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Gaby Logan My Body My Story
On why she felt strange about her body as a child striving to be a top gymnast:
“When I was a child, I was completely unaware of my body, it was just there, and I think the thing that often teenage girls find tricky is that period when your body starts to change. And when you’re a gymnast, you’re wearing a leotard all the time, so you see those changes very pronounced. It all kind of added up to feeling a little strange about myself, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with these changes that didn’t marry up to I wanted to be, which was this gymnast, and look like the top gymnasts who…didn’t seem to have any curves or any bumps or lumps on their bodies in their leotards. So I guess I wanted to be in control of that.”
On why she became a vegetarian during her years as a young gymnast:
“I told my Mum I was going to be a vegetarian and that meant that I felt like I could eat what I wanted to away from the rest of the family, so I kind of went on these mono diets of eating only cauliflower for a few days, or only courgettes for a few days. My mum was very no-nonsense about it…but just let me carry on for a bit. And I think she realised I wasn’t actually necessarily developing a serious eating disorder. I was, what she would probably have described as, going through a phase, and she was right, it did kind of burn itself out eventually because I actually realised I wanted to be healthy, not just fit into this physical ideal that I felt I had to. By the time I finished gymnastics, I resolved all of that very quickly and found a balance.”
On how her start in the TV industry during her early twenties brought some unhealthy habits:
“I started working in TV in London, and for some reason, I just went from feeling really good about myself to starting to eat the wrong foods and eat at the wrong time of day. I’d finish my shift at 10 o’clock at night and instead of having a healthy meal in the evening, I’d buy a box of Magnums on the way home from work and eat those while watching the Letterman show. And that, unsurprisingly, led to weight gain, and it also led to me not feeling great about my body…I became kind of the antithesis of the person that I was six months before.
On how she then built back her healthy body and mind:
“I wanted to get back to feeling healthy again, and decided the way to do this was maybe to get a trainer and get me back on track with some kind of training routines or regimes that was not just…running around the block for three miles a day. That really did help because he wasn’t putting me on any kind of diet, but he reminded me of nutrition…It was a really good time actually. It was my early twenties, I was about 24, 25,,and then I met my husband not long after that, and actually he was a professional athlete…so then it was easier to eat well and have a better attitude towards exercise, and diet and lifestyle.”
On the frustration of unexplained infertility when she was such a healthy person:
On the importance of menopausal women staying in the workplace:
Fresh from her incredible September cover, sports pundit Gaby Logan is the latest star to sit down with Women's Health for our My Body My Story series.
In this insightful and far-ranging interview, the former professional gymnast, 50, explains why she's more passionate than ever about fitness, living her best healthy life, getting au fait with nutrition in her twenties, and supporting other women through their menopause journey.
'I think it’s really important women feel they can stay in the workplace once they hit the menopause or they’re in perimenopause. Having spoken to a lot of people about how women do leave the workplace because of what are actually quite minor alterations that would be needed, I think it’s really important to get behind any campaigns that are there to encourage women to stay in the workplace. We need that as a country, we need people to keep working,' she says.
The mum-of-two also touches upon the diagnosis of 'unexplained fertility' which turned her world upside down and led her and her husband to go down the route of IVF.
Gaby says: 'As someone who was a former competitive sportsperson, I wanted a plan, and I wanted a way of getting my body to do what it should so…I was just frustrated that it was something we wanted to achieve and couldn’t do.'
Watch the full interview in the player above.
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