Aging with Power, (Without an Outage) with Vonda Wright

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. What if aging wasn't a slow decline but a powerful ascent? In this episode, Dr. Vonda Wright joins me to redefine aging with power with your natural hormone boost. We're busting myths about menopause, metabolism, muscle, bone, talking strategy for women over 40 who want strength without burnout. Whether you're lifting for longevity or you're just trying to feel like yourself again, don't miss this empowering conversation. I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve. Oh, I got a juicy one for you. In this episode, we dive into the true science and strategy behind aging with power. Orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert Dr. Vonda Wright joins us to talk about what really happens to women's body in midlife and how to prevent the physical outages that so often follow menopause. Menopause, injury, and hormonal upheaval. From her groundbreaking FACE method to the concept of precision longevity, Dr. Wright delivers a clear, compassionate call to action for every woman over 40 who started feeling fine— we all know what that means— and ready to feel powerful. Her book Unbreakable is something to put on your list or in your Amazon cart, depending. Together we address why 80% of women still aren't strength training enough to support their bones, brain, and metabolism, and how this one shift can change everything. We unpack the VO2 max dilemma for already existing midlife women and explore how we can reclaim control without burning out. If you're ready to redefine what aging looks and feels like. This conversation is your roadmap to aging with power and with joy. You may have heard me mention Dr. Vonda Wright in previous podcast episodes. She's gonna be somebody you hear more about. She's gonna be somebody you want in your corner. But she was in the research team for the publication of a study in July of 2024 describing musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, finally giving a name, a term, a label to what so many fitness experts, exercise instructors, physical therapists would've put our heads together in the back room and said, you know, what is going on here? Our midlife clients keep getting injured. And those same injuries generally are recurring. And it seemed to be the -itis, the chronic plantar fasciitis, tendonitis. And so many times there was no reason why. We all would guess logically that this was related to hormonal changes, but there was nothing documented, nothing to actually show. Until Dr. Vonda Wright and her team coined the term. So there is that. If you think she sounds familiar, she is familiar. My guest is Dr. Vonda Wright. She's a double board certified orthopedic surgeon and internationally recognized authority on human performance, longevity, and women's health. The founding director of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes, PRIMA, That is the acronym. She served as a physician for athletes at the University of Pittsburgh, Georgia State, the Pittsburgh and Atlanta Ballet, World Rugby, and the PGA. A highly sought-after media expert, she's been featured on the Diary of a CEO, Jay Shetty, and Mel Robbins podcasts, as well as the Today Show, the Dr. Oz Show, and in top publications including the New York Times, USA Today, The Observer. She's authored 5 books including Fitness After 40 and Guide to Thrive. She lives with her husband, a retired 2-time Stanley Cup champion, near Orlando, Florida. I think you're gonna love this episode. Please do me a favor and do a friend or two a favor and share this one once you've listened. Dr. Vonda Wright, thanks for being in the house.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

And thank you for, for the insight you're about to shed. So, you know, I really want to unpack this new book and the platform because it's such a great container for everything you do, you have been doing, and you're no newbie to this. People may be starting to recognize your name as a household word. I know within the last year I've said it probably two dozen times to myself, for everyone on this podcast, for you know, shedding some light on musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause almost a year ago right now. But in your book, you first share your own menopause wake-up call. So really powerful and vulnerable of you to do in the book. How did that experience shape your clinical and your personal mission? What is it that you want every woman to in the audience to know from your story?

Well, you know what, Debra? I think, if I'm honest, I thought I was never going to age. Yeah. I mean, I thought, I'm an aging researcher, and somehow it just didn't occur to me that I too was going through the passage of time. So as I tell the story in the book, when, when I started really losing my estrogen and the profound changes that nobody can avoid started happening, I was not yet a menopause expert because it's been over a decade for me. I mean, I've been going— I've— my first perimenopause experience was quite a long time ago, and at that time I didn't know everything I know now. So I just thought, okay, what's happening, blah blah blah. And then I started educating myself. So what I want people to do first is realize that birth, death, taxes, and menopause are going to happen to everybody born with XX chromosomes and ovaries. There is no way to not go through this. So we might as well be the strong, proactive, getting stuff done women we are and learn about it so that you're not like me and you're like, oh my God, I think I'm aging. Can you imagine? Yeah, right.

