Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Transforming Health Beyond Menopause with Alicia Jones
The second puberty is real. As women navigate the challenging terrain of perimenopause and menopause, their bodies demand a completely different approach to fitness and nutrition—one that most traditional workout programs fail to address.
Fitness expert Alicia Jones joins us to reveal why the Jane Fonda-inspired cardio workouts that dominated women's fitness for decades may actually be working against women over 50. Drawing from her extensive background in kinesiology and her specialized work with aging women, Alicia breaks down the science behind why strength training becomes non-negotiable as estrogen levels decline.
"When estrogen drops, we lose its anabolic effects that previously helped us build muscle and maintain bone density," Alicia explains. "Simultaneously, our protein synthesis becomes less efficient, creating a perfect storm that makes maintaining strength increasingly difficult—unless we specifically target these changes."
The conversation shifts to one of Alicia's most remarkable success stories—65-year-old Judy who couldn't perform a basic lunge and became winded climbing a single stair. Now in her 70s, Judy performs power weight training, plyometrics, and conquers hiking trails throughout Europe. This transformation wasn't magic but the result of a carefully designed program addressing the unique challenges of aging female bodies.
Beyond the physical aspects, we explore the "Three C's" framework—confidence, choice, and community—that provides the psychological infrastructure for successful aging. These elements work together to combat the isolation and limitation that often accompany major life transitions.
The episode offers practical guidance on high-intensity interval training (properly defined, not the hour-long classes that claim the name), protein requirements specific to women over 50, and strategies for maintaining mobility and independence. Whether you're approaching this life stage or supporting someone who is, this conversation provides an evidence-based roadmap for thriving during and after "the change."
Check out Alicia's free masterclass on her three-phase food and fitness formula at alisajoneshealthyliving.com and discover why it truly is never too late to transform your health.
Intro for podcast
information about subscriptions
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we've got a very special guest. Her name is Alicia Jones, and Alicia helps transform the health and lives of women over 50 through her fitness and weight loss strategies. She's appeared on various health and wellness television programs and produced and hosted Health Matters and the View Health and Wellness on Rogers TV. She's got a BA in kinesiology and adds many certifications on her list of qualifications, including National Coach of Canada, advanced Sport Nutrition, certified Group Fitness and many more. Alicia, welcome to the show. It's really great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait to dive into everything over 50.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, I happen to be over 50, so it's good to hear. I don't happen to be a woman, but I happen to be married to one and have a lot of them in my life, so I'm certainly interested in where you go and I definitely like your business, which carries the same name as my podcast.
Speaker 2:Yes, alicia Jones, healthy Living and you being healthy living, so we're all connected here.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it, so why don't you give us a little? I like to hear about what brings people to their area of expertise. Many people have had some kind of a transformative incident or experience in their life, and some people just live in their dreams. So tell us how you got to this place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, when it comes to the transformative experience for me to get into health and wellness, that's very different of how I got into working only with the over 50 population and the aging population. So I think my story into getting into fitness is very much like many. You know, I was working in a job I was actually in the hotel industry at the time and I ended up going through a bit of a depression and a lot of anxiety. I wasn't sure about what I was going to do and the direction I was going to take, and so I ended up going to a gym and exercising and it happened to be a great community. It was a YMCA here in Canada and it was such a great community that I felt like that was my place.
Speaker 2:Every time I was working out or doing some form of fitness, I felt happy, I felt like that was where I wanted to be, and that's how I got into fitness to begin with. But then, years later, as I was, you know, I was working in these box gyms and at the same time I was studying kinesiology. There was this huge shift that happened for me when my mother decided to do the CN Tower climb with me, and so this is kind of where the over 50 comes in, because growing up I grew up with a mom. She was a single mother to my brother and to myself, and my grandmother was the main caregiver for us because my mother was out working all the time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But my grandmother grew up in a time when smoking was considered the norm. She was a nurse and she smoked right and back then you could smoke in the doctor's office in the car without seatbelts. Yeah, everywhere, everywhere. So it was the norm for her. But by the time she got to the age of a grandmother and taking care of us, she wasn't able to. She had COPD cardiovascular disease and so we often had to get somebody to come in. At the same time, my grandmother was there to take care of us.
