What do posting bikini pics at 56 and being a doctor have in common? Both can be “an inspiration,” says Dr. Jen Ashton, former GMA3 chief medical correspondent, OB-GYN, obesity medicine specialist and nutritionist. When Ashton started posting her progress photos on Instagram, that’s what many women told her she was. “That word is just gold, because that’s why I became a doctor,” she explains.
Her photos don’t hide what it’s like to age as a woman, but they also show the power of what spending six months focusing on getting stronger and healthier can do. Getting into the best shape of her life didn’t mean Ashton lost weight – in fact, she gained six pounds. But Ashton now likes what she sees in the mirror and feels stronger than ever. “And that’s just contrary to our thinking in general,” she says.
When Ashton quit her job as chief medical correspondent and co-host of GMA3 in June 2024, she embarked on what she calls an “experiment” to age better and become healthier and stronger. She then created a road map for other women to undertake their own fitness and nutrition challenges. “Challenges can be failed,” she says. “You can’t fail an experiment because the point is to learn; you’ll always learn something.” She educates women about their health, as she always has, through her newsletter and wellness brand Ajenda (which you can now read on Yahoo), and offers the Wellness Experiment program to put her advice into practice.
It might seem like a major career pivot for Ashton, but this is a natural next step for her. She has spent her entire professional life helping people, especially women, live healthier lives. And now she’s doing it live and direct, sharing expertise from her work in medicine and science communication, along with her own experience of being fit in her 50s.
How did it get here?
“My career in television has been nothing short of miraculous,” says Ashton. “I never planned or tried to have this kind of career – it just kind of happened and evolved, but I’m very proud to say that I’ve reached the pinnacle of what I could achieve in my role.”
Ashton wanted to become a doctor to empower people to improve their health, which she did as an OB-GYN for six years. The opportunity to work in television came out of the blue after friends in the industry suggested she would be great in front of the camera, Ashton told Columbia College Today. What began as a weekend appearance on Fox evolved into a three-year stint as the network’s first female medical talk show contributor. He then moved to CBS News and eventually landed at ABC, where he was chief medical correspondent and co-host. Pandemic: What you need to know. “In those days, we really put a stake in the sand and said to our producer and the network, ‘We have to have the honesty to say what we know,'” Ashton says. “Science isn’t black and white; it’s much more nuanced than that, and I like to give that nuance to people.”
Ashton used his skills to explain everything from pandemics to foodborne illness and wildfire smoke to millions of American viewers as a TV correspondent. She discovered she had a knack for communication and learned a lot by covering so many disparate health issues. But after 18 years of doing the widest coverage possible, Ashton wanted to focus. “All I want to talk about is what I’ve accredited,” she says. “When I stepped down from that role, it was almost entirely because I felt I had more work to do.”
She decided to devote her full attention to the Agenda, publishing articles that cut through the noise around women’s health, obesity and nutrition issues. “And it just so happens that these are literally the biggest topics in the country right now,” Ashton says.
The turning point
While growing the Agenda, Ashton was beginning her own personal wellness journey. “Even though I was going to the gym five days a week, I wasn’t in shape,” she explains. “I knew because I’d be at a party and I’d be dancing and I’d be out of breath. Or I’d look in the mirror and see an image of someone who was, as I call it, ‘skinny fat.’
Ashton called in an expert to help her find a fitness routine to see if, combined with her own nutritional expertise, her tone and stamina could be restored. With the help of personal trainer Korey Rowe, her experiment worked in spades. And in response to her social media posts documenting the process, “literally tens of thousands of women asked me to share what I was doing with them,” Ashton says. So she did, creating a wellness “experiment” with Rowe that includes a fitness regimen, meal plans, Q&As with Ashton herself, video content, and a community forum. It got its members moving and helped Ashton do something she couldn’t do on network television: interact directly with the women in her audience.
Ashton’s “Ins” and “Outs” for Better Aging
Out: universal health tips
One of the reasons Ashton is eager to reach out to people is that she’s tired of social media — and even mainstream media — painting health with too broad a brush. She’s frustrated by “influencers who really capitalize on people’s interest or need or desperation to improve their health and, in my opinion, are dishonest in science communication by suggesting there’s only one way to do something,” Ashton says. That’s why she frames her approach as an experiment. She shared what worked (really, really well) for her, but stresses that each person needs to test for themselves and make changes accordingly. “See how you feel. Make those observations. What did you learn? What do you want to throw away? That, for me, is the sweet spot,” says Ashton.
In: Staying Curious
As Ashton notes, it’s common for women to hit a weight and fitness plateau in their 40s or 50s, due in large part to the hormonal changes of menopause. It’s easy to get stuck, especially without guidance on what to do differently—something Ashton has experienced herself. “If you don’t have curiosity and an open mind” to try new things, “you’re not going to move the needle on your own health,” she says.
Out: The all-or-nothing theory of well-being
Carnivorous diet. Heavy lifting. Herbal only. Just cardio. If you consume health and wellness content, you’ve likely heard one, if not all, of these one-item practices touted for solving everything from weight gain and menopause to back pain and more, with studies supporting the benefits of each. “It’s literally cherry-picking your data points to get your message across, and I’m fundamentally against that mentality,” she says. She is particularly annoyed by advice that says women should only lift weights and should never do certain types of cardio. “Early women got the message that all they had to do was zone two cardio, and now there are other bigger voices saying, ‘No, you have to do HIIT cardio,'” Ashton explains. “And guess what? You need both. But the moderate gray area doesn’t get clicks and follows, and I just think that way of living needs to go.”
In: Aging with Vitality
Ashton doesn’t care for the term “longevity, because it’s not just about how long we’re on the planet,” she says. Instead, she hopes to see and promote a greater focus on vitality and the cessation of age. “I think we’re already starting to see that 60 is the new 40, 70 is the new 50, and I think that’s great,” she says. It’s not just about people looking younger than they are, it’s about living as they are and extending their health span. To achieve that, she says, there’s more work to be done in preventing diseases that affect women as they age, noting that heart disease doesn’t just affect men. She also suspects that using GLP-1 drugs for maintenance and prevention—not just weight loss—could become an important part of the women’s health equation.
Out: being glued to a smartphone
“This is nothing earth-shattering, but I think the whole planet — and certainly our country — is now seeing that screen life, technology life, is not only suboptimal, but harmful in many ways,” says Ashton. Amidst teenage angst, tech neck and short attention span, she ended up living on a smartphone. The good news is that Ashton believes change is on the way. “I think we’re already at the beginning of that pendulum back to real-life experiences and analogy,” she says.