I interviewed the author, health and wellness coach, and fitness trainer D.D. Forrest (Daniella). Her book is called “Own Your Wellness: Giving You the Tools to Break Through Your Plateaus.”
Her book deals with diet fads, diet plans, and how to achieve optimal health and wellness as you age.
Watch our interview on YouTube
I interviewed 98-year-old Elaine LaLanne who held a jumping jack challenge in Los Angeles that we both attended. Even though we did not meet each other there, it connected us. Below are the highlights of my interview with Daniella.
What is the greatest obstacle to optimal health?
Finding the consistent motivation to keep going. You will set a goal and at some point, you will hit a speed bump. You might give up or take a break but must find a way and a “why” to continue.
What must you do to obtain optimal health and keep it up for life?
Make adjustments. You may have done X amount of cardio or ate low-fat for a few days to lose extra pounds in the past. As you age, you must change and do it differently.
She meets older women who barely eat or are trying to do hours and hours of exercise without seeing results.
Instead of doing those things more intensely, they need to shift gears.
As women’s ovaries cease to produce hormones in menopause, the adrenal glands take over. They mostly deal with stress hormones. As we age, we deal with more stress with ailing parents, children at home, work situations, etc The adrenals become exhausted.
When you attempt to starve yourself or do too much cardio, it adds additional stress that makes it even more difficult to lose weight.
It’s important to nourish yourself to support resiliency and get support instead of punishing yourself and feeling further depleted.
Daniella believes that as women get older, they need to work on strength training to put on muscle tone because it gets harder to maintain muscle mass. Putting on extra muscle and eating more protein helps older women’s bones stay strong, improves energy, and burns more calories.
Why is it important to figure out a “why” to achieve your wellness goals?
You may want to get back into your size 4 pants. But what do you do when you wake up and feel terrible or don’t feel like eating a salad for lunch? Those days will come more often than not. When you have a more emotionally charged reason to achieve your goals – a why – it helps to move you forward.
An example might be you are scared that you may be pre-diabetic and do not want your family to have to take care of you. Post that message next to your vitamin drawer to remind yourself that you are not just doing it for yourself. It will give you more motivation.
Daniella shared that she has severe osteoporosis which was diagnosed at 28 years old. She has spent the last 20 years slowly putting on bone. Even when she doesn’t feel like lifting weights or eating high protein, she doesn’t want her daughter to be worried about breaking bones when she gets older. She is also on hormone replacement therapy in peri-menopause.
When you make it about others rather than just yourself, it gives you more impetus to succeed.
“Own Your Wellness” is about making those adjustments based on your needs as you age.
We talked about how older women need some extra fat to prevent osteoporosis and falls so it is not a good idea to be too skinny. Also, the hollowness in your cheeks when you lose too much weight is not so cute when you get older. This has been happening to women taking Ozempic-type drugs who are not diabetic and are not morbidly overweight.
Losing too much weight will rob your bones of the minerals and nutrients you need.
If you are taking those drugs, you must work to build muscle strength and mass and adjust your diet for long-term health. Muscle comes off first. Fat is much more difficult to lose.
When they get off those drugs fat will come back first before muscle tone unless you work on it.
How does living in Silicon Valley (innovations in high tech) affect how you look at health and wellness?
Many of her clients are data-driven and use wearables and other devices. They can take that information but must decide what to do with it. She writes in her book about various types of testing if you are not feeling great. That may include tracking steps, looking at your gut health, or hormones, etc. The question is: “What will you do with this information?” “What adjustments will you make?”
What is your take on supplements? Marketers are constantly hawking supplements for older people.
It’s very individual but hard to get all your nutrition with our current food supply. Our soil is not the same as it once was. She often recommends Magnesium and Vitamin D with Vitamin K2. She goes into detail in her book about all kinds of supplements.
Vitamins work together. If you take calcium which is often recommended for older women, it may not solve the issue and will deposit it in your kidneys and elsewhere. We need Vitamin K2, which is not as available in our diet these days, to tell the body where to deposit the calcium. (bones, teeth)
Ask “Do these vitamins help me toward my goal?” “What strategies must I implement to bring these vitamins into my regime?”
Start with one supplement at a time and layer them slowly. If you have a negative reaction, it is easier to determine what is causing the problem.
What is your fitness mantra?
I like to be pushed as hard as possible. I want to learn where my limits are.
She hired a trainer even though she is a fitness trainer herself. He helps her work around her injuries and other issues.
My mantra is to get as strong and muscular as humanly possible.
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