He is a major heartthrob, recently posing topless on the cover of Elle magazine, and a doting dad. But it seems David Beckham is also one of the sweetest guys in the world!
Arriving back in the UK on Thursday from Los Angeles he immediately visited two of the most important people in his life, his mum and his gran, posting these adorable pictures on Facebook.
“As I’m sure you would have expected, I had a pie and mash lunch today with my mum. There is nothing better,” he wrote alongside a picture of him with his mum.
“Great to be back in London. Paid a surprise visit to see my gran,” he wrote on another.
David with his mum Sandra.
David with his gran and a group of her friends.
David Beckham’s recent cover shoot for Elle magazine.
Like more than half the Australian population, Chrissie Swan is overweight. Unlike most of us, she’s not ashamed of it.
Chrissie — who found fame on Big Brother in 2003 and went on to host morning show The Circle before she quit in December 2011 — has never let her size hold her back. Her attitude is inspiring.
“I never bought into that, ‘I am fat, and therefore I am bad’ way of thinking,” she tells the June issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out today.
Chrissie started dieting when she was 10 years old and has been on diets her whole life — even as a child, when she didn’t need to be.
Chrissie believes this set her up for a fractious relationship with food. Yet now, after almost 30 years, Chrissie says she has come to terms with her size and is happy.
It may have caused her unhappiness in the past, but she has never let it hold her back or define her as a person.
“To me, it was always just weight,” she says. “It’s quite popular now, television shows like The Biggest Loser and all that stuff. They weep and say how ashamed they are and they are terrible people [for being overweight]. Why can’t it just be kilos?
“It’s shaming fat people into thinking their heart’s about to explode, their legs are about to be cut off due to diabetes. They’ll never conceive a child, they’ll never get married, they’ll never find love, they’ll never get the job they want.”
Chrissie — who has two sons, Leo, three, and nine-month-old Kit — is especially upset at the messages conveyed to children, that there is something wrong with them and they ought to be ashamed if they are chubby.
“We can’t say fat people are bad, we can’t have them crawl through mud pits on national television and have skinny people yelling at them, saying, ‘How does it feel?’ Because kids see that and they go, ‘Okay, it’s cool to scream abuse and belittle a fat person. I’ll do that next time I see Billy in the playground.’
“The responsibility is on parents to try to set up a healthy relationship with food and exercise, right from the get go.”
In 2010, Chrissie became an ambassador for Jenny Craig, signing up to lose 40kg before trying for a second baby. She lost 20 and fell pregnant easily, but won’t sign up again.
“I actually don’t think the answer is in a pre-packaged microwave meal, but again, you don’t know until you have a crack,” she says.
“For me, the whole time was about stopping the weight gain, which was just going nuts, and learning about eating because when you are overweight, you actually don’t eat that much. I just didn’t eat, I wasn’t eating almost anything.”
Now, Chrissie is a size 22 and happy. She can’t escape wagging tongues — she was photographed without her knowledge at the beach in a swimsuit with her family.
Yet, as she wrote in her Sunday Life column, she refuses to feel ashamed.
“Life as an overweight woman is an exercise in apology,” she wrote. “You always feel like you have to say sorry for your presence. That’s what those sad eyes on the awkward size-18 waitress are saying, ‘Sorry you have to see me.’
“Ordering a full-cream flat white is often met with judgemental eyes, yet people at their ‘goal weight’ do it every day of the week. So I do it, too. I’m not ashamed any more.”
Weight, she believes, brings its own benefits. “Fat people are different to thin people,” she says.
“When you are overweight, that’s the first thing everybody sees, so you do have to work harder. You have to be good at something else. I’ve had to get to know people quickly and be interested in them, and all that sort of stuff.
“Our personality muscles I think are stronger because of that.”
Read more of this story in the June issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Have you battled with your weight? Share your story below.
She’s tried every diet, pill and potion. She’s suffered bulimia. She’s seen doctors, dietitians, nutritionists. She’s exercised.
Her weight has oscillated wildly, but the kilos always come back and, as a result, Kath has spent the best part of 40 years feeling like “the most worthless person on the planet”.
She has tried to kill herself several times, figuring there was no point in living if she had to live fat.
Many Australians can relate to Kath Read. Statistics released last year show 61 per cent of adults are overweight and one in four is obese.
Governments are urging people to slim down and many are desperately trying. In 2010-11, Australians spent $789.6 million on weight-loss programs, low-calorie products, dietary supplements, low-fat cookbooks and even surgery.
Yet, both personally and as a community, we are fighting a losing battle. Not only are obesity rates rising, but statistics show that the majority of people who lose weight put it on again, plus more.
According to conventional wisdom, losing weight should be simple for those with enough willpower — just consume less energy than you expend, or eat less and exercise more. Following that logic, those who fail are lazy or gluttonous.
