Speaker 1: Welcome to Healthy is your podcast from Body and Soul.
Speaker 1: I am your host of Felicity Harley. To celebrate summer,
Speaker 1: we're dropping our top healthiest episodes of the year, the
Speaker 1: ones you love now Wow you listeners adore Lizellas. This
Speaker 1: episode went so well we did drop it back in
Speaker 1: January where she was hosting Gladiators and the former netball legend.
Speaker 1: She's actually the most capped Australian netball player in history.
Speaker 1: Liz discusses how she unwittingly empowers many women by being
Speaker 1: open and honest, and also she adds a few tips
Speaker 1: on how she stays fit in her fifties. Make sure
Speaker 1: you listening to our big sister podcast Extra Healthy Ish,
Speaker 1: where she shares more about how she's embracing midlife like
Speaker 1: a queen. Thank you for joining us on Healthy Ish.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me now welcomeratulations. Firstly on your new
Speaker 1: TV show. Now, I almost think you're a bit of
Speaker 1: a gladiator yourself. I mean, you've entertained audiences in various
Speaker 1: forms over the years, but thanks to I'm a Celeb,
Speaker 1: you've become this voice for women in their forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: How does this sit with you.
Speaker 2: I guess it's still a bit of a surprise.
Speaker 3: I think the whole I'm a celebrity thing, I didn't
Speaker 3: really give any thought to what it would be like afterwards,
Speaker 3: and I literally just went into the jungle trying to
Speaker 3: not embarrass my kids or my husband. I certainly didn't
Speaker 3: go in there thinking I'm going to set myself up
Speaker 3: as a spokeswoman for.
Speaker 2: Women in their forties and fifties.
Speaker 3: But I guess because I went in there just trying
Speaker 3: to be honest, and I don't have much of a
Speaker 3: filter anyway, but I just tried to be honest about
Speaker 3: the things that, you know, that happened to us or
Speaker 3: my life that I think it probably resonated with a
Speaker 3: lot of women. So to come out and find that
Speaker 3: lots of women really enjoyed hearing or enjoyed seeing someone
Speaker 3: that was a bit like themselves, you know, that had
Speaker 3: fertility issues or you know, trying to deal with the
Speaker 3: kids as they head grow up and head towards puberty
Speaker 3: and all that sort of thing that I'm.
Speaker 2: Glad it resonated.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I didn't sort of set out for that,
Speaker 3: But I guess if you find yourself on something like
Speaker 3: I'm a celebrity and you're honest. People are either going
Speaker 3: it's either going to resonate with people or they just
Speaker 3: won't like you. So I'm glad it was the former
Speaker 3: and not the latter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we don't have enough
Speaker 1: women out there in their forties and fifties telling it
Speaker 1: how it is and you know, and being a real
Speaker 1: and vulnerable about what they've been through. Have you always
Speaker 1: been like this? Have you always been no filter putting
Speaker 1: it all out there?
Speaker 2: Always? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: My husband's heading it's the opposite, so he's like, why
Speaker 3: did you say that?
Speaker 2: Like it's the truth, babe.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, And I think also like we
Speaker 3: don't hear lots of voices of women who are our
Speaker 3: age out there. But also the platforms just st aren't there.
Speaker 3: So when you get the opportunity on a platform like
Speaker 3: I'm a Celebrity to say it how it is, at
Speaker 3: the older I get, the less I care about what
Speaker 3: comes out of my mouth in terms of when it's
Speaker 3: about me, in terms of being honest. So, you know,
Speaker 3: the other interesting thing about doing I'm a celeb was
Speaker 3: that I chose share the dignity as my charity, and
Speaker 3: it was really interesting getting feedback from Rachelle Courtney, who
Speaker 3: founded WHO, said that when she first started Share the Dignity,
Speaker 3: she couldn't get on to mainstream TV, especially breakfast or
Speaker 3: evening primetime, because people didn't want to hear about periods. Right,
Speaker 3: you couldn't talk about periods on time television or god
Speaker 3: for me, breakfast television. And yet so she was happy
Speaker 3: that we were able to talk about periods and period
Speaker 3: poverty and menstruation and pregnancy loss and all the sort
Speaker 3: of stuff that we often don't hear about because it
Speaker 3: used to be deemed a bit icky for prime time.
Speaker 3: Whereas you know, this sort of stuff affects half half
Speaker 3: the adult population, so we should actually be talking about it. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I think having getting the opportunity to go on,
Speaker 3: I'm a celebrity. When I reflect on it now, I'm
Speaker 3: really grateful that I've got that platform to talk about
Speaker 3: the things that affect me, because I think they affect
Speaker 3: a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Actually, that's a good point. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: suppose I've been in women's lifestyle publications for years, so
Speaker 1: talking about periods and mens duration and miscarriages and IVF
Speaker 1: is nothing new to me, but I do forget that
Speaker 1: outside this, you know, Dome, I mean, in women's health
Speaker 1: and well being, you know, I mean, people don't have
Speaker 1: these conversations.
Speaker 3: Now they don't, and I think it's something that we think.
Speaker 3: I think traditionally has been oh, well, women should have
Speaker 3: these conversations, But these are conversations through everybody, because you
Speaker 3: need men to be and men get affected by infertility,
Speaker 3: whether it's them that who are infertile, or it's their partner,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's and often we think it's women's issues,
Speaker 3: but it's everybody's issues, you know. And the more we
Speaker 3: think about the language that we use around these things,
Speaker 3: and you know, when you suffer pregnancy loss and it's
Speaker 3: and you're part of a couple, it's deeply affecting for
Speaker 3: both of you.