No hall pass for that. We're not immune.

And, and you know what, maybe I felt that way because like you, I've been really active my whole life. I knew what to do. But the things that happen are profound, and it— and we still need to get in front of it.

Um, so true. So there are a lot of hard-working, busy women feeling like they're on missions listening, which I would say is probably your MO. I mean, you don't get to be an orthopedic surgeon probably by, you know, hanging out, getting to class 50% of the time. And then you're also— you have this entrepreneurial spirit and nature about you that, I mean, you're kind of like a bulldog. And first of all, I am so distracted. So for those of you who are listening, not watching, do you have a weighted vest on right now?

You know what, I do.

You overachiever, you!

Oh my God, I'm gonna tell you the truth. Yes, a weighted vest increases my heart rate about 10% when I'm working out. But this particular weighted vest, I'm in design phases. Don't tell the world that yet, but I am. It actually feels like a hug. It's an anti— I'm not anxious, but when I wear it, it's almost like a little hug, an anti-anxiety thing.

We're calling this the oxytocin vest then.

Oh, I love it. I love that so much because, you know, I'm, I'm Thinking about all use cases. So yes, I do. And you know the beautiful thing about this one? It has an adjustable zip cord on the side because I find so many weighted vests— meaning it's ruched like— well, it's got these ski things on it for those. Can you see? Oh yes. So if you happen to have more boobs than I do, which are minimal, I mean, this is gonna adjust for that. Listen, I'm thinking of all things, girlfriend.

You got it covered. Uh, yeah, but yes, speaking of Type A overachievers that might be listening, I think you might know them. Was, was that a part, do you think, of your own perimenopause journey? Did, did that hit you a little harder, you think, because anxiety or needing a hug or Or, or the adrenal stress, maybe.

Yeah, you know what, it's— yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I'm baseline, like, I mean, just like the women that run with us, then in the— in that I see around at things we're at together, I am high capacity. I have accepted that. I am not ashamed of that. I do not try to downplay that. I am high capacity. But you know what, when I was in the throes of the chaos of perimenopause about 45, 47 to 50. I was having— waking up with heart palpitations. I was ruminating a lot. I was, you know, instead of sleeping, I was worried about something. And I'd never really done that before. It wasn't in my capacity, MO. I mean, I know some people live with that all the time, but it was new to me. And here's the thing. I can get pretty animated like this, but emotionally, I'm pretty level. I mean, I don't— I mean, I don't let— I'm a surgeon. Nobody's gonna die if I make a mess, make a mistake on the outside of the OR, right? So outside the OR, I'm pretty calm. I am not kidding you, I was enraged all the time, and I didn't know why. Wow. Why was I so angry? And I think it had to do with the dysregulation, uh, of not having estrogen on the receptors that it was sitting on before. And I had to learn to deal with that, and I have chosen to do hormone optimization. So that's really helped me. But that was a surprising thing for me. It was a new— because I'm used to being high adrenaline, high capacity, but it was a new feeling.

