Paula Moorhouse, 66, started exercising in her late forties…and has been turning heads ever since!
Since hitting her sixties, Paula, who’s just become a grandma, has won a body sculpting competition, set a new age-group Australian indoor record for the 800m and been part of a relay team that smashed the world record for the 4 x 800m.
Yet she didn’t even discover exercise until her late forties.
“I’d just been too busy with my family,” says Paula, who followed her first child with twins.
“At one stage I had three children under 12 months. I was an average size 12, but then one day I mentioned to my partner that he was putting on weight and he shot back, ‘Don’t talk to me about being fat, Barge Arse.’”
At the time, Paula says she had low self-esteem.
“I thought, ‘Is that what I look like?’ and started going to the gym.
“A personal trainer introduced me to training with weights. Combined with good nutrition, that’s the real secret to burning fat and getting in shape.”
In her fifties, she was also persuaded to start running and, despite never having run before, soon found herself winning half marathons.
Ironically, Paula’s partner didn’t like her new fit body.
“It’s like going to bed with a footballer,” he complained.
Paula’s sons Stephen, now 38, and Christopher, 39, weren’t sure how they felt either.
“Your mum’s hot,” their friends would whisper when Paula returned from the gym in her tiny shorts
“They’d tell me to go and put some pants on!” she laughs.
However, research has shown lifting weights can also lift women’s self-esteem, and so it’s proven for Paula.
A few years later, at 58 and now single, she packed up her car and drove away from Queensland to live in Sydney, where she knew just one person.
“I wanted a new start,” she recalls. “I’d been dependent on two men for 30 years.
“I didn’t want to stay in Brisbane and become dependent on my kids, so I just went for it.”
Since her move, Paula’s less fitness-focused daughters Mirella, 38, and Suzie, 35, ?have been to visit.
They’ve hinted their mum might like a new image to go with her new life and tried to persuade her to throw away her mini skirts and wear something more “age-appropriate”.
But Paula isn’t having any of it.
“I tell them not to try to change me. I point out, ‘How many 60-year-olds do you know who are happy with the way they look and with themselves?’”
However, Paula admits she doesn’t train for compliments.
“I do it to feel good and that’s what I tell my clients: if you want to get fit, then do it for yourself,’” she says firmly.
Read Paula’s full story and find out what she does to keep in shape, ONLY in this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale now!