Speaker 2:And for me, like I'm sure you've heard this, the relationship with grandparents and their grandkids. It's really, really special and I didn't want anybody else taking care of me, except for my grandmother.
Speaker 1:I'm a grandpa, I know all about it.
Speaker 2:That's it right. It's all the fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly All the fun and none of the work.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah, but you need to have that energy for them. You need to have that well-being?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And so my grandmother wasn't really able to do that. And then, coming to this time, with the CN Tower climb that I was speaking of, my mother led a very different life. She, you know, did her weight watchers, her, you know, fitness classes. She didn't really drink that much, and so I was. I had the all of these clients that were older women and they were saying to me Alicia, I'm not going to do the CN Tower climb with you because I'm too old to be doing it. So, recruited the mother.
Speaker 1:That's quite a barrier there, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly yeah. So recruited the mother who was 72. And my slogan for that was if she's 72, so can you.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:And that, well, that was the turning point for me. I was like I knew I wanted to only work with aging population. You kind of see that direction you can take. You can take the direction where maybe you don't even really understand something you're doing isn't healthy for you.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But as we age, you could be the grandma that's lying in bed or sitting on the couch.
Speaker 1:Exactly 100%. Yeah, my wife follows a lady. I don't remember what her name is, but I think she's 80 years old and she's this fitness buff and she's out there exercising and looking better than most people half her age and what an inspiration, right. I mean, her mom's 96 and she doesn't take care of herself, but she's got this genetics that just lets her out, walk everybody around and somehow she she just got the good cards. But you can see the difference where sometimes you got to really work for it, but you can.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and genes definitely play a part.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely, yes, absolutely, and genes definitely play a part.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely yeah, I'd argue with that. Well, so when you decided to go this route, you know that's where. So all of my programs are geared towards women over 50. And I think there are a lot of commonalities, because it is very different to train as a woman or it should be than it is as a man. Like we have men, we go through perimenopause, menopause those hormones really shift. It's like a second puberty almost.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and men, you guys go through andropause but it's not quite the same.
Speaker 1:Have you felt that? Um, you know I'm also recovering from cancer right now, so I think that overshadowed all the andropause stuff, but it I've raised up and and I'm, you know, the finishing strokes of killing this thing off. And look at me, I'm still out here talking to you. You know, doing it, and no surgery, no radiation was able to really beat the hell out of this thing, and so I think, a lot of it. You know, there's some people that get really extreme hormonal um changes that affect them dramatically. I I think mostly it's.
Speaker 1:What do we do with it? You know, we get depression, we get a little bad luck, we get a little injury, we get a little sick, whatever. What do we do with it? Right, some people lay in bed and complain and say, I don't know, I'm stuck. Other people say, well, I got to figure this out and move forward. And so me, I love my life and I want to, you know, share the things I learned. So I turned it into my full-time job and now, you know that's a big part of this podcast is I share my journey with people and teach them how to find their answers, not just do what I did, but how to go and find those answers? Because everybody's experience is so unique as you find out. You know everybody. You can take a group of people 1000 people all going through a 10 year cycle where they go through perimenopause, menopause and, and watch them all, and there'll probably be a dozen different groups of categories, of types of reactions and symptoms, and even you know what they did about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah, and to your point as well. Some of it is genetics, some of it is environment, what you've been exposed to or how you take care of yourself. There are a whole bunch of different factors that come together so to decide on how you experience perimenopause.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. I think that your spirit and your mind have more to do with it than all the other things. You know your genetics. You can't get away from. But what decisions you make and how you feel like, what's motivating you, those things you have control over, and I think that they can become more powerful than the actual experience itself sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely yeah. I think it comes down to, you know, positivity is one thing, but it comes down to have. You heard of Tasha Urich. She talks about the three C's. It's we need in our lives to have a level of confidence, you know so, confidence even in that you can beat this thing or you can, you know you can deal with the symptoms of perimenopause. We need to have that level of choice and community, and those are the three C's.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard of her specifically with that, but I totally agree with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then each of those come into different place. So, for example, if you feel like you have really bad symptoms when you're going through perimenopause and you believe you have no choice in it, then you're more likely to suffer depression. That area of your life is more restricted, and so your health is going to suffer as a consequence Right, you give yourself fewer options because you don't see them.