Wow. Okay, so to anybody who's here and listening, I think this is actually refreshing. And we're sorry you had to go through it, but they're all a little relieved, like, oh like I should have known better. I think we all go to, what did I do wrong? Or I didn't know this, or is this just me? And knowing that a physician— and I think we all look to Mary Claire Haver and thank her too for sharing that she's just as vulnerable underneath it all. She's a woman too, period. But you are part of this very powerful wave, this force of physicians who You know, there's still too few of you, but, you know, Pamela Peek was doing this quite a long time ago, but then we really didn't hear about more. There wasn't more people like Pamela Peek. But then Peter Attia comes out and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and you and Mary Claire Haber, your MDs literally reinforcing, you know, what exercise and fitness experts I think have tried to do for decades, but you're doing it with a credibility edge that finally, I think people still look to doctors no matter what we think or what kind of service we've had. We still feel like if you say it, I'm going to pay attention. So it's such an opportunity right now to get people's attention. I mean, and what do you see between medicine and fitness? You know, how will they merge more if you could look into a crystal ball, or what do you hope would happen?

Well, you know what, I've always tried to merge them and take care of the whole person. So, uh, when I returned to the University of Pittsburgh after my fellowship in the very early 2000s, I started these, um, what we would call now high-intensity interval training classes with some of the exercise physiologists at the performance center where my office was because I realized that it was one thing for me to say to people, okay, you need to move more and here's how you're going to feel better. 70% of people in this country do no form of mobility or activity or exercise, whatever you want to call it, every day. So because I had the opportunity to, to collaborate with people like you, and we had trainers and physical therapists and exercise physiologists, We ran twice-a-week classes called START where we took people fresh off the couch and we measured their body fat, Debra, it was 51%, and could not hold a plank. And over the course of 12 weeks, in a 10-exercise circuit, 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off, which we were doing at the time. I don't really teach that way anymore, but we were doing it at the time. And then following that, a 45-minute walk, do you know that people were no longer pre-diabetic, people were no longer hypertensive? And we always timed our start classes to end at a 5K race because for people who do not move, that is like an unbelievable monumental brain charge from which they believe that the future is hopeful. I have always tried to integrate, although for an orthopedic surgeon, I'm going to tell you, I've had more than my share of career people looking at me like I'm insane. Still to this day, they don't know what to do with me because I'm interested in this integration and working together with all facets of—

You're the girl on the right hanging upside down on the ballet bar. I got it. We like it. Don't change it. So with these people, I love what you're saying. You know, at some level, we try to do the same thing. It's not about checking the box and getting the workouts in every week. It's about who you become along the way and what— how you plug that into the rest of your life and your, your gifts and deliver them. And that's what I hear you saying. You're not just here to bag of bones and bag of muscles and fix that and patch it, but what they can do afterward. I want to ask you something specific, like what do you see for the future of medicine and fitness coexisting regarding all diseases, you know, not just osteoporosis and sarcopenia, which are so heavily involved in, obviously, from the bone, but we know that it takes muscle to get to the bone. And we're talking cancer, heart disease, diabetes, I mean, all of the comorbidities related to obesity. What, what could our future be?

So what I predict for the future is the democratization of longevity practices, meaning right now longevity and the integrative model of prevention is really, unfortunately, sometimes only accessible to people with extra money because insurance-based care is disease care. It's based on a productivity model and it's based on doctors being taught in school a pathophysiology model. And that's the way it's been for generations. And so I predict for the future and projects I'm working on now is to take the prevention model, which is currently not paid for, and, and in a, in a healthcare model, make prevention the, the primary treatment with disease care only in the end. And I frankly feel things like AI will help us because common things are common. And I'll give you an example. I spoke at the American Diabetes Association earlier this year on the things I talk about. And in preparing for that, I was reading diabetes research. 96 million people in this country have prediabetes defined as a fasting blood glucose of over 110 and hemoglobin A1C, like, 6. Well, what happens now in a disease care model is those people are not dying and their eyes are not going and their feet are not falling off. And so, the mantra that's said to people, and I know this because I ask my patients, "Oh, what did your doctor say to you about your prediabetes?" So, they're like, "Oh, your sugar's a little high. Watch what you eat." Well, the fact of the matter is if we could, and we can, you know this, you do this all the time, very easily, reverse prediabetes by building some muscle, by walking every day, by not treating our bodies as a garbage disposal. We can very rapidly reverse prediabetes and we could save 96 million lives. Because what happens when you progress? The data show that within 10 years of being prediabetic with no preventive intervention, 70 to 100% of people will have diabetes. And diabetes is the precursor of Alzheimer's. And lack of estrogen makes it worse. So if we can democratize prevention and make, make the fitness industry not a gym-only thing, but I am prescribing exercise. Here are the trainers that I have in my trust box, which I do. I have 2 or 3 that I refer to all the time. I mean, that is the way we bring fitness into a modality, nutrition into a modality. And AI will make it easier because we can expand the physician. And what does have to happen, which is something to work on, is we need to expand how we pay for it because millennials tell us they will pay 25% of their disposable income to live this way, but we've got the Xers and the Boomers who are not used to expending money on their own health. So, maybe it's their health savings account. Maybe it's just convincing people that they're worth it. Within the biohacking and longevity space that I know you and I are both in, people do pay money. But in the general population, I find people are not willing to spend money on their health.

