Entertainment
‘I’m 76 and go to the gym five days a week’: Why it’s never too late to get into fitness
In January 2017, almost exactly six years ago, Joan MacDonald’s health was deteriorating. She had turned 70 and was having difficulty using the stairs, while the arthritis in her hands was extremely painful, she had edema in her ankles, and she was on medication for high blood pressure. But most of all, she was unhappy.
“My daughter told me I needed to make a change. Live or die, is what I would put it down to,” says MacDonald. MacDonald’s daughter Michelle runs her own gym. She asked if she could set up a fitness programme for her mother. “She threw down this challenge for me so I picked up the gauntlet and it’s been my focus ever since,” she says.
Now aged 76, MacDonald is an unlikely fitness influencer. With almost 2,000,000 followers, her page is glossy and chirpy in tone. She shares photos of herself squatting 43kg weights in the gym in a sports bra and leggings or flexing her muscles on the beach.
Joan MacDonald with her daughter Michelle who runs her own gym
Originally from Canada, she now lives in Mexico, hiding from the harsh winters with her husband. “Most of my followers are young women,” she says. “But I want older women to see that it’s possible too.”
In her new book, Flex Your Age, MacDonald details her journey. “I don’t think fitness should be any different in your seventies than in your twenties. In my head, I have never aged older than 30 and while I may be a little slower than young people in the gym, I work just as hard.”
It’s easy to believe: over Zoom, MacDonald is sunkissed and full of energy. Since throwing herself into fitness, she is no longer on medication for her blood pressure and her arthritis and edema have become more manageable.
She puts all this down to her dedication. “My daughter has a [fitness] programme for me and she changes it just about every month. When I started though, I was doing four days a week at the gym and one day of yoga. Now on the days I’m not doing strength work, I do at least 30 minutes of cardio. I like to cycle. Running is still far too painful for me.”
MacDonald’s later years fitness transformation is rare, but NHS guidelines advise anyone over the age of 65 to be physically active every day, including at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week.
Still, even with a fitness guru daughter to help her, MacDonald admits it hasn’t been easy. “I still fall into old habits, like eating sugary snacks. But what I’m really trying to rid myself of is this mindset that I wasn’t worth saving,” she says. “I think especially for women, we are told to be caregivers and to put others first. We can easily forget about ourselves. But nobody has to give up on themselves.”
MacDonald recalls her late mother, who also struggled with arthritis. “She gave up on herself, but you don’t need to give up on yourself. You need to fight.”
For those looking to pick up a new fitness regime in 2023, MacDonald has some straightforward advice: “Don’t concentrate on anyone else. Everyone’s different. Everyone’s going to develop differently. All you have to do is challenge yourself and be in competition with yourself.”
MacDonald also warns it’s not about losing weight, especially for older gym-goers. “Avoid the scales as it’s best to focus on your strength, not your body weight,” she says. “When first starting out in the gym, I would never do anything with heavy weights. Your muscles aren’t ready for that. You’re going to have a lot of pain for sure, so I say start off slow.
“This is going to be your life. You don’t have to change in a week or two weeks or a month. The most significant change should come after about three months”. Even more importantly, it’s not about showing off: “I’m not going into any weightlifting show, so I’m not concerned about overloading too much. I just want to keep my joints moving.”
For those starting out, MacDonald suggests beginning with walking or swimming. “Those are great exercises to start off with and then the following week, you just keep adding to it. It’s a steady build up. You’re changing your way of living so that you can embrace life a little bit more rather than having an end game.”
The other important ingredient for success is routine. “Before I ever started, I would get up in the morning and just do whatever I had to do that day. There was no fixed thing. Nothing was regimented at all which meant I never stuck to anything. For me to succeed, I have to have a routine: I have to have something that I look forward to.”
MacDonald advises doing exercise first thing in the morning, to get it out of the way. “That way if you have other things planned for the day, and you’re able to do them without worrying about whether you have time or if you have the energy.”
