At the age of 70, weighing 198 pounds (approx. 90 kgs), and suffering from different health issues, Joan MacDonald was a very unhappy person. But after making healthy life changes she not only got rid of the issues that once plagued her but she’s also grown to be a fitness influencer with over a million fans.
When she spoke to The Epoch Times about her impressive journey, Joan was on the cusp of turning 77. Originally hailing from Ontario, Joan now resides in Mexico.
She exercises five days a week and is pushing herself to the limits with a combination of cardio, yoga, and weightlifting. Joan is helped and supported by her daughter Michelle MacDonald, a transformational fitness and lifestyle coach who is the founder of The Wonder Woman, a strength and bodybuilding coaching program.
Almost six years ago, the septuagenarian was on medication for high blood pressure, and acid reflux, and had terrible edema in her ankles. She also struggled to walk up and down stairs, due to extremely painful arthritis.
“My doctor wanted to up my medications because my blood pressure wasn’t being stabilized,” Joan said.
At that time, Michelle, 52, suggested that her mother get in shape, hoping this would help her either partially or fully get rid of medication.
“I didn’t have to think about it too long,” Joan said. “After a day, maybe two, I decided I needed to do something for myself instead of concentrating on everybody else and being miserable. So, I got under her wing. Thank God I did.”
A large concern of Michelle’s was that Joan might have cardiovascular disease (CVD). With a waist circumference of a little over 39 inches, Joan was considered high-risk.
“There’s clear evidence showing that for a female, a waist circumference of 35 inches and above is directly correlated with a sharp increase of CVD risk,” Michelle said. “The blood pressure medication, which was the medication that she was on, does not solve the problem; it just manages the symptoms. We know that high blood pressure wrecks enormous damage on the body’s arterial lining, as well as organ tissue. ”
“I think it’s safe to say that as you get older, the more medications you are on, the more you accumulate side effects and your quality of life goes down.”
Having already witnessed this firsthand with her grandmother, Michelle was eager to help her mom in achieving optimum health and well-being. That winter, Joan participated in an online group with other women who were also working on changing habits to take the best possible care of themselves.
With the help of Michelle and the group, Joan’s life took a drastic turn.
“We work on building muscle through intelligent programming that focuses on progressive overload,” Michelle, who was born in Ontario but has lived across the world, said. “Progressive overload is not a new technique, it’s just a way of making sure that a client or athlete is getting stronger and more skilled in the gym over a period of time, with improved mobility and range of motion.”
Michelle also increased the protein in Joan’s diet, spacing out her meals to four or five a day. Using this method, Joan was able to shed 45 pounds (approx. 20kgs) over six months.
“I felt really good about losing that much weight, it was more than what I had planned on,” Joan, who worked for the Ontario government for 30 years, said. “I had my doctor monitoring my blood pressure and she said it was decreasing little by little.”
Additionally, Joan also began to feel more hungry compared to the past.
However, along the way, Joan encountered some challenges. Initially, she couldn’t do exercises that involved bending over, since doing so would cause a lot of acid reflux.
In her first year, as she was monitored by her doctor, they noticed that she was losing weight and taking her blood pressure pills. However, that only had an adverse effect on her health.
Since her blood pressure kept dropping too fast, she ended up in the hospital many times.
But that didn’t seem to deter Joan, who continued to strive forward. Over the years she has been able to maintain a 65-pound (approx. 30 kg) weight loss and has been able to go off medications for high blood pressure, acid reflux, and high cholesterol.
For Michelle, witnessing Joan’s change was amazing since she was her oldest client at that time.
“It was great to see that somebody in their 70s was able to have the same outcomes as somebody who was 30 years old,” said Michelle, who feels there is a lot of negative messaging and assumptions about what people who get older can do.
“It’s not the doom and gloom thing we’re being told,“ she said. ”It was great to work with this person who doesn’t do HRT [hormone replacement therapy] or take any kind of drugs to assist her; it’s just raw, natural hard work.”
Michelle doesn’t advocate for fad diets, or encourage losing weight too quickly. For most people, she said, one pound a week is good, though, for those with a lot of weight to lose, it’s normal for the body to shed the extra initial pounds a little faster.
To keep her clients motivated, and in light of the fact that only a “very tiny percentage” of people are able to sustain significant weight loss over time, Michelle encourages them to have social media accounts.
“They can make it private; they can create a new account that has nothing to do with their personal account; make it about fitness, tag each other, share their training, share their wins, share their losses, share their food. It’s worked really, really well as a kind of accountability tool, that’s also very fun,” she said.
However, the downside of running her own social media page, Joan said, is the tendency of her followers to idolize her and what she’s achieving.
“When you’re up on a pedestal, it’s a hard place to be,” she said. “But you know, I’ve helped so many people who tell me that seeing what I could do, gave them hope. If you have hope, you can try. You don’t have to grow old and feeble.
“You can still grow old but be vibrant. You have a life to not just exist, and that’s what I realized I was doing: just existing.”
Joan believes that there may be fears and tears along the way and emphasizes that nobody is perfect, however, insists that we can still try to be our best possible selves.
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