Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get real answers about
Speaker 1: your health? If you've been told that everything looks fine,
Speaker 1: but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.
Speaker 1: That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you
Speaker 1: better understand what's going on inside your body so that
Speaker 1: you can take the targeted action needed. With a functional
Speaker 1: health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to
Speaker 1: uncover the root causes of your symptoms. I've teamed up
Speaker 1: with Doctyesmina, an incredible integrative GP, and together we will
Speaker 1: help you decode your body's signals and answer questions like
Speaker 1: why am I always exhausted? What's really causing my stubborn weight?
Speaker 1: Am I inflamed? Insulin resistant? Or maybe missing key nutrients?
Speaker 1: Because when you understand your body better, you can transform
Speaker 1: your health. Visit v three sixty dot health or check.
Speaker 2: Out the show notes for more.
Speaker 1: In the work that I do, many of the ladies
Speaker 1: that come to me are over sixty years old. You
Speaker 1: know they're really focused on their health, but they're often
Speaker 1: also carrying some significant health challenges as well. For many,
Speaker 1: changing their exercise and then nutrition habits can feel really hard.
Speaker 1: It can feel really daunting and there's no super clear
Speaker 1: path for them to follow. So many often say to me,
Speaker 1: I just think it's too late. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: stick with my weekly walks. You know I am too
Speaker 1: And then they insert issue here, I am too old,
Speaker 1: I'm too injured, I'm too nervous, I'm not interested, I'm
Speaker 1: too confused to try new things like strength training, for example.
Speaker 1: And it was about this time, after getting quite a
Speaker 1: few of these repeated patterns of ladies coming to me,
Speaker 1: that I stumbled upon an Instagram page the most inspiring
Speaker 1: woman who started her health journey not when she was sixty,
Speaker 1: but when she was seventy, and she completely turned her
Speaker 1: life for She is so inspiring that since then, in
Speaker 1: pretty much all of the workshops that I run and
Speaker 1: all of the ladies that I meet and work with,
Speaker 1: I always say to them, you have to follow the
Speaker 1: Instagram page.
Speaker 2: Train with Joan.
Speaker 1: You have got to get in Joan's community, because if
Speaker 1: she can do it, you can too. This is Healthy
Speaker 1: Heir with Amelia Phillips, and today's episode is going to
Speaker 1: challenge what you thought you knew about aging, strength and
Speaker 1: what the human body is capable of.
Speaker 2: Particularly later in life.
Speaker 1: My guests today are Joan McDonald and her daughter Michelle McDonald,
Speaker 1: the duo who created Train with Joan, a fitness platform
Speaker 1: and inspiring Instagram page with over two point three million followers.
Speaker 2: Yes, so inspiring.
Speaker 1: All focused around helping women of all ages, but particularly
Speaker 1: older women, fall in love with strength training and really
Speaker 1: reimagine new versions of themselves. Joan has such an incredible story.
Speaker 1: She began her health and fitness transformation at the age
Speaker 1: of seventy after years of struggling with her weight, low energy,
Speaker 1: declining mobility, and multiple medication.
Speaker 2: Fast forward to.
Speaker 1: Today and she has inspired millions of people around the
Speaker 1: world by proving that it's never too late to build strength,
Speaker 1: to reclaim your health, and to completely redefine what aging
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 2: And I just love this.
Speaker 1: So then we have the equally inspiring Michelle, Joon's daughter,
Speaker 1: a women's fitness coach, a bodybuilder and transformation specialist who
Speaker 1: has played a pivotal role in helping guide Jones's incredible
Speaker 1: health journey. Michelle has spent years helping women strength, improved
Speaker 1: body composition, and challenge the limiting beliefs around aging. So
Speaker 1: together they have become one of the most inspiring mother
Speaker 1: daughter voices in healthy aging and strength training worldwide. So
Speaker 1: today we're talking about how we can take the leap
Speaker 1: into not just strength training, but also to really reframe
Speaker 1: this new season of life, to stop seeing aging as
Speaker 1: a decline but rather see it as a possibility. So,
Speaker 1: whether you're at a similar age to Joan, or maybe
Speaker 1: you have a loved one who is, today's episode is
Speaker 1: for you. Joan, Michelle, welcome to Healthy Her.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for invading us familiar.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: I am so excited.
Speaker 1: You can probably hear it in my voice as I
Speaker 1: chatted through my intro, because you have so many fans
Speaker 1: here in Australia.
Speaker 2: Where are you both beaming in from today?
Speaker 3: I'm San Miguel Violande in my sick.
Speaker 1: Well done, Joe, and you're there to Michelle, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: we lived together.
Speaker 2: Oh I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it, lived to eat together, trade together.
Speaker 1: I wish I could live with my mom as well.
Speaker 1: I actually spent a week with her last week and
Speaker 1: it was just so special. But look, Joan, take us
Speaker 1: back to the moment everything changed. What was happening in
Speaker 1: your life and your health around that age seventy, that
Speaker 1: really made you decide something has to change.
Speaker 5: Well, I was what I always say is I was
Speaker 5: sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yeah, my
Speaker 5: health was not the best. I was on the medications.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be on them. I had gone
Speaker 5: to the doctor, and because my blood pressure was so wonky,
Speaker 5: she wanted to upgrade them, like multiply the pills that.
Speaker 3: I was taking.
Speaker 5: Anyway, I said, no, I don't want more. I want
Speaker 5: to get off. So what can we do? And anyway,
Speaker 5: Michelle was coming, her and her husband were coming to
Speaker 5: be with us before they moved down to Mexico, and
Speaker 5: she saw the state I was in, huffing and puffing
Speaker 5: up the stairs, and she just laid it on me.