How much do you think this is also, they can't see it yet? They don't have the vision because, I mean, our generation hasn't had that vision. We're it. We're the vision. We are becoming it.

Yeah, well, yeah, that is a good point. Millennial people see the, see the future very differently than the Generation X and the baby boomer generation of people.

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So people who have been in shape, you know, your entire adult career like you are still the anomaly. Mm-hmm. But the more that we age in a powerful way, You know, we age with power or strong or that. I'm hoping that the anomaly part of that will become the common part of that. And the anomaly will be, oh, I'm so happy or so sorry you were so sick that you've ended up frail. And not the fact that two-thirds of all people in a nursing home are women and frail, right?

Yeah, yeah. Live that, yes. Talk to me a little bit about doctors. And, you know, there's, there's such a wide— so there's you, pioneer, leading the way, saying what's possible. And then there's such this opposite end of the continuum, still doctors suggesting you cannot gain bone density after 30. It's just it— doors closed. I've got, I've got patients of theirs arguing with me, saying that's not possible. I'm like, yeah, we see it, we see it, it happens.

Yeah, but are they—

is this an ignorance? Is this fear of litigation? Is— what is causing them to bury their heads in the sand and not see what, what is now and current?

Well, I, you know, it's hard to— it's hard to know. We're not taught in medical school We're just not a preventive model. We're not taught exercise physiology. We're not taught nutrition. We're taught pathophysiology. I mean, I can— I can't, and I wouldn't want to, but many doctors can still write out biochemistry pathways, which are good for knowing diseases. But so it happens in the way we're trained. And then if you just stay where you are, then that's all you're gonna know. Um, because I truly do not think what you're describing is because doctors lack empathy or care for people. We've given up our entire freaking youth to do this. We're not doing this because we don't want to help people. But I, but I think there are some doctors who get stuck. Um, and I argue with my patients all the time. They come to me just like they come to you, and they're like, nope, it can't be done. I'm like, listen, I'm not arguing with you. These are the data. I'm sorry you've been taught that. It is not right. Uh, because I've gotten just very— like, I've got too many people to save to argue with you right now.

Good point. How much, if any, of your work is dedicated, or have you looked at the educating other doctors?

Yeah, so I, I still speak academically. I mean, I speak at a lot of consumer conferences, but I speak academically all the time. We just published that paper The, the Musculoskeletal Syndrome of Menopause. We've got a series of other, uh, big population studies coming out where we analyze data and say things like, uh, doctors, did you know that, uh, estrogen optimization and using medications can save 38% of bone fractures? I mean, we've done big data studies and are publishing, so a significant part of my work, especially I have this brilliant young big data scientist that I work with, and we just mine databases to produce this. So that is still going on. My original work trying to rethink what musculoskeletal aging was, you know, those studies have been completed. Looking, we've proven that we can maintain muscle mass, we can maintain bone density, we can maintain brain function. We've explored the why, which is skeletal muscle contraction causes the production or transcription of a longevity protein called klotho. So that work has been done. And then other people after I stopped really continued it. And now we're looking at just big data sets. So I'm still at it. It's all I know how to do.

