Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - Mission Confidence: Alice Liveing and WH’s Claire Sanderson on Building Ageless Confidence + Finding Strength on the Inside

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Welcome to Mission Confidence, a special edition of the Going For Goal podcast sponsored by Philips that’s designed to help you on your body confidence journey. This podcast has been created as part of our Project Body Love initiative, which is all about challenging the way we think, feel and speak about our bodies; embracing what makes us unique and putting an end to negative self-talk and embarrassment. Philips believe that hair removal should be a choice, and it looks different for everyone. If you do choose to remove your body hair, whether you prefer to take it all off or to tackle your legs, armpits or bikini line only, Philips has a range of hair removal tools to suit your needs. And on Mission Confidence, over four episodes and with the help of some very wise women, we’re going to be exploring confidence in its various facets and forms – with the goal of helping you tap into yours. On this final episode of Mission Confidence we’re looking specifically at ageless confidence with two women – one who’s 28, the other who’s 42 – who are both extremely passionate about the topic. They are Women’s Health editor-in-chief Claire Sanderson and three-time WH cover star and PT Alice Liveing. We discuss how confidence can evolve with age and experience – and how both women have noticed that, as they’ve gotten older, they’re better equipped to find confidence and strength from what’s inside – kindness, resilience, individuality, grit – rather than needing external validation to shore-up their self-esteem. Both seriously fit women discuss the confidence-fuelling power of a workout; why body hair, or the lack of it, doesn’t need to be a statement – and why using the Philips Lumea IPL device is a simple, pain-free solution for helping them achieve the smooth armpits and bikini line they, personally, prefer.   Join Alice Liveing on Instagram: @aliceliveing Join Claire Sanderson on Instagram: @clairesanderson Join Roisín Dervish-O’Kane on Instagram: @roisin.dervishokane https://www.instagram.com/roisin.dervishokane/ To find out more visit philips.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi and welcome to Mission Confidence, a special edition of the Going for Girl podcast sponsored by Phillips that's designed to help you on your body confidence journey. This podcast has been created as part of our Project Body Love initiative, which is all about challenging the way we think, feel and speak about our bodies, embracing what makes us unique and putting an end to negative self-talk and embarrassment. Phillips believe that hair removal should be a choice and that it looks different for everyone. If you do choose to remove your body hair, whether you prefer to take it all off or tackle your legs, armpits or bikini line only, Phillips has a range of hair removal tools to suit your needs. And over four episodes, with the help of some very wise women, we're going to be exploring

confidence in its various facets and forms, with the goal of helping you tap into yours. On this, the final episode of Mission Confidence, we're looking specifically at ageless confidence, with two women, one who's 28 and another who's 42, who are both extremely passionate about the topic. They are Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Claire Sanderson and P.T. Alice Living, who has been on the cover of women's health a whopping three times. We discuss how confidence can evolve with age and experience.

How both women have noticed that as they've gotten older, they're better equipped to find confidence and strength from what's inside, you know, kindness, resilience, individuality, grit. rather than needing external validation to shore up their self-esteem. And both seriously fit women discuss the confidence-fueling power of a workout, why body hair, or the lack of it, doesn't need to be a statement, and why using the Phillips Lumaya IPL device is a simple, pain-free solution for helping them achieve the smooth armpits and bikini line they personally prefer.

Claire Sanderson and Alice Living, hello, and welcome to Mission Confidence in association with Phillips. Thank you so much for having us this morning. Oh, it's so good to see you both. How are you both getting on? What are your plans for the weekend? What are my plans? Well, I have two young children, so my plans basically revolve around them, ferrying them to various sport and activities. What am I doing this weekend? So I've actually, because my app is coming out quite soon, which is very exciting, I've actually got a lot of work to do. I'm not normally someone that works weekends, but there's just a lot of like last minute bits. But I am going to getting my nails done tomorrow.

All the beauty bits that I've just missed so much that I've, like I think it was the week before things started to open up, I booked in. So getting my nails done, seeing a friend for a walk, nothing too exciting. But a very chilled weekend. Those first beauty bits are just so nice though, isn't it? I love it. I love it. Yeah. Didn't realize how much of a difference it made.

