Tall order … Giaan Rooney has had to watch what she eats since retiring from competitive swimming. Photo: Jason Ierace.Change can be a difficult beast to master, especially if it comes with a wake-up call. Four women tell Candice Chung how they turned challenging circumstances into something life affirming.
Giaan Rooney, 28
Television host and former elite athlete
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Ringing the changes … (from top) Michelle Wright, Amanda Allen, Karen Driscoll. Everyone says to me now, "It must be so nice not to be on a diet." And I'd think, "Are you kidding? It's the first time in my life I've had to watch what I eat." Back then, when you are doing six or seven hours of exercise a day, six days a week, you can eat whatever you want, as much as you want. There were no holds barred because everything was fuel and you burn it off so quickly. My friends used to laugh at me because if I didn't eat every two hours, I'd get a glazed look in my eyes and it would become my sole mission in life to find food.
A lot of athletes blow out after they retire because they assume once you stop doing the exercise, your brain is going to stop craving the same amount of food. But it doesn't work that way. Stop doing the exercise and you still want to eat exactly the same way you did before. It's hard to change habits that have been formed over such a significant part of your life.
While I was swimming, my diet was all about carbs - pasta, bread, potatoes, rice - things that functioned well as fuel. I only discovered after I retired that I am gluten intolerant. Nowadays, if I eat too much pasta or bread, I can look like I'm three or four months pregnant. I didn't realise it at the time, because the exercise managed to balance it out somehow. Little things like that took a long time to figure out.
When I retired I had no desire to do anything physical at all. I just wanted my body to rest and recover and feel normal again. For me, one of the biggest challenges was to work out how to fit exercise into your life when it's not part of your job. I had no idea how to exercise for health - I only knew how to train towards a goal. I loved Pilates, so I started turning up to class five days a week until my instructor finally pulled me aside and said, "Giaan, there's no Pilates at the Olympics, so just chill out. You only need to be here twice a week."
I was lucky to have walked out of swimming and straight into a job with Channel Nine. But for the first time, I also became aware of how physically different I was compared to everyone around me. Having come from a career where it was all about what your body can do and not what it looks like, I've always had a healthy body image. All of a sudden, in a television environment, I no longer had that clear-cut relationship.
When I walked into work the first day, there were all these tiny gorgeous women everywhere. And there I was, 178 centimetres, with broad shoulders and muscles, and I thought, "Wow, I feel like an Amazon in here." When your body is so used to doing something for so long, it actually takes a long time for it to figure out where it's meant to be normally. And I learnt that I couldn't force it. But I also feel immensely proud of what my body has achieved. If it looked any different, then I maybe wouldn't be where I am today - so I have a lot of respect for it.
It probably took everyone by surprise how much I didn't miss being an elite athlete. I actually feel much healthier now than I have ever been. As an athlete, you're constantly being pushed to your limits - emotionally, physically and mentally. So to have the freedom to look around and enjoy life and take stock of the small, simple things - that's something I will always relish.
Michelle Wright, 41
Personal trainer, owner of Mishfit Mothers
Ten years ago, my husband and I moved to Australia from Britain. We had just bought a house and I was seven and a half months pregnant with our second child. That winter, I went for a holiday to New Zealand to visit some friends and when I got back, my husband told me he had fallen in love with another woman and wanted to be with her and not with me. We'd been married for nine years.
After Max was born, I was diagnosed with post-natal depression. The doctor prescribed antidepressants, which I took for six months. The medication helped. It stopped me from feeling like I was falling into a black hole, but at the same time it also stopped me from feeling joy. For me, that was the trigger to think there has to be another way.
I have never been an overly fit person and I've never really liked exercise. When Max was about eight weeks old, a really good friend of mine came over from Britain and lived with me for six weeks. Every day, she would say, "Right, what are we going to do for exercise today?" I was reluctant at first - all I wanted to do was lie on the couch and cry! But she made it work somehow. We'd go for a walk in the Botanic Gardens, or we'd go for a swim. She would hold the babies and I would swim and then we would swap.
By the time she left, I couldn't imagine a day where I didn't exercise. So I joined the gym. Because it had a crèche from Monday to Friday I went every day. If I missed it, I would feel that sense of hopelessness creeping in again. Sometimes my friends would try to persuade me to skip the gym for a day, but I'd refuse. For two hours every day, someone held my baby and I got to forget my worries and do something for myself. It was empowering to take some control back into my life for a small part of the time.
I used to be a primary school teacher. When the children got a bit older I tried to get back into teaching, but gave it up again within a year. I couldn't bear the thought of putting my own kids into childcare while I looked after other people's children - and missing out on the chance to exercise all day. So at 35 I decided to become a personal trainer. The training took a long time - I was one of the oldest people in my class.
Knowing one of the biggest hurdles for new mums to exercise was the lack of childcare, I started Mishfit Mothers, a group personal-training program where you can bring your children.