Still plugging away. I am. So answer this question.

We kind of—

you kind of alluded to it there, but I want to say this. So these questions come up a lot right now. For whatever reason, it seems like there's a little ping pong going on between researchers saying HRT doesn't help gain muscle, HRT doesn't help gain bone density. Where do you stand on that?

Uh, I think they're coming from the standpoint of there are not randomized controlled trials that can prove in a randomized controlled trial and meta-analysis way Right? But here's what we know about research in women. We know that less than 1% of all research money, at least NIH research money, has been devoted to women over 40. And yet women over 40 are 25% of the entire population. We know that 2% of all venture capital is spent on devices specifically for women over 40. So when researchers, of which I am one and have been, say there is no data, my response is, how could there possibly be 20 randomized controlled trials when nobody funds this work that would cover 51% of our population? So I say there may not be randomized controlled trials now, but look at the mechanism. We know that estrogen— let's take bone density. Is critical in the balanced remodeling of bones such that estrogen controls the work of the osteoclast, the bone cell that breaks down bone and releases bone minerals into the body. Well, when we have estrogen, it's, it's more tightly controlled. When we don't, the osteoclast works with less control while the osteoblast, the building cell, just continues on its pace. So instead of being balanced, it's unbalanced, and there's more breakdown than there is. So, uh, we know the mechanism, right? This is probably not a good example because we know that estrogen can prevent osteoporosis, but maybe heart disease. There's several great studies that point in that direction. We may— we maybe we can't say directly, uh, and Lisa Mosconi makes the point that you cannot say directly that estrogen is going to save your brain. But look what she discovered: the entire brain is covered in estrogen receptors. Any smart person is gonna know that that is not a chance occurrence. Like, why is that, right? So I think, is there work still to do? Absolutely. Do I think— I'm going to say this, I'm going to get so much flack for this. Do I think there is value in being an actual practicing clinician in understanding the human condition that you cannot possibly understand by being a PhD researcher? In the same way, I'm not going to ever understand the mechanism of some cell surface molecule like that researcher does. I think instead of being so oppositional is what I'm seeing right now.

Yeah. Why can't we all just get along? Right.

And because—

Yeah, I think we're losing sight of the end user and what are we doing to them, but we're confusing them further.

Well, and I think that there is a lot. I mean, I will be the first. I've always had a PhD partner in my research. I could not do what I've done without them. And I would love, instead of the negative crowd that's just spending all of their social capital breaking down people who are trying to help, I would love them to just teach and expose the data. Most of the posts I see are breaking down people trying to do good. I would rather they spend positive energy clarifying 'Look at the data,' and not just saying, 'Oh, you know, wacko person over there.' I just don't think it's constructive.

Agree.

Agree. You started me on this.

Well, I'm glad that you addressed it because, you know, something, something must have triggered someone because this is recent. This, I would say, is just within the last 6 months that I've noticed this, and I don't really understand it. We're really all on the same side. I mean, our goal is to educate. So let's, let's pivot for a minute. But I guess I want to add this too. So when we say maybe directly we can't tell, I do find from a fitness standpoint, from, from practical application of being in the trenches with them, that it doesn't matter to me if it's there's a direct link. But what we do see is that maybe it's because their sleep improves or their brain fog goes away, so now they can be compliant when they, they intended to or wanted to be, so they can do the thing that gets the muscle and the bone density, because that was an obstacle for many women prior to HRT who have chosen it.

Well, and I think that wisdom and even recognizing that is analogous to what I was saying, because if you passed your training certification or your strength conditioning certification from the big thick textbook— I have the textbook— that's where you left it, you could claim to be an expert trainer. But you cannot know the nuance of what you just said or how this woman is going to respond or how this one's going to— unless you've been side by side. And I draw I, I think there's a difference between side-by-side people who have a knowledge base like me and you.

