Dr. Vonda Wright, UNBREAKABLE: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power

Summary

Totally Booked with Zibby

Guest: Dr. Vonda Wright
Episode: UNBREAKABLE: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power
Host: Zibby Owens
Date: August 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this energizing episode, Zibby Owens chats with Dr. Vonda Wright, double board-certified orthopedic surgeon and author of Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power. The episode explores how women can challenge outdated assumptions about aging, take control of their health, and build resilience—biologically, mentally, and emotionally. Dr. Wright demystifies critical health metrics and discusses practical, realistic steps that empower women to age vibrantly instead of declining into frailty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Wright’s Journey to Advocacy

• Background:
  • Dr. Wright began as an orthopedic sports doctor and shifted focus to musculoskeletal aging, questioning the ingrained “myth that aging has to be this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty.”
  • In 2012, research revealed that women make 80% of the health decisions for those around them ([05:21]), catalyzing her mission to educate and empower women’s health choices.
  • Dr. Wright observed the lack of tailored resources for women, especially as most longevity research targeted men up until the 1990s.

“I refuse to believe the societal myth that aging has to be this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [05:22]

Rethinking Musculoskeletal Aging

• Powerful Imagery:
  • Zibby references a striking comparison from the book: a thigh cross-section contrasting sedentary and active older women ([08:18]).
• A Better Path:
  • Dr. Wright insists, “We don't have to sacrifice the integrity of the muscle and the bone...if you don’t want” ([08:49]).
  • She challenges the assumption that aging must equate to weakness.

The Unbreakable Assessment

• Objective Longevity Measures:
  • The book introduces eight objective health measures—like resting heart rate—for tracking one’s longevity profile ([09:29]).
  • Emphasizes that numbers inform, not judge; assessments should inspire, not shame.

“Numbers are objective. They're not judgment...What it does is what it did for you: it gives us hope that we know how to get back to ourselves.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [10:09]

• Practical Takeaways:
  • Even if you don’t “pass” all the tests, it’s a gateway, not a gatekeeper, for improvement.

Inspiring Action Over Theory

• The Motivation Challenge:
  • Dr. Wright reflects on decades attempting to motivate patients, realizing lasting change comes only once a person decides they’re worth the investment.
  • Her strategy: Start simple. For true beginners, she prescribes just a short walk after dinner—not a radical overhaul ([11:55]).
  • Seven-day streaks build manageable habits and a mindset shift.

“Until a person decides that they are worth the daily investment, then no amount of me shaking my crooked finger...will ever work.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [11:55]

• Walking as a Foundational Practice:

  • Ideal: work up to a 45-minute daily walk (~2 miles, about 3mph).
  • Even 10 or 20 minutes is beneficial—just start moving ([14:34]).

• It’s All Movement:

  • Walk outside, on a treadmill, or simply up and down the stairs. The key is muscle contraction, not location ([15:15]).

Beyond Walking: The Role of Intensity and Strength

• Strength Training:
  • Recommends heavy lifting (“squats, deadlifts, bench press, and some kind of pull…based on powerlifting”) two to four times per week ([21:11]).
• Sprinting/Interval Work:
  • Twice a week, includes short, high-intensity bursts of cardio—30 seconds at over 80% max heart rate, followed by full recovery ([18:40]).
  • These intense efforts rejuvenate metabolism, stem cell health, and mitochondria in a way basic walking does not.

“Sprinting and the lifting...recomposed my body and made me even recognize myself again.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [21:11]

Addressing Population-Level Challenges

• Realities of Sedentarism:
  • 70% of Americans don’t invest in regular exercise; 96 million have prediabetes ([20:23]).
  • Social media might give a false impression that “everyone's exercising”—but the data says otherwise.

Sustaining the Movement

• Building a Community:

  • Dr. Wright aims to ignite a movement—“so that we begin to be a group of women that talk about being unbreakable, about aging with power, not with frailty” ([23:39]).
  • She leverages her platforms—podcasting, speaking, Instagram—and direct DMs to spread the message.

• Vulnerability Resonates:

  • Her real Instagram growth began when she validated women’s experiences with menopause and musculoskeletal symptoms—the things most doctors dismissed ([24:51]).

“The day that I said, you are not falling apart and you are not going crazy...Instantaneously, people started listening.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [24:51]

Debunking the Myth: “It’s Too Late”

• It’s Never Too Late:
  • Dr. Wright offers stories: a woman who became a bodybuilder in her sixties, and research proving people in their nineties could rebuild muscle ([26:51]).
  • The limit isn’t age, but self-belief and consistency.