Speaker 2:That's right, you don't see them. That's it. I think that's it. It's a part of the mindset of how can we start to shift our beliefs and how can we create community and how can we nurture our confidence, because we can also have.
Speaker 2:you can also feel like you're really great at something, as in you know, like I love to exercise it doesn't mean that internally I could have this really great confidence overall in my wellbeing or my life, and so it's also really important to reflect and understand where we have these certain areas. Where are we confident internally and where are we struggling?
Speaker 1:Community is key for that, and that's actually one of the really fundamental reasons for this podcast is building a community so that listeners can come in and find people that they connect with and the guests and can find people that you know, agree and want to participate with the things they do and ultimately there's sort of a global community developing not in a formal way, but it's happening. And I think community offers a couple of different things. One, it offers possibility to people who might not see it if they were by themselves. But two, it keeps you in check. You know if you think you're doing better than you are and you're walking around. But two, it keeps you in check. You know if you think you're doing better than you are and you're walking around. You know confidence is great, but if it's not built on reality, sometimes it can cause you problems and somebody can come along and do something with you and you're like, oh wow, I'm not so good after all. Maybe I got to put some work in, you know, and both sides of that can be important.
Speaker 2:And I also think with community. It's about understanding. You're not alone. For example, you've told your story and I think we can get so much in our own head that we're the only ones that feel this way. We're the only ones that experience this. So to hear those other stories, that, yeah, really makes us realize that we're not in this alone, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:And the truth is none of us are alone. You know everything we've done. A million people have gone through. You know everything we've done. A million people have gone through. You know, the world's been around for a long time. There's been people on this planet for a's just a matter of finding the people that maybe could share that with you. So you don't. You know, it's funny like even with joys, people do great things or accomplish something wonderful, but it's really not. It's really kind of empty unless you have somebody you can share it with. It's like I caught this great fish all by myself out in the stream. Nobody saw it. I let it go. And what am I going to do? Tell somebody about it, maybe take a picture. It's beautiful for me and I get a lot out of it. But when you're with somebody and they get to share that with you, whatever it is, it makes it many fold better. So community is key in all of this, for sure.
Speaker 2:Oh, I totally agree, and that can even be online, which that's because I think some people find it, you know, isolating that they're doing things on the computer, but there's so many great communities out there that are online, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, this information age is a double-edged sword. I tell people everything's a double-edged sword, you know. I mean the treatments I've been taking. You know, the natural ones, the Western ones, they all have their strengths and weaknesses and it's up to me to find that balance and that stack to make sure that that's the thing best for me. But if I did too much on one thing or focus too much on one thing, it would have a detrimental effect.
Speaker 1:And I think it's like that with everything and information. Like you know, when I started studying herbs, it was, you know, in the early 80s and there was no computers. I went to old used bookstores and bought seeds and learned myself, you know, found a community and found old people that taught me stuff. And then eventually computers came along and now look at it, it today. You just type something in and you're a whiz in no time. And both sides have their strengths and both sides have their weaknesses. And you know, with all the information, literally, I can learn anything that can be learned. But when you got to go and hunt for it, you learn it in a maybe a little different way and maybe it sticks you a little better, maybe your experience is a little deeper and maybe I could teach it better.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know it's hard to say, but yeah, I think that we're also with the the technology age. We're a little bit good at everything but, you know, there's only a few. For example, you're a real expert in herbs, right, that is your specialty. That's what you're great at, um, you know all my textbooks. I'm really great at physiology and nutrition and and you know, uh and exercise all of those fun things right but you know, on the online I'm a little bit good at.
