Full Transcript Show Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:03 Welcome to Hotness, the podcast that brings you practical tools to balance your hormones and rekindle connection, confidence, 0:10 and desire in midlife and beyond. 0:13 I'm your host, Dr. 0:14 Liz Lister. 0:15 Hotiness is a safe space for honest conversations about menopause, sex, identity, love, loss, reinvention,and desire, because you can embrace your hotness 0:28 at every age. 0:30 Welcome back to Hotness, the podcast where hormones, confidence, and desire come back online. 0:36 Today's guest is an incredible powerhouse, wonderful woman named Jana Short. 0:41 She is the editor-in-chief of the best holistic life magazine. 0:51 She is a bestselling author and she is the host of the podcast, Oh My Health, There Is Hope. 0:58 I've been fortunate to be a guest on her podcast and She's just an amazing person. 1:04 She inspires transformation through authentic living, wellness and purposeful storytelling. 1:12 This is where if you want to learn more about her, we will let you know that during the Podcast and also in the show notes. 1:20 But it's really fun. 1:20 We are both women in our 60s. 1:23 we compared a lot of notes about how things are different than when we were in 20s, what do we do now? 1:30 How do you reconnect with our hotness? 1:33 She's just, we had a lotta fun with that question towards the end of our interview. 1:40 So please enjoy my conversation with Jana Short. 1:45 Welcome, Jana Short, to Hotness.
Midlife Growth and Lifelong Learning 1:51 Thank you. 1:51 I'm super excited to be here today. 1:56 Awesome. 1:56 Fantastic. 1:58 Well, let's start there. 1:59 Let's talk a little bit more about you, and you and I have connected through our work. 2:08 Your audience is people of all ages. 2:10 However, we are both women in midlife and, you know, a lot of women reach mid-life, and they feel like they're supposed to shrink or slow down or settle. 2:22 And I know that that is 100% not your belief. 2:26 So what has really emerged for you in this really fantastic season of life? 2:32 Wow, there's so much. 2:34 I went back to school in my fifties, right? 2:36 I wanted to learn something new, to build my practice on what I was doing. 2:42 When I say practice, I'm not a doctor, but built my platform and brand and I want more education. 2:54 taking over the world, right? 2:56 And when I just think I learned something, it's upgraded, and I got to learn more. 3:00 And it is so challenging and so exciting. 3:03 For me, It is. 3:05 I love feeding my brain on a regular basis. 3:08 So for me moving into my now 60, I'm 65 now, cannot wait to see what 70 has for my and not slowing down. 3:16 Just opened a new magazine. 3:18 opening in new cities, went back to school again so I could learn more about AI, by the way. 3:23 I don't think I'll ever be out of school for that. 3:26 Right, I think that's right. 3:27 But I, think it keeps me young. 3:29 By the, way the whole time I'm doing this, i'm listening to cues from my body because I realize I am 65 and I do not want to get so busy that I m not paying 3:39 attention to what's going on in my, body so i m always listening the cues like those little whispers are something you should be paying So otherwise they 3:49 get louder. 3:49 That's exactly right. 3:51 They not only get loud or sometimes they just completely take your feet out from under you, which is what happened to me in my fifties. 3:57 And now I listened to those cues. 3:58 I'm never too busy to listen to my body. 4:01 So, um, as I doing all this and building things, I listening, like I highly recommend you guys pay attention to. 4:09 Yes, you talk a lot about that on your podcast. 4:13 Oh, my health. 4:14 There is hope. 4:15 So we will definitely link to that. 4:17 I love that and I've had the honor of being guest on Your podcast, so that's just tremendous and you focus on hope and healing and resilience and mindset 4:28 as well as the title of the magazine best holistic life. 4:32 so, that implies the holistic approach and interviewed huge names in holistic health. 4:40 What is a wellness belief that you think still needs correcting that's out there, that the mainstream health industry gets wrong or just maybe isn't ready 4:51 to hear yet? 4:52 Wow, I absolutely have an answer to that. 4:55 For me, the thing that they have completely wrong, and we need to get right, is Western medicine and holistic medicine are not meant to work separately. 5:03 They're always meant best integrated together. 5:06 It's not one or the other. 5:08 The other thing I think that it hasn't quite gotten right is I talk about holistic and I wish that when I created my magazine I would have used the W in 5:16 front of it. 5:17 because holistic isn't necessarily herbs. 5:20 It's not one thing, it's everything. 5:22 When I say I listen to my body, I listened to, am I attaching to the loved ones that I have? 5:27 Am I paying attention? 5:29 I connecting to people, my moving, there's movement involved in my eating correctly. 5:34 There's so many things in holistic is the whole thing.
