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Strength After 50: Why It’s Never Too Late to Start · Create The Best Me

• 0:00
  Carmen Hecox: What if that thing you thought was too late to do is actually your next chapter calling your name?
• 0:08
  Carmen Hecox: Today's guest, Kari Fraser, is 62 and she boxes 4 days a week. She can throw a serious punch and believe me, women don't come with an expiration date. But here's what I love most about Kari's story. She didn't start boxing because she had to figure it all out. Her daughter told her, I think you'd really like to hit something. And that one sentence led her into a boxing gym face-to-face with pro heavyweight champion Joe Hanks, who looked at her and said, what am I going to do with you? Well, as you're about to hear, he did something with her. In this conversation, Kari and I talk about strength. Aging, reinvention, balance, consistency, and why your health may be the greatest freedom you have. And don't worry, Kari is not here to tell you to do 245 pushups tomorrow morning.
• 1:07
  Carmen Hecox: She's here to remind you that one pushup, one walk around the block, one small promise kept to yourself can change the way you see your body, your age, and your future. So if you're wondering, is it too late for me to feel strong again? This conversation is for you. Kari Fraser, welcome to Create the Best Me. This is an honor and a privilege to have you on the show.
• 1:34
  Kari Fraser: Well, thank you for having me.
• 1:38
  Carmen Hecox: Kari, before we get into today's important conversation, Could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who Kari Fraser is and what she does beyond Dixie of All My Children?
• 1:54
  Kari Fraser: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm sort of a longevity influencer, uh, pro trying to reach the category of women between 50 and 80.
• 2:09
  Kari Fraser: To pick up barbells, to get active, to go running, to get your heart rate up, to promote muscle, especially because that's the number one predictor of longevity is quadricep muscle. So that's what I'm doing these days is a lot of exercise.
• 2:30
  Carmen Hecox: And I think that is so Dang important. I think it's important because as we get older, exercise becomes more of a challenge. And so a lot of us might give up, but there's so much benefits to exercising beyond physique. It helps your brain and it helps you maintain an independent lifestyle. And you are showing women that— I can do it. You can do it too.
• 3:06
  Kari Fraser: It's true. You start with 1 push-up, not 30. 1 sit-up, again, not 30. And you really just have to drive yourself to— I have to drive myself to the boxing gym, get my wraps on, get my mitts on, and I have to force myself to hit that bag and hit it. And hit it. And hit it.
• 3:32
  Kari Fraser: And that's the hardest part, is getting yourself physically to where you're going to be exercising, whether it's deadlifting, Lagree, which is Pilates on steroids, basically, running, boxing, Solid Core, SoulCycle, whatever you choose.
• 3:56
  Kari Fraser: You— it's just once you hit about 35, 40, exercise is like brushing your teeth. You have to do it or you will go into decline. It's like, pick your heart. I mean, the workout's going to be hard, but isn't it also regretful and lonely and hard to lie in a hospital bed? Doing nothing. So you pick your hard. Exactly. Kari,
• 4:30
  Carmen Hecox: you talked about boxing. Why boxing?
• 4:34
  Carmen Hecox: Why'd you get into it? And you're passionate about it, from what I understand.
• 4:38
  Kari Fraser: I'm very passionate about boxing, and I'm very blessed to have Joe Hanks as my coach. He's a pro heavyweight champ.
• 4:48
  Kari Fraser: He's, he's hit them all, hit all the big boxers, line them up, and he's gone toe-to-toe with them.
• 4:56
  Kari Fraser: I would say how this happened was about 4 years ago, my daughter, who's 29, called me and said, I just took a boxing lesson and I think you'd really like to hit something. It feels really good. So I thought, you know, that does sound kind of like fun. So I went on Google and looked up pro training facilities, boxing, Pasadena, California, and up pops Brick City Boxing. And I walked in and my coach literally looked at me the first day and he said, what am I going to do with you? I was 58 at the time. And I said, well, you know, I've always been athletic. I've always— and he took me through the paces and he said, you know, I think I can do something with you.
• 5:55
  Kari Fraser: That's how it started. And I've been 4 years in now.
