A lifestyle that offers food for thought
REPORTER DAVIDMEDCALF CAUGHT UP WITH BRAY RESIDENT ILONA MADDEN WHO HAS CONVERTED FROM BEING A PIZZA-LOVING VEGETARIAN STRUGGLING WITH HER WEIGHT TO BECOME A LEAN ADVOCATE FOR SENSIBLE EATING – COMPLETE WITH MEAT
BRAY resident Ilona Madden will never make a politician. Planks in the Madden manifesto would include legislation to ban chips from the national menu – there goes the McDonald’s chomping youth vote for a start.
And Ilona’s suggestion that sugar should also be prohibited will not go down well with jam guzzling elder citizens such as the reporter from the ‘People’. She dismisses with a laugh the notion that she might really be tempted to run for high office on a ticket of improving Ireland’s diet.
She is nevertheless keen to have ideas for reducing consumption of chips or of sugar or of highly processed cooking oils discussed and promoted. She will be to the forefront in leading the debate when she gives a talk on nutrition at the public library in Bray on December 7.
The timing of her appearance is challenging, coming just as many households are gearing up to enjoy the great fat and sugar spree which is the Irish Christmas.
Ilona is no killjoy but the opening shot in her approach to the Yuletide festival is her observation that there is no need for anyone to eat a boxful of Quality Street on the big day.
It’s a fair point and particularly relevant against a background of rising levels of obesity and diabetes.
Ilona Madden first came to wider attention early in 2014 when she celebrated her 50th birthday with a 50 kilometre run.
The idea was to raise money for a good cause but also to highlight the quest for good health and a balanced diet.
She gave up endurance athletics soon afterwards but, as her 55th birthday approaches, she is keen to keep the conversation going.
Given that she looks more like 34 than 54, she likely may have something of interest to say. Ilona – the name sound unusual to Irish ears. ‘I am German,’ she says, shades of her native country evident in her immaculate English, ‘from near Stuttgart and I am twenty-two years in Ireland.’
She met her husband Peter Madden in Germany when he was one of many people who departed from Ireland during the bleak times of the eighties in search of work.
She recalls growing up inspired by her late father who died last year at the age of 78.
Family life was a cosmopolitan experience for his young daughter as he worked for railway companies around the world.
His offspring were enrolled at a series of international schools and education also included a few eye-opening years in Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in Africa.
He was a sportsman who continued to compete as a gymnast into old age and he always pushed his offspring to be active.
Ilona did not follow him into the gym but showed an aptitude as a girl for athletics, particularly middle-distance running.
A road accident where a drunken driver ploughed into her car, leaving her with a bro- ken neck, did not deflect her from enjoying the track work.
She was 23 at the time of the crash: ‘It was pretty scary but the broken bone did not go through the spinal cord. I was grateful to survive and not be paralysed.’
What eventually drove her away from sport was a stint on the staff of a hotel where the long hours were not compatible with training.
She met her husband to be while he was working as a teacher of English and she was receptionist at the school.
The couple were married in Germany and expected that they would remain there though Peter hankered to return to Ireland.
His wish came true in 1995 when he secured employment in the financial sector which was poised to spawn the Celtic Tiger.
His bride joined him full-time the following year and was more than happy to stay: ‘I loved Ireland straight away.’ Being bi-lingual helped her find a job with a delivery company at a call centre in Tallaght, dealing with often irate customers whose goods had gone astray.
‘I am much more polite now to people in call centres,’ she reveals wryly. She switched career from answering phones to organising tours for German holiday makers coming to Ireland.
It was high-pressure work, requiring constant attention to detail, so she looked for an outlet away from the stress.
She decided to study art, signing up for a parttime course in visual art at the college in Dun Laoghaire. The side-line carried its own stresses as she did not fit in easily with the abstract obsession current in the art world at the time.
Drawing – plain and simple drawing – was the foundation of her love of art and she stuck to her guns: ‘I don’t have to explain why I paint an aubergine.’
So it is that home in Bray is enlivened not only by bright canvases of aubergines and other still life subjects but also by portraits of the various dogs who have shared the house.
A busy tour guide, a committed student, she certainly had no time available to return to the sports she had abandoned as a 25-year-old.
She now laments the lifestyle she pursued, which was characterised by bad food washed down by copious amounts of coffee.
It was an existence which began to take its toll. She noticed that the weight began to pile on as she hit the 40 mark.
Whenever a few extra pounds had been a problem in the past, she took the radical step of fasting for a day or even two days.
But now she found that going without meals did not solve the problem.
It was time to take a comprehensive look at how she was caring for her body.
Many people arrive at the same crossroads and then carry on regardless but Ilona set a sterner and more productive example.
She began running as an activity which was flexible and which re-introduced her to the fellowship of club athletics, at Kilcoole AC.
Her father ran his first marathon at the age of 50 but she could not wait past 46, completing the Dublin classic in 2009.
She marked the half century with the well-publicised 50 kilometre run, from Bray to Sandymount and back again.
The route followed the DART, so that friends and supporters were able to join her for sections of the journey and then hop onto a train.
The inspired birthday stunt pulled in thousands of euro for a good cause, supporting neighbour Martin Codyre and his quest to find a remedy for paralysis.
The return to physical exercise in her forties soon convinced Ilona that she needed to improve her diet.
‘I was actually vegetarian from the age of 25 – but not a very good vegetarian,’ she smiles. ‘Pasta and pizza. I don’t think it was healthy.’
Meanwhile, sugar was playing merry hell with her mood: ‘I would eat something sweet and get an insulin hit but then it dropped. I was the “Hangry” person, getting really narky. I could be really grumpy.’
She resorted to what she calls a paleo diet – the sort of food which might have been eaten in the Stone Age by our Palaeolithic ancestors.
A month of this primitive protein-and-seeds, left her ready to embrace a new sugar-free, croissant-free, corn oil-free regime.
Her only admitted vice these days is a continued fondness for chocolate – the really dark stuff, of course. From being a vegetarian (out of sentimental concern for animals) she has become a modest meat eater while declaring war on any food she feels is highly processed.
Acquaintances think she must be on a ‘diet’ but this is no faddy caprice which she will drop once target weight is reached.
‘I love good portions. I just don’t eat the sugar and I have cut out certain fats, such as refined oils, so I no longer eat chips any more. And when I say no to chips, it is not the weight I am worried about but what they do to my arteries.’
She reports the better she eats, the more her outlook on life has improved: ‘I wake up in the morning and I am buzzing. I don’t need coffee.’ Along the way, she has backed out of serious running – but not serious dog walking with two frisky collies – in favour of kettlebell weight lifting.
And she took a nutritionist qualification at the Irish Institute of Nutrition and Health in Bray.
This opened the way for a spell on the staff of Doctor Eva Orsmond – formerly of ‘Operation Transformation’ fame – which left her convinced that diet is the secret to combating the rise in diabetes.
On the day of the newspaper interview she had porridge with coconut milk, nuts and fruit (including blueberries and grapes) for breakfast. Lunch comprised chicken with a salad and grated vegetables. More chicken followed in the evening, this time with Brussels sprouts.
I WOULD EAT SOMETHING SWEET AND GET AN INSULIN HIT BUT THEN IT DROPPED. I WAS THE ‘HANGRY’ PERSON, GETTING REALLY NARKY. I COULD BE REALLY GRUMPY