not conducive. But all through my 30s, early 40s, it was still young enough. I had that youthful resiliency that kind of forgave me for some bad habits. But here what? Here I was at like, 46 or 47 years old, and it caught up with me. So that was a big shock. My doctor is somebody who’s known me for a while, and so I had the ability to sort of dialog about it. He wasn’t just like, Oh, you’re doing what I say. And so I said, give me six months. I just, I need to try this. And he said, Oh, everybody says stuff like that. You know, he didn’t believe me. But he just said, Listen, I know you keep your word. I’ll cut you some slack. You come back. We’re going to make the appointment right now, and you better come back in six months, and we’re going to take these tests again. And I said, if those, if those tests come back that way again, then I will, I will take the prescriptions, alright, deal. And then I went out to my car and just sat and cried because I realized I had no idea how I was going to meet this bargain. I had no idea I made a deal, and I had no plan. So I just hired a trainer, started exercising, because that’s the one thing I really wasn’t doing regularly, and began to get into shape and working out really hard, three days a week, and it was first thing in the morning, 5am so it was a real shocker for my body, but it was the one time I could work out when everybody else in the world was sleeping, and I knew that nobody would get in my way and I’d be able to do it. So I just worked along in silence with this trainer. I didn’t talk about it, just did it, and six months later, I had lost 25 or 30 pounds just from exercising. I hadn’t changed my diet at all, and I was still a little fluffy. You know? I wasn’t super lean or anything, but way healthier just because of dropping that extra weight. And so I went back to the doctor, and my labs checked out, okay. And he said, alright, you gotta, you gotta keep going. Now, if you stop, you know you’re going to be back where you were. So I did. I kept going and just got more and more in shape and got into diet and made sure that my nutrition matched what I was doing with my body. And pretty soon I was very fit, and I decided to become a personal fitness trainer, because I was inspiring everyone around me. Well now and now, I find myself 20 years later, and I’m approaching I’m just a year and a half away from turning 70, and have to say that taking care of your body in a serious and loving way is one of the best ways you can buy insurance for yourself to enjoy the last trimester of your life.

 

Manon Bolliger  01:03

Yeah, for sure, yeah, because it does creep up, right? You hear people saying, Oh, well, it’s normal. My knees creak. And then when I get up a chair, I do, oh, you know, like, it’s hard work. And, you know, and it’s like, but does it have to be that way.

 

Janet McConnell  06:15

It doesn’t have to be and, you know, it’s funny, because we do have certain ideas before we’re old, we have certain ideas about what it’s like because of the people around us, our family members, who are our genetic birthright. We can see how they age, and then and then society tells us, well, you know, when you get old, you know, fill in the blank. And so it can lead to some beliefs that some of it’s true. I mean, it does affect how much stamina you have. You may have to rest, take a little nap in the middle of the day. You do get a little arthritis. And I have news for you, even elite athletes get arthritis. It happens from using your body and, you know, and having that inflammation that can set in, but if you have a good exercise routine and a clean diet, it lessens the symptoms. So it could be in your joint, but it doesn’t hurt the same to the same degree once you’re warm. You know, once you’ve warmed up your body that the arthritis pains go away.

 

Manon Bolliger  07:23

So, so what is it that you feel you get the most out of the routine that you have? And what is that routine a little bit just because there’s so many things available, right? So, what do you do?

 

Janet McConnell  07:39

You know that metaphor where you take like a glass vase and you put rocks you have to fill it completely, and so you put the big rocks in first, and then you add the pebbles, and then the sand, and then it’s completely full. So you want to always use the big rocks first, and the big rocks of this question are adequate exercise, meaning walking, moving. You know that 10,000 steps, idea of having enough movement every day and then lifting weights where you’re doing resistance training, so you’re picking heavy things up and putting heavy things down, because that strengthens your muscles, pulls on your bones, makes your bones stay mineralized, makes you have better balance less problems with joints, because your muscles are all doing the work. You’re not making your joints do the work. The third rock is getting adequate sleep. So really working on sleep hygiene. If you have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, that’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of literature and a lot of work out there. That’d be a whole other podcast how to do that, but that’s something to monitor, and then also making sure that you have a good, healthy social life, so that you’re interacting with other people and you don’t stay isolated too much. That’s also, those are the four real pillars, I think of the first things you want to really look at to have a healthy mental health and physical health all the way into old age.

 

Manon Bolliger  09:17

So, so the first one, it’s, it’s really walking and movement, right, right, yeah, and, and that’s not that hard. You would think, right?

 

Janet McConnell  09:28

It’s the one most people are happy to do.

 

Manon Bolliger  09:31

Right, exactly on top of that.

 

Janet McConnell  09:32

Yeah, happy to do. They’re happy to walk the dog, garden, golf, and do light housekeeping, all that kind of stuff, they’re fine with that. It’s the it’s the other part, the resistance training, that has the most resistance.

 

Manon Bolliger  09:48

And when you say resistance training, resistance against your own body weight, or with weights?

