Nicola's fitness campaign: 'IT'S OKAY TO PUT YOURSELF FIRST'

With an election in October, the politician's put some weights behind her words!

- Wendyl Nissen

National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis started the year taking a hard look at herself and making the decision that if she was going to get through an election year, she needed to get fighting fit.

“These last couple of years have been huge for me,” says Nicola. “Late 2021, I stepped up to be the deputy leader and the finance spokesperson, and that comes with a lot more exposure, more work and more hours, which I loved. I was just giving it everything I had, every hour I had, every minute of the day.”

But by the end of last year, Nicola wasn’t well.

“I had a cough, which just wouldn’t go away,” she tells. “I just had this trigger go off, which I think a lot of people have. Maybe it was because I’m 42, but I suddenly realised I cannot take my body for granted. My body is fighting back – it is saying, ‘Treat me with some respect or I’m not going to let you keep going.’”

Nicola says she was at work coughing all over people for months.

“I knew they were all thinking I had Covid, so I was constantly saying, ‘It’s just a cough’, but then I realised I was sick all the time.”

She then “dragged myself to the finishing line” of last year and had a stern talk to herself.

“I said, ‘You know what, lady, this year is nowhere near as hard as the years ahead of you are going to be. So you need to shape up.’”

Nicola knew that meant losing weight and getting fit, but for the first time in her life, it was about getting healthy not smaller.