On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Dr. Vonda Wright: Formula to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle (Why your Current Workout is Not Giving You Results)
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
How often do you work out? What’s been the biggest challenge in your fitness journey so far? In today’s episode, Jay sits down with Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and researcher specializing in active aging and longevity. If you’ve ever wondered how to stay feeling youthful as you age, lose stubborn fat, and improve your sleep,, this conversation is packed with life changing insights. Jay and Dr. Wright start by debunking the myth that aging is an inevitable decline. Dr. Wright explains how lifestyle choices in your 20s and 30s directly impact how you feel in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. They dive into how excess fat, especially around the belly, isn’t just about appearance—it’s a sign of inflammation that accelerates aging. Dr. Wright shares how movement, muscle mass, and diet play a crucial role in fat loss and energy levels. They also explore the powerful body-brain connection. Dr. Wright breaks down how physical activity releases key proteins that protect the brain from cognitive decline and diseases like dementia. Jay and Dr. Wright discuss how poor sleep can sabotage fat loss, slow down recovery, and disrupt hormones—leading to more cravings, weight gain, and reduced longevity. In this interview, you'll learn: How fat storage impacts aging and energy levels. The critical role of sleep in weight loss and brain function. How movement and muscle mass keep you youthful. How lifestyle choices in your 30s affect long-term health. Why fitness-based friendships can improve your health. If you want to stay sharp, maintain a healthy weight, and build lasting habits that help you thrive for decades, this episode gives you the tools to start now. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free Monk Mode newsletter. Subscribe here. What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:43 Your Perception Of Aging Is A Myth 05:31 Develop Healthy Habits in Your 20s 10:07 Why Your Sleep Can Fall Apart in Midlife 16:58 Can You Restock Years Of Not Sleeping? 22:09 Sleep Deprivation is Sabotaging Your Weight Loss 26:45 The Weight Loss Formula That Actually Works 36:04 There Is A Difference Between Being Healthy & Fit 43:13 Fitness Is A Great Way To Connect 46:17 How To Lose Stubborn Belly Fat 55:30 The Body Brain Connection is Integral to 1:01:39 Don’t Make Excuses to Start Making Changes In Your Life 1:04:24 Mobility is One of the Most Important Skills for Aging Well 1:09:51 Break Free from Your Limiting Beliefs 1:17:15 Vonda Wright on Final 5 Episode Resources: Vonda Wright| Website Vonda Wright| YouTube Vonda Wright| Linkedin Vonda Wright| Instagram Vonda Wright| Facebook Vonda Wright| TiktokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the myth about aging and how does it affect us?
Weight is not the measure for me. It's body composition. I never say lose weight. I say we are going to recompose your body.
Why is it that the high intensity interval training is not having the desired result?
Listen. Many people die for 20 years, Jay.
What's something you used to believe to be true about health that you don't today? If someone listening right now is between the ages of 20 to 30, what are those specific healthy habits that we need to invest in that are non-negotiable?
That is the perfect time to figure out your life habits. Learn to prioritize your health over those things that are going to tear you down.
If someone said to you, I want to lose weight, what is the best, healthiest, quickest way I can do it?
the number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty.
Jay Shetty. The one, the only, Jay Shetty.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. I'm so grateful to have your ears and your eyes for the next hour or so. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today's guest is Dr. Vonda Wright, an accomplished orthopedic surgeon, author, podcast host, and researcher recognized for her expertise in sports medicine and active aging.
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Chapter 2: What healthy habits should people develop in their 20s and 30s?
to figure out your life habits, right? That is not the time to skate along on your youthful zest or your youthful biology, but learn to sleep. Learn to prioritize your health over, for instance, those things that are gonna tear you down. I mean, listen, we're all young, we all wanna go out, we all wanna burn the midnight oil,
But now is the time to respect yourself enough to make the decisions to say, okay, five days a week, I'm going to focus on my career. I'm going to focus on getting ahead. I am going to take care of my body. And because I'm young, I can play around a few days. But if we do that seven days a week, we end up a decade later with no habits, no
Probably this beer belly we never wanted and you're getting teased with our friends. So I think it's time now as we're enjoying our youth to develop habits that will last a lifetime.
How much harder is it in our 30s and then in our 40s to shift to those healthy habits than if we started earlier?
I think if we start earlier, it's just our lifestyle. It's how we live, right? It often, and I tell people this at any age, that as we're layering on our health habits, it may seem like a lot at first, but if it's just how we live, then it's no extra stress, right?