Speaker 3: It was very pivotal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you mean, laid it on Michelle? What
Speaker 1: is laying it on me? Is this the like the
Speaker 1: come to Jesus talk?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It was. It was the come to Jesus talk.
Speaker 4: It was I call it my Friday Friday.
Speaker 6: Night lights coaching talk with my mother.
Speaker 4: I gave her, I gave her the truth I liked.
Speaker 6: I like to say it's kind of like like Tony Robbins,
Speaker 6: I pulled on science brevity, humor, everything, almost faith, Christianity,
Speaker 6: our relationship, everything I possibly could.
Speaker 4: Because I was leaving and.
Speaker 6: It really hit me that her health had really deteriorated,
Speaker 6: and it was make or break, right, So I mean,
Speaker 6: I mean the health business. And Mom was two hundred pounds.
Speaker 6: Waste was thirty nine inches. She's seventy You know that
Speaker 6: a waste circumference for a female. She's five foot three.
Speaker 6: Once we get above thirty four inches, now we escalate
Speaker 6: into that higher risk category for increased morbidity. Right, And
Speaker 6: I was leaving and be frank, my dad's passed away.
Speaker 6: But they did not have this thriving relationship. They were
Speaker 6: surviving together, but not thriving. But he loved candies and
Speaker 6: chocolates and chips and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Just the outcome looked really poor.
Speaker 6: I had a transformation group starting, and I said, Mom,
Speaker 6: I'll put you to this transformation group.
Speaker 4: You know it works.
Speaker 6: You know I'm great at what I do. It'll work
Speaker 6: for you, but you've got to show up. And I
Speaker 6: said literally, and we laughed about it. Now because she
Speaker 6: was sick recently and I had to take care of
Speaker 6: her in the hospital. But at the time, I said Listen,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to come to that nursing home and
Speaker 6: change your diapers because you've let yourself deteriorate. Because the
Speaker 6: version of you, the woman right in front of me
Speaker 6: right now, she is still capable of changing the course
Speaker 6: of her future.
Speaker 4: Wow, but you got to do it now.
Speaker 6: And so it was really like, of course, you know,
Speaker 6: I would have helped her, but I can tell her that,
Speaker 6: I'm like, you got to do this now because I
Speaker 6: knew that the mom that I loved was not going
Speaker 6: to be my mom. If I was going to a
Speaker 6: nursing home to take care of her, she would be
Speaker 6: so depressed, she would be so frustrated and angry, and
Speaker 6: there'd be no going back by that time, right, it's
Speaker 6: too far gone.
Speaker 4: So that's with the speech. It was a tough ball.
Speaker 6: And then I and then afterwards when she showed up
Speaker 6: to to get in shape, I said to my husband,
Speaker 6: because I already onboarded these gals, we were already started.
Speaker 6: And Mom didn't even have a cell phone, like, she
Speaker 6: didn't have a smartphone. So there's this enormous tech obstacle.
Speaker 6: And I said, what have I done? I said, how
Speaker 6: am I going to do it? How am I going
Speaker 6: to do it, Like, there are the hurdles that you
Speaker 6: can't even imagine, or maybe you can't. How do you
Speaker 6: get a seventy year old to learn how to use
Speaker 6: a smartphone?
Speaker 4: Remember her passwords? Remember how to find the app?
Speaker 6: Where I doing the coachry? How are we going to
Speaker 6: do that piece while I'm in Mexico?
Speaker 3: It was wild.
Speaker 1: Joan thinking back to that moment and that very serious conversation.
Speaker 1: What was your initial reaction and feeling when your daughter,
Speaker 1: who you loved so much and who clearly loves you
Speaker 1: so much, is having such a confronting conversation Because for
Speaker 1: some people, when there is that confrontation, for some people,
Speaker 1: the natural reaction is to actually push back and say
Speaker 1: stuff you.
Speaker 2: But what was your reaction and feeling?
Speaker 5: Actually, I told you I'll think about it, But it
Speaker 5: didn't take much to think about it, because I'm going
Speaker 5: if I don't do this now, then am I going
Speaker 5: to be able to do it? Because I'd sooner take
Speaker 5: her up on that challenge than end up. Like she
Speaker 5: said the next morning, I was in the car before
Speaker 5: she was. I just knew I had to I had
Speaker 5: to try. It was a challenge to me to be
Speaker 5: able to even try it because I had no tech
Speaker 5: skills whatsoever, and we did not have a lot of
Speaker 5: the stuff that we have now. It was on a PDF.
Speaker 5: I had to print it out and do it that way.
Speaker 5: It was a very difficult challenge, I'll tell you. And
Speaker 5: I was just three months away from my seventy first
Speaker 5: birthday when I did it.
Speaker 1: Wow, talk me through the first six to twelve months, Joan,
Speaker 1: your experience when I'm assuming you had to go into
Speaker 1: a gym and pick up weights, is that what you
Speaker 1: were doing initially? We took me through that first six
Speaker 1: months and what that experience was like for you.
Speaker 5: Well, Michelle JJ took me to my Jim. I had
Speaker 5: a gym membership, but I wasn't using it the way
Speaker 5: that I needed to be using it. And they saw
Speaker 5: me do it, trying to do the exercises and like
Speaker 5: I was doing it with everything, And I expect that
Speaker 5: anyone that follows me will do it with intent as
Speaker 5: well well, because you have to. You can't just fly
Speaker 5: through it. It's hard, very hard for everyone, and you
Speaker 5: can't be soft on yourself.
Speaker 3: You's got to be hard on yourself.
Speaker 5: And the first six months that was how long my
Speaker 5: course was for I did so much changing and I
Speaker 5: said to Michelle, I don't want to lose a lot
Speaker 5: of weight.
