Vicki Anstey

And I think that's a combination, isn't it?

A family and society and schooling structures and just systems that surround all of us.

You know, and I think one of the most radical things any of us can do in our lives is just to become ourselves, is to find out what life we really want to live.

and then live it.

And I think for so much of my life, really, until I was almost 40, I was living a life according to what I thought others expected of me.

And even according to the narrative that other people had of me that I don't actually think was really the real me.

And what a waste of a life that would be if I hadn't

Realised.

No, not at all.

My professional career started off in advertising and I'd studied French at university and that's where I met my ex-husband and I was 19.

So we were together in total for 20 years, which is a really...

long time that's a long marriage well I mean I know you weren't married the whole time but that's that's a big relationship um yeah and you know I I think people change don't they over periods of time like that and I definitely did and I and I do think that that presented something of a challenge to him and um you know as as you know you've alluded there was that

shift in my career path away from the corporate world into setting up my own fitness business which sort of came about really because I had a moment of reckoning with myself at my computer screen late one night and realized that I needed to make some changes that I wasn't happy and I think there are lots of layers to why that might have been the case but

And addressing the lifestyle that I was leading in advertising at the time, which was quite hedonistic and quite tiring, seemed to be the immediate thing to do.

And then I sort of fell into exercise, really.

And then, of course, I do this huge U-turn.

And it's so interesting, isn't it, how we make what feel like these sort of smallish decisions that turn into kind of potentially life changing moments.

And really, I started doing what was then called Lottie Burke that I kind of, you know,

created into this version of bar through my business that you obviously were very much part of.

I did that because I wanted to reclaim some of my time.