• 6:03
  Carmen Hecox: And exactly, that was my point exactly, is that you're a tiny woman.
• 6:07
  Kari Fraser: I'm tiny, but I'm very strong.
• 6:07
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, but I mean.
• 6:12
  Kari Fraser: Because of boxing.
• 6:12
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, but people might look at you and say, oh, this frail little flower? Boxing? Really?
• 6:20
  Kari Fraser: Oh, no.
• 6:24
  Carmen Hecox: I've seen some of your Instagram, and yes, you have a really nice punch.
• 6:28
  Kari Fraser: Thank you.
• 6:31
  Kari Fraser: I work very hard for it. Repeatedly, 4 days a week.
• 6:40
  Carmen Hecox: So how does someone go from being a soap opera actress to now becoming a leader in muscle development in midlife?
• 6:51
  Kari Fraser: Well, I think it's a cliché. I went from the show to meeting my husband to having my own children. And deciding to raise them, deciding not to do Hollywood. And then my children, of course, now are out of the house.
• 7:14
  Kari Fraser: And a very close friend of mine, my NP at the wellness center, she said, why aren't you influencing people with everything that you do?
• 7:25
  Kari Fraser: Because I do— I participate in 4 athletic type of sports a week.
• 7:30
  Carmen Hecox: Wow.
• 7:30
  Kari Fraser: I don't take days off. I don't believe in days off. Many people do, and that's great, but my body goes into decline.
• 7:41
  Kari Fraser: I, like, if I have to fly more than 2 hours, I start doing triceps. I start doing my, like, mini leg-ups for my lower belly. I get— my body says, you cannot be still.
• 8:01
  Kari Fraser: So basically she said, you should open an Instagram account. And I know from my days on the show that things move a lot faster when you have a great PR group behind you.
• 8:19
  Carmen Hecox: What does your husband think about you being able to, you know, you and him are coming, coming out of the theater and stuff and get attacked? You can protect both of you.
• 8:26
  Kari Fraser: Actually, you can only hit legally in the ring. So what does he think? I mean, I'm in great physical condition for a person my age, and I treat sleep like a religion.
• 8:45
  Kari Fraser: It's very important to get 8 to 10 hours a night.
• 8:49
  Kari Fraser: With everything that I do physically on a day-to-day basis, inclusive of Sometimes 2 workouts a day.
• 8:56
  Kari Fraser: I have to sleep to recover. So I think my husband is very, very mild-mannered. He's more of a thinker.
• 9:05
  Kari Fraser: And he's, you know, I've always been the dramatic one, whereas he's the Ivy League-educated one. And he just kind of lets me do what I want to do.
• 9:18
  Carmen Hecox: When your daughter brought this idea to you about boxing, about the feeling that you get when you hit, does your daughter live locally where you can kind of start off where she left off?
• 9:37
  Kari Fraser: She does not. She is a tax attorney of all things in Washington, DC. She has been to Joe's gym with me.
• 9:47
  Kari Fraser: And gotten very winded. And I'm like, come on, let's go. You're the one who got me into this.
• 9:55
  Kari Fraser: And Joe just sits back and he's like—
• 10:02
  Carmen Hecox: That is crazy. And that's what I was going to say when you— or that's what I was thinking when you said that I'm in good shape for my age. You're in good shape for people 30 years younger than you.
• 10:12
  Kari Fraser: I am, actually, and thank you. That's a tremendous compliment. I do about 245 push-ups a day, probably 500 to 700 crunches.
• 10:28
  Kari Fraser: I can hold a 3 to 5-minute plank, but this is because of consistency. So you can't go to the gym once and expect a svelte figure. It's built upon day after day after day after day, whether it's 5 minutes or 2 hours. Some days you'll have more time, that's fine.
• 10:55
  Kari Fraser: Some days you'll have less and you gotta go. But it always balances itself out somehow.
• 11:03
  Kari Fraser: At least it does for my physique. For my body chemistry.
• 11:08
  Carmen Hecox: And what I love about what you are doing is that you are setting the stage for people to understand that the key to being young does not come from cosmetic surgery or, you know, or taking XYZ drug. It comes from movement.