Speaker 2: It's not just the women's issues.
Speaker 3: So I do feel really grateful that we're able to
Speaker 3: talk about it, and I'm grateful to Channel ten for
Speaker 3: the way they handled it.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the things that came out of
Speaker 2: that was.
Speaker 3: You know, when Deb Lawrence and I were talking about
Speaker 3: pregnancy loss, we didn't realize because we're in the jungle,
Speaker 3: and we didn't know anything, but you know, Channel ten
Speaker 3: put some up to Pink Elephants to the miscarriage Support Network,
Speaker 3: and you know, Dev and I have both been in
Speaker 3: contact with them since and done some things for them.
Speaker 3: So I think it's not only having the platform, but
Speaker 3: having that platform be sensitive to these sort of things.
Speaker 3: That's so important. And I'm just super grateful that we're
Speaker 3: able to talk about that stuff and it made it
Speaker 3: to air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and well, thank you for doing that. I
Speaker 1: think you helped a lot of women, you know, feel
Speaker 1: seen and heard now onto gladiators. I actually sat down
Speaker 1: and watched this with the whole family, with my kids,
Speaker 1: with my husband, and we couldn't get over it. Well, firstly,
Speaker 1: how fit and incredibly strong everyone was. And actually my husband,
Speaker 1: who you know, kept saying I would have been so
Speaker 1: good at that back in the day.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. Yeah, Exa, you can't help yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what do you think you you know,
Speaker 1: how do you think you'd stuck up in a challenge?
Speaker 3: Oh? Look, I was never particularly musty or anything like that,
Speaker 3: but I had lots of mongrel, so I know I'm strong,
Speaker 3: but I'm not like when you see them and they've
Speaker 3: got six packs. No matter how hard I trained, I
Speaker 3: never had a six pack. Might have had something to
Speaker 3: do with the wine that I like. But you know,
Speaker 3: like these gladiators and the contenders are so fit and
Speaker 3: so strong, and the gladiats, particularly a superhuman. You look
Speaker 3: at someone like Chaos and she's the strongest person I've
Speaker 3: ever met, and that is saying something.
Speaker 2: And Maximus and guys like that.
Speaker 3: So I would have loved to have been a contender
Speaker 3: because I think whilst I couldn't have matched them for
Speaker 3: that muscular strength, I was pretty fast, but I just
Speaker 3: had so much mongrel that it would have been so
Speaker 3: much fun.
Speaker 2: To take people like that on.
Speaker 3: Having said that, now I'm much happy to be wearing
Speaker 3: a nice suit and having hair and makeup done and
Speaker 3: sitting on the sideline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can hear that.
Speaker 1: I hear you on that one. How do you keep
Speaker 1: fitting strong now in your fifties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I get a lot of incidental exercise.
Speaker 3: So my husband's a farmer, which makes me a farmer
Speaker 3: by proxy, So you know, jumping fences and climbing through
Speaker 3: the cattle yards and jumping on the back of the
Speaker 3: car and throwing out feed to the cattle is something
Speaker 3: that the whole family does, so all that incidental exercise
Speaker 3: is just so important.
Speaker 2: But when I turned fifty, I really noticed.
Speaker 3: That my muscle was sort of going and I didn't
Speaker 3: have that much to start with, to be brutally honest.
Speaker 2: So I just got a marketplace.
Speaker 3: A couple of months ago, and I bought a little
Speaker 3: home gym to put in the garage, and I bought
Speaker 3: some dumbells, and I just make myself do twenty minutes
Speaker 3: a day as I walk, you know, walk out to
Speaker 3: the car to take the kids down to the bus
Speaker 3: to go to school or whatever, just you know, a
Speaker 3: little bit of weights. And I think that is something
Speaker 3: that I just continue to incorporate. And the other thing
Speaker 3: that I do wish I found out about when I
Speaker 3: was playing is pilates. I do it at least once
Speaker 3: a week, and I try to do it more and
Speaker 3: I love it. It just it's just a missing link.
Speaker 3: It just puts everything together. And the thing for me,
Speaker 3: after being an athlete for so long, when you sort
Speaker 3: of hit your fifties, things fall apart, and the parts
Speaker 3: of your body where the cartilage has taken a battering
Speaker 3: really do let you know, and my back had started
Speaker 3: to give me some issues. So I did pilates and
Speaker 3: I did it really all the way through both my pregnancies.
Speaker 3: And you know, when I was pregnant with Austin, I
Speaker 3: was forty three and I was still doing polarities up
Speaker 3: to the week before I gave birth, and that really
Speaker 3: helped me in my recovery. So that's something that I love.
Speaker 3: That's a non negotiable. So that a little bit of weight.
Speaker 3: So I played tennis occasionally, which is more hit and
Speaker 3: giggle than fitness. And yeah, lots and lots of incidental exercise,
Speaker 3: which I love.
Speaker 1: Liz, thank you for coming on health Hitch.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Always good to chat to you.
Speaker 1: He can catch it Gladiators right now on ten and
Speaker 1: ten A play for anything else, Head to Body and
Speaker 1: soult or Condatu Follous on Socials. Make sure you rate
Speaker 1: and review this Chat with It Liz, or you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to this podcast of course, Share is out with
Speaker 1: a friend, go on someone who needs some midlife inspo,
Speaker 1: and until next time you listen, stay healthy, ish