10 Simple Essentials for Aging with Grace and Strength

Hey there, I'm Amy Connell. Welcome to Grace Health, the podcast for women who want simple and grace-filled ways to take care of themselves and enjoy a little chocolate. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants you to know your eating, movement and body don't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to do what you're called to do. Okay, hello, it has been a hot minute. This is the first of a new season, after a three-month hiatus which I took because, after doing this podcast for four years, I needed to focus on some other projects this summer and I just needed a little bit of downtime and I'm so excited to be back. I hope you are as excited as I am and I'm looking forward to a great season. We've got a few little changes coming up. You'll just see them. It's not, they're not big deal, but you'll see them. But we also have some wonderful guests coming, so I'm really glad you're here. I wanted to start this season with just kind of doing a little high-level discussion about getting older. I know it's just not very, it's not fun and it's not fun to talk about. However, we can do this. We can do hard things. We can be strong in our physical, mental and spiritual health as we get older, and I'm here to explore doing that with you. I have had such a privilege of speaking with amazing guests for the last four years and I've learned a lot. I can't tell you how much I have learned. I am a different person since starting this podcast Not necessarily better, because I don't know that we need to be holding ourselves accountable to the things that we have learned but I've grown and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the conversations that we have had. So this episode is kind of a higher level one that I wanted to come on and just talk about this. So I'm naming it 10 Simple Essentials for Aging with Grace and Strength. I use the word simple in there because I want you to make this as simple as you need it. That may mean that you choose one thing to add in. That may mean you choose nothing right now, but you kind of have on your radar for something you want to do in the future. There's a lot of noise out there and the last thing I want to do is complicate things. However, sometimes there's just a lot out there that does complicate things, so I wanted to just pull it down and give you these 10 things, 10 things to focus on as you are getting older. That, I truly believe, will help you age well, age with strength and, of course, giving ourselves grace in the process. So this is for this episode is for someone who might be wanting to next level things, to optimize things and, again, pick and choose what works for you, what do you want to do, and whatever you don't want to do, that's okay. No one here is holding you accountable. No one here is saying, oh well, we've got to make sure that you know we're doing everything perfectly. No, no, that's not it. So I want to go ahead and get into this, into these 10 things, because I'm trying to keep these episodes a little bit shorter when they're so low. So we will just get into this Number. One of our 10 simple essentials for aging with grace and strength is seasonal grace. What do I mean by that? Well, our seasons are changing. It's funny. We had a sermon at our church a couple weeks ago and he was talking about what season are you in? We have young families there, we have older couples, we have everything in between. And we got in the car and my husband said we are in a season of transition, and he was right. We have one child in college, we've got a senior in high school. We are dealing with aging parents. We've just we're just transitioning and that's okay. I mean, everybody goes through that, right. But I think it's important, especially women and women in. You know, this age group. I'm currently 48, I'll be 49 in how many months? Two months. I know many of you are 50s, 60s. We've got a few 70 year olds in here, we've got some 40s and we've got to give ourselves some grace for this season that we are in. I just went on a girls' trip and one of the most freeing and fresh comments that we had and we did not talk about this very much, but it was like huh, yeah, my body's changing, I'm a little bigger than I used to be, and it was just a fact, like it was just objective. We didn't lament it, we didn't moan and groan, it was just. That's just how it is and I think we have to give ourselves the grace that this is happening. Our bodies were meant to age, our bodies were meant to change and we're not going to be able to look like what we looked like 20 years ago. And you know, I don't want to be the same kind of person I was 20 years ago. I mean, I wasn't a terrible person, but I certainly feel like I've grown a lot, I've learned a lot, and so why should I expect my body to be the same way as well? So, yeah, our bodies are changing. Our workouts may be different. It may be that you were a lifelong runner and you might not be able to run as much anymore. Or it may be that you don't. Because of the season that you're in, you just don't have the time to do what you used to do. That's okay. It may be that you find that, instead of the high intensity workouts that you used to love, you're totally