Speaker 3: I don't want to get skinny.
Speaker 5: I want something on my body to fight with if
Speaker 5: anything happens, you know, like you get sick or something.
Speaker 5: You know how older people they get sick and then
Speaker 5: they're already skinny and they're just fade awight to nothing.
Speaker 1: I love that you realize that that it's not about
Speaker 1: shrinking and getting skinnier, because that does lead to fraul.
Speaker 2: To you, even with.
Speaker 1: Your inexperienced and inexperience and lack of education, you recognize
Speaker 1: that you wanted to feel strong.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic.
Speaker 5: Well, I wanted to I wanted to see what Michelle
Speaker 5: was seeing with her clients, like they were just so beautiful. Well, yeah,
Speaker 5: the transformation following her protocol was amazing, and I wanted
Speaker 5: that for me.
Speaker 1: Tell me, was Michelle with you every day in the
Speaker 1: gym or once she'd kind of given you the beginnings
Speaker 1: and taught you the basics movement patterns. Were you then
Speaker 1: on your own or was she with you every single day?
Speaker 5: No, we were thousands of miles apart because she was
Speaker 5: moving to Mexico and I was still in Ontario, and
Speaker 5: like I said, it was was PDFs and trying to
Speaker 5: teach me something. Her invitation was come to Mexico for
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks at least so we can get
Speaker 5: you started. And that's what I did.
Speaker 3: I went. I went to Mexico.
Speaker 5: The heat was overwhelming for me because we were in
Speaker 5: tou Loom and summertime tou loom is suffocating. It is,
Speaker 5: but we got through it. We got through it.
Speaker 1: Michelle, thinking about my beautiful listeners who are either in
Speaker 1: Joan's situation and inexperienced and wanting to start, or maybe
Speaker 1: a loved one in your situation strongly encouraging. What's the
Speaker 1: best approach when someone doesn't know the basic lifting patterns
Speaker 1: and they don't have a Michelle as a daughter that
Speaker 1: can initially teach them. What would your advice be for
Speaker 1: getting started in strength training?
Speaker 4: Well, we do have an app Cultrain with Joan.
Speaker 6: I would say do the app if your beginner, because
Speaker 6: Joan demonstrates. I do some of the exercises too, but
Speaker 6: it's predominantly my mom. She demonstrates everything, and of course
Speaker 6: a culture. There are so many apps out there now
Speaker 6: they're very affordable. I think having what I call a
Speaker 6: performance criterion, so an actual example of how something should
Speaker 6: be done that you're looking at with reference.
Speaker 4: Most of us learn very visually, and then having a
Speaker 4: plan to follow.
Speaker 6: I do recommend, you know, I of course I'm going
Speaker 6: to say just get started. Of course I'm going to
Speaker 6: say start with walking. But it would be dishonest of
Speaker 6: me to say that's how Mom achieved her results, and
Speaker 6: it's not how Mom achieved her results. Joe followed the
Speaker 6: protocols that a twenty year old would have to follow
Speaker 6: to get in shape. She followed the protocols that a
Speaker 6: thirty year old man would have to follow to get
Speaker 6: in shape. When we say get in shape, we say
Speaker 6: loose body, fat, gay muscle, game muscle. Beyond just getting
Speaker 6: out of a chair or not using a walker, I'm
Speaker 6: talking about gaining enough muscle to have true agency. You know,
Speaker 6: Mom is helping us lift things out of the car,
Speaker 6: heavy grocery bags, I don't know, probably twenty pounds each,
Speaker 6: and she's walking up two flights of stairs.
Speaker 4: So that and not huffing and puffing.
Speaker 6: So that's what I mean by agency, like staying impactful,
Speaker 6: able to contribute meaningfully, and she wants to go travel.
Speaker 6: I don't have to worry that she's not going to
Speaker 6: be able to take care of herself. If she falls down,
Speaker 6: she's going to be able to push herself back up
Speaker 6: again and lift her suitcase up, all of the things
Speaker 6: that a forty or thirty year old like hopefully.
Speaker 4: They take for granted.
Speaker 6: So that's you know, like she had to do regular
Speaker 6: resistance training and get stronger, you know, in a measurable way,
Speaker 6: in a materially measurable way. So she started off with
Speaker 6: doing I think there's a video of her doing these again.
Speaker 6: She was two hundred pounds and she's in this big,
Speaker 6: baggy black good Life t shirt and she's struggling.
Speaker 4: She was really good at creating tension from the get go.
Speaker 6: But if you zoom in and you look at the machine,
Speaker 6: you can see that it's that one skinny little plate.
Speaker 6: That's all she was able to do. And then in
Speaker 6: five months she's lifting I think twenty pound dumbbells or whatever,
Speaker 6: right like, and doubles are much harder than a machine.
Speaker 1: This is what I love about your Instagram page is
Speaker 1: that you keep going back to old videos and images
Speaker 1: of yourself, Joan, And so you can see this.
Speaker 2: Change, you know, gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see this woman in a seventies that
Speaker 1: just looks like anybody's regular you know, mom or grandma.
Speaker 1: And then this transformation where you've got guns of steel
Speaker 1: and your waist has just gone. And I think, like,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to see a thirty year old transform
Speaker 1: their health, but to see you do it and so visually.
Speaker 1: And you guys put the videos together in such an
Speaker 1: empowering way. Joan, how did that feel for you, Like
Speaker 1: from the beginning stages when everything felt hard, unfamiliar, What
Speaker 1: am I doing?
Speaker 2: Am I doing this correctly? Is that weight?
Speaker 1: It hurts all of that to then the glimmers of
Speaker 1: results starting to show through. Talk me through the shift
Speaker 1: from hard to when you go, oh, actually it's working.