“Our bodies will respond. There's never an age or skill level [where it’s too late]...if they believe they're worth it and we do it consistently.”
— Dr. Vonda Wright [27:12]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Can you work on a treadmill?”
  “No. Yeah, I could maybe read, but I couldn’t...do an interview. You know, most people can’t do their jobs on a treadmill.”
  — Zibby & Dr. Vonda, with humor and relatability ([22:54])

• “Thank you for being an advocate for the rest of us to literally stay in one piece...these are the things—take the emotion out of it, like, here are the facts. Start with that. It is incredibly powerful.”
  — Zibby Owens ([28:51])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Dr. Wright’s story & the start of her advocacy (05:21–08:18)
• Visuals of muscle loss & the “frailty myth” (08:18–09:29)
• Longevity assessments & how to interpret the results (09:29–11:32)
• Habit-building and the mindset shift required (11:32–14:25)
• How much should you walk? — Target: 45 minutes (14:25–15:11)
• Does it matter how or where you move? (15:11–15:52)
• Difference between walking and high-intensity efforts (18:24–20:20)
• Realistic routines & population-wide exercise gaps (20:20–22:52)
• Spreading the movement—social, speaking, and personal stories (23:20–24:51)
• Is it ever ‘too late’ to begin? (26:43–28:27)

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Final Thoughts & Tone

Dr. Vonda Wright’s expertise mixes authority, compassion, and hope, offering listeners a roadmap to resilience instead of resignation. The conversation is personal, science-backed, and motivational—grounded by memorable analogies and success stories. Zibby's open vulnerability as a reader and interviewer adds sincere relatability, making “Unbreakable” feel genuinely accessible.

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For More:

• Find Dr. Wright on Instagram and at her website.
• Her practice accepts new patients (information on her website).
• The book Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power offers practical tools and mindset shifts for women at any stage of life.

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End of Summary
(Advertisements, intros, outros, and sponsor segments omitted per instructions.)

Transcript

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[Dr. Vonda Wright]

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[Dr. Vonda Wright]

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If you've been thinking about printing your book, this is the support you want. Again, that's digipod.com zibby for your free consultation. Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books in my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information go to zibbedia.com and follow me on Instagram ibyoens Dr. Vonda Wright is the author of A Woman's Guide to aging with power. Dr. Wright is a double board certified orthopedic surgeon and internationally recognized authority on human performance, longevity and women's Health. The founding Director of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes, she has served as a physician for athletes at the University of Pittsburgh, Georgia State, the Pittsburgh and Atlanta Ballet, World Rugby and the pga. A highly sought after media expert, she has been featured on the Diary of a CEO Jay Shetty and Mel Robbins podcast as well as the Today show, the Dr. Oz show, and in top publications including the New York Times, USA Today and the Observer. She has authored five books including Fitness After 40 and Guide to Thrive. She lives with her husband, a retired two time Stanley Cup Champion near Orlando, Florida.

[Interviewer]

Welcome. We're talking about your book A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power. Congratulations.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Thank you so much.

[Interviewer]

Okay, I ate this book up. I am like your prime target for the book. I needed it so badly. I still need to now listen to all the advice as opposed to just intellectually take it in. Why don't you start by sort of explaining how you became an advocate and your own Journey, which you write about in the book.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Yeah, you know what? So my primary training is as an orthopedic sports doctor. And so it's everything you think it would be, like, all these badges, sports fields, working with teams of various kinds. But my research has always been in musculoskeletal aging, because I refuse to believe the societal myth that aging has to be this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty. And so I was churning along in my career with those principles until 2012, when I first read the data that women, people like you and me, make 80% of the health decisions for everyone we touch, which puts us in the seat of control and almost activism for our own health, but everybody we care about. But I found so many women didn't know that and didn't feel listened to and couldn't find the right information. So within my own practice, since then, I've been really focusing on listening, validating, providing women with the ways that we don't have to end up in the hospital, like so many of the women I take care of, because I say often I am still practicing and I still take trauma call. And women. A woman comes into the hospital with a broken hip because she had bones that had disintegrated that we could have prevented. It makes me, like, stand up on chairs and shout from the mountaintops, we can do better, and we can help women remain healthy, vital, active, joyful. And yet, when I looked into the stratosphere of longevity and living longer and all that stuff we're hearing now so popularly, you probably know what I'm about to say. It is a culture filled with information specifically targeted at men. And I felt like, based on my experience and the fact that we know that until 1993, women were not even required to be in studies and that women suffer silently, I just wanted to turn a spotlight onto why women age differently and all the tools, because there's a lot of tools right now. But my women that I care for every day still are fuzzy about what to do. And so in this book, Unbreakable, it's a mindset that we do not have to go from vitality to frailty. It's hopefulness, it's building resilience biologically, mentally, and it's what I do with people every day. It's like the blueprint I use. So I'm excited about it, but I'm more excited about the powerful women that we're going to train because of it.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing. I mean, I was so struck you had this one image early on with what if you like a cross section of like through your thigh and what, what it all the bone and the muscle and everything. And how pristine it looked at the triathlete who was like 40 or younger and then like a 70 year old sedentary woman which if I keep doing what I'm doing, it's going to be me and then a 70 year old triathlete or somebody who keeps going and you don't have to sacrifice the integrity of the muscle and the bone at all if you don't want.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

