Sally Wilkinson on diet culture, depression & midlife power

Walking This Way

Host Lise interviews Sally Wilkinson about her transformative journey from the depths of depression, bankruptcy, and alcohol addiction to be

Key takeaways

• Sally Wilkinson used an Ironman training regimen as a tool to combat clinical depression following her property business failure.
• The 'soggy dishcloth' moment served as Sally's rock bottom, prompting her to seek extreme physical challenges to change her mindset.

Main topics

• Depression recovery
• Diet culture criticism

Notable quotes

Anybody can fall into a hole. Anybody. Even the most perfect person can fall, but nobody can fall out of the hole. You've got to climb out yourself.

Conclusion

A deeply moving testament to resilience, illustrating that true transf

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Anybody can fall into a hole. Anybody. Even the most perfect person can fall, but nobody can fall out of the hole. You've got to climb out yourself. Speaker 2 (0:19) Hello and welcome back to season two, episode two of Walking This Way. How are you all doing? So it's official. Yesterday I turned 50 years old. Half a century on this planet and my goodness what a ride it has been. I'm going to chat a bit more about it all in the next weeks out and about but today I have got the most fabulous guest for you and I want to get to her as soon as possible. But, and there's always a but. First, a quick one before we crack on. If you're enjoying the show, please hit follow wherever you're listening. And if you've got 30 seconds to spare, a review really does help. It's such a small thing for you to do, but it makes a massive difference to us. It's basically how other people stumble across the show. And following means you'll always get the next one the second it lands. But that's enough. And now for episode two of season two. I was over the moon to welcome Sally Wilkinson onto the Speaker 3 (1:19) podcast. Speaker 2 (1:20) I have followed Sally on Facebook and Instagram for almost 10 years now. She has always been there, inspiring me to move and to be real. She was also a huge inspiration to massively reduce my drinking. In fact, I think I stopped for a whole year because of her. But more on that a little bit later in the show. She isn't shy and she says it how it is. So strap yourselves in. Here is Sally Wilkinson. So my guest today is the wonderful Sally Wilkinson. And I have been researching you, Sally, and I'm going to put some things out there. But really, I need you to explain it because I couldn't get a thread. Normally, I like to sort of give a bit of a thread about a person's history and who they are. But for you, I've got rugby player, Jason Vale Juice Retreats. You used to help facilitate. property developer, fitness instructor, tribe leader, Nordic walker, iron woman, author, Strictly Come Dancer charity fundraiser. It goes on. So actually, I want to kick straight off and ask you, who is Sally Wilkinson? Well, all of those things, Speaker 3 (2:34) I think. I started my business totally accidentally. I like to say accidentally because people say, oh, you shouldn't say that. But, well, why not? Because that's what happened. I didn't really set out to, oh, I want to be a business owner and inspire thousands of women to step away from the dieting treadmill nonsense and this is how I'm going to do it. It wasn't like that. You know, it just started really strangely. But yeah, before all that, it was all those things. I did the Iron Woman, Iron Man, should I say, to get out of a depression in 2016. You know, I was diagnosed with depression because all our property business went tits up and it was just an awful, awful time. And yeah, I started drinking heavily. I was never really a big drinker. I was a bit of a little party drinker, a social drinker, I'd say. But then when we were going through that, it really was bad. And yeah, I went to bed for three months basically still. And I just used to work at the gym then. I just used to teach three spinning classes and two body pump sessions a week. And that was my job. But before that, I'd done retail management. You know, I'd worked at the call centre at BT for 10 years because I didn't want any responsibility while I was having two more children. Plus, I knew they did really good maternity packages. Speaker 2 (3:53) So, and that was lovely. Speaker 3 (3:55) It was lovely not to have a managerial role because I've been in retail management since I was about 20. How Speaker 2 (4:01) old are you now? 56. 56 years young? Yes. Because you seem to have, the reason why I'm saying that is that you seem to have fitted a lot in. Yeah, Speaker 3 (4:12) no, I did. I did my retail management, so I did all that and I always had two jobs. When I was on maternity leave with Nancy, who's my... younger she's 23 she was so good i took a year off bt so we bought a house on a credit card me and my brother and he's a builder and we just started doing property development and we did that for a couple of years well for a few years and it all ended up going up takes up in the end and it just ensued five six years of absolute hell really, and fear and worry and bailiffs and bankruptcy. And it was just a really horrible time. And I just became ridiculously depressed. I put a couple of stone on, started comfort eating, which I hadn't done for years since I'd stepped away from the dieting industry. And then the biggest thing was