Speaker 2:You know my self-help or self-love. You're talking about the book or you know things like that. So we're over. We're more spread out in our knowledge instead of niche down for certain things.
Speaker 1:I find I totally agree and I think with AI, people are getting more and more that way and I don't know, we'll see where it goes. I think that there's always going to be people committed to truth and to sharing information and really being focused on the reality of things, and we'll get through it all, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it definitely is something as well where, online, you have to be careful with the information you're given. You do have to research, and it's not just about this simplistic spread of information that you have. You really have to dive deep and find out. Is it even factual, or is it some influencer telling you to do something?
Speaker 1:You have to source your sources and go back all the way as far as you can, and you know so he was paying for it and see, you know, all right. So it's a different challenge that you have instead of finding the information. And even when I was, you know, going to old used bookstores, I got a hundred herbal books, and they don't all agree with each other, because there are different points of view, different locations in the world and people have different experiences with different plants, and so you always have to be a critical thinker. And I think that that's a key to it all is, you know we seek knowledge and truth and then we want to share it. So, you know, really focus on that. And you know we seek knowledge and truth and then we want to share it. So, you know, really focus on that. And you know, check yourself and double check yourself. I think it helps a lot. So your program it's it sounds to me like it's a personal trainer type program or it's it's a group program as well. So tell us how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the word personal trainer, only because I feel like it. I don't. I. I remember the days because I've been in this industry for a very long time, you know. So I remember the days when it was the hulky men inside, you know the gym, kind of puff, puff, puff.
Speaker 2:And the women would feel really intimidated. I think we're still getting along, we're coming a long way from that now, but you know, I consider myself more a coach or an expert in women over 50. All right, and my program is Over 50, fit and Fabulous, and what it does is it talks about the nutrition side of things, because the food and the fitness formula shift with age. So we talk about the food and we talk about how that shifts and we talk about the fitness side. And the big component with the fitness side is adding in strength training Because, especially with age, I think a lot of us women have been, you know, kind of almost brainwashed into the Jane Fonda. Let's do a cardio workout workout, yay, put our leg warmers on. But really we're missing out on that piece of enhancing lean muscle because that declines with age.
Speaker 2:We really need to be focusing in on that Also for bone density, as well?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're spot on I you know, as I get older, I've been doing a lot of biohacking and you know fitness seeking and you know I lost 50 pounds about eight years ago and that was the beginning of my journey, before I got my diagnosis. So I got super healthy and then found out I had a an obstacle to overcome. But meanwhile I've learned so much about you know nutrition and and um fitness, and you know strength training, resistance training, um, and then you talk a lot about HIIT training. That becomes as you get older. Like you said, we lose muscle mass, we lose bone density and a lot of people, and we lose our lung capacity, that's another big one the lung capacity, and that's a very, very big predictor of quality of life.
Speaker 2:It's called our VO2 max, how we use oxygen in our body when we're doing these exercises, and that declines with age, no matter what. We can't just keep this magic number as high, high, high as it was in our 20s, but the thing is that we also don't use that percentage of it.
Speaker 2:We don't ever use our max of our VO2 max. So we can still improve quite a lot and always maintain a really great quality of life. And you can still improve quite a lot and always maintain a really great quality of life. And you can only do that through things like high intensity interval training.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. I've gone through a lifetime of lung problems and I have had, you know, asthma and an allergy to aspergillus, which has given me chronic pneumonia, and so I've gone through, you know, every kind of thing and I ultimately came up with a treatment that worked for me, and the doctors really couldn't do it without steroids, and steroids have this long term negative side effect that I wasn't willing to go through. But the last time they tested me, they said I had lung capacity of about 70, 70%, but it's operating at 115%. Oh, that's amazing. So I've been able to take what I have, in spite of the scarring, in spite of the damage that has happened to me for a lifetime of this, and still got it to work as good as it probably ever could, and so that's amazing.
