless, if you go in any of the big supermarket here, it's very, very difficult not to fill your trolley with ultra-processed food. But the diet that you advocate is almost the diet that our grandparents are.

So it's whole foods, meals from scratch. My two children go to their, my mother-in-laws, and she makes them shepherd's pie. I don't know if you know what that is. You know, shepherd's pie and spaghetti boronets. I sometimes think, oh, she's filling them with carbs and stodgy carbs, but actually it's good, hearty meals. That's never going to cause a problem. It's all the crap around it. It's all the boxes where you turn it over and it says 11 grams of added sugar. And then it has

a list of chemicals that benzo, something, hyphos, something that you can't even, like, what is that actually doing in the food? For instance, in my house, I mean, I'm a busy person, like the next person, but I bake bread every two weeks from a sourdough starter, and we just put it in the freezer. It's made out of three ingredients, and we just use it as, and it becomes therapeutic for me, but I know where it's coming from instead of a simple loaf of bread having 97 chemicals in it. It's really difficult with nutrition because I know it all, you know, not at all, but I know a lot. No, but it's your job here to know. It's my job to know at all. However, there are times where the primal need to eat sugar takes over.

And our producer of this podcast, Chely, laughs at me because I will sometimes say to her, so do you know what I had for dinner last night? A Caneto. Do you know, of ice cream? Oh, an ice cream. And yesterday, I was working from home and I felt really quite under the weather.

So I ate 10 biscuits with a cup of tea And afterwards I felt, why did you do that? You know, and it's almost like my mind takes over And he's driving me to the kitchen. It does because when we eat sugar, our brain gives us a hit of dopamine. But here's what I want to say about that. I think women are made to feel guilty about a lot of things from a lot of sources. And on days like that, I feel like let's just give ourselves a little grace.

yeah some for forgiveness if every day is like that then we have a habit problem but every once in a while i'm pleased you said that because you know i speak to these people i don't i don't have a gram of sugar in my diet and i think that would that would be impossible well you know what in in the spirit of giving grace i mean we had a very long day yesterday we were seeing a lot of people it takes a lot of energy and we finished late and i was famished and so i had a healthy dinner but you know what we had to order the chocolate tart and I had to eat three bites of it and go to bed without the guilt any guilt because we have to be human beings but if we choose to that's the point if we choose to give in to the easy seven days a week every meal not minding

how much protein we have or for women many times we've been raised with this thought that we have to be this tiny and we can't take up space and we can't feed ourselves, God forbid. I take care of a lot of women who come in who eat less than 1,000 calories a day because I know. So I think we should give ourselves grace if once in a while we want to have three bites of dessert or ice cream for dinner as long as, or 10 biscuits and some tea. But as long as most days we're really treating ourselves. as a specimen and not a garbage can.

So we put an ask out on women's health's Instagram for questions for you. That's great. And we were inundated. There was much excitement that you were coming on. Oh my gosh. I will go through some of these questions now. I feel that we maybe have covered the answer to some of them. We don't need to spend too much time on the ones that we feel we've covered.

So the first one is four resistance sessions plus 10,000 steps a day. enough for a 43-year-old woman to help with aging? I will take 7,000 steps a day, walking every day, including what you do in your life, fine. For resistance sessions, amazing, as long as his quality lifts and not wasting your time with very lightweights. Can you give me some postpartum breastfeeding tips for bone health? Yes, I'm so glad we brought that somebody asked. that. What women don't realize is that to grow a baby, it takes about 500 milligrams of calcium a day,

your body's going to prioritize this baby and take it from your bones. So we must eat so that we don't get osteoprocess of pregnancy. When we're breastfeeding, which I am all for, I breastfed my last child for as long as she would tolerate it, which was about a year. Every day, we're using 500 milligrams of calcium. So if we are eating that calcium, we should be fine. But mothers are busy. Sometimes you're just latching on and hoping for the best and don't eat enough, let alone shower, right? Many of us have been there. We must replace our calcium with our food so that we don't lose our bone density. We can lose, depending on who you read, 6 to 20 percent of bone density while we're breastfeeding babies. Here's the good news. Our bodies are,

equipped to replace that, but only if we feed ourselves. And what's the best way to replace calcium through food? Through food. So dairy is very high. We need 1,200 to 1,800 milligrams, depending on life stage. A cup of Greek yogurt has about 300. You can get your calcium from food, preferably, not from a tombs or a pill. How do I exercise after spinal surgery for sciatica?

