TV and radio presenter Lisa Snowdon, who once famously dated George Clooney, has revealed how the onset of the menopause wreaked havoc with her sex life, saying: ‘Wanting to bounce around the bedroom just wasn’t on my radar.’
Speaking openly about how mid-life hormonal changes affected her relationship with fiancé George Smart, who she’s been dating for eleven years, she tells the Daily Mail how her ‘mojo’ deserted her.
The 53-year-old says she was left blindsided by the impact of early menopause, saying that the ‘really close’ relationship she’d enjoyed with George was derailed by her feelings of being ‘disconnected’ from intimacy.
The This Morning presenter describes how a double whammy of exhaustion and fluctuating hormones didn’t just dampen her ardour, it drowned it completely.
‘For women, sex is such a mental thing, and when I didn’t know what was happening to me, the last thing I wanted to do was get sexy between the sheets. I was just trying to put one foot in front of the other each day,’ she says candidly.
She credits George, whom she first dated more than 20 years ago when she was an MTV DJ and reunited with in 2014, with helping her through the most trying times.
She admits it wasn’t always easy for the Yorkshire-born entrepreneur, saying she could be ‘a bit of a b****’ at times, as frustration and mood swings took hold, but says her partner remained patient and understanding throughout.
‘I lashed out, and it was horrible when those sorts of rages just took over me,’ she says, adding, ‘thankfully, George was super understanding and never made me feel pressured.’
This Morning presenter Lisa Snowdon, 53, told the Daily Mail the menopause left her feeling ‘completely disconnected’ from intimacy and ‘not sexy at all’
‘He always knew there was something else going on. He was incredible, he still is.’
Lisa reflects that it was just over a decade ago when she felt the first symptoms of the peri-menopause slowly infiltrating her daily life.
The hardest part was being misdiagnosed with depression in her early forties after visiting her GP. She experienced anxiety, low moods and bouts of uncontrollable emotion and knew she wasn’t herself.
At 42, she found herself weeping in her doctor’s surgery, unable to explain why she suddenly felt so lost.
‘I just remember bursting into tears. It was the first time I’d acknowledged that I’d hit rock bottom.’
Her doctor prescribed antidepressants, but Lisa says her gut was telling her there was something else going on.
‘I just didn’t feel like that was it,’ she recalls. ‘I felt like there was something else going on, but I did end up taking the anti-depressants for a really short while.’
The journey to understanding what was happening to her body didn’t come quickly or easily. At that time, no one around her, she says, seemed to be talking out loud about peri-menopause; the term itself was barely part of the mainstream conversation on women’s health.
The former model says that while she and fiancé George Smart, who she got engaged to in 2017, have always had a strong intimate relationship, hormonal changes that started in her early forties left her feeling ‘disconnected’ from intimacy
Lisa says she was left to try to make sense of what was happening with the help of George. She threw herself into work, determined to keep life ticking over, but inside, she admits she was struggling.
‘There were days of anxiety and panic, and feeling like, “I’m out of control, I can’t do this”, it was so overwhelming. And then the symptoms kind of shape-shifted.
‘The panic and sadness then goes to an angry rage… and then your weight fluctuates, and then your periods start changing, and then the hot flushes come. Everybody’s journey is very different; it’s very individual.’
Communication is key, she says, for ensuring your relationship makes it through the menopause’s choppiest waters.
‘You just have to say: “I’m not feeling it right now, but I promise we’ll get this back.”
‘If you have to go to therapy together, whether it’s couples therapy, sex therapy, whatever it is… It’s about talking to each other about your needs and your desires.
‘Whether you need more time to get back on track, whether you want something different in the bedroom, it’s about communication.’
For Lisa and George, who’d only recently reunited when Lisa’s symptoms started, there was also the question of whether they might start a family.
‘I had to have a conversation with George and say, “That means that we probably will be even more challenged fertility-wise, so…what do you want to do?”
‘But we had a really adult conversation about it. He’s always been so supportive in every aspect; he just took the pressure off me completely and was like, “I just want to be with you.”
Fertility: Discovering Lisa was peri-menopausal in her early forties left the couple, who got together again in 2014 after briefly dating 20 years ago, with big questions over whether they would have a family together
In 2019, Lisa got the definitive knowledge that she was experiencing full-blown menopause.