 

Janet McConnell  09:55

I would say, if you’re a beginner, you want to start with body weight. And get comfortable with the movement. Make sure that you’re getting some good instruction, so that you’re using proper form. You’re not rounding your shoulders and you’re not swaying or standing with your back sway back, or you’re standing correctly, to do the different things, but then quickly, you can progress into light weights, both free weights like dumbbells, and then resistance, like bands or cables, and then there’s also machines. And here’s the other piece to that. So women will say, especially, I don’t want to lift weights because I don’t want to get bulky. I don’t want to get big and muscular. I want to look like a woman. I don’t want to look like a guy. Well, because of the way that we’re wired, hormonally and structurally and genetically, it is not possible unless you do extreme, extreme stimulation of those muscles and eat in a certain way to get really big, just eating a healthy diet and lifting light weights is not going to do that, but what it will do is firm up your body so that you have a firmness. And this is the thing that is become my real my real topic of late is there are recent double blind, peer reviewed research that has come out to say one of the most powerful non pharmacological things you can do to preserve your cognition into old age, or if you have some beginning signs of a neurological disorder or a disease like Parkinson’s or dementia, it will slow the progress is resistance training. It’s using your large muscle, your skeletal muscles, and really working with them, because the hormones and the enzymes and the chemical reaction that happens in your body is to heal, heal, heal, heal.

 

Janet McConnell  09:55

It’s like you get a cut. Your body right away wants to sew that little cut up, you know, you put a band aid on it. The next day, it’s fine, you know it that’s the body is, is programmed for that. Well, you don’t just heal the muscles you worked. It affects the entire body. So all of that healing goes up here and also and it helps to heal and helps to cleanse and helps to grow. It’s called neurogenesis, helps to grow new brain cells, and there’s now double blind, peer reviewed research to back that up. So it’s really an exciting time.

 

Commercial Break  12:40

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Janet McConnell  13:49

I heard a metabolic doctor talking about this in a podcast not too long ago, and she coined it this way, you’re the most powerful aging organ, that an anti aging organ is your skeletal muscle. It is a longevity organ. I never thought of my muscles as an organ, like your stomach and your heart. It’s an organ of longevity, your your skeletal muscle. And it’s true. I mean, I I’m living proof of it, but I have clients who have some of those neurodegenerative diseases in the early stages, they come to me and say, I just went to my doctor and sure I’m taking the light medication that I’m supposed to take right now, but he doesn’t understand why I’m not getting worse

 

Manon Bolliger  14:44

So but do you think it’s because the muscles also help the lymphatic system? You know, it moves things. It helps you detox, right?

 

Manon Bolliger  14:55

And a lot of these diseases, it’s in accumulation of toxicity. So if you’re moving and allowing things to to go through you you know you can eliminate them better. So it makes sense. You know, goes to the cellular level. Yeah. What have you seen? Or which neurodegenerative diseases?

 

Janet McConnell  15:20

Okay.

 

Manon Bolliger  15:21

You know, resistance has seemed to stall it, help it, improve it, whichever.

 

Janet McConnell  15:28

Right, the research says that all of the brain diseases are definitely affected, but in my own practice, it would be multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s are the two that I have worked with clients on. So that’s what caused the question in my mind that made me start digging to find out, Oh, this is bigger. This isn’t just anecdotal on my part, how interesting that people who have a disease that gets worse, isn’t they aren’t they’re getting worse much more slowly than what the doctor would expect based on a larger population. But there also that. What the studies say, also, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Lewy body. You know, they’re all a big family of neurodegenerative diseases.

 

Manon Bolliger  16:19

It took you six months to kind of get moving, and you had a reason to do it. So what do you tell people who, you know, like the I mean, the biggest excuses is, oh yeah, I’ll walk tomorrow. It’s a bit chilly today, or it’s this, or it’s raining, or, you know, maybe I should get a dog, you know. Or, Oh, is it really going to make that much difference? So how do you help people get over the bazillion excuses that makes it hard to get out of your comfortable sofa and your house or your place?

 

Janet McConnell  17:01

It usually starts with what is immediately bothering them. Right then, you know, you start with the immediate problem of, I went on vacation and I had such a hard time keeping up with my tour group and everybody had to keep waiting for me.

 

Manon Bolliger  17:20

Oh, okay.

 

Janet McConnell  17:22

I went to Italy and was walking on cobblestone streets, and several times I almost turned my ankle, you know, not having that stability or I was so excited to go visit my kids and my grandkids. My daughter has a new baby. It’s now walking, and I bent down to grab it and pick it up, and I threw my back out. You know, there’s usually some kind of real life thing. I work with people who are 50 and older. So it’s no longer about having a bikini body. It’s about wanting to feel good in their skin and have the the strength and the stamina to enjoy what they already enjoy. And so what I tell people is you don’t have to, you know, join a CrossFit gym or do an Iron Man or any of that stuff. What is it right now this day? What is it that you love to do? What are the activities that you don’t want to give up? Because as people get older, one of the biggest fears is of aging is having to give things up, having to lose your autonomy, lose your agency, lose the ability to be able to take care of yourself, and do the have the freedom to enjoy what the world has to offer, whatever is your passion, and so whatever that is, that’s the motivator. You love to golf. How much do you love to golf? And how are you going to be able to do it when you’re 80, if you don’t do some things now to almost, you know, train a little ahead of that.