For instance, if you're used to mobility almost every day, if you're used to making food choices that do not involve a lot of fried foods or you understand that you can't be drunk every night and still be healthy, then it is no effort to live that way versus, oh my gosh, I've got to do these five or six things. Does that make sense?
Yeah. But biologically, how much harder is it to like, say, lose that belly fat?
The good news is, is that recently a study was released that showed our first big hit of biologic aging is about 40. Now, that doesn't mean that you can- What does that mean, yeah? That means at a cellular level, the repair mechanisms become less efficient. It means that our pluripotent stem cells, which we have not only from our bone marrow, but in every cell, are actually less young.
That being said, lifestyle can rejuvenate those. And we've done our own, we've done, that's part of my research, having done those studies. But so when I say at 40, it's the first big hit, our actual intracellular biology becomes less efficient. We are able to clear the toxins of metabolism less efficiently.
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Chapter 3: Why does sleep quality decline in midlife and how can you improve it?
So for instance, I live on the East Coast. We're on the West Coast. I have stayed on East Coast time. That happens to me when I come down the way.
Do you do that?
Yes. And then you're not exhausted or jet-lagged. It's a little weird if you have to do business or go out, but... If I'm having a party at my house, I'm like, see yourselves out, guys. You have fun. I'm going to bed. It's 9.30. So for our house, it's 9.30 to 5, like clockwork. Number one.
Number two, I am not a holder to intermittent fasting, but what I am a holder to is time restricted, meaning fasting. I'm going to eat as early as possible so that by 9.30, everything is out of my digestive system. I'm spending no energy. And that helps us sleep better. Number three, I always say, don't throw rocks at me.
But in midlife, especially for midlife women, alcohol is a total sleep disruptor. Because when we're young, we think, oh, of course, it makes me sleep better. What it does is it makes us pass out. But if you're tracking your sleep, you'll see that you're not entering into the really deep sleep levels. And this is being talked about a lot lately, except I don't see people adjusting to it.
I mean, I find that when I work with my longevity patients, they're willing to do almost anything. except give up the glass or two or four of wine at dinner because it's so cultural. It's so almost like a ritual. And people come to believe that they need that to relax when in fact it inhibits their sleep. So timing of sleep. We talked about not eating three hours. We've talked about alcohol.
And then, you know, something I do, something that's very helpful is I take my magnesium, which is a supplement that I think most people need, especially for bones, at night. I also suggest that women, if they're taking progesterone, take it at night.
And then all the other lifestyle things, blue glasses, turn off your phones, which I find hard to do personally, but those are all legitimate ways to help regulate. And then as things as silly as if you find you're waking up at 3.37 every morning, like clockwork, you know what the clock is going to say. that may be your blood sugar.
And I know it's my blood sugar because I often wear a continuous glucose monitor. So if you eat a little bit of protein right before bed, just a titch, not a meal, not enough to disrupt this other advice I've given you, That will make your sugar not dip so low and your liver will not, and your body will not wake you up because your body wakes you up.
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Chapter 4: Can lost sleep from earlier years be recovered later in life?
Calling all Nine Niners, now streaming. It's the more better podcast with two episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine fun. Host Stephanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero welcome two friends and former castmates. Don't miss Gina Linetti herself, the talented Chelsea Peretti, as she sits down to laugh and swap stories.
Like Andre would always be like, try and step there. They're like, do less. Do less.
Do less all the time. But then some of the biggest things were the biggest hits, like Vindication, remember? And the 9-9 nonsense continues in the next episode as the more better amigas sit down with Joe Latrullio, a.k.a. Detective Charles Boyle. There'll be more laughs, more conversation, more stories from the set, and more, more better. Both episodes are now available.
You felt safe enough to throw out a bad idea, right? I mean, that is the key because you're definitely not throwing out good ideas all the time. I mean, that's just not how it works.
Listen to More Better with Stephanie and Melissa on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Camila Ramon, Peloton's first Spanish-speaking cycling and tread instructor. I'm an athlete, entrepreneur, and almost most importantly, a perreo enthusiast.
And I'm Liz Ortiz, former pro soccer player and Olympian, and like Kami, a perreo enthusiast. Come on, who is it? Our podcast, Hasta Bajo, is where sports, music, and fitness collide. And we cover it all. De arriba hasta abajo. Sit-downs with real game changers in the sports world, like Miami Dolphins CMO Priscilla Shumate, who is redefining what it means to be a Latina leader.
It all changed when I had this guy come to me. He said to me, you know, you're not Latina enough. First of all, what does that mean?
