'SUGAR & BOOZE'
Hollyoaks’ Davinia Taylor says she was ‘close to death’ after drinking a box of wine a night and ‘ballooning to size 18’
HOLLYOAKS' Davinia Taylor says she was "close to death" after drinking a box of wine a night and "ballooning to size 18".
Davinia, 43, opened up on addiction, gaining weight, and getting sober in a candid chat.
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She told the : ''I’m definitely not a doctor or anything but I have been extremely unhealthy, near death unhealthy, through fault of my own and genetics and environment or whatever.
"But I am always up for trying something, even if a doctor says don’t try it, I’m sitting there staring at an overweight doctor who smokes 20 a day and drinks a bottle of wine, or dare I say a box of wine every evening, and I’m like, 'yeah I think I will do my own experiment'.
"To see what works best for me to be able to think better, move better, feel better, so I don’t have to turn to old behaviours, whether it be sugar or booze or whatever, I just want to live without any cravings really, because they are horrible."
On becoming sober, the Hollyoaks star added: "I think that a lot of people have to go down the AA route, and I went in with AA but they promote you having sugar to swap your alcohol cravings which didn’t really work for me.
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"Having said that AA is a lovely place and a very spiritual place, and you can get a lot of serotonin from the group chats, and that's the basis of how it works. But I’m not 100% behind the AA movement as you can get some really difficult people in there, so for me it was just working my brain to stop getting cravings.
"In AA you hear people who have been abused and had all these awful childhoods and I sat there thinking, why am I here? I’ve had an amazing childhood, hilarious upbringing, great education, like what the hell is my problem?'
She went on: "That's when I got into genetics to figure out what it is that makes me, be able to consume so much alcohol and be able to detoxify from it, so I don’t puke up and yet still want more, and that’s all in my genetic code."
Davinia admitted life is now different after she ditched her "party animal" ways and she's swapped nights out for exercise to feel some "euphoria".
She said: "Well, when I was a party animal it’s safe to say I did let my hair RIGHT down. But now, my ideal lockdown situation in terms of letting my hair down would be just to get myself moving.
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"This does not happen on days one to five by the way. I’ll go for a little run, I’ll listen to some house music, I’ll get some euphoria, I’ll make sure the kids are all in bed and then I will sit in my hot sauna, it’s like a sauna boiler suit."
She's now back to a healthy weight and wears a size eight clothes, but recalled feeling "super addicted" to wholegrain foods that were full of sugar and that made her feel sluggish.
She said: "It depended on what shop I was in, but I was around a 16-18.
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"I did balloon and I didn’t even realise, I just lied to myself, I thought I was eating the right foods, I was eating a wholegrain heavy diet, not realising that they are heavy and super addictive. I was in a state of craving and diet days.
"What motivated me was that I found it an effort to even get out of bed to go for a shower. So, it wasn’t just the weight, I thought there is something mentally wrong here.
"I mean because people say, 'just go for a walk', and I thought, 'I can’t even go for a shower', I was that fatigued. That’s what annoyed me because all I would read is eat less, do more and that’s when I started doing the cold showers, and tapping into my hormones, because fundamentally it was because my hormones were in disarray."
Listen to the full interview at //hotmessmumsclub.com/ hosted by Kelly Pegg and Jenny Powell.
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