Speaker 2: And how that experience felt for you?
Speaker 5: That actually worked within the first three months, because I
Speaker 5: could see the difference in my clothing, like the measurements.
Speaker 3: Michelle had us take measurements all the time. Every week.
Speaker 3: We had to put a new photo.
Speaker 5: In with our original photo, and you can see the
Speaker 5: differences in the body shape. But seeing my clothes get
Speaker 5: so baggy that I had to give them away and
Speaker 5: I'm eating more than I did. I'm going it doesn't
Speaker 5: make any sense, but it's working. So it's got to
Speaker 5: be a good thing. Like whatever Michelle did, she fell
Speaker 5: on something that or organized something that was really workable,
Speaker 5: doable for anyone. If it can do it for me,
Speaker 5: it can do it for anybody else. If you put
Speaker 5: the intent in, you keep.
Speaker 1: Coming back to that, which I think is you know,
Speaker 1: is such an important point. What about nutritionally, Joan, what
Speaker 1: were some of the biggest changes that you made to
Speaker 1: your diet.
Speaker 5: Well, I had to stop snacking, which was kind of
Speaker 5: hard for me. I actually had to have more protein
Speaker 5: than what I was eating vegetables and fruit. I had
Speaker 5: no real problem, but it was what it was was
Speaker 5: I was made to eat it just like it, but
Speaker 5: I've had to eat it. And sticking to that protein,
Speaker 5: the proper carbs, the proper fats, good fats, made a
Speaker 5: big difference.
Speaker 3: And of course with the exercises.
Speaker 5: And I was only doing like maybe ten to fifteen
Speaker 5: minutes of cardio as a warm up when I was
Speaker 5: doing my workouts.
Speaker 2: What the rest was strength training?
Speaker 5: The rest was strength training. Yeah, and it made a
Speaker 5: big difference. At the beginning, I was doing five days
Speaker 5: and I was doing one day.
Speaker 4: Was like a yoga.
Speaker 5: Yoga, Yeah, yoga movements. And when I started learning yoga,
Speaker 5: I'm going Anyone says anyone's doing yoga's a pansy is nuts.
Speaker 5: They don't understand how much you use your body. It's
Speaker 5: just amazing, like what they do, how they cantort their body.
Speaker 3: And that wow, like it's not easy.
Speaker 1: Did you notice an improvement in your flexibility and mobility
Speaker 1: when you started doing yoga?
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm not really as flexible as I would like
Speaker 5: to be, but I think it's just the way my
Speaker 5: body's built.
Speaker 6: Says the woman who'd practiced for two weeks because my
Speaker 6: other clients were doing a split challenge. And then she
Speaker 6: surprises us in two weeks by dropping to the floor
Speaker 6: in her bikini at seventy.
Speaker 4: Whatever eight at the time of day or so, in
Speaker 4: a full splits and I'm like, what the heck. I
Speaker 4: grabbed Mike. I'm like, we gotta get a camera.
Speaker 6: We've got to get like this is insane that her
Speaker 6: body's been able to be so responsive and get her
Speaker 6: pliability back.
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 4: It is amazing. Well, you're a teacher as well, and
Speaker 4: it was like, wow, this is.
Speaker 2: Oh Michelle, she was looking at that amazing.
Speaker 3: Can you get up now?
Speaker 6: One of the backing because I think the food's so
Speaker 6: important the coaching us.
Speaker 1: Add it right, Yes, I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: the food talk us through what you're thinking is behind
Speaker 1: Joan's food choices.
Speaker 6: Again, I come from a bodybuilding background, meaning that I
Speaker 6: don't have special, magic secret protocols. These are very normal
Speaker 6: protocols that almost anybody that's doing a physic competition follows. Right,
Speaker 6: you eat multiple meals, so you have multiple protein dosings
Speaker 6: if you want to be you know, technical, especially because
Speaker 6: you want to get that loosing threshold per meal. And
Speaker 6: then you know, I think a lot of times people
Speaker 6: forget that women I have smaller bodies, and so we
Speaker 6: want to make sure that each protein serving is going
Speaker 6: to help give them that anabolic response, because even if
Speaker 6: it's only helping like a small percentage, but you do
Speaker 6: something like that consistently every day, multiple times a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that muscle protein synthesis triggering.
Speaker 6: Exactly versus lipogenesis, which like we're really good at that,
Speaker 6: but we want to get really good at creating muscle
Speaker 6: issues So I think that the biggest change was for
Speaker 6: most people is thinking about it at least that worked
Speaker 6: with me or any of the like I said, like
Speaker 6: a proper physique coach is shifting from you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner,
Speaker 6: and snacks. And as we get older, what we really
Speaker 6: see the pattern I call it the executive lifestyle. Right,
Speaker 6: you skip breakfast or you have a coffee or something
Speaker 6: like that, and then you have like a big lunch
Speaker 6: at a big dinner and then maybe some late night snacking.
Speaker 4: Right, it's kind of like this if.
Speaker 6: That executives are doing all over the world. My dad
Speaker 6: he'd never eat breakfast, but he'd have this big late
Speaker 6: lunch with the guys and then a big dinner, and
Speaker 6: he just packed on a lot of visceral body fat.
Speaker 6: So for Mom and my clients, it's learning to think
Speaker 6: of food as number one. Can this help me towards
Speaker 6: Can these meals help me towards my goals versus just
Speaker 6: eating sort of pleasure or whatever.
Speaker 4: Can this actually give this meal help me towards my goals?
Speaker 4: Thinking of getting protein with every meal?
