A quick read with someone in the public eye
Do you take regular exercise and if so, what?
I walk the dog once or twice every day and I do a spin class once a week. Stefan is a personal trainer — we met when he trained me — but it’s that old cliche that if your husband is a decorator the wallpaper will be hanging off your walls. Recently I’ve made a conscious effort to have him train me again and I do weights at home.
What’s the worst illness you’ve ever had?
It’s not exactly an illness but I broke my pelvis falling off a horse 20 years ago. They can’t do much for that so I was in hospital for a week on bed rest, then at home for another week. I was on crutches for a few weeks afterwards and that’s when it got really stressful. At the time our offices were on the third floor of a tall building so if the lift wasn’t working I couldn’t get in to work. This was in the days before mobile phones and working from home so it was a real nightmare.
How healthy is your diet?
The one advantage of living with a personal trainer is that you’re almost forced to eat well with them. Breakfast usually involves protein and vegetables such as scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, mushrooms and bacon. For lunch I might have homemade herbie sausages or wholemeal toast and baked beans. The beans do have sugar but they’re so high in protein and there’s very little sugar in the rest of my diet.
For dinner we live on chicken, very often with noodles and lots of vegetables. I’ll also try out Slimming World recipes because they’re low in sugar and high in taste. For dessert a recent favourite has been a 0% fat Greek yogurt with a teaspoon of Choc Shot in it. It tastes quite naughty but there’s actually no sugar in it at all. We do eat more or less what we want at the weekend — anything that we deny ourselves during the week. Cake is a big one, especially as The Vintage Rooms in Hillsborough do takeaway cake boxes.
Any bad habits?
Having too many espresso Martinis. I don’t normally like cocktails apart from those, but after a couple I get palpitations and can’t sleep because of the caffeine. That or opening a bottle of bubbles and not being able to put it back in the fridge until it’s empty.
Do you drink and/or smoke and if so, how much?
When I lived on my own I would have had a glass of wine every other night but now I don’t even think of drinking during the week. On a Friday I’ll have a gin and tonic or a glass of bubbles. I can have a drink on a Saturday night too, but if we’re out at a party there can be a few too many glasses taken. I don’t smoke at all and never have done. My mum was a nurse in the bronchoscopy unit so she was always handing out leaflets to me and my friends on the evils of smoking.
Do you take any health supplements?
I take turmeric in tablet form for joint pain which I have in my hands and feet, and I add the powder to any meals I cook.
How do you take time out?
Relaxing in the bath with a book. I also love taking the dog to the beach for a big long walk at the weekend.
How well do you sleep?
I’ve had problems sleeping for about eight years now. The only thing that has ever helped was an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course. It was all about meditation and switching off and it really helped — but in the last three weeks it’s got really bad again. I tend to go for three nights with just a couple of hours sleep, then collapse on the fourth night and get five or six hours. But then I wake up as exhausted as I was when I went to bed.
Do you worry about getting old?
I suppose I do. When you have no kids, the older you get the more you wonder about who’s going to look after you. My friends who aren’t mums and I all joke that we’re going to be in the nursing home together. You worry about looking older too, especially in my industry where no-one is allowed to get older. They’re all always 15-35.
What is your go-to product/habit that keeps you feeling healthy?
Drinking two litres of water a day. I also wear a Fitbit all the time. My go-to product, though, is coconut oil. If I’m at home for a day I take off all my make-up and cover my face in it.
‘When you’ve no kids
you wonder who will look after you...’