My mouth is wide open. Yeah. History makers like the Sucar family, who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy.
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Chapter 5: How does sleep deprivation sabotage weight loss efforts?
What can we do during those years for the women that are listening, the parents that are listening? What can you do during those years where that piece of advice is going to be impossible to follow naturally? What can they do to cushion that impact?
Well, and this is so pertinent. I lived through it. I have daughters who are having children now. Simple things like children can be scheduled. They will learn to go to bed at a certain time and wake up at a certain time. Not newborn infants, but once they get big enough, about three months, six months, depending how big they are. they can learn a schedule. So let's schedule them.
They might wake up in the middle of the night. It always happens. But if there's no schedule, children feel a little insecure and will wake up more. So that's number one. Number two, give yourself the grace. I That when your child goes down for a nap, young children less than three years old usually have two naps a day.
Give yourself the grace that the minute they go to sleep, you don't have to go clean the house or get on email and lay down and sleep too. Just collect sleep, right? And then all the other habits, you know, if you may feel like you need a glass of wine to relax, that's just going to disrupt your sleep more. So those are simple things.
I think the biggest thing that I just said is young parents, please give yourselves the grace. It's an imperfect time in your life. You can't be in control of everything and your child is not going to break. Children are so resilient. So as an old mother, I'm saying that to the young mothers, there's no perfect way.
The young parents, there's no perfect way, but have the grace to take the rest, leave the dishes in the sink. Do not think that everything has to be perfect in that really chaotic time in your life.
Yeah. I think one of the things that is really challenging people right now is our cortisol levels are so high. So high. we think of or we've trained ourselves to believe that certain things help us rest and decompress. But as you were saying, with alcohol, they don't really. And I think the same is true for watching something.
And I used to always feel like, okay, well, I can stay up because I want to watch my favorite show. But actually that... that I get from watching a show versus if I changed that for sleep, the sleep would have been far more relaxing and rejuvenating.
So say I finish all my daily chores and everything that I have to do at 10 p.m., if I had the choice to get into bed at 10 and fall asleep or watch a show for an hour and a half or an hour or whatever it is, it would be better for me to go to sleep. But we've trained ourselves to believe, no, the drink or the show will make me feel better. Right.
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Chapter 6: What is the effective formula for weight loss and body recomposition?
You can totally reverse that. But I hate... The reason I pointed out weight is because... The words we use are, I'm going to lose weight. I never say that. I say, we are going to recompose your body. We are going to build muscle. And in doing so, we will replace muscle with fat. Muscle weighs more than fat per volume.
And so your weight may not change, but your composition will be vastly different and therefore your metabolism.
Yeah, I've been working on that consistently probably just for the last six months.
Yes.
And I saw drastic shifts in my skeletal muscle mass. Yes. My weight practically stayed the same. But my body composition is what was changing.
And doesn't it feel and look different?
It feels and looks different completely, but it was fascinating to me. And it was exactly what you were saying. It was weight training, eating more protein in my diet.
Mm-hmm.
cutting out sugars and it was simple changes, but it was incredible to see how it looked different on paper. It felt different. It looked different in real life, but my weight was exactly the same.
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Chapter 7: What is the difference between being healthy and being fit?
Yeah. For the people that are gonna be mad if I don't ask this question. Okay. How do we lose that stubborn belly fat?
Number one, let's give ourselves some grace that this is the way the human body is. Any person who's had a child is gonna be transformed. And that is just the way it is, right? Don't crucify yourself. That being said, if we're living in a time of excess energy all the time, the way that I've described for you, the high intensity energy
interval, let's clarify that, the sprint intervals plus the weightlifting is what's going to transform your body. And you may never get rid of that extra little inch, but you'll get rid of most of it. You'll get rid of the back fat. You'll get rid of the heavy hips people don't like. And you will decrease visceral fat, the fat that is inside the smothering your organs will decrease.
And that's what we really want, right?
What's the difference between the good fat and the bad fat around our belly? Because I feel like we don't know the difference.
The peripheral fat is that which you can pinch, whether it's on your hips or in your belly, around your belly button. That's not the fat that's going to really kill you. That's the annoying fat. That fat does make a protein called leptin, which is bad for your metabolism. It is bad for your bones.
But it is the visceral fat, the fat that you can only see on a body composition or an MRI, that literally we've got this apron, right? In our body, under our skin, under there's a layer called fascia. It's white like you would see on a steak. It's an apron of fat over our organs. It's a protective. Well, that gets thicker. And then fat is deposited around our organs.