• 11:32
  Kari Fraser: Exactly. You hit the nail right on the head. Movement is the number one antidote to inflammation. What is inflammation?
• 11:43
  Kari Fraser: Eat too much sugar, you have a stroke. You eat too much fat, you have a heart attack. Because the liver is only designed— it can only do so much to clean you out. But the more you exercise, you're sending signals to your brain, I am healthy. My cells are healthy. They regenerate quicker. They turn over quicker.
• 12:11
  Kari Fraser: Your mitochondria gets clean really quick.
• 12:15
  Kari Fraser: You sleep better. And it's all from just— even if you were to do 10 jumping jacks, your heart rate would come up. You would instantly feel like, wow, I feel better. Your serotonin released when it was all packed in there waiting to come out.
• 12:35
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 12:39
  Kari Fraser: And I just, I do not believe that a woman's life is over at 50 or 60.
• 12:46
  Kari Fraser: I mean, we have so much wisdom by now.
• 12:50
  Kari Fraser: That truly, truly, I am happier now than I ever was in my 40s or 50s.
• 12:58
  Kari Fraser: And partly due to boxing because it's my passion, but partly also from the wisdom of everything I've gone through and gained. I now can see when a young person's taking the wrong direction. I want to go right back to that. Go this way, don't go that way.
• 13:21
  Kari Fraser: It'll pay off in the long run.
• 13:24
  Kari Fraser: I think it's made me a better mother to my 2 children by raising them and not having just nannies raising them all the time.
• 13:33
  Carmen Hecox: And that's so important because I think that in the entertainment business or an actor Whatever it is that you're doing, I think that we're hot or we're in demand, and sometimes we need to make those hard decisions about what our priorities are. You decided to take that step back to focus on what was more important to you, what was going to give you the Biggest bang for your buck, per se, and it was raising a family and being a wife. And look, here you are, you have reinvented yourself to a more satisfied and better version of yourself.
• 14:24
  Kari Fraser: Well, thank you. That is kind of the culmination of what happened. I started with the NEAT Group, the NEAT Agency rather, last November. And I said, create me any way you want. Here's your ticket. I played the original Dixie. I created her on All My Children.
• 14:47
  Kari Fraser: Here's your intro. Or your get-out-of-class pass. I don't know.
• 14:56
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 14:56
  Kari Fraser: But they really— they followed my journey and they tweaked it and developed it.
• 15:00
  Kari Fraser: But in terms of Hollywood, you're either hot or you're not. So I think only 2% of the Screen Actors Guild actually makes over $1 million in show business. The rest, you know, you— if you get a hot TV show, your grandchildren will never have to work. from the residuals.
• 15:30
  Kari Fraser: But it's very, very rare. And it really, really robs your soul. And I was at a point where I had done the show, experienced it, made a lot of money from it. And I was now ready for this phase of my life. And children don't ask to be born. So I was going to be there with them. For every stage and every step of the way.
• 15:59
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. And I always think of that window, window of demand is this small and you need to decide, am I going to take advantage of that small little window? Because once that window closes, who knows if it'll ever open back up.
• 16:20
  Kari Fraser: When the other networks found out that ABC was gonna give me the offer for Dixie, 3 other shows wanted to test me all in one day.
• 16:35
  Kari Fraser: As the World Turns, One Life to Live, and what was the other one? It was another, it was a Channel 2 show.
• 16:44
  Carmen Hecox: Days of Our Lives?
• 16:48
  Kari Fraser: No, that's a Channel 4 show.
• 16:51
  Kari Fraser: Because I was in New York at the time. So they all said, no, no, we want to see her on film. We'll make an offer, we'll make a better offer. And that's when ABC called and said, you got the part. And I had to decline.
• 17:06
  Kari Fraser: But when you are hot, everybody wants you. And when you're not...
• 17:14
  Kari Fraser: Silence. That's what I always say in boxing when people are getting challenged and Joe's like, come on, keep repeating it till you get it right. And I look at him and I'm like, welcome to Hollywood.