We don't. And pictures like that or when I was raised, I would go to races in the 70s with my dad. Right. My dad was a runner and there would be that lone older woman. We're like, oh my God. The anomaly of that right now more and more we're seeing lots and lots of pictures. And yet I think that's the bubble that I live in. Probably you live in because middle America, every people, you know, the population of America are still living in the time when aging means frailty. And I know it doesn't have to.

[Interviewer]

So in the book you have a set of assessments that we can all do to track sort of how we're doing now. So I took my resting heart rate and it's not the worst, but it's like the second worst. And I was like, okay, I don't have to like jump off the couch in a panic and like scamper to a treadmill. But it was enough of a wake up call. Like I can't even do the co. The next tra. The next step of the testing. Right? That was enough to be like, oh, but I was in shape before, I must be in shape now. But actually no. So what do you do when you get like a bad score, so to speak on some of these measures?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

So in the book Unbreakable, we took the top eight longevity measures that can be tested. And I had my brilliant data scientist statistician weigh them according to how important they were. And so it's number one, it's meant to. Numbers are objective. They're not judgment. So many women, when I put something out on the Internet, feel judged or take. And that is not how it's intended. I. The analogy is I can read that I have $100 in my bank account. 1 00. It's not judging me. I assign value to that. But. And that's what this is meant for. But what it does is what it did for you. You're like, oh, I had and kind of, you know, I went through that too. Of I was grinding so hard in my life, in my career, that when I hit perimenopause, it hit me hard and. And I'm not in the shape that I was when I was 40 and what am I going to do about it? And do I have to accept this or to lower my resting heart rate again? Maybe I employ things like VO2, max training once a week and build my cardiovascular engine. So what I hope that the unbreakable assessment does is doesn't stop us at a gate, but gives us hope that we know how to get back to ourselves.

[Interviewer]

So how though do you inspire people to actually take action? Right. There are multiple levels your book works on. One is education, one is fear at what could happen if you don't do this, then why. But how do you inspire the daily changes that have to happen to get us where we need to go?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Well, that's an excellent question. And you're right. I started my career as a cancer nurse all the way back in the 90s. In the 30 years of working with people, I have to be honest with you, I have tried always to motivate people. Like you've said, stories, information, fear. Here's what I know and then I'll answer your question. Here's what I know. Until a person decides that they are worth the daily investment, then no amount of me shaking my crooked finger at them or any of the techniques will ever work. Because you have to know that you are worth it and important enough and that for some people, that's a mind shift change. But the way I do it practically for people is to realize that you don't actually have to go from no lifting to heavy lifting in two days. And that there's no judgment if it takes you a year or if people are literally starting off the couch, the first thing I ask them to do is take a walk after dinner. Because we've been walking since we were one year old. It's a core skill. We don't have to do anything different or you know, and I'm reminded all the time that not everybody is a walker, but if you're a wheeler, go out and wheel after dinner and get your skeletal muscles moving. Because number one, that is going to work on your mindset that you are worth the investment. But number two, on the sneaky side, contracting skeletal muscle is going to push all that glucose from your dinner blood into your muscles and make you the first step towards metabolic health. And you know what? Most of us couldn't do a streak of seven days we can say, okay, every day after dinner or sometime for seven days. That's a streak. And after seven days, you're going to be less likely to quit. And I'm going to tell you for sure you'll feel better. And that's the motivation. You'll say, oh my gosh, I feel better even after seven days. I don't want to stop now because I have found also the temporal disconnect, which is a banking term I learned a long time ago, meaning we will not invest today in something that we don't need for 20 years. That's why I like to bring it back to today. Can I make you feel better today?

[Interviewer]

How long a walk are we talking?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

You know what? If you can only do 10 minutes, do 10 minutes. If you can do 20, do 20. But I prefer you do 45.