Holistic Health and Integrated Medicine 5:38 The whole enchilada. 5:39 So you can't just have the beans, right? 5:41 You have to have it all when you're doing it. 5:43 So I wish that people understand Western and holistic medicine work best together, integrated together. 5:51 And I think that it's also important to understand that holistic isn't the one thing. 5:55 It's multiple things. 5:56 I can do one and expect change. 6:03 First of all, I think that's completely correct and accurate. 6:08 And I also think it's the opportunity of midlife. 6:12 Because we don't have to think about all those things when we're 20, we have high levels of hormones which provides this buffer. 6:19 It's a buffer against not enough sleep, not eating right, and not exercising correctly. 6:24 But that buffer just gets thinner. 6:27 And then here we are in this, what I think is an amazing, wonderful phase of midlife where we have to pay attention to that. 6:36 Our body asks that of us. 6:39 I Think the old school method was when you retire, like I looked at my grandmother and my age, I like there's no way that's she's got to be way older, 6:47 right? 6:48 The old mentality of aging was you slow down. 6:52 You aged, you retired, You set on your rockers on the front porch waiting for your grandkids to come visit, which by the way is lovely. 7:00 But I think it's cheating. 7:02 And we're seeing aging now as an opportunity. 7:05 Our kids are raised, we have more time on our hands. 7:09 We're through with building our careers, right? 7:11 We are in the midst of it or finishing it up. 7:14 We have so much opportunity now and time to do the things that we're passionate about. 7:19 It's the doors for me just blew off when I hit 50. And then when had to turn 60 instead of crying, I was so excited and I tell people all the time now 7:29 I cannot wait to see what the seventies have for. 7:31 Like I, but it's going to be spectacular. 7:34 Are things changing? 7:35 We just talked about this at the beginning before we started recording. 7:39 Aren't things in my life, in body? 7:41 Absolutely. 7:42 I'm very quickly. 7:45 And it's okay. 7:46 It's like, okay, I still do my golden rules, like pay attention, listen to the cues, take time. 7:53 There's movement, there's community, and there are so many important things that I have to incorporate in every single day. 7:59 And so it is not just business and driving a magazine or doing a podcast. 8:05 My family and the spirituality come next and then moving forward into my community and doing, you know, as much as I can. 8:14 And one of the things I will tell you, I learned in my sixties. 8:18 So it took me six decades to learn this. 8:21 I cannot fix anybody else. 8:24 I cannot make my husband change, make kids do the things I think they should do. 8:31 The only person I can change for the better is myself. 8:34 And so I work on every single day. 8:37 That is so, you keep giving me chills. 8:39 I'm like listening to you. 8:40 Yeah. 8:42 It's such an epiphany. 8:46 But we still spend a few decades thinking we have those answers. 8:53 I spent the first few decade trying to get those answer so then I could use them on other people. 8:59 That was my trajectory until life threw me some curve balls that said, you know what, I will look at me and I'll share what I can. 9:12 and we will go from there. 9:13 So that is just really beautiful.
Health Crisis, Recovery, and Listening to the Body 9:16 And you've had your own health journey that has really been a story of hope and resilience and more than that, expansion and moving into bigger chapters. 9:32 What can you share with us? 9:35 My health journey changed my life, Dr. 9:37 Leister. 9:39 I will tell you that I'm not supposed to be here. 9:41 And for those of you who are waiting to cure whatever you have, I still live in the exact same diagnosis that was in 14 years ago when they told me I didn't 9:49 have very long to live. 9:51 And I thrive in it now. 9:53 And, I think a lot of that is what shifted in my mind. 9:56 So, making shifts in your brain really starts getting your body to adjust to better things. 10:08 And so I'm not going to act like a sick person. 10:11 And I move forward in a healthy lifestyle, doing the best I can. 10:14 But I lost my stomach because of a surgery for a fundification. 10:19 By the way, these happen all the time. 10:21 Not that the injury I got through that surgery, but fundifications are very common. 10:27 And it's from a high in a hernia. 10:28 People get them as they get older. 10:29 A lot of times they fix them, a lot times, they just tell you to do certain things to adjust to it. 10:34 But mine was twisted, which meant it would deepen us and open up and I become septic. 