• 17:31
  Kari Fraser: Because Joe actually was a very, very in-demand boxer. And he was engaged to one of Stevie Wonder's daughters.
• 17:46
  Kari Fraser: So he did the whole Hollywood route, and we joke about it in the ring all the time when we're sparring. And he's like, you know, the famous saying from Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get smacked in the mouth.
• 18:01
  Kari Fraser: Then you have to reset your plan.
• 18:07
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. And some people I don't know if you've ever watched, I watched this HBO show, it's called The Hack, where this actress is this, or this comedian is in high demand and then she's no longer in demand. Is that Jeanine Smart in it? I'm not sure what the name of the actress is. She's supposed to be in her late 70s and she's got a Vegas-type residency and then she's kicked out. And so she has to reinvent herself and she learns what her true voice is and she learns to get more connected to herself rather than what society said she was supposed to be. And she recreates a better version of herself. And I see that in you, that you're not letting society say, this is who you're supposed to be. You're recreating a different version of Kari on your terms, not what Hollywood said you're supposed to do.
• 19:14
  Kari Fraser: Well, thank you. But do you remember the late comedian Joan Rivers? Joan Rivers didn't make it until she was nearly 50 with Johnny Carson.
• 19:28
  Kari Fraser: Colonel Sanders, he didn't sell his first bucket of chicken till he was 66.
• 19:37
  Kari Fraser: I mean, and Jeff Bezos says you can, you can be grinding and grinding and grinding for 5 years, and the next day you make it and skyrockets go off.
• 19:49
  Carmen Hecox: Mhm.
• 19:53
  Kari Fraser: So I think, honestly, it's about consistency.
• 19:56
  Kari Fraser: If I make a promise to myself, I keep it.
• 20:00
  Kari Fraser: Otherwise, I'm insulting my own integrity. I always tell people who are like, how can you do so many push-ups? I said, start with this one challenge. Do 10 push-ups. Before you get in your bath or the shower. At the end of the year, how many will you have done? 3,650 push-ups. That's more than sitting on the couch for 3 hours a day. That's an accomplishment, and that's doable. Even if you do the push-ups on your knees instead of military style, that It's still a push-up.
• 20:45
  Kari Fraser: Or if you push from your kitchen counter, from the kitchen sink, you're still working your muscles.
• 20:55
  Carmen Hecox: And you are securing your independence and you're keeping your brain from declining.
• 21:03
  Kari Fraser: From atrophying. One thing I have found that, that does really, really help with balance Is if you brush your teeth with the right hand, try doing it with the left hand a couple times a week. It really does open up your scope of what you see in day-to-day things, like little details. Like, oh, I never knew there was a tree on the street. I've driven on the street 10,000 times. Where— when did they put that tree in? Tree's always been there.
• 21:39
  Kari Fraser: Your subconscious didn't see it.
• 21:42
  Kari Fraser: So when you do use your non-dominant hand for things and non-dominant leg, it's using a vast sphere of your brain that largely goes untapped.
• 21:57
  Carmen Hecox: I've never heard of that. I know that when I've tried to brush my teeth, I have an electric toothbrush, with my left hand and I make a mess all over my face.
• 22:08
  Kari Fraser: That's okay. You tried.
• 22:11
  Kari Fraser: You sent a signal to your non-dominant brain and fired up some neurons.
• 22:19
  Kari Fraser: That is only beneficial and helpful in other areas of your life.
• 22:23
  Carmen Hecox: And I think you brought that up and I'm going to just tap into that. think that that's something a lot of us take for granted or we tend to overlook is, I don't have a balance issue. I don't need to do what Kari just said because I don't have a balance issue. But that minute that we trip and we fall—
• 22:42
  Kari Fraser: And break things.
• 22:42
  Carmen Hecox: That's when we say, oh, I guess I do have a balance issue. And I think another thing that people need to remember is that I am not working out because I want to have abs or I want to have sculpted arms. I'm working out because I am treating my body. I'm giving it a treat.
• 23:03
  Kari Fraser: Okay, here's an indicator of how healthy you are. If you sit Indian style on the floor, can you get up by yourself or do you need to hold on to someone Or grab a piece of furniture.