I started drinking quite heavily. And when I say heavily, I mean probably a bottle, bottle and a half, five, six nights a week, creating fake happiness. you know, where you just forget about it and party for one on the sofa till midnight, one in the morning. I've seen some of those clips, Sally, in the early days of my life following you. I don't think... How old were your children at that point? Oh, it was the shame I feel about being a shit mother when they probably needed me the most. Nan's sort of been about 11. I remember being in bed and she'd just got into the grammar school. I remember it was her, you know, on the first few days, but then towards Christmas... She used to come into the bedroom, she used to have long hair, and she still does, and she'd come in in a uniform. And this had been going on, I'd probably been bad for about a good few months, six months. And I remember going to bed and just not wanting to get up in the morning. Nancy would come in at 7 o'clock because of how the bus was. She had to go at half seven to get the bus. And she'd come in and say, Mummy, can you tie my hair up? So I'd wake up, swing my legs out of bed. I mean, it's shameful admitting this, but there's shame only hides in secrecy, I feel. So I felt, since I'd been honest about it, I'd swing my legs out, tie a hair up and she'd go out of the room and I'd just go back to sleep. I'd get up about one o'clock really when the dog needed to go out. But I remember there was one particular... event which is so innocuous that really did make me think I have got to do something about this because nobody is going to come and do it for me. I'd gone to the doctors to diagnose with clinical depression, chose not to take the antidepressants. I don't judge anybody who does, I just feel it wasn't for me. So I remember that one morning getting up about one o'clock and going down to the kitchen. to make myself some food. And this is when all three children lived at home. They'd obviously made their own sandwiches because I was shit mother of all. You know, I usually occasionally used to do it. I shouldn't laugh, but occasionally I'd go, there's no crisps left. And they knew I'd had to drink the night before because I'd eaten all the crisps. You know what it's like when you used to have a drink, you get the munchies. So I'd eat all the school crisps and it's terrible. But I remember going down to the kitchen and... seeing the worktops were covered in crumbs and I hate that so I went to get the cloth out the sink and I picked it up and it was wet and soggy you know when you pick a cloth up and usually because you like to wring it and leave it you know what I do and it was wet and soggy and I got hold of this soggy cloth and I just thought fuck it can't be arsed and that might as well have been writing 100 emails, that task of having to wring that cloth out and wipe the units. So I just chucked it in the sink, made a loaf of toast and went to bed eating my feelings. And it was then that I really thought this can't carry on. It really can't. So I happened to read a book called Operation Ironman by George Mahood. And it was funny as anything. And within four months, he did an Ironman. And so I just thought, I'm going to do that. Literally that day, I read that book. So I came to the computer. When's the next Ironman? Never having done a triathlon of any description in my life, not even a sprint one. And it was four months later. So I booked it. So I was in bed and just absolutely... all horrible thoughts feeling really suicidal basically you know just awful and i thought i've got i knew enough about fitness and how it made me feel that i know that's what's going to help me and so that day i booked bolt nine man this was in the march And that afternoon I went out on my bike, had to pump the tyres up. I did six miles and it nearly bloody killed me. I'm not kidding you, I was blowing out my arse and I came back. But it worked. I needed something. I could have done a half marathon or a marathon or a 20-mile bike ride, but I needed something, Lisa, that felt impossible that I had to train for. Because if I didn't have that, I knew I'd just wing it. But I needed something that I really needed to train for. And four months later, and the irony, and it always upsets me when I think of this, the irony that on the Tuesday, me and my brother had to go to Blackpool to be interviewed about the bankruptcy, and we were declared bankrupt on the Tuesday in Blackpool. And it was humiliating. It was awful. It was just horrible. Four days later, I was crossing the Bolton Ironman finishing line. in the same week and it was just it was so tinged because I didn't do it to get a good time people said what's your best discipline I was below average at all of them you know I wasn't particularly good runner cyclist or swimmer but I did all three and Ironman's very strict and it's 17 hours but I was 17 hours 12 minutes So I was the last person they allowed to finish the line, cross the line, but there were 400 people behind me who didn't finish. But I crossed the line and I will never forget this amazing woman, similar age to me, with long blonde hair. She came up to me with a medal and a T-shirt and I was just in bits and she put this medal over my head. She says, it's people like you is why I volunteer to do this. And I'll never forget her kindness. And she gave me a medal and a T-shirt. And I wear it with pride because it signifies so much that you