California-based vegan chef Babette Davis celebrated her 70th birthday by sharing with the world seven jaw-dropping photos showing off her phenomenal physique. Thousands of fans took notice of the fit photos, and so did hackers.
At the start of last month, the health advocate released one photo per day for seven days leading up to her Dec. 7 birthday.
It wasn’t long before the images went viral. In the photos, Davis wears a two-piece bathing suit showing off her killer figure and abs. She had many people wondering if she had discovered the fountain of youth.
“Because of the lifestyle, it has given me or afforded me an incredible quality of life,” the chef shared with Atlanta Black Star.
Davis said she was initially going to share two photos on social media, but her good friend, comedian Michael Colyar, encouraged her to release seven. He also suggested that she call the photo series “Seven at 70.”
“By posting one photo every single day, people just started tripping out,” Davis said. “I was so happy that he had me do it that way, because I wasn’t going to do it that way.”
With every posted image, Davis received thousands of likes and comments from people in awe of her body. She said it’s likely because society isn’t used to seeing a 70-year-old woman in her condition.
“I guess because in our society, we look at people that are past 50 and 60 as old; I mean, you know, when we’re in our 20s, we call somebody 30 old,” she said.
One of the downsides of her recent spike in online popularity is being targeted by hackers. Davis said late last month, she discovered her Instagram account was taken from her after a hacker figured out her password.
The hacker locked her out of her six-year-old verified Instagram account, @chefbabette, and began posting content of his own, but Davis’s team immediately alerted her Facebook followers about the security breach.
“I did all that I could to make the hacker uncomfortable because he was a little bit bold,” Davis said.
Her followers sent messages and posts to the hacker, which Davis believed helped scare off the thief.
“He couldn’t make any money off of the page, so he disappeared, I think.”
She was frustrated, even shed some tears, but Davis said she’s not letting a hacker get her down.
“It was like, ‘Come on, girl, please. This is Instagram. Okay, so what lesson have you truly learned from this?’ ” Davis asked herself.
“I learned that my life is more important than a platform,” she said. “One second, I was in there posting my last post, and when I went out after I posted it, it locked me out.”
Davis, who had amassed a following of more than 133,000 people with her original Instagram page, compared the sudden change to life and death. “It’s like death, we are here one second and literally dead the next, so that just spoke volumes to me,” Davis said.
“I had to really sit down and have a conversation with myself on what’s really important in my life, and what’s not so important,” she said.
Meanwhile, Davis said she’s in the best shape of her life.
“I grew up with asthma, eczema and bad earaches and once I got on this journey, read the books, and changed my lifestyle everything started to change for me,” Davis said.
She added that her husband, Rondall Davis, helped motivate her to become vegan when they met in 1990. “I got into working out, I started paying attention to what I was eating,” she said.
These days, the physically active grandmother starts her days with a green drink and ELlive blue-green algae. She said she keeps her meal portions small, sometimes only eating a handful of nuts for lunch.
Davis said she and her team are working on restoring her hacked Instagram account, which had over 133,000 followers. In the meantime, the vegan chef has started a new account, @babettedavischef.