• 23:22
  Kari Fraser: If you can get up on your own, you are a healthy person. 9 out of 10 people at my age can't do that. They need help from someone, or they need to hoist themselves up from the desk or the chair. That's a great indicator.
• 23:45
  Kari Fraser: And balance exercises are all over Google and YouTube.
• 23:50
  Kari Fraser: All over. I work with a balance coach named Kia Wellington at Joe's Gym. I don't want to have a hip replacement.
• 23:59
  Kari Fraser: That's 6 months recovery time. That's too much time out of the ring for me.
• 24:02
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 24:06
  Kari Fraser: But we take for granted, you know, of course, when you're 30, you know everything.
• 24:11
  Kari Fraser: You know, and you get to 60 and you realize, I knew nothing, nada. And then you have to relearn. And unfortunately, sometimes we make disastrous decisions.
• 24:31
  Carmen Hecox: But you know, Kari, you bring— you brought this up and I'm gonna tag on to it. I remember A couple years ago, we took my daughter to California Adventure, or is that what it's called?
• 24:43
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, California Adventure. And they have this room where they do some entertainment. You have to sit on the floor with your legs crossed. And there were people there that were in their early 30s and 20s, parents who couldn't get up, who needed assistance from someone else to get up from the floor. after sitting there with their children doing this Disney thing?
• 25:15
  Kari Fraser: I just don't know what to say. That shouldn't happen.
• 25:18
  Kari Fraser: They're too young. I mean, if I can do military pull-ups, so can you. You just start by hanging and pulling up to develop this muscle.
• 25:33
  Kari Fraser: And you pull, you just keep pulling. And every day you pull a little bit more until all of a sudden, that bar is right here. And you're like, I did a pull-up. Oh my gosh.
• 25:48
  Kari Fraser: It's repetition. It's commitment to yourself. See, I think there's an A whole movement going on where once a woman turns, I'm going to say 50, she's done with drama, BS, people who are not true people, and living a fake lifestyle that isn't her true soul. And that's when I think that you have to truly commit to you.
• 26:28
  Kari Fraser: And that's when you do that, your best version of you comes out.
• 26:34
  Kari Fraser: But I honestly, I don't see it in 30-year-olds. I don't see it in 40-year-olds. I still see everyone trying to be this, everyone trying to be that.
• 26:46
  Kari Fraser: When your true stardom, your true gift is your soul.
• 26:50
  Kari Fraser: And when you unleash that, you're unstoppable.
• 26:52
  Carmen Hecox: But I think that we have that ear to hear that message when we reach that age of 50, when the noise gets quiet. And we either have a clean ear or a clear ear where we can hear it, or We ignore it because it's so quiet.
• 27:19
  Kari Fraser: Well, that's from pre-programming all the way down to when you were a child, that, oh, women of my age don't do things like that, women of my age don't wear things like that. Why not? It's a free world, especially in the United States.
• 27:37
  Kari Fraser: I mean, Why not?
• 27:42
  Kari Fraser: If they're doing it, I'm gonna do it. If they're— if someone's doing an incline push-up, I'm gonna— I wanna try that.
• 27:52
  Kari Fraser: So, it's pre-programming from decades of decades of relatives telling, and society, especially there's tremendous ageism in Hollywood.
• 28:09
  Kari Fraser: Tremendous. And I just, I was not willing to sell my soul to the devil.
• 28:15
  Kari Fraser: And this whole anti-aging, ageism, longevity, pro-healthcare platform on TikTok and Instagram just came about because of what I was— I was really living what I was saying, what I was doing. But Don't limit yourself.
• 28:40
  Kari Fraser: That's cheating yourself. I mean, do you want to get to the end of your life and say, oh, I really wish I had tried this? Try it now, not tomorrow. Try it today because you don't know if you have tomorrow.
• 28:56
  Carmen Hecox: And that's why I admire people like you that are not afraid that yeah, there's going to be those naysayers out there, those horrible people out there that are going to say negative things, but you don't care.