And that fat, the visceral fat, is metabolically different than the peripheral that you can pinch. And it's that visceral fat that is what causes chronic inflammation that leads to disease. So... Yes, cosmetically, we want to get rid of the peripheral fat, but metabolically, we got to control the deep visceral fat.
You've worked with so many athletes, and I just want to kind of go off on a tangent before we come back, but... I wonder with the athletes you've worked with and to your earlier comments around models and being at Fashion Week, I was going to ask you, which sport do you find the actually healthiest people in versus just... fittest or what is the difference and how do you see it?
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Chapter 8: How can fitness help improve social connections and mental health?
Well, you know, I think at an elite level, all athletes are healthy because do not be fooled by the field athletes, the shot putters, the discus, the javelin. You may think that they're not fit because they're carrying extra body fat, but they are tremendous specimens, right? So body morphology can't predict it. Gosh, I'll get in a lot of trouble for this. I was once the...
Twice, the head football doctor for Division I schools, Pittsburgh and Georgia State. And linemen are not always the most healthy people. They're strong. They're carrying a lot of extra weight. And that bears out because on average, it's the sad statistics, on average, a professional football lineman, offensive or defensive lineman, they die of metabolic syndrome in their 50s and 60s.
They turn out not to be that healthy. And so I feel like as a sports medicine community, we need to do better for them. But to answer your question, maybe it's that.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just intrigued and curious because I think we have a vision of what we think fitness and health looks like. And like you said, often we think people who are the leanest or people who are the skinniest or people who are the most built or whatever it may be.
And I think that's partly our challenge when we talk about these things because most of us are wanting to get healthy either from an aesthetic point of view you want your summer body, you want your whatever it may be. And then from the other side, there's this feeling from some of us, we're just like, I just want to be healthy. I want to be fit enough to take care of my kids.
I want to be healthy enough so that I can spend time with my grandkids. How should someone measure their fitness and health right now if they're listening? Because a lot of people will say, especially when they're younger or on the younger side, they'll say, well, I feel okay. So how do I know if I'm okay, safe, unhealthy? Like, how do I... feel that or experience that.
You know what? I love that you said, okay, because I find a lot of people come to me or maybe you're asking someone in the street, how are you? I'm fine. You know that fine. I think many people, because we're so busy, we're taking care of other people. I'm not blaming them, but we live in this state of fine. We're neither hot nor cold. We're this lukewarm health.
We're not dying, but we are not truly optimized, right? So if you're exhausted, if you have trouble sleeping, if you don't have enough energy to do the things that you truly believe that you enjoy in life, maybe you're fine. Maybe we should invest some time and actually get some analytics.
You know, sometimes when I'm bringing people to surgery in the preoperative time, we're asking them questions about their health and do you have this, do you have that? And people will say, I have no health problems. Well, if you've never been checked, if you've never had labs drawn, if you've never been examined, It's not that you have no problems. It's that you don't know.
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Chapter 9: How do you lose stubborn belly fat and why is visceral fat dangerous?
I don't think there's an ideal length. Some days my weightlifting takes me 30 minutes because I power through it. And sometimes it takes an hour. I think ideally, if we're talking about this cardio 80-20 regimen, it's 45 minutes of base training. And if you're adding sprinting, that usually takes another 15 minutes.
So weightlifting can take, I don't think you have to be there three hours unless you just want to hang out in the gym. So it doesn't take forever. And it's not about time. It's about what you put in that time.
Yeah, because I think a lot of people are feeling like I only have 20 minutes a day.
Is that true?
Is that enough?
Is that true? Do we only have 20 minutes a day? I've been doing this a very long time and And I tease people that you can't out excuse me because I've been practicing 25 years and I've had the privilege of taking care of probably 100,000 people. I have heard all the excuses. And there are some times when you legitimately excuse. do not have time.
But I would say that is the fraction of the time, not the reality of the time. And to the, I don't have 20 minutes, I ask you to examine how literally, and I'm guilty of this, how long we're scrolling. How long we're washing our dishes? Do you really have to spend three hours every night cleaning your house? Because that's what makes you feel not anxious at the expense of your health.
So I think you have more than 20 minutes, if that's what you tell me.
It is so interesting. I was looking at it from the point of view of relationships. I was looking at some resets that was talking about how You know, we say we don't have time together, but the amount of time as a couple we spend in front of the TV is astronomical. It's like, I think it was something like 90 minutes a day minimum. And we're missing out on together time.
