Davina at 52: “I’m more body confident now than I was at 18”
TV presenter Davina McCall on her at-home workouts, cooking quick, simple meals and feeling fab in her fifties
Forget 5am gym sessions, thousands of squats before bed or gruelling workouts, the secret to Davina McCall’s trim figure is a lot more basic – and (thankfully) you don’t need to leave the house!
“I have a demanding career and home life, so I work out no more than three times a week, usually to the videos on my website Own Your Goals. I’ve got everything on there – Pilates, yoga, HIIT, dance,” says the 52-year-old TV presenter. “My motto is to exercise when you can, enjoy it and try to be nice to yourself. There are so many things that we get stressed about – ‘I haven’t hit my water quota! I haven’t reached my target of 10,000 steps a day!’. Just relax, and don’t turn it into a stick to beat yourself with.”
Davina – who is mum to Holly, 18, Tilly, 16, and Chester, 13, with ex-husband Matthew Robertson – admits she’s proud of her body but says keeping fit is only part of why she exercises. “Working out relieves stress in a huge way. I’ve got a lot going on in my head at work and with my three teenage kids, so even when it’s hard to fit in exercise, it’s the one thing I try to keep doing.”
HEALTHY DIET
Davina’s balanced approach to her fitness regime goes for her diet, too. “Sometimes I’ll have bangers, mash and beans with the kids and I really enjoy that,” she says. “We always have a roast every Sunday, and if
I’m dashing around I might have a salami sandwich with tons of butter or one of those instant packet noodles. But I don’t feel bad about it, because the vast majority of the time I eat really well. Home-cooked food is a gift you give to yourself. I love quick and easy meals, so I’ll have pepper, onion and chicken in fajita sauce with brown rice, or I’ll fry some chickpeas and have them with iceberg lettuce, houmous, sweetcorn and red onion.”
The former Big Brother presenter has also long spoken about the benefits of not eating refined sugar, and says she has become stricter recently and feels better for it. She says, “I haven’t had chocolate or sweets since January because I fell off the bandwagon a bit recently and it doesn’t make me feel good. After eating it, I would feel sluggish and bloated, my skin would be spotty and my tummy would just kind of pop out. I feel much better without refined sugar in my diet.”
LETTING GO
Despite being 52, the star is far from hankering after the body she had in her youth. In fact, Davina, who stunned viewers back in 2005 when she stripped down to a bikini to interview a contestant on Big Brother, says she feels more comfortable in
her own skin than she did three decades ago. “When I think about my body confidence it’s probably at an all-time high in comparison to how I felt when I was 18, when my body was at its very peak,”she reflects. “It’s a weird thing. Body confidence has nothing to do with what your body actually looks like and everything to do with how you feel. I looked better when I was 18, but I care less about what other people think now. I never get nervous wearing a bikini – you just have to let it go otherwise you’d get really self-conscious.”
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
It’s been a tough few years for the star, who divorced her husband of 17 years, Matthew Robertson, in 2017. She’s now dating celebrity hairdresser Michael Douglas, who Davina describes as her “best friend” after knowing each other for over 20 years.
And Davina is marking a new chapter in her personal life. She’s sold her former marital home and is in the process of building a house for her and her kids. “It’s probably everybody’s dream, isn’t it, to have a home exactly the way you want it,” she says. “So I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to build one from scratch?’. I did think that perhaps I should have made a documentary out of the process, but I decided against it. I know I will probably have a breakdown along the way and I’m not ready to share that with Britain!”
By Kirsty Nutkins
● Davina is fronting WellFest, in association with Nature's Bounty. Visit Wellfestuk.com for info
‘I care less what other
people think now’