As a regular on ITV’s Loose Women, Ruth Langsford inevitably takes a lot of care over her appearance but even so, she says, she can’t entirely hold the realities of ageing at bay: “I’m at least two dress sizes bigger than I would have been in my thirties,” she told the QVC podcast.
She adds that she came to a shocking realisation about her lifestyle after the emergence of devices such as the Fitbit and the Apple Watch got everyone monitoring their daily step count.
Ruth recalled: “I remember thinking, ‘I’m a very busy person, I must probably do that naturally, because I am very busy’.”
But in fact, she says, while her work schedule is quite hectic, it’s also quite sedentary: “I spend a lot of time sitting; I get driven to work in the morning, but I’m sitting. I’m reading my notes, I’m reading the papers, I’m sitting. I sit in makeup.”
Ruth says that, while she expected to smash the 10,000 step target, her normal daily average is less than half that: “I realised I need to really up my game,” she admits.
Following her discovery, the star is trying harder to keep up with a regular exercise regime, and takes her dog out for a walk at least once a day.
However, she adds that a healthier lifestyle doesn’t extend to giving up the things she enjoys: “Am I going to ever say, ‘No cake for me, no champagne for me?’ Never!”
In contrast with her ex-husband Eamonn Holmes, also 64, Ruth took a step back from the spotlight after their split – while Eamonn was spotted out and about with 42-year-old divorcee Katie Alexander.
In the wake of her husband’s apparent romance with a younger woman following their split, Ruth spoke candidly about the realities of ageing.
She divulged: “When I hit 60, it seems to have happened very quickly. You know me, I don’t tend to worry much about age. But at 60 until now, I’m 64, I feel that everything has drooped and sagged and I have a funny neck.
“I can see it. When you take a selfie or something, whereas before I didn’t really notice. Now I do and I go, ‘Ugh, look at that’.
“We promote very much on [Loose Women], body positivity, confidence – age is just a number. I teeter on this tightrope of trying hard to be that woman, ‘Age is just a number, count your blessing in life, all my friends look like this’.”