Speaker 6: Right, So Mom mentioned that, so it start not we're
Speaker 6: not obsessiment protein, but we're starting to think, gosh, like
Speaker 6: am I getting any protein in that meal? Or is
Speaker 6: it mostly fat or is it mostly carbs? Like where
Speaker 6: is the protein coming from? SOS starting to think more
Speaker 6: about like where's the protein coming from, making sure it's
Speaker 6: in the meal. Mom talked about vegetables. So we're big
Speaker 6: on the micro nutrients. We say, just eat the colors
Speaker 6: of the rain and hit your twenty five grams of
Speaker 6: fiber per meal. So I have my clients track their
Speaker 6: fiber per meal. Or the worst case, if you're just
Speaker 6: starting out, that's too much, think about some high fiber fruits.
Speaker 4: Those are going to be your.
Speaker 6: Grains, your legomes, your nuts and seeds, and some of
Speaker 6: your legumes and fruits, especially in your seeded fruits.
Speaker 4: Right, and I'm sure your clients know all about that.
Speaker 6: So eat the others comes with the rebol get your
Speaker 6: fiber in, and spread the protein out throat the day.
Speaker 6: And so we're really reducing these you know ups, these
Speaker 6: wild ups and down, these overfeeding and then you're going
Speaker 6: high bocaloric like no calories for large.
Speaker 4: Periods of time.
Speaker 6: Then you're angry and you go and eat everything or
Speaker 6: you have bowl of penis, and we're stepping away from that,
Speaker 6: and we're starting to get very routine and very balanced
Speaker 6: and very systematics. It's like James Clear atomic habits, right.
Speaker 6: We create a system that helps somebody's body optimize.
Speaker 4: We take away the friction.
Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get real answers about
Speaker 1: your health? If you've been told that everything looks fine,
Speaker 1: but you know that something is off, we're not imagining it.
Speaker 1: That's why I created Vitality three point sixty to help
Speaker 1: you better understand what's going on inside your body so
Speaker 1: that you can take.
Speaker 2: The targeted action needed.
Speaker 1: With a functional health approach plus testing, we go beyond
Speaker 1: the guesswork to uncover the root causes of your symptoms.
Speaker 1: I've teamed up with Dottyasmina, an incredible integrative GP and
Speaker 1: together we will help you decode your body's signals and
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Speaker 1: causing my stubborn weight? Am I inflamed? Insulin resistant? Or
Speaker 1: maybe missing key nutrients?
Speaker 2: Because when you.
Speaker 1: Understand your body better, you can transform your health. Visit
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Speaker 2: Michelle.
Speaker 1: For someone listening to that wise advice, I can imagine
Speaker 1: that the pushback might be, but when I eat multiple meals,
Speaker 1: I'm going to over eat.
Speaker 2: How do you help your.
Speaker 1: Clients stick within their range? Are they tracking? Are they
Speaker 1: you know, weighing their food and tracking their macros? How
Speaker 1: do you work And I know you've got your bodybuilders,
Speaker 1: which are a particular cohort, but then you also work
Speaker 1: with lifestyle, with everyday people like us.
Speaker 2: How do you help us keep that.
Speaker 1: Caloric intake at an appropriate deficit when or not not
Speaker 1: a deficit? Potentially when we live in such an abundant
Speaker 1: lifestyle and world.
Speaker 6: I think Number one, I'd like to say, they're they're
Speaker 6: this initial friction as there is was learning anything new.
Speaker 4: But when you're.
Speaker 6: Why, it's stronger than that stubbornness or that friction.
Speaker 4: You'll find a way, right, You'll find a way. I coach.
Speaker 4: I love coaching on passion. I'm an educator, right.
Speaker 6: I like to say at TWW that's what we call
Speaker 6: the Wonder Woman where educators not dictators. So I don't
Speaker 6: like when people say trust the process or I mean
Speaker 6: we joke about it, right, But I'm like, no, I
Speaker 6: want you to understand the process because I need you
Speaker 6: to understand why we're doing stuff in the beginning.
Speaker 4: We just teach you.
Speaker 6: Right, if I get somebody that's never done it before,
Speaker 6: which was my mom, which was all of my clients.
Speaker 6: I mean, people didn't do macros back then the way
Speaker 6: they do now. For the first decade of my coaching,
Speaker 6: I had to literally sit down with a client so
Speaker 6: say Embelia said, oh my god, I love your results,
Speaker 6: Can you please coach me? And I would do an
Speaker 6: intake and sure enough, you've never really tracked before. Almost
Speaker 6: everyone thinks they're eating twenty five hundred calories. Nobody that
Speaker 6: I started with, it's eating twenty five hundred caties.
Speaker 2: They're eating more, they're eating less.
Speaker 4: Less on a day to day basis. I'll be honest.
Speaker 6: Most people are at a magical like in my avatar,
Speaker 6: which is the thirty five plus, it's like this magical
Speaker 6: fifteen hundred. If the person's two hundred pounds, if the
Speaker 6: person's one hundred pounds, they're all kind of around twelve
Speaker 6: hundred and fifteen hundred cats wild and they've accumulated.
Speaker 4: A lot of body fat.
Speaker 6: So we just sit down, we figure out their their macros.
Speaker 6: I create a meal plan for them. I might do
Speaker 6: a starter meal plan. In the old days, I'd say, okay,
Speaker 6: what are your favorite four proteins, your favorite four vegetables,
Speaker 6: your favorite But I would make this said, let's I'll.
Speaker 4: Create a simple meal plan to get you started.
Speaker 6: And then here's this app, and we use the app
Speaker 6: called my macros and you can and we don't track.
Speaker 4: We plan.
