I’m 54 with a 35-year-old body. It all started because I gave up drinking

How I gave up for good

It was December 2017 and I’d been out on Friday night for a friend’s birthday and got carried away. I woke up the next day with a dreadful hangover and thought: ‘This is it. I’m done.’ The next night I had already arranged to go to a Christmas party, so I thought I’d have a drink for the very last time and then stop. Enough was enough.

One of my closest friends had trained to do Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT). I’d never really heard of it but she described it as a bit like hypnosis. I said: “I need your help, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this on my own.” Actually I begged her. She gave me a session. I knew I was quite good at being hypnotised as I’d given up smoking that way, but it only works if you really want to stop. I had one session and came out with a tape which I listened to for 21 days. She taught me that my body is really precious, it was really quite powerful.

The hardest milestone

Giving up alcohol completely wasn’t easy. You go down the pub and the whole pub is drinking and you just want to join in. You feel like you stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t peer pressure – my gorgeous friends would support me no matter what – but I just felt uncomfortable. You go to a pub to drink, don’t you? It felt very odd at first, but I didn’t let that stop me, you just have to keep going until you get used to it and eventually it feels normal.

Christmas came along; usually I’d have a glass of Champagne at 11am, then a glass of wine with my Christmas dinner, then more wine. So it was a big change. I tried a few posh non-alcoholic drinks, and even though they’re nice enough, there was something missing. Again, I just got through it. The only way you are going to succeed in anything is to push yourself and eventually you get used to it.  

But actually the hardest milestone was six months later – going on holiday. Before we’d stay in a lovely hotel, get ready after a gorgeous day in the sun, go down for pre-dinner drinks at 5pm then have more drinks with dinner, then go listen to some nice music in a bar and have another drink. That was our routine, every day. So suddenly we’re on holiday, we’re going down for drinks and I’m thinking: “Hang on, what am I going to do?” But somehow I kept my resolve, rather than thinking maybe I should just try and have one drink again, something stopped me. At that point I thought, ‘I’ve done it.’ 

How fitness took over

It turned out giving up alcohol was just the beginning. I’ve always been into fitness and I started studying to be a personal trainer. I built a gym in my garden to do one-to-one training with my clients and for my family to use it. 

At that time, my own fitness regime was mainly running and lighter weights. But because I was in menopause I wanted to make my body strong both inside and out to deal with all the hormone changes. Menopause lowers oestrogen and testosterone levels, which are essential for muscle maintenance. So when I was 50 I started to lift proper weights.

I began weight training with the progressive overload technique, which means very slowly and surely increasing the weights, reps or sets. It’s putting more stress on your muscles which forces them to break the muscle fibres and grow back stronger.