digging yoga. All of these are great, these are okay, and we've got to give ourselves the seasonal grace of recognizing that where we are now is different than where we used to be, and that's okay. You know our sleep and I'm going to talk about sleep here in a second. If you know me, you know I'm talking about sleep, but our sleep is probably changing. A lot of that is hormonal. A lot of that is just something that happens, and we can do things to mitigate that. You know that's. That's a real thing. I mean, I don't have perfect night sleeps every night, and that's just how it is, and that, of course, impacts everything else we are also we may be in a caretaking season, and when that happens, our focus, our energy is Shifting significantly. So we have to give ourselves the grace of the season of doing that and knowing that it may not be exactly like it used to be. It may be that you need to have that same structure and schedule that you've always had for you to feel sane, and that's okay. But if it doesn't, I don't want you to give yourself or I don't want you to stress out about it. Let's go on to number two. That is, having some sort of purpose, or what I call a calling. So, whether or not faith guides or steps or not, 81% of Americans feel like they have some sort of higher purpose. They have some reason to be here, and that is important to not only explore, but also because we need to ensure that we are Continuing to live into our purpose. Dr Sanjay Gupta, who is author of the book keep sharp, you may recognize him as a medical correspondent from CNN. He was he's. He would did that for a long time. I don't know if he still does, to be honest, but he talks about how having a sense of purpose is one of the greatest predictors of longevity. When we have something else we are striving for, when we have something else we are working for, this will help us live well and live longer and with more reason and purpose and vibrancy. So finding that Purpose, finding that calling, and really leaning into that rather than being like, well, I've raised my kids and I'm retired now and I'm just gonna do whatever I want, and I want you to Feel that to an extent. But don't forget that we are here for a reason. We are here for a purpose. You know, my faith isn't very important to me and I feel like God has a purpose for me as well as for you. So we're in that and exploring it. And if you're like, I don't know, I used to think I was supposed to be doing this and now I think I'm supposed to be doing this, in my opinion, we have lots of different purposes. In fact, in my book you were worthy body, I give five book or five callings that we might be able to Identify, and we're not going to necessarily have all of them, but it helps prevent us from this pressure of Feeling like we have to go do something huge or our purpose is not fulfilled. Number three quality relationships. So there are two different kinds of Quality relationships that I want to dig into here. Some of them are are horizontal, and those are our friendships. They might be our relationships or a marriage, our family, like people who we can reach out to, to love, to be loved by, and those are the horizontal ones. Now there's also vertical and, by the way, I can't take credit for this. I think I heard it in this, I think I heard it in a sermon, I'm not really sure. So this is not my original idea. But then there are these vertical relationships. Actually, it's one vertical relationship for me and that is who do I look up to? And that is One answer, and that is God. Or you can say three, which is the father of the son and the Holy Spirit, but whatever, just for purposes of keeping it simple, I'm just gonna say God. When we are looking up to God and reaching out to our friends, then we make the cross, and that is what allows us to live into the fullness that God has for us when we are being guided by him and Reaching out to others, to love and be loved by them. Now there, I have seen it. Countless articles recently on how important relationships are, particularly as we age. And if you were sitting here thinking, my Friendships have changed so much in this season that I'm in, especially if you are older and when I say older I mean like my age. But as your kids are getting older, you are not alone. My Circle of friendship has gotten smaller. The people who I see regularly is not as much. It doesn't mean I don't care and love for other people, it's just that I just don't see as many people, and I've heard this as well. One book I want to recommend is the life counsel by Laura Tremaine. The subtitle is 10 friends every woman needs. One thing I Like that Laura has done is she has identified 10 kind of Think of it as a board of directors, a friendship board of directors, and they all fill different roles. So in a board of directors you might have someone who has a really strong marketing sense or a strong financial sense or a strategic planner. So our friendships Can have different purposes and different roles, and I'm just going to read you a couple of these roles that she offers in the life counsel, like she has the business bestie, so that's like your friend at work. Or that friend who like I've developed a couple of these recently just as an entrepreneur. But you can have the fellow obsessive, like if you are totally into Yellowstone and you want to obsess about Yellowstone with someone, then you can. Then this is a fellow obsessive. You have a yes friend. This is the friend who's like do you want to yes? Hey, any interest in yes. And you know who's not a yes friend? Me, I am not a yes friend, but I'm okay with that because I feel like I can fill other roles really well. So you don't have to have all 10 of these Filled by one person. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself and another person. So it's okay that your relationships, you're you're filling those, and from different people. And in fact Laura right says that, yeah, this is how it should be. And I think when I hear this it's very freeing to me because you know, when you're younger You're like, oh, she's my total bestie, she's my ride or die, and you can have those. But then it's like but what if that person doesn't believe the same thing that you do? Or what if that person has really no interest in what you do for a living, but they're a lot of fun to go out to dinner with, so that's okay. That's okay. So check that book out if you are interested in learning a little bit more About that. But having quality relationships super important as we age, because that is what's going to keep us grounded and that, again, is Another longevity factor we've got to have we. We've got to have friendships. We cannot do Life in a silo. That is not how God designed us. Number four is sleep. Okay, so I'm gonna try not to get on this preachy, preachy about sleep, because y'all know how I feel about sleep and that I am very protective of my sleep, sometimes to a fault. I can tell you that in this menopause phase right now, sleep is impacted and you know I'm having to kind of figure that out. But when we are continually sleep deprived, and really even after one night there are some studies that you can it shows that it has a negative impact on your health. But I mean, I don't need to tell you that you're gonna be tired and you're gonna have low energy and you're gonna be irritable. You can. Also, your brain's not working as fast. So if you have a big meeting or a big event and or maybe you know that you're gonna sit down and have a difficult discussion from a relationship standpoint, then being sleep deprived is not going to be setting yourself up to feel and function well. To do that, it can lower your immune system. If you are continually sleep deprived, it elevates your cortisol, which is that stress hormone, and especially as we are having some changing hormones, then our body does not metabolize that cortisol as well, and so then that's just gonna end up with excess cortisol, which ends up often in your stomach. It's that belly you know that mini menopause belly, or something like that. So, again, sleep, you've got to sleep. And then the other thing too that it does is it totally gets your hunger hormones out of whack. So we have two different types of hormones. We have or we have more than this, but the two main ones that I want to talk about are ghrelin, and so I remember ghrelin is growling stomach. Ghrelin is the hormone that kicks in and says you are hungry. Then leptin is the hormone that says, all right, let's stop. So ghrelin, growling leptin, let's stop. It says you've had enough. It's that satiating hormone. When you don't get enough sleep, then it makes those out of whack and in fact it decreases the leptin let's stop and increases ghrelin, ghrelin, and it takes us out of balance and we don't want to be doing that. So that's another reason to make sure that you are getting plenty of sleep. Obviously, when you don't get enough, you'll also crave that energy, that easy energy. I mean I will definitely go to the sugary like quick hit, super carbo-licious. Not that those are bad, but those aren't going to make me feel my best. And then of course you're not. You're just not going to be thinking as clearly. So sleep, sleep, sleep as much as you can. If you're not a napper, but you start to feel like you need a nap, then maybe you can be a napper for a season. That's okay. Maybe you're going to sleep earlier, maybe you get an extra 30 minutes in the morning if possible. I mean, you have to maintain control over that, but as much as you can get some sleep. We did have an episode with Morgan Adams, who is a sleep coach, in season 15, episode one. I'll put that in the show notes. But if you are like, okay, I'm in here, but my sleep sucks, then you can go listen to that and maybe she'll give you some good advice for that. Number five get outside and get some fresh air. And there's a couple of different reasons for this. One is to get that vitamin D. Now, we can't get vitamin D if we are slathered in sunscreen, and I got to be honest I don't know how to rectify this Like I don't I hope my dermatologist isn't listening I do put sunscreen on my face. I don't put it on the rest of my body. I will probably not have great skin in 20 years and I've just come to terms with that because I want to make sure that I have enough vitamin D. I want to make sure that I'm getting that and it makes me feel good. My husband has psoriatic arthritis and he has found when he gets outside, probably three times a week for about 30 minutes, his