When I first met Sarah I was a hopeless case. Not just a yo-yo dieter but a yo-yo exerciser as well.
I jogged till my knees hurt – walked and jogged – jogged, power-walked and sprinted in sequence – or donned terrible leotards that someone had designed to make legs look longer. Wrong! People can always tell where your legs stop and that unattractive stomach/groin area begins. No eye was ever thus deceived.
I aerobic-ed to Jane Fonda, and bopped and bounced and pulled on long pieces of rubber till I was catapulted into A&E with gym whiplash. I switched on the telly every morning and watched ladies on mats in Sydney Harbour stepping and punching and lunging, and with every step and lunge they just looked sweatier and squarer. I became aware of the square aerobic body, all muscle and fitness and leotard. Those bodies that come up and say, ‘Look! I’ve been to the gym.’
‘I know, I can tell. You’re square shaped.’
These women are so fit but look like Dick Emery when they put on a pair of heels. All wrong.
So I slumped into my fatness only to be rescued by the gorgeous Miss Toner. She was recommended by a friend who could see me falling into a ‘I hate every kind of exercise and by the way I have bad knees and by now a very bad back’ abyss. When I first met her I did not think this was a match made in heaven. She arrived all tall and slim and beautiful as ballerinas should be; I thought this is never going to work and yet, within a year, I was in point shoes. I was ‘en pointe’. Something I had imagined would almost go against the laws of Nature. But Nature had not reckoned on Sarah Toner!
Sarah is a wonderful teacher and motivator and she makes it fun. She can make you laugh. She can make you laugh almost to the point of not feeling the pain (or ‘the burn’ as the square aerobic-ers would call it). She taught me to think about how I should move in a totally different way.
Stretching and lengthening – elegance through strength! No more spinning and wobbling on jiggling machines and pointless weights. I’m too old and, frankly, bored. I just want to have fun and feel relaxed and upright and great.
This book is about helping women feel great – read on…