Yet, as Kath Read already knew and experts are beginning to learn, losing weight and keeping it off is far more difficult than that. It requires not only relentless discipline, but an almost unwinnable fight against our own bodies.
When we gaze enviously at naturally skinny people, we should remember that, a couple of thousand years ago, they would have been gazing enviously at us.
In the days when humans were scrounging for their next meal, the genetic pathways that helped some people hang onto fat were key to survival.
Professor Louise Baur, a specialist in paediatric obesity at the University of Sydney, says up to 70 percent of variation in body size is determined by genetics.
Not one gene, but hundreds of them, governing everything from whether cells prefer carbohydrate or fat as fuel, to the way taste works or how the stomach tells the brain it’s hungry.
“If we only had one pathway that determined what our body weight was and whether we stored fat, the human species would not have survived,” she says.
Nevertheless, obesity only became a widespread problem in the late 20th century, when food became cheap, accessible and processed.
This provided the environment for people who already had a genetic bent towards obesity to start tipping the scales in numbers we’ve never seen before.
“We’ve had massive changes to the food environment in the past three decades and genetically vulnerable people in particular are responding,” says Professor Baur.
The fight against hormones and genetics is tough enough, but at least that’s a private battle. For many, living in a world that seems to unashamedly discriminate against fat people is the most difficult thing about being obese.
Studies have shown overweight people earn less, are less likely to be promoted and are more likely to be sacked. In the United States, they are less likely to be accepted into college.
At 35, Kath decided to stop worrying about her weight. She couldn’t take the emotional roller-coaster and her body had been through too much, so she quit dieting and embraced life. “I can’t express the difference,” she says.
“I spent the first 35 years of my life waiting until I was thin. Now, nothing stops me. I have so much more confidence. My life is joyful.
“People still make those comments, but what I’ve realised is that other people’s crappy behaviour is not my burden to carry. It doesn’t measure my worth. I’m not going to let anyone else stop me from living my life.”
Read more of this story in the June issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Have you struggled with your weight? Share your story below.
Lisa Wilkinson has shared a flashback photo to the 90s of when she was editor of CLEO Magazine. Here she writes for The Weekly about what life lessons she wish she knew at 16.
Lisa Wilkinson today, and as a teenaged school girl.
Imagine if you could whisper in the ear of your teenage self. What advice might you have shared? TV presenter Lisa Wilkinson shares her letter.
It hasn’t been easy lately, has it? In fact, it’s been three long years since the bullying started and I know better than anyone how many tears you’ve shed.
I also know how relieved you are on this, your 16th birthday, that school has broken up for the Christmas holidays, liberating you from that handful of girls who have made your life hell.
Lisa Wilkinson shared this picture of her CLEO days in the 90s.
Yes, it does seem strange that not one of them has told you what it is you’ve done to anger them, but that is the point really.
There is no reason and their actions have very little to do with your imperfections … and everything to do with their problems.
Yet here is the amazing thing — you.
One day, when you least expect it, some of them will track you down for a different reason. To apologise.
They will be grown women with children of their own, living in fear that others will do to their kids what they did to you.
You will be surprised by your calm when this happens. And your understanding that you have left it all behind. They perhaps might not.
I know that a career seems like a giant question mark right now. Air hostess? Teacher? Secretary? Journalist? I have good news, but you will have to work hard.
When opportunity comes your way, recognise it, back yourself and run with it. When others see promise in you, believe it. It’s then that you will fly.
There will come a rainy Thursday in a few years’ time when Mum will tell you to pull your head out of the pages of Dolly and go and grab The Sydney Morning Herald to see if there is a job with your name on it.
I really don’t want to say too much, as that would spoil the surprises in store, but at least know the well-thumbed Dolly copies under your bed Mum keeps telling you to throw out? Maybe don’t, just yet.
I know Saturdays can be a little quiet at home when the whole family heads off to the rugby and your two brothers take to the field.
I know you wonder, with four of your girlfriends dating guys in the team (as you stay at home playing, yet again, Janis Ian’s ‘At Seventeen’), whether you should, too.
Resist. Eventually, rugby will find you. And so will love. In a very different way than you could imagine. Even though Dad might not be there when it happens, he will have a hand in it. You will know the moment. And you will smile, sure in that knowledge.
When it comes to boys, try not to lose “you” when you love. Scratch that … I want you to know what that feels like so you know not to do it again.
But, yes, there will be one and, before you know it, a family, walking life’s path with you; a family you’ll love more than you can possibly imagine loving anything.
Lisa, it is all going to work out. You won’t be a stranger to tough times, though.
Sometimes, you’ll wonder if you need your head read over some of the challenges you take on. You will know sadness, fears and disappointments, too. But from where I sit, I wouldn’t change a single second of what lies ahead.
