Jennifer Aniston jogging while filming on location for The Morning Show. Aniston says, at 54, she is in the best shape of her life. Photo / Getty Images
The key to feeling healthier and happier in midlife lies in a more balanced approach to exercise.
Jennifer Aniston says, at 54, she is in the best shape of her life. “I’m in better shape than I was in my 20s. I feel better in mind, body, and spirit. It’s all 100 per cent better,” she told British Vogue earlier this month.
It’s not as if the Friends star was a slouch in her 20s. Far from it, but then her tough, exceptionally long cardio workouts often landed her with injuries. Now, her attitude to fitness has evolved and she has found a more balanced approach, one better suited to a woman in her 50s.
These days, she’s choosing shorter workouts, rather than the 45-minute sessions of hard-at-it cardio that left her feeling “burnt out”, and using more controlled resistance moves with an exercise band to challenge her muscles. The change came at the behest of her physio, who presented the star with a Barbie doll covered in Kinesio tape, which is designed to relieve pain and aid movement.
“It’s a silly mental image until you realise the purpose of all that tape is to show every injury I’ve had in the past 15 years,” she said recently.
She’s certainly looking good on the new workout, which she revealed last week, showing off her astonishingly honed stomach. Just don’t tell her that she looks great for her age. That’s a particular bugbear. “It drives me bananas, I can’t stand it,” she says. “That’s a habit of society that we have these markers, like, ‘Well, you’re at that stage, so for your age…’ I don’t even understand what it means.” I’m with Jen there, it’s a patronising comment that assumes it’s all downhill for women after 50. Why not just say “you look good”, and ditch the sexist subtext?
While you won’t ever catch me flashing my midriff in a sports bra – I have never had abs like that, even as a teenager – I can relate. Just like Jen, I’m fitter, healthier and happier in my 50s than I ever was in my 20s or 30s.
My 20s were a boom or bust period for fitness. As any woman who grew up in the leotard-loving 1980s will know, feeling the “burn” was essential. Like Jen, I caught the aerobics dance bug. And, yes, I wore a thong leotard and did too many jumping jacks. I have the “war” wounds to prove it. My joints bore the brunt and I now have “wear and tear” in my right knee, also known as arthritis.
I was at my skinniest then, but my fitness fanaticism soon waned. It was hard to stay motivated when the chief goal was to look like one of the “Supers” on the cover of Vogue. Even at my most dedicated, swimming 50 lengths five times a week in the university pool and doing daily aerobics classes at Pineapple Dance Studios and the Fitness Centre in Covent Garden – the coolest place on earth, as I thought then – I never remotely attained the glamazonian physique of my idols. The best I could hope for was to be thin, as my weight yo-yoed wildly between 66kg (bad) and 49kg (good).
My focus soon drifted to the student-union bar and I swapped aerobic highs for 50p White Russian cocktails (milk and Kahlua in a plastic glass), nights at the Mud Club and visiting my art-school boyfriend in Brighton.
Was I fit in my 30s? I can barely remember. As with most mothers, it was all a blur of nappies, play dates and frantically looking for lost PE kit, or drying said PE kit with a hairdryer (just me?), and dragging buggies on and off trains on the way to the nursery. If you would have told me then to go to the gym before work, I would have laughed in your face. Who has time or energy for fitness in their 30s? Surely only those who can afford live-in childcare and a personal trainer. My 40s brought divorce, and as I was a single working mother, the gym didn’t get much of a look-in then, either.
But now my kids have left home – my daughter, 22, moved out after lockdown, and my son went off to uni last September – and though, at 58, I’m far from the slimmest I’ve ever been, I’m certainly the fittest. Because, however much I miss my kids, I now have that thing that every mother dreams of: time.
I go to the gym at the end of my road most days before work. On the days I can’t squeeze in a 45-minute class due to work commitments, I walk home from the office, through Green Park and Regent’s Park. It takes well over an hour, but it gives me a chance to decompress, and why not? There’s no one to rush home to cook for, or waiting for the mum taxi service.
On Saturday mornings, I do two 45-minute classes back-to-back. Spin for high-intensity cardio, which is not too tough on my knees, then Pump, a weights class led by an instructor to music. I’m now a dab hand at squats, dead lifts, chest presses and bicep curls. Sunday is my day of rest.
It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. Because, bar frequent water-cooler breaks to fill up my flask and stretch my legs, I sit on my bottom at a desk for nine or 10 hours a day. The gym sessions are there to offset the scourge of sitting, which we often hear, rather alarmingly, is as bad for us as smoking. And, in fact, I’m merely following the recommended guidelines, which are the same whether you’re 16 or 64, of 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week. Plus two strength sessions.
Post-menopause, with the drop in oestrogen, we women need exercise that builds our muscles and protects our joints, rather than just “pounding, pounding, pounding”, as Jen so succinctly put it. The Morning Show actress recently said: “When you’re in a mindset of, ‘I need to do 45 minutes of cardio or I won’t get a good workout,’ it’s daunting. I believed it for so long, I just burnt out and broke my body.”