To keep on top of healthy eating, MacDonald makes sure she plans her meals at least one day ahead. “I do food prep twice a week so that my food is still fairly fresh, and it’s not more than three days old. Anything close to processed or fast food you have to get rid of, so I plan it accordingly.”
Still when MacDonald first started out, more than anything else her biggest hurdle was insecurity. “Everyone is going to feel like that. I just had to think, I’m not going to let some young pups think they can do it better than me”.
Look, we all know we are more interested in looking at female celebrities than male ones (except you Ryan, calm down). Here are the top lady crushes most women have:
10. Emma Stone
Emma Stone burst onto our radars as the quirky, offbeat comedy star with a difference. Yes, there’s no denying that she’s beautiful but she’s also a little different, funny and not your typical Hollywood starlet. They say you can’t have it all…
9. Olivia Wilde
Not just a pretty face, Olivia took the stage name Wilde after the one and only Oscar, a testament to her brains too, perhaps? No, mainly because her real name is Olivia Cockburn. No, it is. Not only does she act, she also models, writes, acts and directs. Oh and she just did a shoot with Glamour where she showed just how beautiful is is to be a breastfeeding mum. Swoon.
8. Miranda Kerr
Miranda started out as a Victoria’s Secret model (no surprise there really) and rose through the ranks to become one of the most famous Supermodels of recent times. As if that wasn’t quite enough, she’s also a fashion icon and has the worlds cutest baby with Orlando Bloom. Life envy much?
7. Christina Hendricks
Christina, or as most of us will know her, Joan, the steely star of Mad Men, is as famous for her acting skills as she is for her curves and she never looks as good as when poured into another of those fabulous vintage costumes. Not bitter at all…
6. Mila Kunis
Mila is another classic case of being the girl that every man wants and every woman wants to be. Not just content with being hot, smart, funny and oh yes, engaged to Ashton Kutcher, she’s also a serious film actress when the time calls for it. *Sigh*
5. Jennifer Lawrence
Who doesn’t love Jennifer Lawrence? She proved herself as a worthy actress from the get go and her popularity has been on an upward spike ever since. The fact that she appears to be so grounded, normal and funny only helps to increase our admiration (and love) for her.
4. Alessandra Ambrosio
Brazilian born Alessandra is a Victoria’s Secret model (no surprise there) and there isn’t really much else to say here, so just look at the image below and feel the awe rise up around you. If you aren’t blessed with her genes, you can always use party casino research to understand how you can win elsewhere – right?
3. Rihanna
Pretty much every sane girl in the world would agree that Rihanna is one of the hottest females ever. She appears to have it all. The looks, talent, money, men (well…), lifestyle, friends. So thank you Rihanna, we officially want to be you right about now.
2. Blake Lively
Blake, the tall, beautiful Gossip Girl star has since moved on from teen dramas and married the equally beautiful Ryan Reynolds. With legs up to her armpits, the most lusted after hair in the business and a wardrobe full of clothes that merely highlight how goddamn hot she is, Blake, we applaud and really want to be you.
1. Beyoncé
Come on, you had to have known that Beyoncé would be our number one. It’s Beyoncé for gods sake. A stellar career, the most amazing figure on the planet, riches and an ability to rock a leotard like nobody else, there isn’t much to do apart from just look on in wonder.
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I am a Cassie Howard apologist. Yes, even after last night’s episode of Euphoria. I sympathise with her, even if I don’t condone her choices, or even enjoy watching them most of the time. The problem with being a Cassie stan – as is the case with any of the characters in the Euphoria universe – is that every week the show tests that stance, pushing our problematic faves to new depths of debauchery and dubious morality. Cassie’s character in particular has practically become a meme in itself, with TikTok asking itself, week-on-week, how she can possibly fall any lower in our estimations. Of course, she does it anyway.
Some have speculated online that Cassie is a character foil for Rue, both of them addicts, with the show telling the story of their desperate needs. For Rue, the object of her addiction is opiates, for Cassie, it’s love. Rue’s backstory illustrated to the audience how her life up until now – her family trauma, a healthcare system that over-medicates its children – had primed her for addiction to drugs. In the same way, Cassie’s – growing up with an alcoholic mother and absent addict dad, being se**alised at a young age by older men – primed her for a dependency on male validation. But it’s undoubtedly harder to root for Cassie in spite of her flaws the way we rally for our flawed protagonist Rue to finally get her shit together.
