MOTSI: BODY
DANCE star Motsi Mabuse has revealed she feels fit and fabulous at 40, after years of coping with the pressure to look a certain way as a dancer.
The Strictly Come Dancing judge admits her perception of a healthy body has changed constantly during her career but she has now decided: “I’m going to let my body speak to me – and I’m going to listen.”
Motsi, who celebrated her milestone birthday last week, said: “The competition world is not the best kind of space to be in for such a long time. It destroys the healthy way a body is supposed to be and then you get stuck with that mentality.”
It is something that has troubled her since childhood, with her weight fluctuating throughout her life. She added: “When I was a child everyone would say, ‘Oh my God, you’re so thin, so then I got a thing about being too thin. Then puberty happened and changes happen and everyone told me to lose weight so I got super thin again.”
She describes pictures of her from that time as “unbelievable” and said: “I couldn’t eat normal, I was crazy,” before she ultimately realised: “This is not good.”
The glamorous TV star and mum of a two-year-old daughter is now focused on getting the body that is right for her health and her mind. She said: “Now for me it’s just trying to find out who am I? I am a mum, a businesswoman, and all these other things. What is that supposed to look like?”
Motsi, who has been a judge alongside Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli since joining the show in 2019, is an ambassador for WW – the new name for Weight Watchers.
She initially lost some weight with the programme after giving birth to her daughter with dance partner and husband Evgenij Voznyuk but then lockdown happened.
Like many people, Motsi admits it has been a tough journey, with no face-to-face contact with family, including her Strictly dancer sister Oti, and the dance school that she runs in Germany having to close.
She said: “I felt paralysed. I had a lot of anxiety and then I had a kind of wake-up call of, ‘What are you about now?’
“So when I came back from Strictly I thought, ‘This lockdown is going to be different.’”
Since January she has lost 1st 4lbs by exercising five days a week and making changes to her diet such as switching chocolate for berries, taking her total weight loss with WW to 2st 3lbs.
Despite reaching 40, Motsi says she has no problem with ageing and actually enjoyed looking back at how much she has achieved in the last decade. She added: “I looked back to my 30th and everything that has changed – I’ve divorced and remarried, I’m a mum, I started working on television in Germany then working on television in UK, I have a business. It’s like woah!” Holding on to that sense of achievement and self belief is important, given the criticism that inevitably comes her way with being on screen. Motsi has