She embodies the energy of a Duracell bunny crossed with a gym bunny. And yet, says Davina McCall: ‘I wasn’t always exercise lady. I wasn’t A-team at school ever. I wasn’t brilliant at sports. I wasn’t the kind of bouncy, get-into-everything, on-all-the-top-teams, on-the-athletic-field-at-school-on-sports-day [type].’
So how did her name become synonymous with fitness? As she said on stage at the The Longevity Show, it’s really about finding your own personal motivation.
Speaking at the women’s health summit at London’s Tobacco Dock, she shared how: ‘I’d go to the gym occasionally before I had kids. But I was the type that would read a magazine on the stepper. The gym I used to go to, the Wasps rugby team used to train in there, too. I would only work out properly if they were in. Then I’d put the magazine down and suddenly put some weight into it and suddenly wouldn’t be able to walk for five days.’
That motivation may have worked in the short term, but after the birth of her second child she found a deeper drive. ‘I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I am definitely not bouncing back here,”’ she said. ‘But after I’d had my second baby, I got fit for me… It’s not to get bikini-body ready, it’s for my own kind of sanity. And then fitness took on a new meaning. It wasn’t about being thin; it was about feeling good inside my head and inside my body. And that had benefits outside as well. I looked better, but it was more about how it made me feel up here.’
‘We’re bombarded with unrealistic images and expectations – even I get confused,’ agrees qualified personal trainer Kate Rowe-Ham, an expert in menopause fitness and author of The Longevity Solution. But being fit isn’t the same as being thin, she says. And a desire to slim down is unlikely to provide the staying power necessary to hold you to a fitness programme. Instead, she says, you need to dig deeper and identify your own, very personal and more profound motivation.
In Kate’s case, she says: ‘I want my teenage daughter to know she doesn’t ever have to feel the need to shrink herself,’ she says. ‘I want her to know that being strong is cool. Equally, my mum’s 75. She says, “At my age, I just want to drink what I want, eat what I want to eat, do what I want.” And I get that! But how do you want to feel in those remaining years? Strong enough to really enjoy them?’
That’s a powerful motivation, and one that’s likely to keep you working when things get hard. As for Davina? ‘I work out, I do the best that I can…. It is hard, but I’m living my best life. And on the other side, we can all behave wholly inappropriately and no one can really tell us off because we’ve earned it.’