• 29:11
  Carmen Hecox: You don't care because you know you're reaching that one woman who says, wow, check Kari out. If Kari can do it, why can't I do it?
• 29:23
  Kari Fraser: There's always going to be haters, but your haters are actually envious of you.
• 29:31
  Kari Fraser: They just have nothing to do. I've got a few haters. My daughter blocked them on Instagram.
• 29:39
  Kari Fraser: What are you going to do?
• 29:40
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. And you know, Brené Brown has said this many times, and it comes from Theodore Roosevelt.
• 29:47
  Carmen Hecox: Only pay attention to the people that are criticizing you that are in the arena Doing exactly what you're doing. Because anybody else, the spectators, screw them. They're going to talk, but they don't know how difficult it is to not feel well, but know that you need to get in that arena. You need to go box. You need to inspire people to get healthy.
• 30:17
  Kari Fraser: Health is wealth.
• 30:20
  Kari Fraser: I mean, you can have millions, billions now, trillions. But how are you going to enjoy it if you're not healthy?
• 30:32
  Kari Fraser: We take for granted you can get in a car and drive a car.
• 30:38
  Kari Fraser: Well, what do you need? Hand-eye coordination.
• 30:42
  Kari Fraser: Where do you think you get that? From exercise.
• 30:47
  Kari Fraser: Because it signals to your brain, if I hit right here, it's going to hit this person right here on the cheek.
• 30:57
  Kari Fraser: That is my brain traveling information to my fist. If I do, I don't know, 15 pushups really, really, really quick. What's going to happen? Heart rate's going to shoot through the roof. Now, when— this took me years to do that many, to do as many push-ups as I can do. And the one difference is I now no longer am out of breath.
• 31:31
  Kari Fraser: Consistency. Even if you just walk around your block for 5 minutes a day, you're exercising. You're moving.
• 31:43
  Kari Fraser: Your body will reward you.
• 31:49
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 31:49
  Kari Fraser: It just takes the smallest amount. I mean, I'm a savage. I box, I deadlift, I do Lagree, and I'm a runner. You don't have to— you don't have to do all that. Pick one thing you might think you'll enjoy. Drive yourself to the class. Try it. If it's not for you, try something over here.
• 32:15
  Kari Fraser: Or if you just want to walk, just walk.
• 32:21
  Kari Fraser: You know, there's the infamous 10,000 steps a day.
• 32:27
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-hmm.
• 32:27
  Kari Fraser: In boxing, it feels like 30,000 steps, but But that's a whole other conversation.
• 32:38
  Carmen Hecox: Kari, I am dying to ask, so are you boxing other women?
• 32:45
  Kari Fraser: No, I spar with my coach, and he pretty much does what George Foreman was famous for, which is kind of blocking you.
• 32:56
  Kari Fraser: And he laughs at me. He's like, that's all you got? Bring it on. And then it makes me mad, and then I just really go at it. But no, I am not boxing other women.
• 33:09
  Carmen Hecox: So, Kari, for the woman who struggles to get off the couch when she is binge-watching Netflix but has kind of like been on her phone and she came across you on Instagram or TikTok, What advice would you give her so that she can kind of start living the life that you're living, a healthy one?
• 33:36
  Kari Fraser: Get up off the couch, leave your phone at home, and walk around the block. See how you feel.
• 33:44
  Kari Fraser: Drink 2, just 2 extra glasses of water a day. And see how you feel.
• 33:53
  Kari Fraser: And I can guarantee you'll feel better just for those 2 simple things.
• 34:02
  Kari Fraser: Now, the next day, do the same thing.
• 34:05
  Kari Fraser: Walk maybe 10 feet more. Drink maybe another half glass, 2.5 glasses of water.
• 34:14
  Kari Fraser: I think where people get frightened And go back to their comfort zone is when it they their brain is saying this isn't safe, this is too much, you're going to get hurt. You're not. You're going to get better.
• 34:30
  Kari Fraser: You're going to get healthy.
• 34:32
  Kari Fraser: So my advice is don't be afraid to walk around the block. That's how you start putting one foot in front of the other. Believe it or not, you had to crawl before you could pull yourself up and then take your first steps and then run around the playground. And I started deadlifting to get better at military pull-ups.