Not just physically, not just aesthetically, but just, I don't know, sitting in a chair and having someone play with your hair for three hours. It's quite nice, isn't it? I had my cut and colour done this week, balliage, full, full head, and it makes such a difference. And I realised that for the last two, three months, I've been wearing my hair scrape back constantly because I was so mortified by my roots, which were basically down by my ears, because they were like 10 months old roots. And I just felt like a new woman. You know, I instantly felt a bit more glowy. And that's inner confidence coming out, isn't it? Because my skin was exactly the same, walking in the salon as it was walking out,

but I just instantly felt that my skin looked better, and I just felt much more me and much more back to the old Claire Sanderson. So we're talking there about confidence in terms of, you know, the little things and the little aesthetic tweaks that make you feel good. But starting with, starting with Claire, let's talk about what does confidence mean to you? What does it look like? Confidence to me is absolutely a state of mind. and my confidence fluctuates wildly.

And it can be from day to day, even hour to hour. And what feeds into my confidence or lack of. I'm quite well versed in realizing what those things are. And they are for me eating well and exercising. If I'm eating well, healthy, nourishing food, not drinking very much. Which to be fair, I don't drink very much anyway. My demon is sugar, processed sugar, jelly sweets. chocolate, that type of thing. If I eat too much of that type of food and my body is moving less,

then it dramatically affects my confidence detrimentally. And it really can. And it can ruin days or several days at the time. Then on the flip side, if I'm eating well, cutting out all the process rubbish, and I'm doing exercise and people who are familiar with me, No, I'm very dedicated to exercise, a bit of a fanatic in that respect, but it is what embodies me and what makes me Claire Sanderson, then I feel amazing about myself. So on the weekend, a woman's health has partnered with the National Fitness Games, and I'm team captain, so I'm training for it. So I decided to do a National Fitness Games prescribed workout, and it was, you know, to time,

and it was really lifting quite heavy weights and doing lots of rowing, and I smashed it. I did it in 22 minutes. And at the end, it did. Love the energy. I knew that was going to happen. I did. I did. I did. I absolutely love you. And by the way, I'm going to butt in because I have authority to say this because I do train Claire.

She is amazing. She has the capacity to dig deep like no one else I know. But for the rest of that day, I was buzzing. I was on cloud nine, you know, and I was like, oh, yeah, look how strong my legs are. And look how strong my lots are. you know, so it's, yeah, for me, confidence is absolutely a state of mind and it's fluctuating.

I would like to say that confidence is ever more present for me the older I get. I definitely am more confident with age. I'm 43 and I think what you really, I'm not, I'm 42, don't age myself, I'm 43 in, um, in a month's time. Um, 14th of June, if anyone wants to send me a birthday on. Um, but I'll definitely become more forgiving and more accepting

and more celebratory of what my body can achieve and realizing that actually my outer shell is the least interesting thing about me. I'm smart. I'm a great mother. I'd like to think I'm a good colleague and a great manager. All the really important things, a loyal friend, all the really important things that matter.

And you know what? My outer shell, yeah, it's nice. It's great. Everyone wants to look nice, but there are so much more important things to concentrate on. That's so interesting. And on this, as the theme of this podcast, as I said, on this mini-series, we are looking at confidence in all its kind of various facets and forms and guises. And this one, we are looking at the theme of ageless confidence. Alice, I'm intrigued. You're in your late 20s, right? Yeah, 28. So you're our 28. Have you noticed, have you kind of noticed this kind of positive relationship between as your age is increased, so as your confidence? What's your journey being like? I think it's so interesting. And I was just nodding along with what Claire was saying, because,

If I think back to 10 years ago, I would say that a lot of my confidence came from being accepted and validated by those around me, whether that was my peer group, whether that was, you know, social media, which was just in its infancy at that stage, or even like my parents and my family, you know, I was very much seeking that external validation for the way that I looked, the way that I dressed, who I was as a person. And I entered into an industry that was very aesthetically driven. So I worked in theater, which meant that my appearance was so. intertwined with my success. And so yeah, of course, a lot of my confidence came from putting on a show and looking the part and making sure that I looked a certain way. You know, I never forget at college, we had to, you know, there was one teacher where you had to wear bright red lipstick and you had to be done for every, every class. And just this idea of that the way that we look on the outside was way more important than what we gave on the inside. And I think that's one of the biggest shifts that I've really seen as I have got older is I take pride in the way that I look and I love looking nice. I love I love clothes. As people probably know who follow me, I love fashion and makeup and

beauty stuff. You know, I'm a real girl's girl when it comes to that. But what I've really seen is that shift where that stuff matters and I enjoy it. But really, that stuff is only an enhancement of the confidence that I have inside. And that's not to say that my confidence is 100%. I'm absolutely with Claire when I say that there are days when I feel great and there are days when I definitely don't. And I think I really try and practice this idea that that's, reality for most women. You know, I don't want to sit here as an unrealistic person saying, I love myself. Every day is great. You know, I love every part of me. Because I don't believe that that's a reality for a lot of women. I think we all have days and moments where we are caught off

guard or where we feel a lack of confidence in ourselves. And talking about those and encouraging people to be open about those insecurities and worries is far more helpful than just trying to tell everyone to love themselves, which I don't necessarily think is as helpful. And I think that that, you know, we are talking about ageless beauty. And I think our bodies and ourselves change with age. So I am a different person to the person I was five years ago. And there are things that I've had to grow to love and accept in a way that I didn't have to do five years ago. And I'd say that definitely I'm learning to find confidence from within.

