Lisa Snowdon: ‘I’m on a journey of feeling calm and nurturing myself’

TV presenter and model Lisa Snowdon says she felt “out of control” and “massively over-emotional” when she experienced burnout at the end of last year.

“I had too many tabs open on my brain,” says the 53-year-old, a regular on ITV’s This Morning. “Everything got on top of me, I was trying to do too much and saying yes to too many things. I wasn’t listening to my body. I felt over-emotional, burnt out.”

The changing season, the build-up to Christmas and the end of the year made her feel “you’ve just got to push, push, push – and I didn’t have any push left”.

Going on a 10-day digital detox retreat in Majorca in November helped to break the cycle – and face her reliance on her smartphone. “It was really quite tricky for a few days, then totally liberating”.

“It’s almost like a constant battle,” she notes of her relationship with her phone. “Somebody will email me, I’ll then check all my other apps and things like that. It’s a sort of addiction.

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“I needed to leave the country, I needed to give my phone to somebody or lock it in a safe in a resort somewhere. I just completely switched off, which is great, but then you have to come back home and you have to, you know, get back into real life and try not to, you know, always just check your phone.

“My mental health gets really impacted when I’m just staring at the phone a lot, when I’m going from app to app to app to app, you just get that ping of notification… ”

“I don’t have that clarity of thought, I feel a bit snappy. I notice my stress response in my shoulders, and I’m not able to kind of deal with stuff as well.”

This year she has tried to cut back significantly on using it – particularly at nighttime. “The hour or two before bed and in the morning, I don’t reach for my phone for at least half an hour. I think we need to wake up slowly and let the brain wake up, rather than bombarding it immediately.

“It’s on silent all the time, I don’t have notifications that come up, so I need to physically go on the apps to check it.”

Now she’s on a “journey of feeling calm, nurturing myself and knowing what I need – rather than doing stuff for everybody and not honouring myself.”

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Snowdon, who hosts the podcast We’re Not Getting Any Younger with Andy Goldstein, consciously tries to carve out moments of reset in her day. “It’s having those moments where I’m cooking or I’ve got a good book. I think it’s making a nice space in your home, whether it’s having a few houseplants, lovely neutral, calming colours, a comfortable chair [where] you can hunker down and have a moment with a cup of tea and a book. It’s really calming to the nervous system.

“When we go out for dinner now with my friends and family, I’m like, let’s have no phones at the table so we can all be in the moment. We have two hours together and we’re really present.”

Research by sofa brand DFS found that 41% of adults say they look at their phones ‘too much’ – 54% for more than three hours a day. Some 35% are attempting to reduce screen time or end it completely.

Improvements to her mental health can happen quickly when she puts her devices down, Snowdon says. “If you’ve ever been completely overwhelmed and you’re on your phone too much, and then you just have maybe an hour or two, and you go out for a walk, or you sit and you do some breath work or some meditation. You can actually just change that chemistry in your brain quite quickly.”

Snowdon meditates everyday. “I like to do it first thing in the morning, even if it’s just five minutes of breathwork. And I like being out in nature – that’s like a walking meditation, like forest bathing [a Japanese practice of immersing yourself in trees to improve wellbeing].

“I love to look at trees, and I love to touch them and honour them – even though I know that sounds a bit ‘woo woo’! Just looking at the dappled light, feeling the air on your skin, and being more aware of what’s going on around you.”

These days she embraces quieter hobbies at home with fiance George Smart – “playing board games, playing cards, I love cooking, I love gardening. I like those calming, quiet hobbies and my body likes it too. My mind certainly likes it.”

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As an early riser (“I’m waking up at 4am!”) she’s in bed by 8:30pm most evenings. “I know it’s kind of crazy, I just think as I’ve gotten older [it’s about] looking after me, it’s a real priority. I know that I need to sleep, I like reading before bed. It’s that wind down. I don’t eat too late, maybe have a shower or bath, a nice book – all those things that help get your melatonin starting to rise and you start getting sleepy naturally.”

Getting up very early just works for her, she notes, after years of early morning radio, co-hosting the Capital FM Breakfast show from 2008 to 2015. “I like to exercise first thing in the morning. It’s nice, you’re up before anybody else. Perhaps it’s sort of set in my circadian rhythm.”

She’s already completed a gym workout by 7am. “Obviously, the summertime is beautiful because you walk home [from the gym] and the sky looks beautiful and the sun’s coming up. In the winter it is a little bit harder. I definitely have less energy in winter – I’m definitely solar powered,” she laughs.

After starting reformer Pilates in 2016 (“It’s proper hardcore”), Snowdon got into weight training in 2020 and hasn’t looked back. “It’s been a game-changer for me. It’s a no-brainer; it burns fat, it protects our bones. If anybody has a fall and your bones are strong, then you’re less likely to end up in hospital. You hear horrific things about ladies in their 50s and 60s with brittle bones and osteoporosis.

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“A lot of women are undiagnosed with perimenopause for quite a long time and that’s the window where we really need things like resistance training, strength training, eating well, movement.. it’s all really crucial.”

Thankfully she’s on the other side of the menopause now. “I’m post-menopause – I’ve had no period for nearly five years, which is bloody brilliant.

“That doesn’t mean that I can just let everything slide,” she adds, “I still have to put the work in, but I think my symptoms are much lessened now. I don’t have that hectic spike and drop of hormones flooding through my body, I’m slightly more on an even keel. But I can’t drink all the time, I can’t have lots of coffee.

“It’s that 360 approach to looking after yourself.”

Lisa Snowdon is working with DFS on the benefits of reducing screen time and embracing quiet hobbies. For tips on how to digitally detox, visit the website.