There’s a version of 40 we all envisioned when we were young. For Millennials, it might have looked something like compression socks, sensible shoes, an early bedtime and fiber supplements.
Which, funny enough, are all on trend now. But it’s not what Whitney Cummings had in mind.
“I kind of thought, by 40, I’ll start smoking,” she said. “I’ll be like a Florida lady who’s tan and shoplifting.”
Instead, she had a baby, overhauled her health and is declaring, with Hone Health, that it’s time to kill the midlife narrative entirely — the one that all too often treats your 40s like the credits are rolling.
“I’m not sure how they picked me, but I think maybe it was because I’m incapable of lying, and there’s a lot of con artists and charlatans in the wellness space,” she said of the partnership with the telehealth company, which raised $33 million in a Series A last year. “I don’t say something helps me if it doesn’t.”
Cummings, the 43-year-old comedian and actress known for her Comedy Central roasts of Donald Trump, Joan Rivers and David Hasselhoff — and the NBC sitcom “Whitney” — has built a career on never pulling a punch. Earlier this year, she took that same energy to New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to do what she does best, delivering a live, satirical eulogy for the word “midlife” itself.
Jokes aside, the bit had data behind it.
A Hone Health national survey of 1,000 adults ages 35 to 65 found that 73% feel positive about this stage of life and 71% believe their best years are happening now or still ahead. Still, 84% said negative aging language shapes their expectations for this phase, even when it contradicts their own experience.
“I feel like it’s just the beginning,” Cummings said. “Life kind of starts at 40. That’s when you can actually see clearly.”
For an admitted wellness skeptic — one who, as a broke 21-year-old, participated in pharmaceutical trials for cash — Hone Health passed the test.
“A company that was just reasonable, accessible, accurate — I was like, I’m in. This is what’s up,” she said of the platform, which offers personalized hormone optimization, longevity therapies and weight-loss medication.
There’s a personal origin story, though, one that has made Cummings devoted to her health. She watched both of her parents have strokes in their early 60s, and spent the better part of a decade as their caretaker, missing out on her mid-20s and 30s.
“I almost missed my ability to have a kid because I was taking care of my parents, because they didn’t take care of themselves,” she said.
Now, as a mom herself, she is resolute not to repeat the cycle. It began with a realization that the body is the most important home you’ll ever own, and looking at it as a financial investment.
“I saw the amount of money that I spent on my parents when they were sick,” Cummings said. “Doing this now is going to save me so much money down the line in medical nonsense.”
She shares her protocols: sauna three times a week, red light therapy, cutting out soda and sugar — but none of it ever gets too extreme.
“If the protocol stresses me out, it’s undoing whatever benefits of the thing,” she said. “The worst thing for all of us is stress, and the wellness space stresses me out. So that’s completely anathema to the whole point,” Cummings said.
That goes for the powders, too. “It’s a lot of powders, guys — let’s just eat,” she said.
She practices true functional fitness — strength training, doing squats throughout the day and picking up her Great Dane Pitbull a couple of times a week.
Preparing. Just in case.
“I’m doing this for when there’s a meteor,” Cummings said. “I can carry my son and my dog and run to the car. I want to be useful in a chaotic, scary scenario.”
There’s the mindset shift, as well. “So much of how we feel is how we feel about how we feel, or how we expect to feel,” she said. “I refuse to perform that ’40s is old,’ and I think that’s a big part of the way we talk about ourselves. Our body hears it, our body knows.”
At 43, she has never been more certain of what she wants.
“I’m my favorite version of myself now,” she said. “When I was in my 20s and ‘young,’ I was a mess. Now that I’m cool, I want forever.”
