Sixty-one-year-old Alison Cork MBE is a true multi-hyphenate. As a broadcaster, you may remember her from the ITV show Home in the Country, which was filmed at her Welsh cottage in the late 1990s.
Perhaps you’ve encountered one of her lifestyle businesses or work to support female entrepreneurs. Or maybe you’ve read one of her numerous books and columns, covering topics from baking to home renovations.
However, after a personal revelation in her 50s, Alison has turned her sights to a new area of interest: health and wellbeing. She explains, “It suddenly dawned upon me how important it is to be in control of your health and wellbeing in the second half of your life.”
This revelation sparked a journey of learning and self-development that has not only helped her lose weight and build muscle but also adopt a new outlook on later life.
In her new book, Fit & Fabulous Over 50 – How to rewire your second act, Alison shares all the tips, tricks, and recipes she’s discovered along the way. We sat down with her to learn more about her experiences and what readers can expect from the book.
“I felt as if I’d been given the chance to start life again”
Later life can bring various pressures that affect our wellbeing. These not only include health challenges like menopause and weight gain (which can become trickier to manage with age) but also changes to do with work and family. People may be contending with caring responsibilities, children leaving the nest, or the question of whether to retire.
“There’s all this stuff going on and your physical and mental health can suffer as a result,” Alison says. “And I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘I don’t look the way I want to look. I don’t feel the way I want to feel.’ So I thought about what I wanted to do next.”
The first step for Alison was seeking out a personal trainer. “I took up weight training at 57. I’d never been in a gym in my life and, suddenly, I was doing all sorts of squats and Romanian deadlifts,” she says.
But Alison points out that you don’t have to go straight into weight training to make a positive change. “If someone was starting from scratch, I would say, ‘Just move your body. Get your seven to 10,000 steps in a day.’ But, if you’re in your 50s and beyond and want to go a step further, absolutely think about taking up weight training, because it builds muscle and muscle burns fat.
Alison continues, “With weight training, you’re also building strength and bone density – and that’s what’s going to see you into a quality of longevity. If your body is strong, you’re less likely to suffer from a fracture when you fall, and you’re going to be more resilient for the future.”
However, while her new exercise regimen was certainly effective, the most revelatory advice Alison received was about the importance of nutrition. After telling her trainer what she ate, he said, “I can train you until you drop but if you don’t change the way you’re eating, you won’t lose weight.”
“And this was the golden key for me,” Alison continues. “It was the realisation that food – certainly when it comes to weight loss – is the most important thing. It’s 80% of the equation. So I focused on food, lost 30 kilos, and completely changed my outlook on life. I felt as if I’d been given the chance to start life again, literally.”
“When focusing on nutrition and exercise, it’s all about accountability”
Credit: Sarah Kelley
If you don’t have much experience in the gym and want to take up strength training, Alison recommends investing in a personal trainer for a short time. They can help you set goals, put a program in place, and learn how to use the equipment. But, perhaps more importantly, they can hold you accountable in the crucial early stages of your health and wellbeing journey.
“And you can give yourself a cut-off point, at which time you say, ‘I’m ready to stand on my own two feet,’” Alison says. “But it means, for that first part of the journey, you have a buddy who’s holding you accountable and teaching you. When focusing on nutrition and exercise, it’s all about accountability.”
However, personal trainer aside, there are plenty of other tools that can help you stick to your health goals. As Alison explains, you can enlist the support of friends and family – perhaps by going to the gym together or checking in on each others’ progress every few days.
In terms of nutrition, Alison has also found MyFitnessPal – a food, exercise, and calorie-tracking app – helpful for staying on top of her diet.
“At its most basic – and apart from a very few medical conditions that make it quite hard – weight loss is about calories in, calories out,” Alison says. “So, even three years down the line, I put everything I eat into the app because it keeps me honest. I know that when I’m not holding myself accountable, I will always underestimate what I’m eating or forget.”
“Nobody is perfect all of the time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be consistent”
That said, Alison is keen to point out the importance of building time off into your health and fitness plan to make it sustainable.
She explains, “Nobody is perfect all of the time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be consistent. I recommend an 80/20 plan. So I’m going to be consistent 80% of the time and I’m going to give myself a bit of wiggle room 20% of the time. That might be when I’m on holiday. It might be at weekends. But I’m going to factor it in and be in control of it.