Jen is doing more considered movement, these days. After lockdown, she was inspired to try a programme recommended by a friend, and loved the variety of the class, which uses bands and “functional movement” designed to help us glide through life without injuries. “After a workout, I don’t feel insane fatigue or broken or in pain,” she says. In fact, she was so impressed, she has now teamed up with Pvolve, the home-workout company behind the programme, to promote it.
Like Jen, I aim for low-impact but effective workouts. That’s why I’m doing strength training for the first time in decades. I can even beat my 20-year-old son at press-ups. I’ve set myself a target of being able to do 60 press-ups by my 60th birthday. Is it possible? I’ve no idea. But I love the fact that my goals are no longer about looking hot in a bikini (that ship has long sailed). Of course, I’d love to look like Jen or, indeed, Elle “The Body” Macpherson –who wouldn’t? But now I’m training for something that feels both within reach and important: ageing well in my 50s and beyond. This is about maintaining muscle and bone and brain power.
If you’re a woman, you might think, “Oh, no, I don’t want muscles,” but, believe me, you do. It’s not even just about looking toned: both men and women begin to lose muscle at the rate of 3-5 per cent per decade after the age of 25. This accelerates after 60, if we don’t work on it, leaving us frail. Muscles exert tugging forces on bones, which boosts bone density. “It’s not uncommon for people to lose 50 per cent of their muscle mass, from their peak, by the age of 70 or 75,” says longevity doctor Peter Attia in his podcast, The Drive. “But the good news is we can do a lot to mitigate that by training.”
Why does losing muscle matter? It turns out that one of the things most heavily associated with a long and healthy life is “muscle mass and strength”. It makes sense, since, as Attia says, “The fifth biggest cause of death in those over 75 is falling.” Our muscles not only push us up hills and stairs, just as importantly, they act as a braking system when we’re coming down, which is why we’re more likely to fall in the downhill stretch of a hike. And grip strength (think bicep curls) can be a predictor of how long we will live.
Being able to grab a railing as you walk down a flight of stairs is an over-70s superpower. It sounds crazy when you think what else is going on in our bodies by that stage, but complications from hip fractures kill more women than breast cancer, something I’m acutely aware of as both of my grandmothers died after breaking their hips. Thanks to this family history, my GP sent me for a DEXA scan on the NHS, to check my own bone strength. It came back as “normal”, and I’m doing everything I can to keep it like that.
And exercise is just as important for brainpower, as the latest research shows. Dr Attia calls it, “The biggest elixir for brain health,” and is adamant that when it comes to ageing well and battling cognitive decline, exercise is the absolute best thing we can do. After spending the past few years watching my father disappear into dementia, let’s just say I’m motivated.
“Exercise is in a league of its own,” Dr Attia confirmed in a recent interview. “As important as sleep and nutrition are, exercise takes the cake. I suspect it’s because it impacts so many systems: glucose disposal, insulin sensitivity, inflammation. It produces growth factor for neurons – BDNF. So that’s the most important thing you can do. If you can do three hours, great. If you can do seven, that’s even better.”
Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter how many personal trainers or chefs you have, looking like Jen takes discipline. Let me rephrase that: discipline plus astonishingly good genes. The actress follows an intermittent-fasting regime, eating all her food in an eight-hour window, saying, “I noticed a big difference by going without solid food for 16 hours.” I tried intermittent fasting once and found it very effective, but ultimately unsustainable, given my working day. But, like Jen, I have made other changes to my diet.
In my 30s, I was too busy trying to find (and mainly failing) 107 different ways to sneak vegetables into pasta without my kids noticing to think much about my own diet. Needless to say, I ate quite a lot of leftovers.
Now, I try to eat protein at every meal. We all need 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day – or about 50g a day for a 63kg woman, spread throughout the day, to help stimulate muscle growth. And after 40, our ability to turn protein into muscle starts to flag, so we need even more of it.
For an added protein boost, Jen likes to whip an egg white into her oatmeal, which is taking it a bit too far, I think, though she claims it’s delicious. If I have porridge, I’ll mix in almond butter and a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds – which contain a decent amount of protein – for an added boost. And I am partial to a poached egg or two for breakfast.
For lunch, I’ll have a salad with a zillion types of vegetables (we midlifers need those plant chemicals to fight inflammation), plus chicken or salmon for brain-boosting omega-3 fats, from a local salad bar. So, yes, more protein: I aim for a palm-sized portion with every meal and snack on cashews or almonds, or a few tablespoons of protein-rich Greek yoghurt or cottage cheese, the good old 1980s diet favourite, which is finally back in fashion. But unlike in the 1980s, I’m not eating – or training – for my beach body, I’m doing all this for my “old-lady body”, as one of the midlife fitness influencers I follow – yes, they do exist – is fond of saying.
As Jen says: “My family lives a long time, especially my dad’s side – I want to be thriving; I don’t want to just be alive.”
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