It's a journey and it's something that, you know, I work hard on in order to get to a point where I feel good. but I think that that foundation of confidence from within matters so much more than that external validation which can give you that false sense of confidence which isn't really real. Absolutely. And what's your equivalent? So Claire does a national fitness game's workout

and feels like an absolute boss because she, by her own admission, completely smashed it. So what's your equivalent of absolutely smashing a national fitness games workout or is it something similar? I mean, I would have to, yeah, I'd have to be honest, my exercise makes me feel like a badass. This morning I went to the gym and considering I've had a lot of time,

obviously, training from home over the last year, I smashed out like four sets of pull-ups, you know, and I was like, I feel on top of the world. That for me is like one of the best exercises that you're like, I feel so strong, I feel so accomplished. And I think, again, exactly like Claire, it's a real celebration of like, wow, my body just did that. And what a celebration of what we can do, you know, with our physical strength.

same for like, you know, yeah, dead lifts. And there are some exercises where you just feel strong and you feel good for doing them. So I'd say the exercise definitely is that for me. But I think that, you know, there are certain things that also make me feel great. I think, you know, I've come to realize that I'm a bit more of an introvert than I may be recognized over this year. So sometimes I recognize that, you know, exercise can sometimes help, but also sometimes pulling back and having a bit of quiet time and having time to myself, maybe some more headspace, maybe doing something a bit more internal, right? other than something quite physical, can actually make me feel a little bit more calm and centred with myself.

So it's a mixture, but I would say exercise is definitely one of those tools that I rely on. Well, I feel like you have both definitely inspired me to go and like hammer something at some point this weekend. And Alice, so you work with, you train lots of people of kind of different ages and stages. Do you, is there something in the confidence that you see within, I mean, you were talking about how impressed you are at Claire's ability to dig deep like no other. Is there anything that you see and admire? I know this is something I always have done from women who are a little bit older than you in terms of their, in terms of their self-assurance, in terms of their grit, in terms of their sense of comfort and strength in who they are.

Yeah, I think it would be one of two things. I think you're right. I think there's a level of confidence. And, you know, I've seen it with my mum, for example. I give my mum workouts to do. and I would say that she cares a lot less about the way she looks or getting things wrong. I think, you know, when we're younger, you care so much about the way you look and you think that everyone's looking at you and you can't get things wrong and you can't make mistakes.

Whereas I think my mum, for example, or clients that they have that slightly older, you know, I've got a client who's 60 at the moment, they are less afraid to sort of just make mistakes and they're less afraid to ask for help and just say, oh, I'm not quite sure how to do this in a way that I don't necessarily think sort of my younger clients are. they want to be able to come in and in the first session be able to do 10 pull-ups. And it's like, it doesn't quite work that way. But the other thing that I would say is there's definitely a shift in terms of the motivations to exercise. I think as you start to get older, you recognise that health is very important and that being physically

strong and fit is probably of more importance than being in a very small body. I think that naturally as we get older, things change, you know, metabolism-wise, particularly women who are post-menopausal or perimenopausal. You're experiencing lots of different changes in the body. and so often, you know, retaining or maintaining a small body becomes less of a focus for them. And they just want to focus on more of a holistic, healthy approach to their training, which I really love. You know, that's what I'm about. And I think it's really important that, you know, I try and help them with that because I think it's a great goal to have.