arthritis is significantly better. This is why, as much as I would love to, we will never move to a cold climate. He has to have the sun for his health. So and by the way, I don't know if there's any research that's just anecdotal. We just figured that out and so that's what we do. I'm not saying that that's what you should do. I don't want to get over my scope of practice, but get that vitamin D. They say that you can like put sunscreen on your face and then if you can get 15 minutes without sunscreen, then that's enough. So you don't need to go by the beach for nine hours without sunscreen, and I am not saying that, but you can get small increments to do that. So how do I get most of my vitamin D? I get it when I'm on a walk in the morning. The other thing about fresh air is it can have a wonderful impact on your mental health. So even just these little five minute walks of getting outside can boost your serotonin levels, which is that feel good hormone that we have. And then you all know remember, we just talked about sleep, right? So getting exposure to natural light during the day can help regulate that sleep wake cycle and that will help your sleep. So, getting outside and, by the way, don't wear sunglasses if you're trying to do that, because your eyes need to get the bright light. Morgan Adams taught us that Again. Go listen to that episode if you're interested. So here's my pro tip. I like to get outside, but just like wandering around outside is kind of just feels weird to me. So I get my dog, grace, and I leash her up and we go for a walk. And then there's an excuse. It's like, oh well, I'm taking my dog on a walk. Now I have never met a dog that doesn't like a walk. I will say my Grace does not like to go in the mornings anymore, but she's nine years old. We think she was a stray so we're not super sure, but she's. She's been around for a while. So we go in the evenings but just get some fresh air, get some vitamin D and take. Take your pet for a walk, take it, take your dog for a walk. Number six white space. Okay, if I was like felt preachy when I was talking about sleep, I'm going to preach to myself here. You may be great about white space, I suck at it and that is intentionally creating time where you don't have anything. There are no external inputs. We're not listening to podcasts, which I know sounds super hypocritical because we're on a podcast or you're watching on YouTube, but like none of that stuff. No music. It's just a time to be with your thoughts. I have found that white space is critical to me figuring out, just kind of processing through some thoughts. You can do that, like by journaling as well, by the way, like that's fine to have in your white space. It helps me be creative. If you're in a job that requires creativity, you can't your brain can't, like go all crazy with creativity when it's trying to process all of the inputs from the other external places. So taking things out of your ears and away from your eyes is very helpful with your creativity. We, every now and then, will have a challenge on my Grace Health podcast or Grace Health Community Facebook group, and we call it be still time and it's kind of taken from the verse that says be still and know I am God. We go outside for 10 minutes and we just sit with God and we're not doing a bunch of praises, we're not doing a bunch of prayers, but we're just sitting in the presence of God and we love it. It's so impactful. So maybe that's something to consider doing and we'll do another one of those challenges here. So go over to the community group and on Facebook and and join. So you know. White space again. This is something I need to be better at, and so maybe this is an opportunity for me to figure out how I can ensure that I get the white space that my brain needs. Number seven of a 10, simple, essential for aging with grace and strength is taking care of our mental health. I know I don't need to tell you why this is important. I will say that my mental health has gotten. I don't know if better is the right word, but I just understand the reason, maybe the story behind I can. I have language for my feelings as I have taken care of my mental health. I did an episode back in season 16 on I think it was like 10 strategies to take care of my mental health. Those will be in the show notes. You can go listen to those if you are interested. But yeah, take care of your mental health. This is not a surprise. Now I'm going to pause really quickly and say that I put these in. I guess we can call it a priority. I did put these in an intentional order as I went through as a personal trainer. I want to just point out that I put number eight. Strength training Adds number eight. So we are down here. However, I do believe and this is proven by a lot of research and science that strength training is critically important, especially as you go through menopause and after menopause. Now, without getting into too much detail about this, basically what is happening is when we have hormone changes, then our bones start becoming weaker if we're not doing something to counteract that. That's why you don't really see osteoporosis in women in their 20s, because you have peak bone mass at age 26. And actually this was one thing that in my new book that I