KERRE McIVOR

KERRE GOES ON THE RECORD ABOUT GETTING FIT AND FAB

Here we go again. When I was packing up the house before we sold it, I found a stash of Woman’s Weekly magazines spanning two decades, featuring me on the cover.

There were 10 to 15 of them, each featuring a Kerre, with curly hair in the younger days and blow-waved, straightened locks in the more recent years, but all with headlines proclaiming my latest weight loss. “Ten kilos lighter and I couldn’t be happier” was one. “Fit, fab and forty” was another – you get the general gist.

The stories inside told of my latest life-changing revelation – the Liver Cleansing Diet! Giving up booze! Kickboxing! Marathon running! The 5:2 Diet! – and they all quoted me resolving that this was it. I’d learnt my lesson and it was all about moderation, portion control, regular exercise and consistency and… honestly!

If you’re longtime readers of the Weekly, you must have thought, “Really, Kerre? Haven’t we heard this all before?” It’s a wonder I wasn’t hit by lightning when I was banging on to some poor journalist about how my latest fad and craze had changed my life forever.

And yet, here I am, back again, desperately hoping that the switch in my head that flicks me over into good and healthy habits will suddenly click on and get me out of my torpor. It’s not about looking good now that I’m in my fifties. It’s about being healthy and wanting to lay the foundations for going into my dotage fit. It’s about being able to keep up with the grandkids when they’re whizzing ahead of me on their scooters. It’s about not feeling puffed climbing up the stairs with the grocery shopping. It’s about not needing to use my asthma medication. And yes, alright, a part of it is to do with pride. Having my photo taken is part of my job – for NewsTalk ZB and the Weekly

– and I hate feeling selfconscious knowing that I’m going to be on a billboard or a poster, far bigger than I was last time the photo was taken. You just know people are going to think, “Crikey, she’s been grazing in a good paddock!”, or worse, “She’s let herself go, hasn’t she?”

And while it doesn’t matter, it’s chastening to realise that you have indeed let yourself go and it’s entirely your own fault. Well, actually to be fair, I do have a flatmate who is an excellent cook. Like, really, really good and I’m going to put some of the blame on him. I’ve hardly done any cooking since I moved in, and it’s such a treat to come home to delicious roasts, pastas and curries.

We enjoy hosting long Sunday brunches – out come the linen napkins, Champagne buckets, on goes the jazz and Les whips up extraordinary meals for our lovely friends. Food and entertaining are part of our lives and I don’t want to change that. But it’s time to get back into gentle exercise, and feel fit and strong again.

Les has a set of scales that are state-of-the-art. I call it the Cruel Disc of Unavoidable Truth.

It tells you everything you never wanted to know – including fat and muscle percentage, blood pressure – everything. It’s time to take that step onto those scales – one small step for woman, one giant leap into fit and fabulous – and start making the changes I need to make to keep up with the grandkids.

And this time, I promise, when I’ve finally reached my targets, there’ll be no more Weekly covers proclaiming my glorious weight loss and how this time, truly THIS time, it really is forever.

‘It’s about being healthy and wanting to lay the foundations for going into my dotage fit’