Speaker 6: So if there's a word that for me is like
Speaker 6: a trigger word, it's track because I talk about food
Speaker 6: in financial terms and it's like, here's your budget, and
Speaker 6: if you want to win at this game, you decide
Speaker 6: what you want to spend your money on, and you
Speaker 6: plan in advance.
Speaker 4: You even plan.
Speaker 6: I eat chocolate every day multiple times. I don't drink
Speaker 6: a lot of alcohol, but I might have a glass
Speaker 6: of champagne. I might do it, and I plan for
Speaker 6: it so there's no surprises. Just like you would budget
Speaker 6: and plan to go on a holiday or go have
Speaker 6: a nice dinner. Right, you budget, you don't spend the
Speaker 6: money and then track it afterwards to say that I
Speaker 6: stay in the targets. And a lot of people do that,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, that's very stressful and it doesn't actually
Speaker 6: help your body to be optimized.
Speaker 4: And I'll add one last thing, Amelia.
Speaker 6: I talk about the teeth a lot, right, So when
Speaker 6: we put braces on, you can radically change someone's bridge.
Speaker 6: You can change their teeth, how they fit together. I mean,
Speaker 6: you can put.
Speaker 4: On elastics and bring the jaw for it.
Speaker 6: There's so much that we can do, but it's very systematized.
Speaker 6: We don't like crank the bands one day and then
Speaker 6: then we reduce the tension the other day.
Speaker 4: We very progressively and very strategically.
Speaker 6: We you know, a good orthodonist they know what they're doing,
Speaker 6: like how to change the bridge, when to put the
Speaker 6: elastics on, in all of this, and a good coach
Speaker 6: knows how to do that too, and then the client
Speaker 6: follows through. They work with the collaborate with the coach,
Speaker 6: and they work together to get.
Speaker 4: An optimal result. You can do it.
Speaker 6: On your own, but remember data is your friend. So
Speaker 6: we want to stop guessing and like I think this
Speaker 6: is what I had, and actually create your own meal
Speaker 6: plan and follow that and get some consistent feedback. Is
Speaker 6: this enough of a deficit? Is this enough protein or food?
Speaker 6: Am I getting great workouts in?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 6: I hope that kind of helps with the food bit
Speaker 6: and how we do it.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting and especially having you know Joan as
Speaker 1: such a public and real life success story. Joan, how
Speaker 1: has building muscle and fitness and health. How has all
Speaker 1: of this changed your life beyond just the physical transformation,
Speaker 1: the clothes fitting better, maybe emotionally, mentally, socially, what's shifted
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 3: I would say just about everything, especially at the beginning.
Speaker 5: I was really happy that everything came out the way
Speaker 5: we were planning, you know, like working towards it. The
Speaker 5: most weight came off at the beginning, and every year
Speaker 5: after that my body seemed to change. And that's what
Speaker 5: we want for our clients. Now that is for a
Speaker 5: limited time. This is going to be part of your
Speaker 5: lifestyle for the rest of your life. Be happy with
Speaker 5: what you're doing, because if you're not happy with what
Speaker 5: you're doing, you're going to stop for sure. And I
Speaker 5: love the change, and I love the fact that I
Speaker 5: didn't have to I was in maintenance for I don't
Speaker 5: know how many years, Michelle five years, pretty much, and
Speaker 5: I wasn't losing a lot.
Speaker 3: Of weight, but my body was changed.
Speaker 5: And that is something that at the beginning, after the
Speaker 5: first year and going if I can get this different
Speaker 5: in one year, what am I going to look like
Speaker 5: if I keep at it. So it was more like,
Speaker 5: you know, you're curious about what is potentially an outcome
Speaker 5: or what is going to happen as we get along.
Speaker 5: Even through all the things that have happened to me,
Speaker 5: operations and accidents and all the rest of it, I
Speaker 5: come back strong again a lot faster than I would
Speaker 5: have ever done before. I probably would have succumbed to
Speaker 5: a lot of the things that happened to me if
Speaker 5: I hadn't been going through this transformation. It's just life
Speaker 5: changing to be stronger as you get older.
Speaker 1: If you think back to ten years ago and the
Speaker 1: come to Jesus talk that Michelle had with you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: had you done nothing and said thank you, I'll think
Speaker 1: about it, and then done nothing and Michelle moved away,
Speaker 1: and you just kept going, who would we be talking
Speaker 1: to today?
Speaker 3: Would be talking to me today? I know that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have been Really that makes me.
Speaker 2: That makes me really emotional. That's incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, not the way I was going.
Speaker 2: Wow, Michelle, how does that make you? I'm literally cry.
Speaker 6: That is so I don't think she would have made
Speaker 6: it through COVID with her OBC. I don't, and she
Speaker 6: has underlying lung issues. She had hypertension. Those are all
Speaker 6: tied to severe increase likelihood of dying from complications with COVID, right,
Speaker 6: so I don't think she would have.
Speaker 1: Made it now, oh Jo, I mean the number of
Speaker 1: daughters that would be listening to this, just wishing that
Speaker 1: they could sprinkle the Michelle magic on their moms and
Speaker 1: do that. What a difference a decade makes.
Speaker 6: It's so hard, right like it's And I've had so
Speaker 6: many gals come up to me and say, you.
Speaker 4: Know, how do you do it?
Speaker 3: My mom?
Speaker 4: I wish we had that relationship. I wish I could.
Speaker 4: Either they've lost their mom or they're going to lose
Speaker 4: their mom.
Speaker 6: It's often let them other daughters, and I have no
Speaker 6: easy answer. You know, I was at the pinnacle of
Speaker 6: my career as a coach, with almost a decade of
Speaker 6: experience in a competitive field as well as feeling there's coaching.