No regrets. Ever. No one could ask for more.
Hugs, your older self,
Lisa.
Your say: What advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
Tea is the second most popular drink in the world, behind water, and for good reason. Besides its delicious taste and versatility, tea has a number of significant health benefits.
Up your antioxidants
Tea contains high levels of catechins, a type of powerful antioxidant. Some studies have estimated that black and green tea have up to 10 times the amount of antioxidants found in fruit and vegetables.
“The antioxidants in tea are certainly the biggest health benefit,” says Zoe Bingley-Pullin, nutritionist, chef and founder of Nutritional Edge.
While black and green teas are great, Zoe says the best choice is white tea. “That’s not black tea with milk and two sugars but a type of green tea that has an even higher antioxidant level and is less treated and processed,” she explains.
“Green tea also helps to inhibit dietary fats being absorbed so therefore is excellent for weight loss. Try drinking Green tea 30 minutes before eating as it helps to suppress the appetite.”
Flavour and variety
Once you get hooked on tea you’ll be amazed by how many blends there are beyond the usual English Breakfast and Earl Grey.
There are many different varieties of green and white teas and an even bigger range of herbal teas, including ones made from everything from hibiscus, lavender, chamomile and rose petals, to licorice, peppermint and ginger.
“One tea I absolutely love is Rooibos tea,” says Zoe. “It’s an African tea that is non-caffeinated and has a slight redness in colour, which also contains some carotene (Vitamin A).”
Herbal teas
While tea has many health benefits, it also contains caffeine and therefore needs to be consumed in moderation. Tea contains less caffeine than coffee, but it is still present in black, green and white tea.
“The recommended daily intake of caffeine is 250-300mg a day, but I think we should be consuming even less than that as caffeine over-stimulates the adrenal glands and most of us are over-stimulated in that respect anyway,” Zoe says.
Fortunately, herbal teas do not contain caffeine and often come with their own health benefits. Here are Zoe’s favourite warming winter recommendations:
Rosehip tea: Extremely high in Vitamin C, which is an antioxidant, anti-bacterial and anti-mucosal. Do not boil this tea, as this will deplete the high Vitamin C content.
Licorice root tea: Licorice contains glycyrrhizin, which is 50 times sweeter than sugar. Licorice tea is brilliant to have after meals as a sweet substitute and it is also wonderfully soothing on the digestive system.
Ginger tea: Fantastic for helping reduce nausea. It can be used for everything from morning sickness and PMT to motion sickness and also helps reduce bad cholesterol.
Dandelion tea: A fantastic alternative to coffee. It has a rich flavour like coffee and is similar in colour. Dandelion tea is wonderfully stimulating for the liver and has a slightly bitter taste, which helps stimulate digestion.
Chrissie Swan in Swan & Thompson (left) and in Style and Substance (right).
Are you struggling to find clothes to fit your fuller figure? The Weekly’s fashion editor Mattie Cronan shows you how to look as good as our June cover girl Chrissie Swan.
Looking for clothes for our cover girl Chrissie Swan was always going to be a bit of a challenge.
I wanted something beautiful for Chrissie, something that she would feel amazing in as she was about to join an elite club: The Australian Women’s Weekly cover stars!
I’ve got to be honest there is not a great deal out there in the world of plus-size clothing, and I was a little disappointed with what I was seeing on the racks.
The quality, designs, fabrications, and the overall lack of choice, was not very appealing.
So Tiffany, our Market Editor, and I went to work and started researching clothes for larger women and came up with some real gems. Chrissie was thrilled to see how much we came up with and had masses to choose from on the day.
I thought it was my duty to share these great finds with all you other plus-size ladies out there!
On the cover, Chrissie is wearing a custom-made dress by one of her best friends, fashion designer Rebecca Thompson.
The dress was made under Chrissie and Rebecca’s label, Swan & Thompson, which focuses on creating beautiful silhouettes in luxurious fabrics in sizes 16-24.
Rebecca’s solo label Rebecca Thompson only goes up to size 16, and she says the bigger pieces are always the first to sell out, showing there is a huge market for plus-size fashion.
Tiffany and I also came across a great local online website Style and Substance. You can find everything from casual to bridal, the range is vast and it goes from size 14-32 .
Chrissie wore two Kiyonna dresses in our photo shoot, the Cosmo Cocktail Dress in Golden Evening and the Betsey Ruched Dress in Elegant Aubergine and looked incredible in both.
The Betsey dress by Kiyonna is a style they continue to stock, as it is so flattering to all body shapes. It comes in seven colours and prints.
Other brands and websites we used were Dream Diva for the best leggings around, At Last for Chrissie’s Bless My Soles shoes, Eve Hunter for the lilac embellished dress, Marina Rinaldi for the gorgeous gold cardigan, and of course Harlequin Market for all of the incredible jewels.