Speaker 2:It goes to show, when you take care of yourself, what you can do.
Speaker 1:It is. It's totally true, you know. I think you know we have a lot of guests that talk about longevity and telomeres and all these different. You know I call it biohacking, but it's just you know answers, finding solutions, and there's so many things they all have in common and that's one of the reasons I love to have a really diverse, you know subject matter out here, because everybody kind of dives deep into one little thing.
Speaker 1:And oxygen is a big part of my cancer treatment. You know, cancer doesn't like oxygen and healthy cells love it, and so guess what? I'm gonna give myself as much of it as I can possibly give, and it helps the healthy cells and weakens the cancer cells. So there's so much to all of that. So tell us about, you know, the high intensity interval training. I've heard a lot of things, both positive and negative, about it, and it's just like everything you know, like every single thing, there's going to be somebody that says I got this great answer and there's gonna be somebody else that says, well, yeah, except for your ligaments and your connective tissue or whatever you know their beef is. And, like I said, everything's a double-edged sword. So tell us about how you navigate this program.
Speaker 2:Yes, and when it comes to high-intensity interval training, I'd love to know what the negatives are, because there's always a workaround, there's never one solution. So, for example, all I care about with high intensity interval training is that you're getting into a place where you can no longer have a conversation. You're high in your breathing and it's very, very hard to breathe.
Speaker 1:And you only need to be there for a little while.
Speaker 2:You don't need to be there for a long period of time. It really does depend on where you are and where you're starting in your high-intensity interval training journey, and it doesn't need to be long. So some people are doing these classes that are high-intensity interval training classes. They're an hour long.
Speaker 1:Well, you are not doing it's like running a marathon. Of course you're going to destroyperse your body Exactly.
Speaker 2:And for you to actually have obtained that very high intensity. If you're doing that for a full one-hour class, I can guarantee you are not doing proper high-intensity interval training.
Speaker 1:Right. You cannot sustain it for a very long time You're not pushing yourself hard enough and then you're not getting that full value of it. I mean, the whole point is to get yourself to where you can't do anything else but that, and then you let go.
Speaker 2:That's it. And just to show how safe it is, though, you know I go to the conferences each year for fitness, and there was a medical doctor that came on, and he was a heart surgeon and all of his patients, once they've gone through heart surgery, automatically get high high intensity interval training, because what happens is, once you've gone through and I'm not talking about every type of surgery what he specified in Once you stand up if you are really weak or tired and you haven't worked out from walking from one chair to another chair that might be just a couple of meters away your heart rate's going to rise really high to get to
Speaker 2:that chair Right. That's high intensity interval training. You sit down on the chair and that was literally all this man did. He had a room full of chairs and a part of the rehab process was getting the individual to go from one chair to the next and sit down and, when they felt ready, go on to the next, Going up a flight of stairs. You know for a lot of people you go up a flight of stairs you will feel totally out of breath. I don't personally, because I work on that.
Speaker 2:But you know you might go up a flight of stairs, especially if you're new to fitness.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Uphill climb is one of the quickest way to wear yourself out. Go up to a high altitude and do it and you'll EPOC, which is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. So basically, our whole metabolism has to speed up to get us to this balanced state homeostasis. Our body loves being in balance in this homeostasis state and so when that balance is off, we will do all of the physiology in our body, everything in our body is going to do everything in its power to get back to the balanced state.
Speaker 2:And so to do that, you rev up your metabolic rate, you're replenishing the oxygen and then, on top of it, the body's like. This might not be a once in a while thing, this might happen more often. So we need to adapt the body to a level that is going to allow us to handle this. So there are acute responses or chronic responses to exercise, but even one bout you get that acute response Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there are benefits to it and it's really beneficial for a lot of the women they want to lose weight when they come to me.