There was, she says, a myriad of symptoms – from poor sleep to skin changes – and thousands spent on private doctors, before she finally received her diagnosis and was put on hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
It wasn’t until she started taking the HRT, which helps alleviate menopause symptoms by replacing the hormones estrogen and progesterone, that everything started to make sense.
Her libido also came back after taking the hormones, but Lisa added she went through a ‘journey of communication, patience and feeling confident and connected again in myself and my body’.
She explains: ‘It was like a kind of hallelujah moment, because then I could kind of identify what was happening.’
Determined to finally take back some control, Lisa also began focusing on things she could improve, introducing ‘sleep hygiene’ to promote more restful nights.
‘I realised temperature was a big one,’ she explains. ‘A lot of sleep disturbances come from changes in body heat, so now I always make sure the room is cool and dark.
‘I stay off my screen. I literally have a “no phone rule” for about two hours or more, if I can, before I go to bed.’
As part of her new evening routine, Lisa discovered that small rituals could make a big difference to her wellbeing.
She’s partnered with Baylis & Harding’s Goodness Sleep Range, and says the brand’s lavender-scented bath products help her unwind at night.
‘I’m like a baby. I like that whole routine of having a bath, lighting a candle. I’ve always been kind of attracted to lavender as a herb. We know how powerful that is as a kind of switch-off instinctively for your senses.
‘And then if you add into the mix the other ingredients that they’ve included, like the bergamot, which is just a divine, chamomile is stunning. I mean, if you drink chamomile tea, you know that instinctively it’s just such a soothing, beautiful herb.’
Lisa also noticed that getting a good night’s sleep didn’t just help her emotionally but physically as well, saying that it has helped control her weight.
Over time, the kilos had crept on, making her more aware that she needed to take better care of herself and her lifestyle, she says.
‘You’re so tired in the afternoon that you’re more likely to snack. You’re more likely to have a cup of tea and eat a packet of biscuits.
‘I had to really take a little bit of control over that part of my life, and I think getting sleep on track just is a game changer across the board.’
Today, she says she takes a simple but disciplined approach to diet and exercise.
Her weight training routine had slipped before she found HRT, but she’s returned to it, saying she now sees it as a vital part of staying strong and healthy.
The presenter explains that resistance and weight training are ‘key for us ladies as we get older,’ helping to build muscle, protect bones, and boost metabolism to keep fat at bay.
The 53-year-old says enhanced sleep didn’t just help her emotionally but physically as well, with her weight stabilising as a direct result
She walks 10,000 steps or more each day, but insists that proper strength training makes all the difference.
‘Even if you can’t make it to a class, grab some free weights, do a few planks, or follow a YouTube workout at home,’ she advises.
She eats plenty of protein, drinks lots of water, and tries to avoid sugar whenever she can.
‘Most days I steer clear of it,’ she admits, ‘but I’ll have a treat pudding or a bit of dark chocolate every now and then.
‘I just reach for the protein. Protein with every meal, so whether that’s eggs, chicken, or fish. Your plant-based proteins as well that contain phytoestrogens, which are really great for us, like chickpeas.’
She’s delighted too, that education and awareness surrounding menopause and HRT have advanced significantly since that lonely day in her GP surgery 11 years ago.
‘HRT was demonised in the early 2000s, and the doctors were really scared to put you on it. It’s no longer seen as something shameful, and it’s no longer seen as something that happens later on in life. It can happen earlier.’
How can male partners help? Lisa says men need to be part of the menopause conversation to understand the women in their lives more.
‘Menopause doesn’t directly affect them, but it indirectly does, because we’ve all got men in our lives, and men have all got women in their lives. It’s their partners, their girlfriends, their work colleagues, their daughters, their mothers. Men need to understand what’s happening.
‘Men need to have more empathy and more kindness, wherever that is, in the workplace, at home or with friends.’
The star says the menopause needs a rebrand, that it should be viewed not as the end of one chapter but as the beginning of a new one, where women can find a new version of themselves and a fresh phase in life.
‘My first 50 years have just flown by, and I’m like, where has that gone? You start to kind of care less what people think, and go out there and grab life by the balls.’