[Zibby Owens]

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[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Oh, yeah. It's just a couple miles. Because you know how fast the Grim Reaper walks. It's kind of a joke. Studies have shown that you get the most long term benefit out of walking at a pace of three or more miles per hour. So that's about a 20 minute. If you could do four, which is 15, which is that walk jog thing, but so three miles an hour. So in 45 minutes you'll get to something. It's a couple times around. A big loop to work up to to have the metabolic benefit that we need.

[Interviewer]

So does it matter if it's a treadmill or outside?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

It doesn't. Your body doesn't know the difference. It just knows that you're contracting. Now on a treadmill, if you want to mimic outside, put the elevation up to 2 so you have that much resistance. But your body actually doesn't care if you're literally on an exercise bike or a stair clim or you. The number of steps between the first floor of your house and the second floor is usually 17. It's just standard for builders. You could do that for 45 minutes. You could do chores up and down your stairs for 45 minutes and get some work in. It's the movement that counts, actually, when we're starting out.

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[Dr. Vonda Wright]

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[Interviewer]

So okay, not to keep asking, not to keep skeptical.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

I see that you're skeptical.

[Interviewer]

No, I'm not skeptical. I'm just so. I used to think that I had to like get my heart rate way up for that amount of time. Now you're saying just the movement is going to be beneficial.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

So I'm glad you brought us to here. So if, if I'm saying, you know, what is the minimum? If you have one half hour a day that's it, that's all we can do. I want you to walk around for your life, like do your life. And I want you to lift weights for 30 minutes a day. That's what I want. If that's all we've got, but if we get to do several things, then walking every day or lifting two to four times a week, walking every day, but twice a week, we're going to get your heart rate up because they do different things. Walking is great maintenance, it's wonderful for long term chronic disease management, metabolic health. But the act of sprinting and now I'm not talking about Sha' Carri Richardson sprinting or Usain Bolt. I'm talking about whatever it takes to get your heart rate up, whatever apparatus for 30 seconds and then completely recover. Takes me two to three minutes to get my heart rate to come back down. And then 30 seconds do it four times when you're completely warmed up. That kind of heart rate intensity at the top of the heart rate causes profound metabolic changes and helps with stem cell health and mitochondrial health. You don't have to keep your heart rate up that high for a HIIT class or something because high intensity interval training is about 70% heart rate. What I'm talking about is over 80, 80, 85. So really intense, but for teeny tiny bursts. So that's how we really reconstitute our bodies and metabolism.

[Interviewer]

What percent of women do you think are doing what they should be doing for them?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

You know, if we look at population studies and big data, we know 70% of all Americans do not invest in mobility or exercise at all. 70% in the United States is very sedentary. So I have to believe that in women outside the bubble that we live in probably are the same. 70%, given that 96 million people in this country have prediabetes. 96 million, that's from the American Diabetes Association. Pre diabetes is the first step towards, you know, diabetes and Alzheimer's from sedentary living and poor diet. So the number is high. Depending on what the algorithm believes you watch, it could look like everybody's exercising. But we know that's not true.

[Interviewer]

So what's your routine?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

So I do that. This thing I described to you, I lift heavy two to four times a week. I prefer four, but I've got a life. So if I get two in, I'm really happy about that. And so the way I lift is based on power lifting, which means squats, deadlifts, bench press and some kind of pull. I can't do pull ups. I'm working on that again. Like, you know, you were talking about your heart rate before. I used to be able to do pull ups and now I have to work on it again. Okay. It's not a judgment, it's an observation. And then around those core lifts, then I fill in with the. The easier single lifts. So I do that two to four times a week. I walk every day. You know, I'm rarely sitting like this. I pace the hallways of my clinic or I'm walking on this treadmill I have. But twice a week I sprint. And in my own menopause perimenopause journey, which I describe in the book, it's the sprinting and the lifting that recomposed my body and made me even recognize myself again. Yeah. Kind of remarkable how it does that.

[Interviewer]

So how. How are you not sedentary while writing a book and doing all these things that require like focus and sitting?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Yeah, well, that is a good point. When I'm writing a chapter, I'm totally sedentary. Right. I've got the big stack of papers and I'm. Because I don't know how you work, but my brain needs a minute to get into the zone and then I can't be disturbed. Right. It just gushes out. So you're right. During that time, for eight hours, I'm sedentary, but there are other hours in the day. My lifestyle is not sedentary. So those are the anomalies, not the norm.