Speaker 2:Well, you going on your nice walk is fabulous for psychological reasons, but it's not going to help you lose weight. What's going to help you is the weight training which is going to help enhance lean muscle. It's highly metabolically active, so you burn more calories, and it's the high-intensity interval training and I love that because it's not just for weight loss. We need our lean mass for quality of life, bone density for quality of life and lung capacity for quality of life. So it is the magic two combo.
Speaker 1:So briefly. I knew this was going to happen. We're going to blast through our time really quickly, but nutrition is such a big part of this and with women over 50, what do you think if there's a couple of really key points you could bring out, what's your?
Speaker 2:take on that. My number one thing is overall, in general, women tend to eat less protein than men and I think it's because there's this idea that it has to be meat Like. You need to have this huge slab of meat on your plate. And I'm not saying that if you're vegetarian or you prefer to have plant-based sources, by all means go ahead. Or you're more into fish, by all means go ahead. But you do need to prioritize protein, especially as a woman.
Speaker 2:Estrogen levels drop and estrogen is anabolic, which helps grow muscle. It helps us with our bone density and so when we don't have that ability to help us grow muscle, like we did when the estrogen was high, we need other ways of doing that. And protein synthesis also goes down. So our ability to use protein that comes in, we don't use it as efficiently to help us grow the muscle. So eating a proper amount of protein is going to help us maintain lean muscle, grow lean muscle if we're lifting weight, and it's also going to help us with that protein synthesis. The more we have in our body, the more possibility we can absorb some, because we've got it there.
Speaker 1:Got it All right Now. I always like to hear you know so many great guests have come and been so transformative for so many people. I always like to hear kind of a story of transformation. Why don't you share one of the classics you have of somebody you've helped in a dramatic way?
Speaker 2:I love to talk about Judy. She came to me at 65 because she retired and she wanted to be healthy. We we just did a simple fitness test and she wasn't even able to do a spreading of the leg lunge, so one leg in front of the other, because her balance was so off she wasn't able to do that. She had three little stairs in her house. I asked her just to go up one of the three and she would get out of breath at about a minute and a half. Now she's in her 70s. She is doing full power weight training.
Speaker 2:She's oftentimes she's my guinea pig. I'll say will you come in and be the volunteer to show people that at any age you can do this? She does plyometrics, she's jumping, she does these huge hike tours with her um friends. So she went to Utah, she went to um, she did the, the I can't even remember what the like the Alps she's done. Like she's done all of these trips right now she's in Italy.
Speaker 2:She's doing um, a whole bunch of hiking trips in Italy, so her retirement has turned into this amazing, powerful strength, building fun with travel and events, because she started weight training and taking care of herself at 65.
Speaker 1:That is beautiful. That is beautiful. Well, alicia, why don't you? If you could wrap up everything, if you had, you know, one elevator pitch to throw out there to say hey, this is the message I have for you, what would that be?
Speaker 2:It's never too late. No, you are not too old and you can get started with some really simple, simple weight training and not even high intensity interval training, but simple weight training and some simple nutrition shifts that can really transform your life.
Speaker 1:I love it and, maybe as important, you're going to find plenty of people over 50 in our demographic listening to this show. They're going to go. How do I get ahold of this lady? So how does somebody reach you?
Speaker 2:Well, I can give you the link to my free masterclass, which talks about the three-phase food and fitness formula that every woman needs to go through, and we go in depth on what to do. And my website is alisajoneshealthylivingcom. And check out my YouTube, because that's where I'm on most and there's a lot of free videos, free workouts and free information.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, as I offered before, I think we have lots more to talk about. I'd love to have you back on the show, but we're grateful that you joined us and just want to say thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:All right, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I want to thank all the listeners for your support and we will see you next time.