10:39 So I had to have the surgery and they damaged my vagus nerve, And so months later, I was eating and every time I ate, it was like food was poisoning me. 10:51 I Was miserable and my stomach started getting big and people were congratulating me on my baby. 10:56 And I'm like, well, thank you so much for thinking I've been having a baby because I am in my 50s, but I m not pregnant. 11:03 And finally, I ended up in the ER with a massive beezer in my stomach, which is food that could not exit. 11:11 And your stomach is magical. 11:13 It'll just keep expanding. 11:15 Right. 11:16 Wow. 11:17 So my whole thing was after getting gastroparesis from this surgery, i had to have my tummy removed because it was that bad. 11:25 I had a radical gastrectomy. 11:27 i was supposed to be fed through a PICC line. 11:30 When they feed you TPM, that's a synthetic. 11:33 And my body just didn't like it. 11:35 So after- It was a very big deal. 11:37 It seems like, oh, just an IV drip. 11:39 No, no, it's a huge, huge deal, its intensive care level. 11:45 Well, I was going to bring it home with a pack to feed me, like you could hear the pack moving, feeding me. 11:51 Wow. 11:51 And so when I using it, my organs just started shutting down. 11:55 I did not like this synthetic thing. 11:57 Nutrition, quote unquote. 11:59 Uh-huh. 12:03 I still to this day eat, I tell people I live in the same diagnosis, and that was almost 15 years ago. 12:09 I think it was 14 years in April. 12:11 And so I living the diagnosis. 12:13 Whatever I want, there comes with consequences. 12:23 esophageal from throwing up so much. 12:26 So I listen to those little whispers. 12:30 I get my endoscopy every year to make sure it's not progressing. 12:33 Like I do the things I need to do, but I just went on a vacation, I ate chocolate every day. 12:40 Everything that I could eat. 12:44 That happens in Europe. 12:46 I hear that all the time. 12:48 Their food is different. 12:49 The food industry is also different, yeah. 12:51 That doesn't surprise me. 12:53 Yeah, I also walked 111 miles. 12:54 And walking, which is the lifestyle there. 12:59 But it was amazing. 13:00 And here I live in that diagnosis, paying attention to my body. 13:04 Like I just had a hip issue. 13:05 They told me it's bursitis. 13:07 It was not. 13:08 I tore something in the gym. 13:10 So now I'm healing that. 13:12 But I listen, I pay attention and I move. 13:14 Constantly get up and move I think there's this old saying, and don't know who said it, maybe you do, but a body in motion stays in a motion. 13:22 When I get sitting too long, like I've got to move, feel like, don' t want to get stuck in sitting position the rest of my life. 13:29 So I'm constantly moving, I have little alarms here that tell me, because I work at a desk, that tells me get up and move, 13:35 go breathe, get outside, put your feet in the grass, and I go and do it when it gives me those alerts. 13:41 That is so yummy. 13:42 I absolutely love that. 13:46 And what prompted you to start the magazine? 13:49 What's the origin story of Best Holistic Life? 13:53 I went back to school like I said in my 50s. 13:55 I got some pretty powerful credentials because I didn't want to be that person I was looking for that wasn't qualified to help others. 14:02 So I when got a bunch of coaching credentials, I started coaching. 14:07 And when I get so busy, i was booked solid for a year and I realized I did not live to have my calendar completely booked. 14:14 that I don't even have time to see my grandkids. 14:16 That's not what I want for my life. 14:18 So I started backing out of coaching and my clients were freaking out and they were like, can you at least do a newsletter and start sending us information? 14:25 So health, you were coaching in health and lifestyle. 14:28 I was coaching a more mindset because I believe when we make that shift in our brain, everything else follows. 14:34 And so I was being more of a mindset coach. 14:36 I got an NLP practitioner, master practitioners licensing. 14:40 So I can hear the words you're saying to me and like, Hey, did you hear what you just said? 14:44 And help them see what they're seeing and adjust it back. 14:48 And, so as I. 14:48 Was coaching, they asked if I would do a newsletter and honestly Dr. 14:52 Liz, I, was too lazy. 14:53 I am like, I don't have time to do a newsletter, but I was working with some really famous people at the time. 14:59 So I'm like why don' t you read an article about your story and I' m going to put it in the newsletter. 15:03 And I think I got like 35 articles. 15:06 Which is a lot. 15:07 That's great. 15:07 How do you put those in a newsletter? 15:09 Well, I have an interior design background. 15:11 Right. 15:11 I went to school as an Interior Designer, so I had an Interior Design background, and I got on Canva. 15:16 And I'm like I can make this into a little booklet and it looked like a magazine. 15:19 So I put it on my newsletter and you had to sign up for the newsletter. 15:23 We got like 37,000 people signup for that.