[Zibby Owens]

Okay, you're giving me some hope.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Oh, my goodness. Can you work on a treadmill?

[Interviewer]

No. Yeah, I could maybe read, but I couldn't, like, do an interview. I mean, but you know, most people can't like, do their jobs on a treadmill, you know?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

No. And thank goodness, because I have been interviewed with the host is on a treadmill and I'm going like, yeah, watching them bump up and down the whole time. I think I'm probably doing this too. So thank you for not.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you can count on me to be sedentary for thousands of interviews. Oh my gosh. So you wrote the book. How are you going to spread the word? We want to shout it from the rooftops. How. How can this message really take off and keep going now that you've split the match, so to speak?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

You know what? It's. To me, it's a book. But if by the end of talking about it, in talking to people like you, in being on social media, on my Instagram page or I speak from a lot of stages and I have a podcast called Hot for your health. All this stuff. 360 media that we have. My goal is to start a movement so that we begin to be a group of women that talk about being unbreakable, about aging with power, not with frailty, to keep the two thirds of nursing home people from not being women, which it is, because they can't get up. They've broken their hip. If I can stop the flow of frailty with a movement of women who see the future in a different way because they've read it or they've seen me jumping around on stage, which I do sometimes, just to get the message apart, that will be work worth doing. Zibby.

[Interviewer]

And how did you, in addition to everything else, end up with like a million people following you on social. On Instagram alone? What. What happened?

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

How did that happen? Well, you know, the truth is I was an early adopter of Instagram, and I just plodded along like everybody does, until I said, back to women, what women were saying to me. And, I mean, I can trace the day. It was the day that I said, you are not falling apart and you are not going crazy. The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause is real. And I knew that because without prompting, women come sit in front of me, even today, and they'll say, I don't know what happened. I'm falling apart. I think I'm going crazy because my doctor told me nothing was wrong. And you know what? And this is the part that bothers me worse, they say, but I didn't want to come here today because I have a really high pain tolerance, because women buy wear our suffering as a badge. So once I had enough people that I had to tell everybody that we're listening. I see you. I know what you're going through. This is how you solve it. Instantaneously, people started listening. And I'm so glad, because I don't mean to sound sadder than I am about it, but women are suffering. Women do not know that the. That the last 40 years in their lives can feel better than it does. And so that's how it happened. I said that, and then I expanded on that, and I just. I still answer DMS when I can. I mean, I don't have an automatic message, so. Because I think that being an educator, I could have been a very happy fourth grade teacher, because educating people really excites me. So that's how it happened, because I listened to women enough to know what they were going through.

[Interviewer]

And you said in the book that it's never too late. But is it like at what point is it. It must be at some point too late.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

So I guess the question is too late for what? The too late to rebuild all your body muscle that you ever had. Too late to feel like you're 30 again. Well, here's some examples. I have a friend who at 63 during COVID started out at 100. I'm only 5 4, she's my size. She had gotten up to an unrecognizable 181. She felt terrible. She was getting all the chronic diseases. She did macro counting, lifting, heavy walking every day and lost 50 pounds. And now at 67 she chose to become a bodybuilding competitor. She started at 63. The very first research that I came across in 2004 when I started my own research about what we were capable of when we were aging was in 90 year old men living in nursing homes where they taught them chair exercises and by rebuilding their neuromuscular pathways started their muscles building and firing again. So if we take those examples of 63 and 90 and all the ages in between that we see, our bodies will respond. There's never an age or skill level. Is it easier when we're 40 to recognize it easier when we're 50? Absolutely. And I would rather start than with people, but if I start with someone who's 70, we're going to make real gains if they believe they're worth it and we do it consistently.

[Interviewer]

And do you accept like patience? If someone's listening to this and it's like, well, I want to work with you, Dr. Wright.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Yeah. So my website allows you to write to me directly and so people can sign up to see me, they can write me a note and my staff sends them how I do it. I do. I am still practicing and happily so with all these other things.

[Zibby Owens]

Amazing.

[Interviewer]

Well, thank you for being an advocate for the rest of us to literally stay in one piece. And it is so important and we all need the reminder and the way that you frame it in the book and how user friendly it is and inspiring too. And like that. These are the things like take the emotion out of it, like here are the facts. Start with that is incredibly powerful. So thank you.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

Thank you. I accept that compliment.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. Okay, good, you run with that. Okay. Thank you so much for coming on, for having me.

[Dr. Vonda Wright]

I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Zibby Owens]

Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a Friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram, ibbeowens and Spread the Word. Thanks so much. Oh and buy the books.

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