Celebrity bodies special
In a world where a woman’s currency seems intrinsically linked to her appearance, three Aussie celebrities share their journeys to self-acceptance.
Mel Doyle, Fiona Falkiner and Sandra Sully on how they learned to love their bodies
It’s often said that getting older brings on many changes. And television host and journalist Mel Doyle knows the truth of that statement.
The host and senior correspondent of the Seven Network’s flagship current affairs program Sunday Night says that during the past few years, she has become more aware of the subtle signals her body is giving her about health and wellbeing.
“I certainly feel that the older I am, the more aware I am that I need to take care of myself, and that’s not just eating well or exercising regularly in that more traditional sense of taking care of yourself,” says Mel, 47.
“I have noticed that I need to be a little kinder to myself, to listen to how I feel more. When I’m tired and running out of puff, I find I really need to be gentle, because I am all too aware I could fall over in a tired, messy heap and that won’t do anyone any good, especially me and my family.”
Married to husband John for the past 22 years and mother to two teenage children, Nick, 16, and Talia, 14, Mel has graced our small screens for decades, first as a reporter and then as the long-time host of Sunrise, the morning show that helped make her a national celebrity.
Now, in the latest phase of her career, she is both hosting Sunday Night and back on the road, spending as much time out of the country reporting and interviewing as she does at home.
And her new role, along with the pressure that it sometimes brings, has helped reshape Mel’s approach to health and happiness.
“I’ve come to a point in my life where I accept who I am and what I am,” says Mel.
“I’m not just talking about my body. I’m talking about everything. I know my strengths. I know my weaknesses. I know what I can do professionally in my job and what I am good at. I also know what I am not good at. I know who my friends are. I know what I get from them and what I give to them.
“I think I have become more content with myself and who I am. And I think that’s an important realisation. There probably wouldn’t be many women who don’t have moments when they wish they could change something about themselves or want some parts of themselves to be different. I’m content with who I am, how I look and how I feel. I’m more at home with myself than I have ever been.”
But that contentment is not without some lifestyle changes. Small changes, perhaps, but enough to make a difference in how she both looks and feels about herself. And it’s an approach that is founded on a simple single message: personal responsibility.
“If you don’t like something about yourself then the only person who can change that is you,” says Mel.
“Change it or live with it. Accept it or make a change. It doesn’t really matter what it is, whether it’s your shape or anything else in your life. Perhaps as you get a little older you have more confidence to do that and not worry about what other people think.”
Mel’s own moment of change came a few years ago while she was still on
Mel Doyle I needed to be kinder to myself
Sunrise. She’d been working strange hours, balancing a family and a career and suddenly realised she needed to make a change and lose some weight.
“It was only a few kilos,” she recalls. “But I was working shift work, with two small children and not exercising as much as I should have been. There are lots of women in that situation.
But mine happened to be more public.”
She started exercising, getting more sleep, looking after herself. And that was enough to shift those extra few kilos.
“It wasn’t a lot, just a couple of kilograms but it made a difference,” she says. “And that started something for me. Even now I try to go to the gym. I do weights because I hear a lot about bone density and bone strength, and frankly I don’t want to have tuck shop arms. I think some of that is driven by the need to look good − I like clothes − but that’s not the motivating factor. For me, it’s about being healthy and able.”
Today, she exercises regularly at home. “I have a treadmill at home,” says Mel. “I try to make sure that I do an hour a day if possible. However, that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Some days I just don’t have the energy and, as I said, I am listening to that now.
“When I am on the treadmill, I usually allow myself the time to get into a good TV series, something really meaty. I watch it on my iPad so I have a reason to stay there. And if I don’t have the energy for a run, then I just walk. I don’t feel guilty about it. I just say, ‘That’s all I’ve got today’.”
She also tries to get to the gym at least one or two days a week to lift weights. But that’s not about building muscle, but rather strength and endurance. The real benefit, says Mel, is the way lifting weights makes her feel. “I really like doing weights,” she says. “And that is something that
I have only picked up – quite literally, as it turns out – during the past few years. I like the feeling of being strong.
“I think probably the thing I love most about my body is that it is capable. I feel I can do things now. I can lift stuff. I can move things. I can paint a wall. I can move furniture.
I can pick things up. I like that.”
The truth is, of course, that Mel could probably always do that stuff. But, she says, when you are younger, you are less aware of your physical abilities simply because you don’t need to acknowledge them – they just are.
“When you’re young, you play sport, you swim, you ride your bike and then in your 20s, 30s and 40s, your focus changes and you switch to being a mother and concentrating on your work,” she says. “You’ve got little children and you’re working full time, as so many others are, and there’s not much time for you.
“I was never one to think all that much about my own wellbeing because I had so many other things to get through. But now, with my children growing up, I am beginning to reassess that,” she says.
“My priorities have changed. I want to be a good example for my kids. They are both healthy, they’re fit, they play sport. I want us to do that as a family. I want to be able to keep up with them on the ski slopes and pelt down the mountain with them. I don’t ever want to be that mum who just sits there saying, ‘I can’t do that, darling. Sorry’.