• 34:58
  Kari Fraser: That's the reason. But then someone was doing bench press and I said, oh, I want to do that. And then someone was squatting with barbells. I said, I want to do that too. She's like, I can't keep up with you.
• 35:18
  Carmen Hecox: But I think that's good, Kari, because doing that one thing brought the desire to do this other thing, get curious about this other thing, and try this other thing.
• 35:30
  Kari Fraser: Because it's adapt or die.
• 35:32
  Kari Fraser: It could not be more clear.
• 35:37
  Kari Fraser: I mean, the one thing you can count on— the 3 death, tax, and change. And I think that that mind shift that you developed has made you relevant.
• 35:53
  Kari Fraser: I think it's made me approachable, but thank you for that compliment. You know, a lot of people think I'm a very big snob. And it's just that I have learned over time we have 2 ears and one mouth, and the more I listen, the more I learn. So I don't really speak unless I have something relevant to say or a question to ask. I try not To just to listen. I try to hear the person that I'm conversing with because you and I have completely different DNA and completely different ways of seeing things. And if I really, really listen, I'll probably learn something, and that's a bonus.
• 36:50
  Carmen Hecox: But I think that the one thing that you and I have in common is that We believe that we don't have a shelf life. As we get older, we become much more important and more relevant, and we are creating the best version of ourselves every single day.
• 37:15
  Kari Fraser: That's a really, really beautiful way to put it because you have to wake up in the morning and I think this is going to be a great day. I'm a great person and I can achieve my goals today. Whether you have a list of 3 or 10, you can get it done. And as far as your shelf life, who knows? I know the more quadricep muscle I build, that's going to keep my longevity going longer.
• 37:48
  Kari Fraser: Because it also, your big organ, the liver, when you start getting really active, it's like, oh, thank you. Now I can really start cleaning up your body and your inner organs thank you for it.
• 38:05
  Kari Fraser: So the healthier your inner organs are, the more they can keep you going.
• 38:12
  Carmen Hecox: Kari, where can people learn more about you, continue to receive your inspiration, and connect with you?
• 38:23
  Kari Fraser: My Instagram and TikTok handles are the same. It's The Real Kari Fraser, and it's K-A-R-I F-R-A-S-E-R. And I'm very good about responses. So if they have any questions, I'm happy to answer. And trust me, I may sound like I know a lot.
• 38:49
  Kari Fraser: I'm only beginning to learn. So I— take what I say with a grain of salt. It has just been the formula that has worked the best for me.
• 38:58
  Carmen Hecox: Keri, you look phenomenal. I love what you're doing. Keep doing it.
• 39:04
  Carmen Hecox: Don't give up. Thanks for coming on the show. I will include your handles down in the show notes and your PR firm if people want to grow their own brand presence.
• 39:12
  Kari Fraser: Brand business.
• 39:16
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah. I'll include that all in the show notes.
• 39:16
  Kari Fraser: Thank you, Carmen. It was very nice to meet you.
• 39:19
  Carmen Hecox: Nice meeting you too.
• 39:23
  Carmen Hecox: Thank you so much. Thank you. I hope this conversation with Kerri reminded you that it's not too late, you are not too And your next chapter does not have to look like anybody else's version of aging.
• 39:37
  Carmen Hecox: Remember that moment Kari shared about walking into the boxing gym and her coach wondering, what am I going to do with you? Well, now we know the answer. She became stronger, braver, more energized, and more herself. One workout, one choice, and one promise at a time. And that's the gift in today's conversation. You don't have to start with boxing.
• 40:01
  Carmen Hecox: You don't have to start with pushups. You can start by walking around the block, drinking a little more water, and even brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand to wake up your brain and challenge your balance. One small action today can move you closer to the strongest, most confident version of yourself. If you want to learn more about Kari Fraser, or connect with her, head on over to createthebestme.com/ep183, or you can find her information down below in the show notes. And make sure to come back next week for another amazing episode created just for you. Until then, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable. Of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.