wrote for young women, I was like please, please, please, start strength training, because this is so good for your bones and your future self will care, and they probably won't care, because you know, when I was 15, I thought I was invincible, but anyway. So strength training Okay, these are. I'm going to do a super high level and I will probably do an entire other episode on this you have. I want you to focus on two primary areas when you strength strength trained. One is what's called your lumbopelvic hip complex, lphc. That's basically like your hips, and so doing things like squats and lunges, any kind of higher impact, even if you're just jumping up an inch and coming down, we don't need to do like as high as we can, but anything that will has that stronger impact on your hips is going to be helpful. Secondly, I want you doing polls, poll, poll, poll, poll, poll, any kind of an. Can you do pull ups? Sure, can you do pull ups, maybe not. I can't. I actually haven't done it in a while. Maybe I can do one or two. I'm not really sure you don't have to do pull ups. I have a episode back at the very beginning of season 16 that I talk about it and I will be doing more on YouTube because I do think they are so important. So if you feel like you just don't have that that strength back there to do a pull up, that's okay. The reason we want to do these strengthening exercises for our hips and for our spine is to prevent the osteoclasts and I'll tell you what that is in a second osteoclasts from taking down the bone. So we have there are two primary things. There are osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts build bones. So this is what's happening until we are around 26 or 27. We are building our bones. Osteoclasts will start to break down that bone. However, when we strength train, then we are releasing osteoblasts and you may not necessarily build a lot of bone in menopause because kind of that was your season. Like you grew to, you got your wisdom teeth when you were six and there's your wisdom teeth, so it's the same type of thing. However, it will prevent the breakdown of it, so that's why it's so important to do strength training. I have had questions of like well, should I do lighter strength, lighter weight with more reps, or heavier with less? The research that is coming in is heavier, go heavy, go heavy. You will not bulk up. If you want to learn more about that, you can read my book. I have a chapter title. That's a myth to break. I don't want to bulk up, so you will not bulk up. Just get in there and lift heavy weights. The other two things in strength training that I really want you to focus on is balance, because if we don't have a balance, then when we fall we will probably hurt ourselves. There's obviously a high potential of breaking a hip, and that is. The statistics are there are really scary, to be quite honest of when you break a hip. That doesn't mean it's just a death sentence, but you really want to do things to prevent those falls, and one of the things is balance. The other thing that I want you to do and I'm going to get into more of these as we go along through the season, but is the mini muscles, and I have actually two episodes on these and I'll link to it in the show notes, and I don't remember what season it was, maybe 14. But mini muscles are those smaller muscles like around your hip complex. So that's your gluteus medius, your gluteus minimus, those smaller glute muscles, and what those do is it will help your knees. Why? Because, if you're thinking about it, your bone, your femur bone, your thigh bone, is connected up into your hip complex and that has to be secure at the top. If it's loose, then that bone will often I mean think of it as swaying in and that's what can cause a lot of knee issues. So if you have knee issues, it may be that doing some mini muscle work will be highly beneficial for you. Now I haven't given a lot of examples on the balance and the mini muscles, but I do have a resource for you and that is my Be Complete signature program and you can get that at gracehealthcom. Slash the letter B, dash complete. That's an acronym for the things that we need to be doing as we get older, but we don't take the time to do so. That's balance, that's core, that's your mini muscles, it's stretching, it's pausing, so we get a little white space in there. It's moving in different directions and in that, I will strengthen your mini muscles, I will help challenge your balance, which is what we want to be doing as we're getting older from a physical standpoint. So you can go check that out. By the way, it's only $20. It's an online class. You can do it as many times as you want. It's on demand $20. I have some friends who have an online course and they asked how much it was. I said it's $20. They're like, oh my gosh, it needs to be like five times that amount. But I don't want it to be because I believe in it so strongly that I know it will make your body feel great and I want it accessible. So go grab it. The link is in the show notes. Number nine eat a wide variety of plants. Now, by plants I don't mean just vegetables. Eat a wide variety of vegetables, sure, but that's also things like fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, any of these, anything