Launching Best Holistic Life Magazine 15:30 And now it's up to millions. 15:32 100%. Yeah. 15:35 Incredible. 15:36 Now we have 2.8 actual subscribers and 4 million readers each month. 15:42 And I think there's more. 15:43 I just have stuff. 15:48 Man, if you wish for it, it will come, especially if your working towards it. 15:51 I didn't realize the cost of having that many emails. 15:56 You've got to pay for that. 15:58 It gets very expensive. 16:00 Wow. 16:00 That's a problem I look forward to. 16:03 Shopping problems, I know. 16:05 Right, exactly. 16:06 Let's just see. 16:10 I want to hear a little bit more, you've alluded to this, but I wanna ask you a bit about what part of you has been the thread that has carried you through 16:21 all of this. 16:22 I think this is one of the reasons you and I have sort of bonded, is that I am a seeker, I've been doing personal transformation, 16:33 writing and workshops and that sort thing since I was a teenager. 16:38 And that has been kind of like a through line for me of my whole life and all the things that I've done. 16:45 What has through all of the difficulties, all challenges that you've been through and risen to the occasion, what about Jana has this theme that really 16:57 you have preserved all this time? 16:59 Well, I'm torsible and pretty bullheaded. 17:01 I sometimes don't know when to quit. 17:04 And I never, ever believed in failure. 17:07 Even as a little girl, I've never believed I failed a test or I have failed at anything. 17:12 I believed that I learned something. 17:13 So it was, for me, feedback, how to do it better next time. 17:17 And so for, me I carried that thread of it's only feedback to be better. 17:22 A lot of people talk about Thomas Edison creating the light bulb and how many times he did it. 17:26 Yes, just thinking about him. 17:29 Can you imagine if he stopped at 872? He took that information and went further and further with what he's learning. 17:39 Same with space travel and all the things. 17:42 They take all that info, it's not failure, they collect the data and how do I move forward doing better? 17:47 And that has been a theme of my life since I was very little. 17:50 And the stubbornness, I'm very stubborn. 17:53 Yes. 17:53 Well, Taurus is also an earth sign, so very grounded as well. 17:57 You get both of those features. 17:59 So that is really awesome. 18:02 I love that. 18:03 Now, another aspect, I think you and I have talked about this, that women midlife, you know, they share with me the wins. 18:12 The best sex ever, the best relationships ever. 18:20 You know, I think about midlife really as our hotness era. 18:26 I think you and I share that. 18:27 Why do you think it's not being talked about more?
Resilience, Mindset, and Reframing Failure 18:31 And what can we do? 18:32 I thing it is not been talked that more because we're thinking of our grandmas. 18:36 Like our generation is thinking what they were probably doing right. 18:40 My grandma probably was hot. 18:42 She probably felt hot, but as a young kid growing up, she was grandma. 18:46 she didn't look hot and were carrying around the past with us. 18:50 And now I look at women and like I cannot believe her age. 18:55 By the way, I don't want to judge on ages either because I work with a lot of celebrities and I feel so bad for them because every wrinkle, 19:04 every dimple, everything is completely torn apart. 19:08 And I want us to just love who we are. 19:11 We're healthy and we feel good. 19:14 That's beauty to me. 19:15 and i want people to be really careful about saying, oh, she aged badly or oh she age really well. 19:21 It's still not okay. 19:23 It's their judgment call, either way. 19:25 Even as a compliment, it's still assessing. 19:28 Right. 19:28 And I do, I have friends who are celebrities that won't even go out, like, well, let's go to dinner. 19:33 I don't want to because if I'm not completely made up and everything's, and I am hitting the right light, someone's going to take a picture and it is going 19:41 be all over and i've got to deal with that. 19:43 Their poor spirits are just getting beaten down, beaten, down beaten. 19:47 So as women, i think we should realize it doesn't matter. 19:51 we need to stop saying that. 19:52 We need stop. 19:53 Here we are, no filters, right? 19:55 There's no filter on us. 19:56 And we're talking about, like, it's okay. 20:00 Aging is okay, if you want to do something while you're aging, that's ok. 20:03 If you don't want do do anything while your aging it is ok, so long as you are happy with who you. 20:09 Are if want make adjustment, make an adjustment. 20:12 For me, I don't do elective surgeries because I can't. 20:15 Having said that, if I could, i'd probably be flipping through those pages. 20:20 What can I do? 20:21 But I am happy with myself. 20:23 So I just want to say, when we comment on those, on social media or to a friend, it's putting it out in the air and we're literally taking each other down. 20:35 Even if it is a positive comment, by the way, you have to be careful when you're even doing positive comments. 20:41 So I'm super careful and very sensitive about that in my life with women. 20:47 Like, do we need to say that? 20:48 Yes. 20:49 She always looks amazing. 20:51 Right. 20:53 Regardless of how she looks on the outside, she is amazing. 20:56 Exactly. 20:57 Yeah. 20:58 That is absolutely beautiful. 20:59 I'm literally jotting little notes because I am getting ideas for other topics and other episodes because, I think there's like a little gold nugget in