Yeah.

And just reading it in a book. And I don't undervalue people who do that. I just think it's different.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it can be very frustrating from the practitioner's side if you're looking for somebody, you know, square peg, round hole, then that's not working. You know, you got to have something else in your tool bag. So I'm going to pivot here. So We both agree that too often women show up in midlife and it's really caught up with them. They're under-muscled and they're undernourished. And yet you and I too, I'm a fan of lifting heavy, do high impact. We're not broken. It's like, look, lady, look behind you at all the shit you did in your life. You got here, you're not weak. I keep hearing you in my head. I will never not hear you say mamby-pamby weights. I can't get rid of that statement. But are we scaring people? That 80, 70, 80% of people who aren't doing enough, do you ever have second thoughts about when we're saying lift heavy, when we say high impact, are we scaring them away or intimidating them?

I may be, but then I encourage them not to listen to the 60-second soundbite that gets picked up on social media, but listen to the whole thing, right? Which I always say, if you are starting from nothing, do your foundational skill, which is walking. We've all done it since we were 1, right? And when you have a 7-day streak, blah, blah, blah, right? Or I also say, "Okay, I want you to lift heavy," which to me is failure around 4 or 5 lifts. But if it takes you a year, to get off the couch, do body weight, figure out where your knee is, right? I want people to hear the whole message. But here's why I'm so— look, listen to me getting frantic. I am frantic because I am still a practicing surgeon who meets broken people in the emergency room in pain with broken bones. And bladder infections that are gonna kill them and dementia because they may have known no better than to just coast from their 20s to death. And you cannot coast. It takes a daily invest. So I'm frantic because I see the pain and suffering and I cannot have it on my watch.

Huge.

Yeah.

And I love that. And just to— emphasize your statement there, people, listeners. This is, this is on you because you're listening and you're listening to the whole thing. If you got this far, you're going all the way with us. So this is for you. And I hear this, and people will say when I'm trying to make a clarifying statement, they're using the terms, but social media tells us to be, because they've listened to a soundbite and it's like, what? No, in 2025 and beyond, we cannot Social media doesn't have a mother. Social media doesn't have a degree or experience. We have to take the whole thing into account. Talk to me about this. So from where you are and being in the trenches and practically training people, how often do you see this? I see a significant percent of people who come into our programs and memberships. It's almost, uh, not an if but a when. Women are suffering from chronic cortisol, from insufficient adrenals, and then often a domino effect on thyroid. And so we want them to do VO2. We want them to, you know, yeah, start with walking, but ideally get some HIIT, get breathless. And yet they're struggling with that. What's your advice to women who are there?

Number one, give yourself grace because progress does not happen overnight. This truly is— we did not get out of shape overnight. If we were in shape ever before. We are not going to feel good overnight. And I want you to not add to the chronic bad stress because stress is strategic. It can be very good for us. But I don't want to add the load of guilt or whatever the emotion people put. Let's give ourselves some grace. Realize it's going to take time. But if I'm expecting you, which eventually I'd like you to do, to do very high-intense things, then we must make time for the recovery part of it, for the nourishing part of it, for figuring out our sleep. In fact, in fact, we cannot do these things that both you and I are asking people to do unless we're getting some decent sleep. So I would rather them stay at a walking period get their nutrition more aligned, anti-inflammatory, and work on sleep before I throw them into any kind of gym program. I just think you can't do what we're asking if you're, if you're already, um, high cortisol chronically. I mean, cortisol is a good thing, but chronically, right? Yeah, yeah.

No, and, and so glad. And so for, for all the listeners out there, What we're pointing to is it's possible. You— it should be a wake-up call that you can do these things. You can do high intensity, you can do high impact, you can lift heavy. But if you feel right now that you can't, that just means there's some foundational work to be done so that you can.