Other Notable plus-size brands are:
Muse by Dita Von Teese: Beautifully handcrafted dresses that go up to size 20. Available exclusively at David Jones.
Leona + by Leona Edmiston: A great array of fun frocks, colours and prints stocked in Myer and select Leona Edmiston Boutiques.
Asos Curve: Asos is cult British fashion website and has a line specifically designed for the curvy girl. It goes up to a size 26 and has great range that is on trend and for the more fashion-forward shopper.
Sara by Ezi-Buy: This online powerhouse brand goes up to 3XL offers a great range at affordable prices.
maggie t: Great classics for a sleeker, more polished look for the more sophisticated shopper.
The Special Size Co: This store has been in Adelaide for nearly 30 years and now sells online too. It stocks has over 20 labels including some of their own: Party Girl, Shelz, Big Scene Knitwear. TSSC also offers a make-to-order service on some garments. The size range is from 14-34 and the styles cover all occasions and all ages.
This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon, Sphere, $29.99.
Despite the furore about this book in the publishing industry, This Is How It Ends is a quiet book, gently written, about some very big human issues and therein lies its charm.
Protagonist Addie Murphy is approaching 40 and in an empty, sad, lost, phase of her life. An architect with no work, thanks to the post global financial crisis recession, she’s temporarily living with her cantankerous doctor father who needs care following a freak accident and is also fighting a malpractice suit.
Addie spends her days walking the windswept beach in her Irish seaside town with faithful pooch Lola chasing seagulls, her iPod ratcheted up high, and swimming in the ocean — where she really feels free.
Enter 50-year-old Bruno Boylan, an American banker who has just lost his job with the infamous GFC demons The Lehman Brothers, and is escaping the chaos by tracing his Irish ancestry, a dying wish from his father.
Interestingly Bruno is not your typical financier but a closet Democrat and is certain that the only hope for America and the world to rise from the abyss is if Obama is voted in.
But with McCain rising in the polls, his whole life teeters on the brink. That is until he meets relative Addie, and a sweet, tentative love match is struck.
Bruno has two marriages and a serious romance under his belt, and Addie has recent trauma from a broken relationship fuelling her, so the path is certain to be rocky.
What follows is both heart-warming and unexpected in ways we don’t see coming, although looking back the seeds have been sown.
But it is not the love story, nor the contemporary political background, nor the dramatic ending, but the female characters that give this book the edge.
Addie and her sister Della are complexly constructed and recognisable, their emotions yanking them in all directions but each with a strong, intense core to steady them.
The male characters are moth-like cyphers around their flames and it is this compelling flicker that like the men, we find endlessly fascinating as the plot plays out to its shocking conclusion.
About the author: Kathleen MacMahon
When Irish TV news journalist Kathleen MacMahon, 42, landed one of the biggest advance book deals of 2011 for her debut novel she was she was “surprisingly calm,” she says.
“I think it was because I was so sure of the book. And I remember thinking: I’m a grown-up, I can handle this.”
The daughter of a barrister mum who quit the law in her 40s to raise Kathleen and her sister and a civil engineer dad, Kathleen wrote during the days off in her shiftwork schedule as a journalist and has since taken a year off to work on a second novel — also part of the deal.
Her inspiration for This Is How it Ends was “solitary walks on the beach, Bruce Springsteen on the iPod, the election in the US, and my dog Lola.” The latter being the only character based on reality in the book.
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They are one of the hottest newlywed couples around, but even Michael Bublé and his wife of one year Luisana Loreley Lopilato de la Torre need a little help keeping the spark alive.
The pair have spent a lot of time apart recently due to Bublé’s demanding work schedule, but he says the pair have a secret to their romance.
“A lot of Skype dates,” he told Entertainment Tonight Canada. “I miss her, though. So it’s just been nuts. We’ve been going back and forth.”
The pair, who celebrated their first wedding anniversary in March, are obviously romantics at heart and gave each other heartfelt gifts to mark the occasion.
True to his Canadian crooner style, Bublé recorded his wife a song and video.
His 25-year-old Argentine actress wife, on the other hand, really “shocked” him with her gift.
It was a special book that contained “every note, every love note, every ticket – everything we’ve done,” Bublé explained.
One year on from the royal wedding, Prince William has spoken about the happiest and the hardest day of his life.
Opening up to ABC journalist Katie Couric, the Duke of Cambridge spoke about the fact that his mother, Princess Diana was not present the day he married Kate Middleton.
In his first interview on the subject, the Prince detailed his sadness that his mother would never get to meet his wife, now Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge, and said he prepared himself emotionally before the big day.
“It was very difficult. I had prepared myself beforehand so that I was sort of mentally prepared, I didn’t want any wobbling lips going on,” he said.
Watch the interview with Prince William in the video player above.
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