Sandra Sully Exercise is as important as sleeping and eating
Last year Sandra Sully woke up in the middle of the night feeling strange. About three weeks earlier, the 52-yearold veteran newsreader had had trouble reading the autocue, but she dismissed the problem. But as she got out of bed she found she couldn’t walk straight.
“I’d lost my balance,” she says. “I had to hold the wall.”
The next day she was troubled by a pressure point in her head. Her left arm went dead. She had to attend the Logies, where she mostly abstained from alcohol because she wasn’t feeling 100 per cent.
“The next day I just knew I wasn’t right. It took me forever to mouth a sentence and I just didn’t feel sharp.”
Sandra asked Hugh Riminton to read the news for her and immediately called her doctor and told him she needed an MRI. “I figured I was having a mini-stroke,” she says.
Sandra has worked as an ambassador for the Stroke Foundation, a cause that is close to her heart after her sister-in-law suffered a stroke at 38, and she knew she had to listen to her body. The MRI revealed white spots on her brain. She was getting migraines, but without the headache. It’s a health issue that is not unusual for women entering their 50s.
Women, Sandra believes, are more in tune with their bodies than men, but are also more likely to put their own wellbeing last, while caring for others first. To them she says: don’t wait until it’s too late.
“One of the things I’m really passionate about is women not putting themselves last,” she says.
Raised in a family that valued sport and exercise, Sandra has always been active. Before becoming one of Australia’s most trusted journalists, she worked as an aerobics instructor and on the pathway to a career in fitness. She used to teach classes for older women, and worked for Weight Watchers. This helped her understand fitness is about lifelong habits that keep your body in the best condition it can be.
“Being a mum with a house full of kids and two parents who work is extremely stressful. Maintaining flexibility and agility is important,” she says. “The more well-rounded, the healthier you are emotionally, psychologically and physically, the more you’ll be able to share of yourself and have a fuller and more well-rounded life.”
Sandra has a deep understanding of how the benefits of keeping active go beyond physical health. She has spoken candidly about a brutal assault in a carpark in 1997. She was getting out of her car when she was attacked by a gunman in a balaclava. He held a gun to her head and hit her. Terrified, and bleeding, Sandra screamed. Her assailant fled, leaving her shaken. While she was clawing her way back to health, Sandra found strength and solace in exercise.
“It’s always been my go-to place just for me,” she says. “It was really important to me. It just made me feel so much better.”
She tries to turn the scrutiny that comes with her public role into a positive thing. “You’ve got an extra incentive because you’re on show every day,” she says.
“I think there’s pressure on women and in our job because they see you before they hear you. Early on I learned to accept that it is a visual medium and I’m okay with that. I’ve also learned to accept I will never be Cindy Crawford. I will never be anyone other than me. So being the best me is as good as it’s going to get.”
It’s a lesson she is hoping to pass on to her adopted stepdaughter Mia.
“I always say to Mia, ‘it’s about who you are not what you look like. If you always focus on the exterior life’s too shallow.”