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Carla Hall: Authenticity is the key to joyful aging
At Newtopia Now, the celebrity chef and cookbook author shared her insights on reaching 60, finding your why and being a successful businesswoman. Read her insights.
7 Min Read
Bryan Beasley Photography
At a Glance
- After a certain age, people have to make changes to keep their bodies happy and healthy, Carla Hall said.
- Aging brings confidence, wisdom and authenticity, she told a Newtopia Now audience.
- At the age of 60, Hall loves herself and cares less about what others think of her, she said.
“At 60, so many parts of my body are changing: my hair, my skin, my outer body. My innards.
“What I can eat has changed. I woke up one day and my body just started rejecting some of my favorite foods.”
While many older women might make such comments, few are likely to express these sentiments with a huge smile on her face, as celebrity chef Carla Hall did last week at Newtopia Now in Denver, Colorado. Hall’s keynote address, “The Joyfulness of Aging Well with Carla Hall,” attracted dozens of women and several men to the Glow Stage on Aug. 26.
As she compared caring for an aging body to maintaining an older car, Hall bluntly described the physical changes she has experienced.
“In my 20s, I used to be able to eat a big, juicy burger with cheese dripping over it, french fries, a big, thick black and white milkshake,” she recalled fondly. “Now I have to plan it like a military operation, complete with strategic timing, backup antacids and a post-meal nap scheduled for recovery,” she said precisely, as knowing laughs spread through the crowd.
“My hamburgers have to be done no later than 2 p.m. I’m not a vegetarian, but after 2, I’m a vegetarian,” she added.
Never did Hall sound as though she were complaining, though. “Whether you have a new car or an old car, a new body or an older body, the constant is change—and I talked about an oil change, but the constant is change,” Hall said. “And the only way I know how to maintain my joy about whatever age I am is to accept and embrace the change.”
Carla Hall's shoes match Newtopia Now's pink on Aug. 26, 2024, in Denver, Colorado. Credit: Victoria A.F. Camron
What does Hall believe is the best aspect of her changing life?
“It's my wisdom. It's my hindsight. It's finally learning to value the failures or the lessons—what I am now calling the gifts—that I grew through, so I can honestly say that I'm excited about getting older,” she exclaimed. “At this age, I'm confident and wise enough to hire folks who are smarter than I am. I'm confident enough to put together a team where we rise like a box instead of a pyramid, with just me on the top.”
Baby boomers hold 70% of the disposable income in the United States, Hall said. But brands aren’t marketing to these adults, even as their needs change, she noted. As her body has trouble processing white flour and white sugar, Hall is looking for alternatives for her next cookbook, which focuses on baking.
“So, as I'm doing my book, I'm giving suggestions of different flours, rye flour, sorghum flour; you have rice flour, you have coconut flour, you have almond flour. There's so many, there's so many flours. The other thing is the different sweeteners, so not just white sugar, cane sugar. You have all of these other sugar substitutes: date sugar, maple sugar, you have all of these other sweeteners that are really interesting,” she explained with her Southern drawl.
“The other thing that I'm looking at when I make something is adding protein. Did you know that most women only have 63% of the protein that their bodies need? So, it's just to remind some of these brands to add protein into things,” she added.
Carla Hall interacts with the Newtopia Now audience during her keynote on Aug. 26, 2024. Credit: Victoria A.F. Camron
Being true to yourself
As a co-host on the food and lifestyle television show “The Chew,” Hall took some media training. “The media training was all about media training me out of me,” she recalled. “It’s like, ‘Carla, don’t play to the camera.’ ‘Share, but don’t share too much.’ ‘Have joy, but that’s crazy joy.’’’
That experience taught her to be her authentic self. “As soon as I became very clear on who I was and what I wanted to do, it was very much accepted. So, now, I’m doing exactly the same thing that I was doing maybe the first year of ‘The Chew,’ but I’ve owned it,” she said, adding that authenticity is required to be successful. “That, literally, is your job; that is your whole job in this lifetime.”
Rubino asked Hall how being authentic and loving yourself strengthens relationships in business and in life.
“If you are in business only to make money, you're not going to do well,” Hall replied. “When I have partnerships, I am looking for some true and real connection. Even when I am making something, when I'm selling something, when I'm licensing with somebody, is this something that I can stand behind?
“What is your why?”
Hall shared an experience of a company asking her to represent their hair-loss product. “Does it look like I’ve lost any hair?” she asked rhetorically. “So, I couldn’t honestly and with integrity, back this product or be a spokesperson for it.”
She also explained the “why” behind having a restaurant, which closed in 2017. “It’s the Southerner in me, that sense of having a table and having people ‘do drop in;’ the ‘do drop in’ factor of always having enough food at the house for people to drop in.
“That is my ‘why’ for a restaurant, it is not to make a lot of money. I mean, we are in business to make a profit. Don't get me wrong, we’re in business to make a profit, but it is a very real why,” Hall said.
After her keynote at Newtopia Now, Carla Hall visits with audience members, shaking hands, signing autographs and taking photos. Credit: Victoria A.F. Camron
Being successful at any age
Jessica Rubino, New Hope Network’s vice president of content, told Hall that she has inspired many people to think differently about aging from both the commercial and personal angles. Rubino asked when Hall first considered the connection between joy and aging.
“When I turned 40, I felt like I was going through this Alice in Wonderland door, and all of a sudden, I cared less about what people thought about me and what I wanted to do,” Hall replied. That expanded when she turned 50, but she’s quite pleased with what happened next.
“Sixty: The bucket of f-its gets real big, and it is so awesome,” she said. “It is knowing that and accepting that change and saying yes and loving myself where I am.
“There’s not a lot of messaging saying, hey, love yourself where you are. You have to be your own cheerleader. It’s not happening out there. You have to be your own cheerleader.
“I have wisdom that I didn’t have when I was younger, and which is more important, the body or the wisdom? For me, that’s the wisdom, because the wisdom can take you into another chapter and write new chapters,” she said.
Recently, Hall took a tumble as she walked on stage to give a talk. She owned it on that stage, telling that audience her fall was funny and laughing at herself. She’s posted the video on TikTok and Instagram.
At the end of that presentation, she asked audience members what the best part was. “You falling!” they told her. “Like I was Carol Burnett and I did it on purpose. But that's how you fall: You fall with grace and dignity and intention.”
All falls are beneficial, she said.
“It's not the fall, it's how do you get up and how do you proceed after the fall?” she explained. “A lot of times, we want the success, but we don't want to go through the challenges to get there. So, if it's a fall, the fall will benefit you, you know, because the fall is going to teach you something.”
Correction: This quote, “The media training was all about media training me out of me,” included an incorrect word when this article was posted. It was corrected on Sept. 13, 2024.
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