It's slightly less tangible, of course. But, you know, we can work on so many different things with people that really get them focused on whether it's specific exercises or certain movement patterns that really help. them to feel better in themselves, to move well and to feel strong. And like I said, yeah, just shifting that focus slightly from being, you know, I need to stay very small to actually I have much more of a focus now on being strong and being healthy and being, you know, fit and and having longevity of their lives. So, yeah, I would say that's two of the things that I definitely notice. And Claire, do you mind if I ask you quickly, Alice Mederega point there, talking about the kind of like perimenopausal years and how like transformative they can be? Do you mind if I

ask you about how kind of those years and that transition has affected your confidence. Yes, so I started experiencing perimenopausal symptoms when I was 39, which I was a bit confused as to what they were. And the symptoms that I experienced were sore breasts, increased anxiety, fluctuating moods, joints feeling quite sore. I was. I was getting sort of night sweats and day sweats at the same time as well. But even though I'm now so well versed in what the perimenopause is, at the time I was completely confused. And it took a doctor friend to say to me,

I think you're perimenopausal. And even as the editor-in-chief of woman's health, I hadn't heard that phrase because it was not being discussed. This was nearly four years ago, you know. And I had a bit of a battle to get myself prescribed HRT because GPs, through no fault of their own and not particularly clued up on perimenopause. And I eventually was prescribed HRT after having gone going private and seeing Louise Newsom, Dr. Louise Newsom, who's the menopause doctor on Instagram. And that instantly made a

big difference to me. It stabilized my mood. It decreased my anxiety. And it's, it just instantly made me feel better. That gives me confidence that I'm clued up and I'm out there. And I hope that I'm change in the perceptions of what women going through the menopause is. Absolutely. So we were talking about beauty stuff at the start and I want to bring us back onto that. Phillips have brought us together today to talk about ageless confidence and I want to know what things, what routines, what rituals that you're doing at the moment to foster that sense of confidence. So Alice, you have been using the Phillips Lumeyer at home IPL device for a while, right? I have been. Yeah, so I'm a big fan. I've been using it probably the last three months. In the winter, I was just, I forgot about any sort of hair

removal, especially during COVID. But I think as we moved towards the summer months and hopefully having it a fun summer in the UK, even if we don't get to go abroad, I did start to think about it. And for me, it's a really good long-term hair removal solution. I'm someone who suffers with definitely sensitive, irritable skin and exma. So constant hair removal, whether that's shaving or waxing just causes so much irritation and can exacerbate, you know, things like exma for me. So I heard about the Lomae. I can't remember where I'd heard about it from, but someone online, I think, was using it. I think it was Callie Thorpe, actually, online, anyway. And I thought, God, that sounds like a great idea. I'm going to try that. And so I bought it. And I honestly,

I just thought it was so easy to use. Takes me 10 minutes, like no time at all. So I've done my underarms and my bikini line. And the difference, like, I, I, I, I, I, I just thought it was so I, I was a bit skeptical about how well it would work from home because you think, oh, I had to go to a clinic to get hair removal done. But actually, it works amazingly. And yeah, I'm so pleased with the results. I think it's really important that we, you know, we caveat this whole chat with saying, you know, whatever you want to do for yourself is absolutely fine and it's so normal. But for me personally, I like having, you know, that hair removed. And it just makes me feel better. You know, Claire and I both exercise a lot. I've got my pits out all the time. and in a bikini sometimes, you know. I'm doing shoots for women's health, for example, where I've got my bikini line out.

You know, there are so many things that you have to be considerate of. And for me, just having that as something that I don't even have to think about, you know, I don't even have to think about remembering a razor when I got on holiday or, you know, all those sorts of things. That, for me, was a real win with this,

with the LeMay. So, yeah, I'm a massive fan. And I would say, you know, people have asked me online whether it was painful. And I would like to say, like, my pain thresholds, average, but I didn't find it painful at all, and I was nervous about that too. But what I like is that you can adapt the setting, so they have everything for one to five. So if you're slightly more

sensitive to pain, you can obviously have it on a lower setting. It's interesting to know. You know what's better than the one big thing? Two big things. Exactly. The new iPhone 17 pro on Tullis's five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever, plus more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. What people do and how people's habits fluctuate and there isn't this expectation that you have to remove everything or you have to remove it all the time. It feels like there's a lot more kind of, I don't know, a bit more freedom with it.

I'd love that there's this diversity being represented in women when it comes to body here. I saw this amazing picture of Madonna's daughter, Lordez, Leon, this week on Instagram. And she's beautiful, super sexy like her mum. And she's proudly grown her armpit here and all power to her. You know, you're seeing that more and more. But my personal choice is to remove body hair. And I have done ever since I did it behind my mother's back, you know. when you start shaving your legs and your mother's like,

you're far too young. And I used to wax it and I used to have problems with ingrowing hairs. That was my problem around the bikini area. Absolutely the worst. I think it is vibration. I think it is about just having that choice in a way that, you know, when I was growing up, everyone removed their body hair. You know, it was kind of like you would be odd if you didn't.

