I think it’s harder to be body confident at 30 than it is at 50.
At 50, it’s an inside job because you stop thinking ‘I’ve got to be perfect’ or ‘I’ve got to look like something else.’ Instead, you just like yourself a bit more warts and all, and know who you are. When you’re a bit more accepting of yourself as a person and of what you’re good at or not as good at, that seeps out, and you can look at yourself and think ‘I know I’m not perfect, but I like myself. I’m okay.’
Make sure you surround yourself with hype women. I’m lucky to have a really nice group of friends and we just big each other up all the time
I’ve got my gang of hype women because life’s tough enough on the outside, you don’t need people who are going to make you feel awkward about yourself around you. And also really watch people’s faces when you tell them some good news about yourself. Surround yourself with people who are happy for you to be successful.
Having a fringe is really helpful for covering my crepey forehead.
When I did botox in the past, I stopped looking like me a bit. The one bit of botox I do like, is on frown lines between my eyebrows. I haven’t got it at the moment, but when I did, I liked it because I could still express myself and look annoyed or sad, I just didn’t look cross. Losing anger lines is very different from losing laughter lines though, and if I haven’t got my laughter lines, I just don’t feel like I look like myself. It’s similar with my big nose: I’ve got a big nose, but I like my big nose, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But that wasn’t always the case; I got called something on twitter once and it bothered me. Now I’m so glad I didn’t change it. It worries me sometimes when I see people making big cosmetic decisions quite young because I think they might just grow into it, and into liking whatever they’re changing.
I tried to do as much cardio and HIIT as possible when I was younger, but now it’s all about weights.
People always think I work out for hours at a time, but I actually exercise 3-4 days a week, for a maximum of an hour, but usually 45 minutes. I don’t do any HIIT or anything where you’re trying to do as many reps as possible because I get so competitive with myself that I don’t think about form enough and I really need to think about form. I love strength training. I try to do half an hour of running, which I can do anywhere, and then I’ll do 20 minutes of strength training. I often wear a weighted vest for squats, lunges, and jump lunges, and take weighted gloves everywhere to improve my grip strength. Bands are also a really good way to up the ante on any work out, and they’re so light that I can just pop them in the suitcase if travelling. I’ll just go on my online fitness platform, Own Your Goals, and put in what equipment I have and how long I want to work out for and follow that.
It’s hard eating enough protein after 45
I’m literally eating more than I probably would like to to maintain muscle because it’s so hard to eat enough protein after 45 to maintain muscle strength. Everyone’s very anti protein shakes at the moment, but at my age, you have to get enough protein and it really helps me on that front. I’ll also add collagen powder to my tea every day and have taken the Ancient + Brave True Collagen (£29.99, ancientandbrave.earth) one forever, their packaging is absolutely beautiful and the product amazing. At night, I take Magnesium Glycinate, which my daughter, who’s a dietician, recommended. I also take vitamin D3 for my immune system. Primarily, though, I like to get as many nutrients as I can through my food. The best thing to make you better is food, so I eat really healthily. I try not to eat refined sugar, I try not to eat white anything, I eat lots of sourdough and fermented foods, and I eat very little pasta or stodge - I’d rather eat a loaded salad than a sandwich as I can get lots of variety from a salad. I also love having two coffees in the morning by Grind - I have their coffee pot, and I use their decomposable coffee pods. Michael [Davina’s boyfriend] and I will go and sit outside with our coffee if it’s the weekend, come rain or shine. We sit under the covered area and watch the rain and drink our coffee.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve done less and less to my skin.
I don’t do face masks, no lights, no red lights, no facials. I love a sauna, and one of my best friends has promised me that next year she’s going to teach me to cold water swim. We’re going to start in January. But overall I’m so low maintenance I just have my staples. One is the Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water All-in-1 (£9.99, boots.com), which I’ve used for decades. I’ve also stayed faithful to the Garnier Vitamin C Daily UV Brightening Fluid Glow SPF50+ (£12.99, garnier.com) which is so easy to use. I sometimes look at younger women spending an hour doing all this stuff with all these creams and think ‘what are you doing?’. Then if they get spots or irritated skin, they try to solve by buying yet another product they’ve seen on TikTok. I just think do less and less and you get more and more when it comes to skin.
I’m not very good at being mellow.
I love doing stuff and being active or socialising. I guess my daily bath is the closest I get to it, and if I’m in a hotel and I don’t have a bath, I don’t know what to do with myself, how to chill. I always put Badedas (£4, boots.com) in my bath. It looks like nuclear waste, and I don’t know what’s in it - but the smell is so reminiscent of my childhood and it makes me feel at home.
Another scent I’m devoted to is Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 (£115, cultbeauty.co.uk), which is amazing. I’ve been wearing it for years, and I’ll get into a lift and someone will say ‘you smell good.’ People literally stop me in the street to ask about it. Sometimes I’ll also wear Michael’s scent on my wrist, so if I think about Michael I smell my wrists, and I’m fine.
The biggest challenge when I got to peri-menopause was knowing what it was
I was having occasional night sweats alongside a low mood and flatness and anger. I would get angry with the kids and I would shout and think ‘what are you doing? You never shout’ and then cry and apologise. It wasn’t happening every day but it was enough for me to get very scared. I didn’t understand what was going on and my brain went to mush. I lost three years of my life wandering in no man’s land. I wondered where my joy had gone. At that point, I thought if someone told me to take HRT I’d get breast cancer, I thought that was an absolute dead cert. I went and did a lot of due diligence, and read a lot and met some experts before realising that wasn’t the case. My new revised edition of Menopausing covers all this and there’s a lot on cancer, too, because I realised women with cancer are screaming out for help during the menopause.