Yeah. So once you are cleared by your surgeon that you can resume exercise, you can work back up to almost anything you want. Is it good to walk if you have osteoarthritis? It is imperative to walk if you have osteoarthritis. So many times people come to me and say, I don't do this, I don't do that because I don't want to get arthritis or I have arthritis. arthritis feels worse when your joints are stiff and when you're weak. In fact, weightlifting is good for people with arthritis because in order to prevent your bones from pounding together at the joint, we must have the shock absorbers of muscles above and below.

Isn't that surprising? Yeah. This next question I love because it's something that we get asked a lot at woman's health. Should you stop or cut back running as you go into your 40s? 50s, 60s, and 70s. The question I ask is why? Who told you that? And why?

There is no scientific data to support the myth that running causes arthritis. What causes arthritis is extra weight, trauma, inflammation. In fact, long-term studies on runners have found that they're some of the most healthy people. So there's no reason to stop. running itself with age. That being said, people who only run do not build enough muscle mass, so you must run and cross-train or run and lift weights. This lady is 56 and she is asking why her muscles can take heavier weights but her ligament struggle. Well, it takes, and by struggle maybe she means that they get sore and maybe they're stiff. Well, number one, we have to have a

flexibility and range of motion practice to keep them limber. Number two, it does take a period of time to adjust to lifting heavy. It's to what you said earlier. You can't go from zero to 50 kilograms in one day. The tendons and ligaments must be given time to adjust. And number three, estradiol plays a critical role in the health of ligaments and tendons. What is the best thing to do if I've got a muscle injury and exercise is aggravatedness? I think a wonderful thing to do is to continue to move, find a good physio who can do some manual therapy, maybe use heat, stem, and ice to recondition the muscle, and then slowly progress back to the exercise you were doing before. But simply resting and sitting still makes you atrophy.

Makes the worst thing. I bet you get asked this one a lot. What supplements do you recommend for women age 40 plus? But actually, let's break that down, if 30 plus, 40 plus and beyond. I ask for a very short stack. I mean, you can take 60 pills a day. But number one, the nutrients in our food, at least in the United States, are not as dense as they might have done when the soil was better. So most of us, even doing our best job, lacks some micronutrients.

So there are studies that show that a good multivitamin is a good thing to take with all the little micronutrients. Number one. Number two, get your calcium from food, especially for 30s. I'll add a few things as we get older, but baseline. These are across all age groups. Get your calcium from food. Get your vitamin D measured because those of us who live without a lot of sunshine and wear sunscreen when we are in the sunshine are constantly deprived of that. and it is critical for brain and immune system.

So vitamin D with K2 to help absorption. Number three, magnesium, 500 milligrams, either L3inate or glycinate, which helps with mood. But our body needs magnesium for a variety of things. Number four, for women, active women trying to build muscle and brain, creatine is one of the most well-studied supplements. and the safety profile used in lower doses, like 5 grams, 10 grams, are great. They have great safety profiles. So 10 grams of creatine, a day for women for muscle and brain.

Let's see what else. I'm going down my stack now. Omega-3 fish oil. You can get it from fatty fish. You can get it in your diet. Many of us don't. So a simple supplement. it's critical for anti-inflammation.

And that's the five or six things that I think people should pay attention to. We can get much more sophisticated in the future and add things like berberine and phycetan. And because as, you know, it's sometimes as a surgeon trained in Western medicine, I'm asked, well, what do you think about Chinese medicine or Aerovedic? And I've come to a place where I'm not so proud to say Western medicine is the only way to go because shouldn't we consider 5,000 years

of Eastern medicine and Aerovedic? If it were totally wrong, it wouldn't have persisted for 5,000 years. And that is a very individualized herbal approach that may be worth considering. I've hurt the ligaments in my foot. Will it ever heal? It still hurts if I wear anything flat. I think this person needs to go get some good physio. Yeah. Because you need to, once you're injured, your muscles around the injury atrophy, and unless you rebuild those and rebuild the coordination of how muscles and ligaments work together, you may always walk funny.

Will I still benefit from weightlifting the same way as I age if I am hypermobile? Oh. Lots of women are hypermobile, meaning their collagen fibers are more stretchy, and it's harder to control your joints. when that is. I think it's, I think with, with care, it's extra important for you to maintain your muscle mass to help hold your joints together. Whether you have a, a medical diagnosis like Eiler's Danlos, which is a collagen disorder, or you're just an extra flexi person. I think muscle is critical. How do I counteract the impact of working at a desk, especially neck headaches? Oh, we