Maybe that’s because Cassie embodies so many of the things we hate, or at least the things we ridicule; the things we collectively recognise are objectively incredibly annoying. Her problems pale in seriousness compared to the others – she’s not self-harming or addicted to opiates or dealing drugs or framing innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit – and so her struggles seem so cheesy, so silly. Cassie’s main dilemma is that she’s sleeping with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend. And she makes such a big deal about it. She falls into a depression spiral and treats her friends badly and dr*inks too much. She throws herself at a man who clearly doesn’t want her. She gets messy and throws up at a birthday party. When she’s exposed by Rue, she deflects the blame with pani*cked vindictiveness. Cassie is completely wrapped up in herself and her struggles, to the point where she doesn’t seem cognisant of the power and privileges she still possesses.
It’s easy to dislike her, I would ar*gue, in moments like this, because it’s relatively easy to see ourselves (or at least our teenage selves) in her messiness. While the problems faced by characters like Cal Jacobs or Ashtray might be so far away from our own lives that we can safely say we’d do it all better and never let ourselves get in those dangerous situations, Cassie’s cheugy, messy emotionality and teenage angst are uncomfortably close. It’s no surprise then, that Cassie has become an emblem of equally painful-to-follow toxic female characters, like Fleabag or the unnamed, but similarly self-indulgent protagonist of Ottessa Moshfegh’s book My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Cassie is in her Fleabag era, but unfortunately for her, there is no Hot Priest-shaped respite for viewers, only Nate Jacobs. And while we do get moments of being able to say “finally, go girl give us something”, like when Cassie walked out of an argument with Nate after saying she was crazier than Maddie, the show almost always instantly subverts them with having Cassie crawl back for more abuse. Annoying to watch? Perhaps. Realistic? From a lonely 17-year-old, sadly yes!
Even when she’s dealing with more serious problems, Euphoria is never far from reminding us of Cassie’s ridiculousness. When she asks Lexi whether she looks different, shortly after finding out she’s pregnant with McKay, Lexi becomes a stand-in for the audience, lashing out at her sister and pointing out how absurd she sounds. For the audience, the dramatic irony is even more potent: we know that while Cassie is experiencing her own personal trauma, she was also totally unequipped to deal with McKay’s (who had just experienced a violent hazing at the hands of his fraternity brothers, and was coming to the crushing realisation that he would never be a professional athlete), which many viewers interpreted as an unwillingness to engage with it too.
Euphoria’s total disregard of character development for McKay – he appeared in the first episode of season two, and has been missing in action ever since – compared to its almost lecherous lingering over Cassie’s every move, has been singled out as one of the show’s many problematic recent decisions. And while online rumours have speculated over whether that was down to actor Algee Smith’s views on vaccinations, the fact remains that Euphoria’s choice to ignore McKay’s struggles in favour of Cassie’s make her OTT breakdowns even more painful to watch. That much is fair: but the fact audience complaints are directed at the fictional character herself, not the polarising showrunner behind those decisions (Sam Levinson), a little more unfair imo!
One constant criticism of Levinson’s writing and of Euphoria as a show, even amongst its hardcore fans, is how over the top and ridiculous it is. How its storylines would never happen in real life (at least not all at once, to one friendship group, in the middle of the school year), and how none of the characters would pass dress code, and how it doesn’t make sense that there are no uggos, only hotties. It’s true that much of the show’s audience has never picked up a suitcase of narcotics and carted it around town on a bicycle, or secretly recorded all of the times we’ve cheated on our suburban wife, or dropped out of school to care for our ex-dr*ug baron grandmother. But you might have drunk too much at a party and thrown up. You probably debased and embarrassed yourself trying too hard for someone who didn’t want you, or ug*ly cried down the phone to people who think you’re being, honestly, a bit self-indulgent and annoying. Every week, Cassie acts out the kind of things you remember at two in the morning and cringe so hard at that it’s impossible to sleep. But it’s hard to admit you were more embarrassing than you currently are, and mortifying to watch someone else do the same, and so we’re like: No, Cassie fu**ing su*ks.
