Life
IMPROVE YOUR MIND, BODY, RELATIONSHIPS & MONEY
The TV presenter opens up about her changing mindset towards exercise, enjoying the foods she loves, and following in Jane Fonda’s footsteps
22-pages of expert advice!
She’s renowned for her incredible physique and has been the UK’s poster girl for fitness since the noughties. And while Davina McCall has always been upfront about her health regime, these days she admits her approach has become less about having toned legs and killer abs and more about longevity.
ACCEPTANCE Davina, 56, tells Closer, “I’m not getting fit for my body or to impress people, I’m getting fit to stay alive longer! Exercise has become much more about health and being around for as long as I can. I have no least favourite parts of my body these days, which feels great.”
She adds, “I’ve got to the stage now where the way I speak to myself really matters. I look at myself, and even if I’m having a funny day or I feel a bit bloated, I’ll go, ‘Do you know what? You still look boss’. I’ve spent enough f ***ing time criticising myself and I am not going to do it anymore.”
How did that change come about? “It just felt the right time for me to say ‘stop’ whenever the negative thoughts came up, and Ibecame much more aware of them,” she says. “My constantly chattering inner critic has always told me that I’m not as smart as other people. Imay not read heavyweight literature, but I’m street-smart and Iknow a little bit about a lot of things and Iam smart. It’s about accepting myself as Iam, and it’s such a relief.”
As well as doing regular exercise like yoga, jogging and spin classes, Davina follows an intermittent fasting plan and she’s worked out which foods do and don’t work for her body using the ZOE programme [a personalised nutrition programme co-founded by Professor Tim Spector]. She says, “I stop eating at 8pm and start again at 10am, so it’s not that hard. I used to snack a lot at night, so it’s cut all of that out. Thanks to ZOE, I know what causes my glucose levels to spike, so I avoid those foods. Of course, I still have chocolate sometimes. Iwas on the mince pies, cream and brandy butter at Christmas and I always indulge at Easter, but it’s brilliant knowing what works for me.”
INDULGING
For her daily diet, the mum-of-three enjoys gut-friendly foods. Breakfast is a bowl of granola with kefir; if she’s on the go, lunch is a Pret-a-Manger salad, and her favourite dinner is a salmon miso ramen dish that she makes from scratch. “I mainly snack on nuts and I drink kombucha,” she says. “It took a while to get used to, but now I love it. I’m trying to cut out the Coke