“If you don’t allow yourself that little bit of wiggle room, you might be wonderfully consistent in the beginning. But then you might have a bad day, which is inevitable, and give up because you say, ‘I’ve lost it. There’s no point.’ We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. So I think consistency is critical – and by consistency, I mean 80/20.”
“I absolutely love cakes and baking. So there was no way that I was going to suddenly give up cake just because I was losing weight”
Credit: Sarah Kelley
In the same vein, Alison’s approach to nutrition isn’t about eating tiny portions of dressing-less salads and boiled chicken breasts.
She says, “I absolutely love cakes and baking. So there was no way that I was going to suddenly give up cake just because I was losing weight. And I think it’s really important not to associate eating well with deprivation.
“I know that if I started a food program and was told, ‘You can’t have this and you can’t have that,’ I’d just feel resentful and quite angry. And I think that’s why people give up on diets – because they’re fundamentally not fun.”
Instead, Alison has focused on avoiding ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to health conditions like obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Her new book contains a cornucopia of recipes that are high in protein and low in sugar and calories – including cakes and bread.
“There’s one recipe that never fails to make people swoon on the spot – and that’s the chocolate orange date balls,” Alison says. “They contain dates, oats, cocoa powder, desiccated coconut, chia seeds, and orange juice – basically all good ingredients. That forms a sort of truffle, which I then dip in 90% dark chocolate. All I can say is that I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody tell me they were less than spectacular.”
“I didn’t just look in the mirror and think, ‘I quite like the way I look.’ I woke up every morning with a greater sense of optimism”
Credit: Sarah Kelley
While her insights into exercise and nutrition have certainly been enlightening, some of Alison’s biggest realisations have been around the importance of mental wellbeing.
She says, “I probably used to be the sort of person who would poo-poo mental health and say, ‘Just get on with it,’ because I’m of that generation. But actually, I’ve come to understand that mental and physical health go hand in hand.
“Your gut and brain are connected and they send messages to each other. If your gut is not happy because you’re feeding it ultra-processed, sugar-laden foods, it can affect your emotions. Some research has shown it can contribute to feelings of depression. And when you exercise, your body produces the happy hormones – serotonin and endorphins. So the act of eating well and exercising means you are creating an elevated sense of wellbeing.”
Alison has seen some of these benefits firsthand. She says, “Interestingly, what I found was I didn’t just look in the mirror and think, ‘I quite like the way I look.’ I woke up every morning with a greater sense of optimism. I think that’s all tied in with the fact that you’ve got more energy, which gives you positivity because it makes you feel capable and confident.
“If you wake up in the morning and you’re feeling sluggish and tired, and maybe you’ve got a bit of a hangover and your tummy’s a bit funny, you’re not going to want to bounce out of bed and go for a walk in the park. But when I wake up in the morning now, my first thought is. ‘Great, let’s get out there and do something.’ It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“That’s life-changing because you find it’s like throwing a pebble into a pond. There are so many ripples. It affects not just you, but your relationship with, let’s say, your partner, your children, and your work colleagues. All of those things have an echo, a positive effect. It goes on and on and on.”
“It’s one thing to hear from somebody with a PhD in nutrition, but it’s quite another to feel that somebody’s at your level and on your side”
Speaking about her health journey and how it inspired her to write Fit & Fabulous Over 50, Alison says…
“It changed my life and outlook. So, I thought, ‘Maybe it would be helpful for somebody like me, who’s not a trained PT or a professional nutritionist, to share all the practical hints and tips I’ve learned along the way.
“It’s one thing to hear from somebody with a PhD in nutrition, but it’s quite another to feel that somebody’s at your level and on your side, saying, ‘I completely understand how you might be feeling right now because I felt like that three years ago.’ I know what it’s like to be 57, 30 kilos overweight, and feeling hopeless and helpless. I understand you might not think it’s possible to turn back the dial, but you can.
“It’s never too late to make a change. It doesn’t matter if you’re 50, 60, 70, or beyond. My mother is 91, and on the day before Christmas, I took her to a spa and she had her first-ever weightlifting session with a trainer. They were small weights. But do you know what? It doesn’t matter. You can start the change and make a change.”
As well as exercise, nutrition advice, and 47 of Alison’s low-calorie, high-protein recipes, Fit & Fabulous Over 50 also contains insights into other aspects of health and wellness – such as the benefits of saunas and the importance of place and purpose.
Would you like to read the book?
Are you inspired by Alison’s story? Or are you planning to read the book? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