that's a plant Grains. I've been eating oatmeal almost every day and I'm just totally digging it. When we eat a wide variety of plants, that will help a lot of things, but if you really want to boil down to it. It's going to help your gut microbiome, and your gut microbiome does everything from works on your digestive system. It will help your mental health. So, again, going back up to the point about mental health, it can help your cognition. I mean it's just. It can help your skin. I mean just eating a wide variety of plants helps get that gut microbiome flourishing, because that's what we want. We like, we want a lot of different things in there, and just eating the same plants all the time is not going to allow it to have a diverse environment. So that's why you want to have a wide variety of plants. Finally, number 10 is I didn't coin this but I like the term, so I'm going to borrow it from and I heard it first at Tim Ferriss and I don't even know if he did it, but it's nutritional insurance. So that's also like your supplements. It is very difficult to get a lot of the micronutrients that our body needs right now, because our soil has been depleted that's the very quick and dirty way of saying it and also we kind of have things that we eat, and then it may be that you're a little more sensitive to things, and so it can be difficult to get some of these micronutrients, and that is when your nutritional insurance comes into play. There are four that I believe are important for menopausal postmenopausal women, and that is calcium, vitamin D, omega-3s and magnesium. We did have a conversation about magnesium back in season 15 with Natalie Gerardo, and she gives you a lot of information about magnesium. She does have a product line that is magnesium lotion, and I love it. I highly recommend it. I will be talking more about calcium and vitamin D and omega-3. Well, definitely calcium and omega-3. I can't remember off the top of my head if I'm talking about vitamin D, so keep listening. In the next several months I'll be dripping those out, but those are very important to our bone health, to our musculoskeletal health, so, like our muscles, to our heart health as we get older. So if I were to say, what do I think you need? It's those four things. If you take a multivitamin, just be sure to turn it around and see how much of your daily recommended daily allowance is in there. It may be that you are not getting as much as you think you are. Also, I do recommend getting supplements that are third-party tested, and this is something that Halle Brook talked about in season 13 at the very end, just about how important having third-party tested supplements are, because supplements are not regulated by the FDA, which means you can have more or you can have less, and neither one is good. I mean you can have too much of a good thing, especially these fat-soluble vitamins, than they're stored inside of you and off the top of my head is DE A and K, if I remember correctly. The rest of them are UPM out. That's why if you have a lot of B vitamins you have neon yellow urine. But anyway, get third-party tested. It's a little bit more sometimes. I like the safety in it, I like the security of knowing that what they say is in there is in there. And the one that I have been using recently and I get this because it's at my grocery store it's at HEB, which is where I do my grocery shopping and it's Garden of Life. So that is NSF tested. Nsf is one of the primary third-party tested testers and you can go see what all of the products that they have tested and approved are at nsfsportcom. I'm pretty sure that's it. I'm doing that off the top of my head. They also make a protein powder, so that's kind of a little you know, I just I've been using their products and I like it and I that's. I don't know, that's just mine, so take it or leave it. There's a lot of different things. Again, the noise can get up there in your just in your supplements, and I don't. I just don't want to take the time to do all that Like just just give me something that's third-party and then I can grab when I'm getting my bananas. So, okay, we're going to do a really quick recap. Number one seasonal grace. Number two purpose or calling. Number three quality relationships, both vertical in your spiritual life as well as horizontal. Number four is sleep. Number five getting outside, getting some fresh air. Number six is white space. Number seven is mental health. Eight is strength training. Nine is eating a wide variety of plants. And 10 is nutritional insurance or supplements. And I'm going to tell you I'm very proud of myself for not trying to go into more detail as I did the recap, because I have a tendency to do that, but these are the things. Then pick what works for you, try one, what is the lowest hanging fruit, what seems the most simple to do, and add that in. I'm not saying make yourself crazy by doing all of these all at once, but if you can slowly add these things in, I think that you will find that you truly are aging with grace and strength. We have a great season for you. I cannot wait for you to hear it, and I will be digging into some of these things a little bit later, throughout the season. That is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.