 

Manon Bolliger  19:10

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it always seems to be the the current thing you can’t do or afraid you you will lose. You know, it’s true, right?

 

Janet McConnell  19:20

It’s about making your future self happy. So be happy now, for sure, but about 10-15-20 years from now, and what kind of a life you want to live then? And if the things you’re doing now are things you enjoy, then train for it. You know?

 

Manon Bolliger  19:38

Yeah, I think that’s a good way to look at it. It’s you’re actually training for it, because otherwise it will naturally become more difficult. Yeah, right, so you actually have to train upwards.

 

Janet McConnell  19:52

There’s this there’s this wonderful thought person, there’s a person out there, Doctor Peter Attia. He has a book called. Outlive the latest big volume. It’s a big book. It’s like Harry Potter, but it’s all about aging well, and it’s from a doctor, a thoracic surgeon’s point of view, and also he’s a fitness enthusiast himself, so he’s kind of coming at it from the medical practitioner, and also the person. Okay, so Doctor Peter Attia wrote a book called Outlive and he is also a podcaster, and he talks about this set of exercises that he has his senior clients, patients do. And he calls it the Centenarian Olympics. And the reason he calls it that is because think about an Olympic athlete. We’ve just come through the Olympics and appreciated all these amazing, you know, physical specimens. And they don’t just, you know, casually go to the gym. They train with that. I want to win that. And they’re very focused. And they train and train and train, sometimes decades as a child. So they have this vision of what they want in the Olympics. So if you turn that on its ear and think, if you live to be 100 What do you want to train for? What do you want? Do you want to be able to climb a flight of stairs? Do you want to be able to carry your own suitcase. Do you want to be able to pick up a toddler? Do you want to be able to swing a golf club? What is it that you want to be able to do ride horses? Be able to go hiking, you know, be able to just walk, you know, be able to walk from your car to the store, you know. What is it that you want to be able to do the centenarian Olympics, and so you’re training for that right now. How’s your training going? You know?

 

Manon Bolliger  21:47

Yeah, that’s good, yeah. And so how many people that you know that you’re starting with actually follow through? Don’t get taken out by their own excuses.

 

Janet McConnell  22:03

Oh, well, once, once I talk to them, they they pretty much stick with me. I mean, the only reason somebody leaves or quits is not they don’t just quit, but they move away, you know, or sometimes they retire and go to a different town or move to a different…I live in a really big city, so they have to go to a different place. So yeah, but once they start right, once they start with me, they’re, they’re pretty much all in because they understand that I’m living it. I’m I’m a walking billboard for my message, and I’m there for them, and I know what it feels like to be a senior citizen. I’m not a bouncy cheerleader saying, okay, you know, I’m old. I’m I’m old what people might call old, so.

 

Manon Bolliger  22:54

Yeah, yeah, well, the living proof is always good, yeah, it’s the easiest way to get over, you know, belief systems where you know it’s no it’s too complicated or too difficult, or I’m not coordinated enough, all this stuff, right? Which you know, if you do, gets better. Yeah. So we have a couple more minutes. Any other message that you want to share to somebody who’s going, Oh, maybe me, maybe, maybe I could do this after all, you know?

 

Janet McConnell  23:29

Absolutely, yeah, I think that it’s important to to just take some time to to visualize your life now and where you want to be and not be afraid. I mean, here we are. As we get older, you become more, oh, you have a better perspective on life. You certainly have the tools. Because what, what young people often don’t have as much of is patience, perspective, perseverance, how to face failure, how to face difficult tasks and get through it, and get to the other side and look back and think, Oh, I’m glad I did that. You know, we have all this life experience, so apply it to your own well being and realize, Oh, I’m ready for a new adventure, the adventure of me and and I do have a couple of really important they’re kind of like slogans. Everybody knows that knows me knows that I usually say this, and that is that I am here to rewrite the rules of aging. That’s why I’m on this planet. And it’s aging is inevitable, but decay is optional. Very good, yeah, yeah. And so I never want to say, like, anti aging, because I’m not against it. It’s coming, whether I’m against it or not. Dead to embrace it. Enjoy it. You. And maximize on what it brings to you. Now that you have lived so much of life, what are you going to do with it? What is your piece de resistance as they say?

 

Manon Bolliger  25:12

Well, that makes sense. Great statement. Well, thank you very much for sharing your your enthusiasm, your transformation, you know, with us, and I think there’s a lot of people in you know, the age group of 45 to 70 that are listening, so yeah, hopefully they will hear you already doing it.

 

Janet McConnell  25:38

Awesome. Thank you. I’m so appreciative. I It’s really been nice to spend some time with you today.

 

Manon Bolliger  25:44

Thank you.

Ending

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