Speaker 6: You learn how to coach, right, which is not just
Speaker 6: the broccoli and chicken, but how to get through and
Speaker 6: have impact. And you know, and it's hard with family.
Speaker 6: We all know that. But if anyone's listening now, I
Speaker 6: think Mom said it out a couple of interviews.
Speaker 4: You know, if your daughter is or son is trying.
Speaker 6: To talk to you about taking care of your health,
Speaker 6: listen to them. It is not the time to be stubborn.
Speaker 6: You got to just listen and just try. And it's
Speaker 6: you start where you are, but you will build from there.
Speaker 4: And that's the key.
Speaker 1: Mom.
Speaker 4: Do you want to add anything to that, because I'd
Speaker 4: love that to hit the people listening. You can change,
Speaker 4: and we were not.
Speaker 6: Able to change my father and he passed away and
Speaker 6: he could have changed.
Speaker 3: He could have, but he didn't.
Speaker 4: So I had two people's hit family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got the same dynamic with my mom and dad.
Speaker 1: You know, up until the age of about sixty, they
Speaker 1: were the same. They looked they kind of behaved and
Speaker 1: looked the same. And then when they divorced, and I
Speaker 1: could not get through to my dad and he's still
Speaker 1: with us, but he's eighty five, terrible quality of life,
Speaker 1: type two diabetic, won't do any of the basic things.
Speaker 1: And my mom's playing tennis twice a week, and you know,
Speaker 1: complete polar opposites.
Speaker 3: I get two different sides of the coin.
Speaker 5: I get some daughters who have and sons who have
Speaker 5: been at their parents to better their life. And they've
Speaker 5: accepted that challenge. And then I have others that will see.
Speaker 3: Doesn't matter what I do. They don't want.
Speaker 5: You know, my mom does not wander, my dad doesn't want.
Speaker 5: They just think through two old it's passed their time
Speaker 5: and they don't want to be bothered blah blah blah
Speaker 5: blah learning news stuff. Well, you have a choice, like
Speaker 5: Michelle's always been telling me, You've got two choices. You
Speaker 5: can either do something about it or ignore it and
Speaker 5: suffer the consequences. I chose to do something about it
Speaker 5: with her help, and my husband chose elseways, and he's
Speaker 5: now gone. So if you can do it, and I've
Speaker 5: seen they've shown me pictures of their parents when before
Speaker 5: they started and after, and it's just soul.
Speaker 3: It just makes me cry every time I see something
Speaker 3: like that. It's up to you. You're the only one.
Speaker 1: It's not life changing. I mean, what you've gone through
Speaker 1: is life saving. Yes, means so much to all the
Speaker 1: loved ones around you. Michelle, you founded and now run
Speaker 1: an online coaching business called The Wonder Women, and your
Speaker 1: mom has been one of your many amazing success stories.
Speaker 1: So it's no surprise that you both then created the
Speaker 1: app Train with Joan, and I imagine because so many
Speaker 1: people wanted the amazing results that Joan got with you. Now,
Speaker 1: i'd love to know your thoughts on online coaching in
Speaker 1: general for women and how women are marketed to the
Speaker 1: pros and the cons.
Speaker 3: Love for your thoughts, oh, Michell, I could fill you
Speaker 3: and to.
Speaker 4: Thank you for that. I appreciate that Amelia a lot.
Speaker 6: I'm very mission driven and when I created The Wonder Woman,
Speaker 6: it was because I had I've been coaching since twenty twelve.
Speaker 6: I started The Wonder Woman actually during COVID in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty because I had a huge line up. There was
Speaker 6: nobody on my coaching and certainly not to who I
Speaker 6: was coaching, which was you know, it was really a
Speaker 6: thirty five plus because I was in my forties at
Speaker 6: the time and now there's a ton and me. You
Speaker 6: can't turn a corner without another online female menopause, you know, coach,
Speaker 6: and as I said, offline coaching is a profession. I
Speaker 6: take it seriously. I think the spar was really high
Speaker 6: with my coaching brand. I'll admit I did try to
Speaker 6: scale the coaches and get you know, a more significant
Speaker 6: number of coaches, and I'm just the quality the standards
Speaker 6: is too important to me, and it becomes too hard
Speaker 6: to manage those standards as you start to scale. So
Speaker 6: I have pulled back on that and this decided to
Speaker 6: stay small. I've got five unbelievable coaches and I'm not
Speaker 6: in any rush to bring more onboard.
Speaker 4: And the reason for that is because of the standards.
Speaker 6: So I think anyone that is a great coach that
Speaker 6: wants to create a coaching team, it's hard to scale.
Speaker 6: So I would say, you know, looking for either an
Speaker 6: individual coach who has a wide range of clients, different
Speaker 6: body types, different ages, that have these very kind of
Speaker 6: cookie cutter outcomes, not cookie cutter coaching, but their outcomes
Speaker 6: are very like It's like.
Speaker 4: Oh, they have these the similar outcomes. They are building muscle,
Speaker 4: they're getting.
Speaker 6: Strong in all of these things, and that they've been
Speaker 6: working with this coach for a long time.
Speaker 4: Right, So I like to say it's easy.
Speaker 6: Anyone could lose body fat and gain a little bit
Speaker 6: of muscle in the first six months.
Speaker 4: But a sign of a great coach is somebody.
Speaker 6: Who's had the same clients for a long time and
Speaker 6: the client's continuing to make progress and they're evolving, so
Speaker 6: and then you should be able to actually talk to
Speaker 6: some clients, right, So I always tell my people like
Speaker 6: if somebody has I'm so proud to tag my clients,
Speaker 6: and they're proud for me to tag them.
Speaker 4: So you know, just be you know, be careful.
Speaker 6: If a coach only has images with a you know,
Speaker 6: no names, you can't contact the people.