Because it's not— I mean, it's not a program, right? I mean, we introduce people with a program, but it's a lifestyle. Your intention when people come to you is not that the minute they're done with the time that they're going to stop, right? Right. It's a lifestyle. And so sometimes people ask me when I'm doing the stuff or I'm eating a certain— I'm making certain food choices in front of them and they're like, "Oh, I feel so guilty, blah, blah, blah. I thought you might choose other things because it was a fun environment." I'm like, well, Actually, it's just kind of the way I live. I mean, this is not hard for— it's just the way I live. I'm just doing my life thing. So that's the point we want people to come to, right?

Right. Feeling good feels good.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny, but there it is.

It really is.

Historically, you know, right now I think you can go on any social media if you're like in tune with anything fitness or you've clicked on it, you're going to be served up a whole lot of things. But over and over and over, we keep hearing and seeing women lose between 3 and 8% of their muscle mass every decade after 30. And, you know, I am like, stop it. Say that this is historically— this is what happened because of the way exercise happened in the past, but doesn't have to continue. What do you hope that our daughters or daughters-in-law— what do you hope that statistic is in, in 25 years? What are they saying?

I think that there's a natural decline that happens just— I'm not denying time happens. Yeah. But, I was in the best shape of my life at 40. I have— I got back when I recovered from my menopause to a— I'm not this now, but a body fat of 22% and I gained 8 pounds of muscle over the course of my recovery from not having energy. You can build muscle at every age. Those statistics were population statistics of sedentary people. That was the whole point of my work, of my research, was what we know about aging, we know about sedentary aging because 70% of people in this country do nothing. Some of the studies that we did showed that you can retain your lean muscle mass across your lifespan. And we have the MRI pictures, which have now taken on a life of their own on the internet to prove it, right? So, um, those are population data. Our population is sedentary. We can change the trajectory of our future.

Amen. And the book is called Unbreakable.

Unbreakable, yeah.

And yeah, hard to forget that one for sure. What What's the pub date?

August 26th. This will be in your houses. It's available for pre-order anytime now. Our publisher is giving away some amazing bonus prizes if you get it now. But it's a woman's guide to aging with power filled with women's stories. I feel like we get our own stories, we get our own examples, we get a mixture of the science of aging and what it can mean to a woman because of our unique physiology. And I hope it spurs lots of great research. All the answers are not in yet. We have a lot of work to do, but I hope it gets people thinking.

Absolutely. And should be a reference book on everybody's shelf. And namely, for those of you here who are the influencers of this younger generation, put it on their shelf, give it— get it in their hands. So where else can they stalk you?

Well, please stalk me on Instagram every day. I make an effort to go there every day. I have a website, Dr. Vonda Wright, which actually people message me on there. You can, you can get access there. So those are the places. Not hard. Dr. Vonda Wright on both Instagram and the internet.

Fantastic. Any parting words? What do you want to leave us with?

You know what my goal is, is that you and I will not become frail as we age. I don't think that's going to happen, but that's my— you and I and the women we represent, number one. Number two, it is also my goal that my four millennial daughters and my one Gen Z daughter will never hit a wall like so many of us hit. They will understand what's happening. They would have set a standard and baseline of health and fitness. They will know where to go to help get their choices, and they're just going to continue their beautiful lives through menopause and into their 60s, 70s, and beyond.

Hate to do this, but I have to ask you one more question. So those daughters, will you have them do a bone density test close to 30 to see a baseline?

Yeah, you know what, actually, they're, they're 31, 32. They're my daughters and daughters-in-law. Yep. And they're childbearing right now. I have 3 grandchildren. The minute they're done, we are getting a bone density because people don't realize you lose bone during pregnancy.

Dang kids.

Yeah. Yeah. So the minute they're done, if they'll listen to me, we are marching off to get bone density done.

Perfect. That's exactly birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, really fun mother-in-law over here.

Yeah, that's good.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I I've made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes, and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.