And she does, of course, but I would argue no more so (and in some cases, a lot less so) than any other character in season two of Euphoria. In last night’s episode [spoilers here!] Cassie tries to get out of being exposed for sleeping with Nate by calling Rue a drug addict, after Rue loses her temper with Cassie’s naive attempt to reassure her she can take rehab “one day at a time”. Was that advice cringey? Yes! Is Cassie’s response cruel? Yes! Is it worse than Rue calling Leslie a bad mom? Or Laurie injecting a dopesick 17-year-old with morphine? In the case of the former, I would say sleeping with your best pal’s ex is dubiously worse. But the latter? I mean, probably not! Judging by the episode’s response today on Twitter and Reddit though, that sliding scale of perspective is not a popular excuse for Cassie’s increasingly dumb behaviour. But, I digress!
Cassie know good and well she could’ve played that off better like baby you gotta learn how to LIE
— HOOD VOGUE is tired of poverty (@keyon) February 7, 2022
So yes, I am a Cassie apologist. But, I must caveat, no more so than I am an apologist for any of the other flawed, broken, ug*ly characters in the relentless, unforgiving universe that Sam Levinson created for them to live in. That’s the beauty of Euphoria. For all the criticism the series has received (some of it deserved, some of it TikTok hysteria) its success lies in its ability to make the audience empathise, even for a second, with a man like Cal Jacobs, who created a life of amorality and toxic masculinity to compensate for internalised homophobia. Or with a character like Jules, so lonely and hurt that she’ll cheat on the emotionally unavailable Rue with Elliott. Or Rue, so desperately addicted to drugs that she’ll attack her mother, sister and best friends. You might recoil at their choices but on some level you understand what drove them to those choices too.
It’s entirely possible, of course, that I will regret this appeal for moderation when it comes to burning Cassie Howard at the stake for crimes against humanity and friendship and fashion. There are still another four episodes of season two of Euphoria left, and with things looking bleaker than ever for the universe’s characters, who knows how much further she can sink. Sam Levinson has created a world with only two certainties: one, that we will complain every week without fail about his characterisation and then tune in to watch anyway. And two, that Nate Jacobs fu**ing su*ks.
Entertainment
Watch: Katherine Heigl flashes knickers as she strips off in middle of busy New York street
The 36-year-old comedy starlet can clearly laugh at herself, and her facial expressions were a picture when she got caught stripping off in the Big Apple yesterday.
Katherine was spotted shamelessly undressing and redressing herself, transforming from her neon pink and black cycling outfit to a more work-ready white pencil skirt and turtleneck top.
But the American beauty gave onlookers an eyeful when she unwittingly flashed her knickers during her rapid wardrobe swap.
While most would be left red-faced, Katherine had an excuse for her peculiar behaviour because she was filming scenes for her new CBS show called Doubt.
The mother-of-two was joined by her co-star Dulé Hill, 40, who played the perfect gentleman by clutching on to her handbag while she was otherwise occupied.
The crew are currently filming a reboot of the pilot episode, with Katherine being cast as successful defence lawyer Sadie Ellis alongside Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox who will play a trans Ivy League-educated attorney.
Meanwhile, Katherine’s husband Josh Kelley recently spoke out to defend her after she was branded “difficult” for blasting her own 2007 film Knocked Up.
I mean, it’s very interesting because somehow a bunch of haters just created a whole thing that she’s ‘difficult’,” he said. “That girl’s never been late, never missed a mark, she’s the least ‘difficult’ person in the world.
“I’ve been to every movie set since we were together, and everybody loves her. “So it’s really interesting how people can make s**t up and then it can get a heartbeat.”
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Nоbоdy соmраres to Gisele in a ʙικιɴι. That’s how genes are!
From Demi Moore to Raquel Welch: Famous Actresses That Appear Younger Than They Are