There is a quote that I really love: "Fitness is a journey, not a destination." You're never going to arrive some place and say, "Oh good, I can put my feet up on the couch from now on." It has to be a part of your life, like brushing your teeth or having a shower. At 41, my body is the best it's ever been. I feel confident and healthy. I feel a new sense of peace.
Amanda Allen, 41
Owner of Realise Personal Training and former professional triathlete
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with a large uterine fibroid tumour. At the time, I was three months away from competing in the triathlon Age Group World Championships. It was something I'd been looking forward to, so the news was a double-blow.
In the six months leading up to the diagnosis, I knew something was wrong. But because I was so stressed and busy, I didn't pay much attention to all the signs. I was getting extreme abdominal pain and heavy, clotted menstrual bleeding. I'd also become anaemic. In the end, I had so little energy that even normal daily activities would exhaust me. Having always defined myself by my physical capacity - my strength, my fitness, my running - it felt like everything was being ripped away.
When an MRI scan revealed a 13-centimetre tumour, I was advised to have a hysterectomy. I didn't have children and I didn't want to compromise the possibility that I might one day. I was also aware of all the possible complications associated with invasive surgery, so I decided to look into other options.
I started asking around and found a naturopath who was great. I have been a vegetarian for years, but she got me to start eating meat again because my iron level was so low. By that stage I was prepared to do whatever it took to be well again. The hardest change for me was giving up coffee and sugar. I had quite an addiction to both. I always had double shots of coffee and I probably had three to four a day - I was hooked on the way it gets you going. It was a tough transition because they were like an emotional crutch for me.
At first, I made all the changes to my diet in the hope that I could treat myself holistically. But when that wasn't enough, I decided to have the tumour removed through keyhole surgery. I continued to eat well in the meantime. If nothing else, I wanted to be in the best shape so that I could heal as quickly as possible.
Before the health crisis I was pretty much a slave to my diary. I would book clients in whenever I had spare time and I would work seven days a week. Now I don't work after 2pm and I make sure I schedule in rest during the week. Most afternoons I have a short nap. I get eight or nine hours' sleep every night and I keep a journal as a creative outlet.
It took me a year to slowly build back up to where I had been physically. But I'm now getting ready to compete in the Reebok Crossfit Games in California, against 50 of the fittest women in the world! I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't have such a significant and painful wake-up call. I have learnt to listen to my body since. It always starts with whispers. Most of us have them - little things like sore knees, a sore back or bloating. It's your body telling you something. It's really trying to fix you.
Karen Driscoll, 38
Co-owner of Luna Mare Vegan Chocolate
I've always been a night owl, so it was rare for me to go to bed before my husband. But in 2009, we were moving house and I remember being exhausted from packing books all day. The last thing I heard before falling asleep was Andrew singing a lullaby to our two-year-old. Then the next thing I knew, I jolted awake and realised that something was wrong. For some reason, Andrew had stopped breathing. Because the room was a mess, I had to climb around all the boxes to perform CPR.
Andrew is a statistical anomaly. At 43, he was fit and healthy when he suffered from sudden cardiac arrest - a little-known condition where the heart stops beating and goes into ventricular fibrillation. I didn't know this at the time, but the chances of survival without a defibrillation machine actually decreases by 10 per cent every minute. I did CPR for about 25 minutes before the ambulance arrived, so technically, he shouldn't be alive today.
When Andrew eventually came home from the hospital, we tried to settle into a new life. Because we didn't know what had caused his condition, we were keen to do everything we could to stay healthy. Having already been vegetarians, we did some research and started looking into other ways to improve our diets.
Before that point, I hadn't made my own conscious commitment to the principles of being vegan, which is as far as possible and practical to avoid all forms of exploitation and cruelty to animals. Once I made the link that life is precious - I'd nearly lost Andrew - I realised it's no different to any other lives disappearing. So we made a big leap, and the entire family has since stopped using animal products.
As well as becoming vegan, I decided to go one step further and eliminate sugar from my diet. That was a huge challenge. At first, I had headaches and withdrawal symptoms. I was also a big biscuit person - that's the other thing about going vegan, there's not a huge variety of affordable comfort foods.
Because we couldn't find any vegan chocolate we liked, we decided to start a business and make our own. Andrew jokes about it now and says he is saving the world by becoming a chocolate-maker because I was getting so cranky without it.
There is an assumption that vegan food is boring and bland. We have six children, so I tried to make the transition as easy as possible for them by replacing all the things that they would miss with something they would love. It's hard to complain about not having a bowl of rice bubbles and milk when there are pancakes and stewed apples and beautiful raspberry sauce and chocolate cakes around.
We used to run a security-camera business and now we are full-time chocolate-makers. I love the idea of being able to give other people a nice transition into veganism - to provide that little bit of luxury I craved so much at the start.
