Grandma shows off shocking transformation after getting fit at age 70
Topics: Fitness, Health, Mental Health
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@trainwithjoan
Topics: Fitness, Health, Mental Health
Can you imagine yourself at the grand old age of 70?
I'd be three years into retirement, golfing, watching a 120-year-old Steve Harvey host Family Feud during the day, eating, napping and taking coach trips with my wife and our senior friends.
Ahhh the life.
Well, one grandma has put my future senior self to shame, as well as all other pensioners.
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When Joan MacDonald turned 70 she made a choice - worried that her health was going downhill, she chose to completely turn her life around to live longer to tell her tale.
Now, at the age of 78, MacDonald has undergone an incredible transformation that would leave people 50 years her junior jealous of her body.
She started grafting to get a grip on her health and her body in 2017 - at that point, she weighed 198.8 pounds.
Speaking about it on her Instagram, she said: "My health was really starting to fail me, and my daughter @yourhealthyhedonista challenged me to join her 24-week transformation program. I accepted."
A month into it she visited Tulum, a Mexican town on the Caribbean coastline near to Cancun, with her daughter Michelle MacDonald for two weeks in a bid to 'kickstart my journey'.
She explained how while there she remembered feeling like she 'would suffocate from the heat and humidity', and her 'acid reflux was the worst'.
"But I prevailed", the fitness guru added.
In order for her to reach her goal, MacDonald had to learn how to use a diet tracking app, My Macros+, and from there she followed her daughter's training programs - which was 'no easy task for a gal like me', she joked.
The following year in 2018, she trimmed down roughly around five pounds and even managed to hip thrust 200 pounds - more than her bodyweight - which is certainly an impressive feat for a 71-year-old.
The video of her doing so landed on Google's New Year wrap up video.
Her post continued: "In 2019, I had eyelid surgery on my upper eyelids and I could finally open my eyes again! I lost another few pounds and started to feel more confident about myself."
Then in 2020, due to coronavirus resulting in lockdowns all around the world, she was unable to leave Canada until October, at that point she visited her daughter once again in Mexico 'for several months'.
She said: "I felt safe and happy with my family in Tulum and I trimmed down a few more pounds. This was when I started meditating and I started to gain a lot of self-confidence and was working daily on my mindset."
So what advice would MacDonald offer to people striving to love themselves?
She revealed: "I can’t tell you enough how important it is to become self aware and let go of the things that don’t serve you. Negative self talk is like driving with your hand brake on!"
An incredible story from an incredible woman - Joan MacDonald, hats off to you!