can. And I know it's probably not everybody's. I'm not saying get out of depression, go and do a nine man. At all, you've got to find what works for you. And that's what worked for me. And it really is why I'm so passionate about fitness and like it's nature's finest antidepressant. And it really did work. And Sally, Speaker 2 (10:52) there's a couple of things that is. Number one, that shame about the alcohol with children. I've got it. I did it. When I was younger, I used to get drunk all the time and then I would have hangovers beyond anything. I would be sick. When the kids were with me, I was doing that. And it was in a very socially acceptable way. Mine was like, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I needed a school mum who would keep everyone up till 2am in the morning on the school drinks. That was me. I was a good party animal. But the alcohol made me so sick. And you also talk about those thoughts of suicide. And I just don't know whether that means we need a trigger warning or whatever. But alcohol is such an antidepressant that I had the same things. It wasn't like I was going to get up and do it and I had a plan. But definitely, this is so shit. I can't do anything. I'm incapable of doing anything. I don't know how to kind of go forward in the day. And a lot of that is the alcohol that people don't realize. And even now, and I have the odd drink now, I don't, you know, not because I changed my, I did the same thing as you. I just took on something that was so big. It's a real, it is a way of doing it, isn't it, Sally? But I took on something so big and it changed my life for the good. And it helped me stop the alcohol that I'm so unhappy about. if you can drink and you have a wonderful time you're not hungover you're not and it's not a problem then it's not a problem but for me it was a problem and for like and I have the same shame that you've just described and I kind of first of all I want to highlight that number one because I think many women have it we have so many responsibilities we're just desperate for a glass of wine to shut it out in the how to sit down on the sofa unless we've necked a glass or two Yeah. And there's so many women out there, but I think you and I are both sort of, you're the beacon of it's possible. It's all possible and kindness to yourself. Oh, I think and definitely having some compassion for yourself, Speaker 3 (12:50) which you don't have. All you have is... Alcohol for yourself, that's all I used to do. And, you know, I never used to be a big drinker at all. In fact, I wouldn't drink unless I went out and we didn't go out that much. It was only when we started going through this that it really, it was insidious. It really did creep in. But I ended up doing a 30-day challenge with One Year No Beer in 2017 and that turned into three and a half years. Yeah, I didn't drink at all for three and a half years and I learnt so much. Speaker 2 (13:17) I said to you, I did the One Year No Beer. challenge and i am sure it was because of you i'm sure you shared it and i used to share it all Speaker 3 (13:27) the time because i was so passionate about it you know because i really did but you don't want to become one of these evangelical who judge people for drinking but i was never the sort of person who could just why would you Speaker 2 (13:40) just have one glass of wine and i'm going to pause you there for a reason because i've got a couple of little surprises for you and I know that you adore your kids and I know that they adore you. Yes. And Speaker 3 (13:54) I get Speaker 2 (13:54) in touch with them to ask if I can stay, if I can keep myself, if I can not cry. So this was Nancy. I'm going to read it to you. I'm so proud of her and that she's been able to find such a fulfilling thing that she's so obviously so naturally talented at and being able to help so many people makes me so proud. Her voice and words help and motivate so many people from all walks of life. And it's a pleasure to see her blossom and grow in herself as well. Oh, my God. Even if she's still unable to motivate me to get out of bed. I love her so much. And I know how many people are so excited to see how much she still has to give. Speaker 3 (14:40) Oh, my goodness. Speaker 2 (14:42) That's Nancy who amazingly used to come into my bedroom. And I'd just chew her out. That's the seven-year-old Nancy who's a grown-up now. Yeah. And you've been an amazing role model to her. So I just, you know, it's so hard to look back on those things. But when you hear those words from her. I know. Speaker 5 (15:01) Just Speaker 2 (15:02) gorgeous. Oh, just. That is so lovely. And then I'm going to ask Tim, because your boys recorded. Speaker 3 (15:12) Oh, Speaker 2 (15:13) my God. So we're going to listen Speaker 3 (15:16) to Ben next. Ben's my 32-year-old. He's my first. Ben's my first one. Your first one. OK, so this is Ben. Oh, my goodness, Philom, this is your life. Speaker 4 (15:29) Hey, so I just wanted to say a few things. I thought it was easier than typing it out. I think, like, me and my mum, one thing we had more in common was playing rugby when I was a... five she says rugby or football obviously I chose rugby but uh growing up watching her play at such a good level and she was like fearless going in to the game and like so many times she wouldn't play the match one of the funniest things was one of her tour names became Dalek she'd run so powerfully with a ball with her hand