And I love that we have that visibility on both sides. And I think it's important just to say, that it doesn't make you any more or less of a woman if you have or don't have body hair. You know, it's all about that personal choice. And I think we live in so much more of an accepting and diverse society now where, you know, however you choose to express yourself is fine.

And I think that, you know, it's nice that we're even having this conversation about whether you do what you don't because I think both sides are normal and absolutely fine. And as you say, it's not a statement about whether you want to look feminine or not. No. Yeah. It just is what it is.

And as you say, like, looks awesome on people. So, yeah, no, I agree. It's great. So I want to end by kind of talking about who you think you're going to be looking to for confidence in the future. I want to say my daughter, Nell, because she is five. She is so funny and clever and articulate. And she has more confidence in her little finger than me. Alice combined possibly. This girl is so sassy. She's five going on 15. But bless her,

she does look very different to her friend. She's in age nine to ten clothes and she's five. She's so tall and she is bigger built than her friends. And we had a really heartbreaking incident last week where she come home and told me that a friend in her class said that she was too fat to do headstands. And it absolutely broke my heart. And I contacted the school because I thought I'm not having that because there's those type of things that can really, really cause damage those words. And then one night this week, she said, oh, I am fat, mummy. Everyone says I am. And I said, you're absolutely not.

You are big and strong like your mummy. So my determination is to instill confidence into Nell and to ring fence. what I know she already has, and I'm definitely not having school friends of hers chipping away at it, because I don't want her to go through life with an inferiority complex. So I'm going to be inspired by her because apart from this, she is hilarious. She's so, so engaging. She's a burgeoning YouTube star because every time I pick up my phone, there's selfie videos of her going, Hi, hi, guys, here I am in my living room.

They're so funny. Honestly, I need to send you one. They're hilarious. So she's got confidence in spades But I think she's at the tipping point Of maybe it's starting to be chipped away By, you know, at the school life And that can't happen

So I'm going to inspire her And she's going to inspire me Love that. That's a brilliant answer. Mine was a bit more basic. My brain went straight to J-Loan You know, I just thought of Okay, well, she is 50 plus She is SaaS personified

It just looks unbelievable, maybe slightly unattainable for the average person. And with a bit of help along the way. But I think she's badass and I just love her. I think that Claire and I were actually having this discussion the other day actually about, I think like we need like better representation of like over 50s fit fab women. You know, like I think there are a lot. And probably I'm sure people are going to comment into this and call me out because there are probably loads of people that I'm unaware of.

But, you know, Claire mentioned Davina McCall, who I again think is an incredible person, like, so inspiring, like fit, fabulous. But there are, there are loads of people. You know, I've actually recently tried to follow a lot more diverse age mixes of people. So Michelle Griffith Robinson is someone who I know does a lot with the magazine. She is an unbelievable woman. She is 50, fabulous. She is just the energy she has. I mean, she left me a voice note the other day.

and just like I could feel her like popping out of my phone, you know? Yeah. And as a mother as well, well, I've basically chosen Michelle because it seems like I'm going that way. But as a mother, you know, Michelle and I have had a lot of conversations. And she is also an ambassador for women's aid, which is the charity that we both work very closely with and have had experiences of domestic violence. But I just think that she embodies positive energy and zest for life. and I think that that is something that I want to have for the rest of my life. You know, my granddad is 88 now, and he did a bungee jump in Australia when he was 82.

He was the oldest person who had ever done it. He's an absolute beast. Like, I just love him. And he always says to me, you're only as old as you feel. And so I think, like, ageless beauty and everything we're talking about today, it comes from within, and it comes from that zest for life. You know, we only get one. So I want to make sure that every day I'm taking.

something from it that I love. I'm finding enjoyment in every day. I'm connecting with people that I love and just having a good life. And that's not to say that every day is going to be like that, but trying to get that out of every day. And I think for me, Michelle is someone that I feel really, really does embody that. But I'm also going to caveat that was also just saying J-Lo for the lulls too. Well, both of you, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really love chatting with you both. Thanks, Roshin. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Bye. Bye-bye. You have been listening to Claire Sanderson, editor-in-chief of Women's Health and Alice Living, superstar, and three-time Women's Health cover star on Mission Confidence,

a special edition of the Going for Goal podcast sponsored by Phillips, designed to help you on your body confidence journey. I really hope you've enjoyed tuning into the show, and that the brilliant women we've had behind the mic have given you plenty of inspiration and advice to have a wonderful, confident summer, whatever that looks like for you. Thanks for tuning in. Bye.