“I was overweight and unhappy!” Liz Earle’s perimenopause and midlife reinvention
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if your best decade is still ahead of you? At 62, broadcaster and healthy aging expert Liz Earle is fitter, stronger, and happier than ever.
In this chat with Fearne, Liz shares how she went from overwhelmed, overweight, and exhausted during perimenopause, to thriving in her 60s. She shares the small lifestyle shifts that transformed her health, and why women in midlife shouldn’t feel selfish moving themselves up the priority list.
Fearne and Liz dig into the science of aging well, including the power of sunlight (and whether we should be wearing SPF year-round!), and why we should be prioritising sleep and strength training.
Plus, what happened when Liz’s younger boyfriend took her clubbing for the first time at 60 years old...?
Liz’s book, How To Age, is out now.
Listen to Liz’s podcast, Age Better, here!
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that demystifies all the confusion |
| 0:07.3 | around how to feel good in your skin. Today, I'm chatting to Liz Earl. I feel very fortunate |
| 0:15.4 | to be here in my 60s now with a great young boyfriend who's kind of given me renewed energy and kind of hope in the |
| 0:22.5 | future and all of that. You know, when I look back to my 40s, perimenopause, I was overweight, |
| 0:28.5 | I was unhappy, I was stressed, I wasn't sleeping. And yes, life can be shit. Yes, life is |
| 0:34.1 | challenging and tough. Of course it is. But, you know, how we choose to respond to that, that's our own making. |
| 0:39.4 | And if we can equip ourselves in the best possible way physically, then everything becomes easier as a result. |
| 0:47.3 | I'm really excited about this. I read this book right recently. Me and my kids went to Paris, which was so brilliant. |
| 0:53.7 | I was very nervous as a single parent to do a city break on my own with my kids. But my God, did we all enjoy it? You know, all the things that you start worrying about like, are we going to be able to get cabs okay or certain places walkable or will I get mugged? You know, like all the silly fear stuff that you've got in your head about going somewhere new |
| 1:14.0 | just were totally dismantled within five seconds of being there. |
| 1:18.5 | We were just stood in awe looking at the architecture and all the gorgeous little shops |
| 1:23.7 | and obviously stuffing our faces with croissants and macarons and creps and all sorts of |
| 1:28.1 | delicious pastries. It was so brilliant. But we went on the Eurostar, so I had a long train journey |
| 1:33.5 | to read Liz's brilliant book, which is called How to Age. And I loved it for so many reasons that |
| 1:42.9 | you're about to hear. |
| 1:52.6 | One of the reasons I'm excited to have this chat is the conversation around aging is always just about like do women look old and haggard, full stop. |
| 1:53.7 | There's nothing else to it. |
| 1:56.0 | Either like, oh, she looks good for her age. |
| 1:57.1 | That piss me off. |
| 1:59.3 | Two, she looks like dog shit. |
| 2:00.5 | She's aged badly. It's just always about what we look like. |
| 2:02.7 | The aging conversation is so much more and that's exactly what Liz is trying to express, |
... |
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