I want to be fit and healthy and capable.”
And for Mel, that doesn’t mean restrictive diets or kilograms of kale at every meal. It’s more about balance.
“Food is one of life’s great joys,” she says. “I’m not a kale eater. I need hearty food. I need proper food. I couldn’t do a liquid meal. And because I travel a lot I get to sample cuisine from all over the world, and that’s great. I love sitting down to a menu and just pointing, even if I don’t know what it is. There’s nothing I wouldn’t try.”
However, she is increasingly aware that her body may not be as indestructible as it once was. “My metabolism is probably not as fast as it was 20 years ago so there are days when I say to myself, ‘No I shouldn’t have that cheese’ but then there’s a part of me that loves cheese.
“So I try to be ... it’s those words: healthy and balanced. I try to have all the things I need to have, and some of the things I want to have. I don’t necessarily say no, but I probably don’t eat as much of it as I want.
That cheese board – dammit!”
Fiona Falkiner I thought if I could be skinny I’d be happy
In a strange way, it was the paparazzi that set model Fiona Falkiner free. The Biggest Loser contestant-turned-host was enjoying a day at the beach, and proudly wearing a bikini − something she was once afraid to do − when it happened.
“I was feeling really, really good,” recalls Fiona. “I put on my bikini and I thought, ‘yep − you got this’.”
Fiona, 35, was eating well and training hard. After a lifetime of raging against her body she’d found a balance and selfconfidence that had eluded her for so long. She and her friend lay down, took off their tops and bathed in the sun, unaware a photographer was lurking nearby.
“They’d shot me from every angle you can imagine. You know, all the rolls and cellulite and boob was out on display.”
A few years ago, photos like that would have sent Fiona into a downward spiral of binge-eating and self-hatred, but not now.
“I was angry, but I was like: you know what, this is me.
“I’m never going to have rippling abs. That’s not something that is achievable for me to have a happy, healthy lifestyle.”
It has been a hard-learned lesson for the girl who, at 22, took a chance on a reality television show that promised the weight-loss results she hoped and dreamed would bring her happiness in the form of a sleeker body.
“I thought if I could be like everyone else, if I could be skinny,
I’d be happy,” Fiona says.
“I believed all of my problems, all of my insecurities, everything in my life all had to do with my weight.”
She was accepted onto the show and recalls listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow when Network Ten flew her from Melbourne to Sydney.
“I thought, this is where it’s all going to change,” she says.
And it did. Fiona seized the opportunity and lost close to
30kg. She met a guy and made the permanent move to Sydney. It was summer, and she felt great.
“I was skinny for the first time ever,” she says. “You train so hard for so long and deprive yourself of things for so long that when you finish you’ve got this incredible body, and I was 23 and I was like: I just want to have fun.”
But the eyes of Australia were on her, and she felt the acute pressure to maintain her figure.
“It was incredibly stressful,” she recalls. “With eating and drinking I’d say, ‘I can’t eat that, I can’t drink that’. And people would say, ‘Don’t be silly, of course you can, look at you, you’re fine’. Then I’d freak out about what
I’d done and go running at night-time along Manly foreshore.”
The weight began to creep back on. Soon, Fiona was larger than when she went into the house. She was devastated and fell into a state of depression. She got to a point where she couldn’t get out of bed.
Fiona recalls, “I remember ringing my sister crying and just saying, ‘I don’t know what to do’.”
She unplugged from the world and booked herself into a health retreat where she learned to meditate. She returned with a healthier self-image.
From there, things started to turn around. Fiona began modelling, and after five years of success in Australia, set her sights on London. She was working steadily in the UK when
New York called. Then came the opportunity to host Biggest Loser in 2015, followed by The Biggest Loser: Transformed last year.
Now, Fiona believes a healthy self-image is paramount, and she works to spread this positive message. At a talk she gave recently, a woman broke down in tears, asking Fiona how she got to the point of selfacceptance. “There’s so much pressure,” the sobbing woman said.
“No one looks like that, and that’s the weirdest thing,” Fiona says of size 8 models. “There’s such a small percentage that actually fit that category. I hope and pray we just get more representation of every body type and body shape available.”
After all she’s been through she has come to learn that hating the one thing that is going to be with you for the rest of your life is pointless.
“This is my body and it doesn’t matter what people think of it,” she says. “It’s got lumps and bumps and wobbly bits and stretch marks and cellulite which have been with me since I was about 12 years old. They’re not going away ever. This is it.”
Learning to love herself has had other benefits, too − it also opened her up to romantic love.
“I think I felt from the beginning I didn’t believe that I deserved love,” Fiona says frankly.
“Just getting to a place of not caring what anyone else thought and being happy within myself allowed me to – yeah, fall,” she says.
Fiona met her partner Lara Creber in South America last year and the two have since moved in together.
“Honestly, if someone had said seven months ago that you’d have a girlfriend and she’d have moved in and you’d be happy and in love ... I would have laughed. It’s not something I imagined.
“I was on the hunt for something exceptional and I’ve finally found it.”
“From the beginning I didn’t believe that I deserved love.”