had this discussion this morning. A desk will kill you, my friends, because 14 hours a day sitting down is hard to overcome. So we can build in little breaks by being fidgety, running to the copier machine all the time, walking the papers over to the next person. We can every hour do 10 little squats as a snack. We can take the stairs up and down in our building. You can do, you know, we can build bone by jumping off an eight inch in step and just doing ten of those. For the neck strain of doing this, you know, head down all day, you have to adjust your screen height. You may have to improvise and put your screen up on some boxes or books even so that your neck is at a natural angle. And what I was suggesting is even if your company won't buy you a standing desk,

find a way to prop your screen up and your keyboard so you're standing for periods of the day. I do that in my house. I put my computer on my kitchen counter instead of sitting down at a desk. And this last one, which encompasses everything we've discussed, what's the one thing, diet, exercise, etc. Should women in their 30s start now? I'm 34, she says. If you do nothing else, if you have 30 minutes a day, this 34-year-old should learn to lift weights.

And that seems it's your overall, overarching message to all women. You know what? There are many things we can do, but I often answer that question. If there's only one thing you can do, is learn to build some muscle. I have a question. It's a personal question about me, but I think it will resonate with the audience here. In my family, Alzheimer's is endemic. My mother passed away from it last year.

her older sister had it her father had it she had three brothers one is no longer with her she still has but two uncles are still alive they were all very active they were in the army then they were firemen they have not had Alzheimer's

and they're in their 80s and 90s but as I say my mother died of it her older sister did and her father did so I've always been terrified that it is written in the stars for me If I'm someone that is living a demonstrably healthy lifestyle, lifting weight, yes, I eat 10 biscuits now and again, but I don't drink alcohol. You know, I give them my best shot.

Can I ward off conditions like Alzheimer's? Even if you have the genes, am I doing the right things not to unlock those genes? There are many studies which show the direct relationship between physical activity, building muscle, and brain. health. We talked about the hormones, our muscles and bones make that go to the brain to help build better brain. By living with a diet that is, for the most part, anti-inflammatory, we also decrease our chances. If we have the genes for Alzheimer's, lifestyle still matters on how we activate those genes. So I would never stop with the behaviors that could stave that off. The other thing that I think is critically important in women that is still being studied is the role of estrogen on the brain, right?

The fact that 70% of Alzheimer's is in women, I don't think makes it possible to separate the role of our hormonal fluctuations from the expression of those genes. So if you're doing all those things, I think you're building the best shields against that. It's interesting because in the UK, and I don't know if the same in the US, there was a whole cohort of women who stopped taking HRT because of fraud research, that it increased instances of breast cancer, et cetera. And then there's since been research that said the women that they were studied, most of them smoked and were overweight, which is... And they were older.

And yeah. So is that contributing to what seems like an endemic of Alzheimer's in society at the moment? So, you know, the unfortunate truth is that the baby booming women and their older sisters, so baby boomers are in their mid to late 60s and their older sisters, they were the woman that had estrogen taken away. And I see extreme frailty, lots of fractures, high incidence of Alzheimer's disease. We just robbed an entire generation and a half of women from things that could have really helped them. Is there anything that we haven't discussed today that you absolutely want to talk about?

You know what? Inasmuch as Unbreakable is about building physical resilience. It is also about building mental resilience. We talk in the first section about what's going to motivate you to do these things. And I ask women to really identify what they value as a motivator to set goals. What do you value? How do you want to be when you envision your nine? 97-year-old self, you know. I want to be independent. I want to have the choice whether or not I

accept health or not. I don't want to be dependent on people. And that, because I value that, I work that into the actions I take. The other part of the mental resilience that we talk about in the book is really building hardiness because it's hard to get old sometimes. You know, there were books out called Growing Old or Not for Sissies, and they were pictures of master's athletes. Well, we can build mental hardiness like a muscle. And in the book, we talk about how we can take control, even when we don't feel like we're in control, how we can maintain our commitment to aging with power.

And when we see the challenges of aging coming upon us, how can we can either accept those challenges and sit still? or rise to the challenge. And that builds the mental heartiness, along with the physical heartiness, that it will take to age with power. But the last message I want everybody to think about is, without this understanding that I'm going to about to say, it will be very hard to do any of it. And that is an understanding that you are worth the daily investment, in your health you are worth it you are more important than everybody else you take care of

that you have worth in this world and therefore taking time for yourself is okay well on that note dr bonder right i found this fascinating thank you um personally so helpful i've learned so much and i would urge anyone listening or watching today to to read unbreakable um Because it's essential reading. Thank you. Yeah, we, you know, us women, we have it hard, I think, sometimes, especially as we go into our 40s and 50s. And there are simple precautions we can put in place to make life that bit easier for us.

So thank you so much for coming on just as well. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you.