From “boost your life” to “when you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends,” advice from the Spice Girls has continued to ring true for the last two and a half–plus many years since Emma, Gerri, Mel B, Mel C, and Victoria took the world by storm within the ‘90s.
Time passing hasn’t made the phenoms any less clever. But now, along with meting out girl power and dating wisdom, as a part of a confidence-building campaign with lingerie and activewear brand Pour Moi, Spice Girl Melanie Brown aka Mel B (aka “Scary Spice”) can be sharing her observations, experiences, and badass outlook on growing older and maintaining fitness in your forties.
Please, don’t let this sentiment depress you by falling into the “I’m so old” trap! It is a present that the ladies millennials looked to as girls within the ‘90s can still help bring positivity and power to the subsequent vital stages of our lives.
It is a present that the ladies millennials looked to as girls within the ‘90s can still help bring positivity and power to the subsequent vital stages of our lives.
So, now 48, how has Mel B kept life spicy? From a habits and outlook perspective, she’s made movement, in addition to self-compassion about what that movement looks like, a component of her each day existence.
“Expectation-wise I feel you will have to be loads kinder to yourself,” Brown shares through Pour Moi. “Do what feels right and is sustainable for you—whether that’s 10 to quarter-hour a day or a few hours every week. And walk more. Don’t at all times take the automotive for brief trips. Walk, use the steps, not the lift—it’s amazing how that may increase your general fitness.”
In terms of fitness modalities, Brown has been lively throughout her life (yes, all of us remember those dance moves). But she says, for fitness in your forties, it’s much more necessary to strength train particularly.
“Definitely add more weights because you should maintain your bones and your muscle tone,” Brown says. She’s right—strength training is useful at any age, but the advantages to your longevity, cardiovascular, bone, and functional health “turn out to be more relevant and necessary as you age,” Sharon Gam, PhD, CSCS, an exercise physiologist and licensed strength and conditioning specialist, previously told Well+Good in regards to the strength training while growing older.
Knowing it is advisable to ramp up your strength training, and finding the motivation and protected space to do it, are two various things. Brown advises you to tackle the challenge with a way of levity, self-love, and the unique confidence that comes with maturity.
“The advantage of getting older is you care less what people think so embrace that,” Brown says. “Just go for it, take advantage of it and revel in it. It could be intimidating for a lot of people to walk right into a gym for the primary time but remember persons are there to enable you to not to evaluate you. Just give attention to what you would like to do and what you would like to achieve.”
That encouragement just means more when it’s coming from a Spice Girl, ya know? Viva endlessly.
