Health and fitness don’t have an age limit, and 75-year-old influencer Joan MacDonald is living proof.
After going on medication for high blood pressure in 2016, MacDonald took a closer look at herself: “I was really huffing and puffing climbing up and down the stairs,” she tells MSNBC, adding that she was 70 years old and 198 pounds at the time. “My daughter got really, really concerned. She thought that if she wanted me around, she’d better intervene.”
At the time, MacDonald’s daughter, Michelle, was a fitness trainer and coach, the perfect job to help her mother out. “Michelle challenged me, and I’m not one to back down from a challenge!” A few weeks later, Joan joined one of her daughter’s fitness groups, and from that point forward her life was changed.
Michelle made sure that her mom was drinking almost a gallon of water per day, getting eight hours worth of sleep per night and practicing weight training to keep her bones dense and healthy. Today, she goes to the gym five days per week, doing two days of cardio and three days of cardio and strength training.
Joan has cleaned up her food intake, boosted her physical activity and improved her health so much so that she no longer takes blood pressure medication. At almost 76 years old, she is 60 pounds lighter than she was as a teenager (and she can even bench press up to 80 pounds!).
