Holly Willoughby on embracing ageing: 'I'm okay with it'
Holly Willoughby has said she has learned to embrace the changes in her body brought about by age and having children.
The 40-year-old This Morning presenter and former model admitted in a frank chat with friend Fearne Cotton on her Happy Place podcast that she has been self-critical of her own appearance, but now she has switched to finding the positives in her flaws.
Willoughby said: "As you’re getting older when you hit your 40s, things change quite rapidly actually.
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"We are heading towards that kind of menopausal time, skin is changing, hair is changing, body's changing — even having had a baby the shape of your body completely changes.
"I think that it's really important in those moments, rather than look down and go, 'Oh my God, look at everything changing, I’m getting old, I’m getting more wrinkled. Oh my God, my t*** are around my knees.'
"Instead of looking down, you’ve sort of got to look up with it and go, 'God, my body was able to carry a baby, and my boobs breastfed three children and they were fine'.
"You've got to go, 'Yes my face is starting to sag and my eyes are blood shot and the rest of it, but I’m healthy and I’m okay and getting older is a privilege because not everyone else gets to be here'."
The TV presenter has three children — sons Harry, 12, and Chester, seven, and 10-year-old daughter Belle — with TV production company boss husband Dan Baldwin, whom she married in 2007.
Willoughby told The One Show that while she has suffered from 'mum guilt' in the past, she has come to realise that a lot of those feelings come from societal pressure.
She said: "Because I think the problem with working mum guilt is that I'm feeling guilty because I'm not there to drop my kids off in the morning, because I have to go to work.
“What I'm feeling guilty about, is that in some way I'm telling myself that I clearly don't love my kids because I love my career more than my children, which is why I'm choosing to do this.
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"And of course, that's not the case. I know that's not the case - I know I love my kids more than anything on this planet.
"So why am I thinking like that? And it's because I believe that's what everyone else is thinking."
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