Speaker 4: They've got a circle over the face.
Speaker 6: Social media and AI now it's forget about it, right,
Speaker 6: everything's fake. Every so much is fake and it is
Speaker 6: almost impossible to legislate against that. My mom's image is
Speaker 6: used to sell all kinds of drugs and it is
Speaker 6: like playing whack.
Speaker 3: Them all serious.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so it's just we're you just want to
Speaker 4: be careful of that.
Speaker 6: We've even got videos now of people that look like
Speaker 6: a real transfer. It's so compelling. But you'll see like
Speaker 6: this thing in the background that that's the tell right,
Speaker 6: Like wait a minute, this person just like gained and
Speaker 6: lost one hundred pounds, but there's like the same glass
Speaker 6: in the background.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's AI generated.
Speaker 6: It's very clever, and I know don't want to say
Speaker 6: that you can't believe everything on the Internet, But there's
Speaker 6: some simple things that you should You should be able
Speaker 6: to talk to people and like what is it like,
Speaker 6: do they get back to the person, do they educate you?
Speaker 6: Are they compassionate? Like it's a sustainable and talk to
Speaker 6: a variety of people. So I would just say that
Speaker 6: about online coaching. I think there are some great online
Speaker 6: coaches out there. I think it's easy to spot them.
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of very average and even
Speaker 6: sub par coaches out there. It's easy in the virtual
Speaker 6: world to play that game, and.
Speaker 4: So it's very much buyer but where.
Speaker 6: And it's not just coaching, it's with doctors, it's with
Speaker 6: everything in.
Speaker 4: The world these days. Right, there's a billion of us,
Speaker 4: and it's easy.
Speaker 6: To kind of like slither and get by and excellent
Speaker 6: looks a certain way, So just look for that excellence.
Speaker 4: You'd say anything different there because you also work.
Speaker 1: With women, right, Yeah, No, I one hundred percent agree
Speaker 1: with you. But I think in your particular case, you
Speaker 1: have just so many incredible transformation stories, Joan of course
Speaker 1: being the most famous, but so many others as well,
Speaker 1: and I think that's always such a telltale sign. And
Speaker 1: also that you've worked with all different ages as well.
Speaker 6: Ages races, people that have one hundred pounds, people that
Speaker 6: need to gain weight. I work with some people that
Speaker 6: we need to gain weight. They're so frail, they're so tiny,
Speaker 6: so five 't four ninety five pounds? We need to
Speaker 6: actually you know, maybe they come from a yoga background
Speaker 6: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well look, ladies.
Speaker 1: Finally, I would love a parting tip from each of you.
Speaker 1: So if you thinking of my beautiful listeners, if each
Speaker 1: of you could give women one piece of advice for
Speaker 1: someone who is nervous to really step into the gym,
Speaker 1: step into a new way of training, maybe strength training
Speaker 1: for example. What would that potting piece of advice be?
Speaker 3: Who do you want to speak first?
Speaker 2: Why don't you go?
Speaker 6: Joan?
Speaker 5: Okay, So the thing is, I know there's a lot
Speaker 5: of people as you get older, would be really timid
Speaker 5: of going to a gym, and especially of my generation
Speaker 5: because we didn't. We had gyms, but they were mainly
Speaker 5: for men or women that really ballsy.
Speaker 3: Excuse my language.
Speaker 5: But it's it's very intimidating. You think people are really
Speaker 5: watching you and judging you, but they're not.
Speaker 3: They're so intent.
Speaker 5: I would say ninety percent of the people at least
Speaker 5: are so intent on changing themselves or doing their what
Speaker 5: they're doing, then to be watching you. And if you
Speaker 5: ever get a compliment or someone talking to you at
Speaker 5: a gym, it's because you've.
Speaker 3: Made an impression. Really, you've made an impression.
Speaker 5: So if you really really want to change, you got
Speaker 5: to think, I have to change.
Speaker 3: I have to change my mind.
Speaker 5: I have to change what I'm doing because I want
Speaker 5: my life back. You've got to really want your life back,
Speaker 5: because this is a good time to do it. You
Speaker 5: don't have any kids around anymore, you don't have anything
Speaker 5: or anybody really demanding something from you. Go out and
Speaker 5: get it for yourself. It's about time you spend all
Speaker 5: your life dealing.
Speaker 3: With other people.
Speaker 2: Focus on your intent.
Speaker 3: Focus on you intention and consistency.
Speaker 2: Michelle Potting tip from you.
Speaker 6: I'd probably piggyback on that, And I think the mindset's
Speaker 6: the most important thing.
Speaker 4: And I think Mom kind of touched on that.
Speaker 6: You've got to allow yourself to truly love and believe
Speaker 6: in yourself, and that's huge.
Speaker 4: Nobody's going to save you. No one's getting out of
Speaker 4: this alive.
Speaker 6: And you absolutely have the power to make small, tiny
Speaker 6: changes and then do it every single day and just
Speaker 6: try to get a little bit better. And that has
Speaker 6: to come from a place ultimately of self love. You've
Speaker 6: got to think you're worth it if you do that work,
Speaker 6: If you actually meditate on this idea that no one's
Speaker 6: going to save you and you've got to do it,
Speaker 6: and you love yourself enough to do the work, you'll
Speaker 6: find a way to make those small changes, and you'll
Speaker 6: make better choices and you'll be successful.
Speaker 4: So it starts with a mindset.
Speaker 1: Michelle and Joan McDonald, thank you both so much for
Speaker 1: your time today.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having us on the show.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you very much to Amelia.
Speaker 6: Great to talk with you, Amelia, and I hope your
Speaker 6: listeners get a lot from it.
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