Hotness, Aging, and Self-Care 21:07 so much, like every sentence that you're sharing with us. 21:12 Let me pause us just for a moment and if people want to learn more about your work, if they want be able to read the magazine or even participate in the magazines, 21:23 can you say a little bit about how that works and what people should do? 21:27 Absolutely. 21:28 It's super easy to just go to my website, it's janna at jannashort.com. 21:32 So you can go my web site to learn more about me. 21:35 If you want, we save half the magazine for free one time writers. 21:40 We have three strict rules, no curative claims, not type of diagnosing and no treatment plans because we first do no harm. 21:47 And so you can write an article about your story, something you want to educate on. 21:51 You can reach out to me at Jana at bestfilisticlife.com. 21:55 Say you heard me on Dr. 21:57 Liz's podcast and that you would love to talk to about submitting an articles. 22:01 We save half the magazine for people to have an opportunity to share their knowledge or their story in the magazines. 22:08 The other half is our regular like Dr Liz columnist that write monthly on a very important topic that our readers want and learn about. 22:16 You can absolutely reach out to me for any of those. 22:19 Wonderful. 22:19 That's really, really great. 22:21 I mean, the magazine is big. 22:23 It's very rich. 22:24 There's a lot of content, a lotta different kinds of authors and contributors, so it's, it really something. 22:31 So I just love that and thank you for doing that. 22:39 I've literally gotten chills so many times during this discussion. 22:42 I can't wait to like listen to the whole thing again and just can wait. 22:58 Ooh, maintenance. 23:01 Seriously, I see my hairdresser. 23:05 Here's the thing, i wear fake lashes. 23:08 They put on, they're permanent. 23:09 I've been doing it for seven years. 23:11 Can I tell you why? 23:11 So that people don't think it's always about vanity. 23:15 When I was recovering through my illness,I would get up every morning and I look in the mirror and i was sick and a sick person greeted me in that mirror. 23:24 i had an event to go to so i got lashes And the next morning I got up, no makeup, I looked in the mirror and a healthier girl looked back. 23:32 Like she was looking back at me and she looked very healthy, right? 23:37 Like I literally have a little bit of blush on today. 23:39 And of course some lip tint. 23:42 But a healthier girl look back me. 23:45 And it started shifting how I saw myself. 23:48 I didn't see myself as a sick person anymore. 23:50 And so I do maintenance for myself, I get my hair colored, because I'm going gray. 23:56 Do lots of fun things for my self, but I did that. 23:59 No shame. 24:00 Like this is how i choose to age and I am going to do it. 24:03 So I have had people say, i can't believe you wear lashes. 24:07 Absolutely I can. 24:08 It makes me feel amazing about myself so yes. 24:12 Love that so much. 24:13 That's incredible because I also get the lashes put on for me It's a question of time. 24:20 It saves me so Much time because of exactly what you said you'd need like very little else It just has such an impact so and you and I do a lot of this 24:30 a Lot of interviews and videos and podcasts and so it just like saves Me so time and what I love the most about what? 24:36 You said is you use the phrase for myself. 24:39 I'm doing something for my I am not doing it for others Doing it for, you know, doing it yourself, I think that giving yourself that gift allows you to 24:50 give such gifts to all of us. 24:52 So thank you for that. 24:54 Thank you. 24:55 I one time had a friend tell his wife in front of me that I was super high maintenance.
How to Connect with Jana Short 25:01 Like, she must be exhausted. 25:02 She's super highly maintenance... 25:04 I really don't feel like I am. 25:05 But my answer to him was, damn straight I'm, but you don' have to pay for it, so what do you care? 25:11 Not asking you to pay for it. 25:14 I know. 25:16 Again, it's what we choose to do to feel our own hotness. 25:22 So I love that. 25:23 That's just wonderful. 25:24 Thank you for that Thank you very, very much, Jana. 25:28 Thanks for being here. 25:29 I always love our conversations and I look forward to seeing you again soon. 25:47 As a gift for listening, go to drlizmd.com forward slash hotness for your free midlife guide filled with powerful support for you mind, 25:58 body and soul because you can embrace your hotnes at every age.
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