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Chapter 10: What is the body-brain connection and its role in longevity?
people that go through hard experiences together end up as a band of brothers or a tight-knit group. So that can happen in relationship. So advice out there, if you want to bond with this person, do something frightening with them.
Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. One of my first dates that I went on with my wife when we were dating was we went to a ropes course.
Oh my goodness.
And it was so much fun because there was like trusting each other, helping each other. And there was that sense of thrill. And I couldn't agree more that I think when you do, I remember the first time me and my wife went skydiving, we did it together. The first time we cold plunged, we did it together. And you're so right.
It creates a different connection when you both done something hard together. And also something that's, I think as couples, we do, people have to go through so many emotional hardships together. It's nice to do something physically challenging together. That isn't carrying this emotional weight or stress because that's something you probably have on in the background anyway.
And so this applies for that. Yeah, I think if you're someone that struggles with finding time, think about the way you spend time with the people you love. And maybe you don't have an extra 20 minutes or 30 minutes, but you can change the 30 minutes you spend with your friend. Or you don't have an extra hour, but you can change the way you spend the hour with your partner.
And all of a sudden everything's changing. It's meaningful. It's meaningful. Yeah, it's meaningful. And like you said, it's giving us so many other benefits. You mentioned magnesium earlier. I did. And we were talking about the need for stronger bones. Yes. What can we do to strengthen our bones? Because I don't think that's a conversation that we're having that much.
You know what? I'm so glad you came back to that because we think of bones as just like the strong, silent type hanging out. Yeah. Holding up our muscles.
They don't say much. That's right.
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Chapter 11: How can you overcome limiting beliefs to start making positive changes?
I prefer functional with free weights and barbells because it requires then you work all of your muscles and it requires neuromuscular pathways to keep you upright, right? It requires balance versus a machine, you're sitting there on a leg press and frankly, We need to work our muscles in the way that our body works our muscles.
And there is no time in the history of people that your quadriceps are working sitting on a leg press. They're always squatting, right?
Yeah. Yeah. That's the more natural movement.
It is.
Yeah, so as much as your workouts are mimicking natural movements, that's a healthy exercise.
You know, even bench press, think about it. I've been traveling a lot lately. I need to lift a 50-pound suitcase above my head into the bin without falling over or hitting somebody with it.
Yeah.
And so you practice that with bench pressing and overhead lifts.
Yeah. You spoke about neural pathways there, and I know you talk a lot about the body-brain connection. What are we losing out? Because if you look at, when we talk about aging, Yeah. brain aging is such a big part of it. Yeah.
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Chapter 12: Why is mobility critical for aging well and how can you improve it?
There is another protein that is stimulated to be, it's called transcribed when DNA makes a protein. When skeletal muscle contracts, it also causes the transcription of a protein called clotho, which is the longevity protein. Part of clotho's role is to go to the brain and stimulate neuron development.
So there are studies out of the University of Pittsburgh that showed a six-week walking program will grow the hippocampus, which is the memory part of the brain, in double digits. Wow. You know, I don't know the mechanism that's worked out, but I think at a very basic level, I mean, we'll go back to the hunting analogy, that kind of strategic stress on the body tells our body
That we're still living. We're not curled up in a ball in some cave waiting on winter to die. We are active. We have enough strategic stress that we have to maintain. Because our body is so highly conserved that if our body doesn't think we're using something, we'll lose it. It will start resorbing like bone. If I put a cast on your leg, you will resorb the bone in your leg.
So true.
Yeah. So I think the brain is the same way. back to what maintains a brain. Well, muscle releases a protein that maintains the brain. Bone releases a protein that maintains the brain, right? fascinating. Isn't that fascinating?
So fascinating, yeah.
Food has a role. But when we think of midlife, we have to start talking about hormones. And the work of Lisa Moscone, who is at Cornell in New York, has shown that in women, and probably in men, but her work is in women, the brain is covered in estrogen receptors. So... As we lose our estrogen, it affects the brain.
That's why when I was going through perimenopause, there was a short period of time when I wasn't on hormones yet. I'm in surgery, and I know that I want the thing that does this, but I could not remember that it was called an Atzen. Think how frightening that is for a brain person like me. I use my brain to help people make a living. That was my estrogen receptors being totally empty.
But once I replaced my estrogen, my brain is a black box again. Isn't that frightening? So I think it's multifactorial when we lose it. But I also think that all the lifestyle things we've talked about have proven out in studies to be able to make a real impact on our cognitive function.
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