Kathryn Thomas
Back for another season of Operation Transformation, host Kathryn Thomas talks to Jess O’Sullivan about her own total life transformation in the past year
The Carlow broadcaster is once again at the heart of all things Operation Transformation this year. She talks to Jess O’Sullivan about her own recent life transformation
There is a window of about 3½ hours every evening when self-confessed workaholic Kathryn Thomas goes off the grid. Text, calls and emails just have to wait. This is because at 4pm she picks up her little girl from childcare, and until 7.30, all electronic intrusions can wait. “I work a lot, pretty much all the time. I’ve always been like that, and then Ellie came along.” Maintaining her career while giving her best as a parent has meant that Kathryn must think differently when she comes home in the evening. “Whereas normally, I’d be on my phone or laptop, now I keep everything in my bag. When she’s in bed, then I can do an hour or whatever, but that time I have with her is so precious to me.”
Kathryn has a reputation as one of the hardest working people in Irish media. Although she says that her pregnancy forced her to slow her frenetic pace ever so slightly, she’s still had a really busy year since giving birth to Ellie last March. She allowed herself some time to enjoy what she calls the “love cocoon” with Ellie and her fiancé Padraig, before going back to work when Ellie was four months old. Her first gig was filling in for Ray D’Arcy on his radio show, where she found herself behind a microphone “attempting to speak adult for the first time in months.” Next Kathryn took over presenting duties from Mairéad Ronan on Ireland’s Fittest Family while Mairéad was on maternity leave. Then the annual Operation Transformation machine kicked into gear soon after, meaning Kathryn was on the road from Cork to Donegal, meeting the new leaders. All of this while also running her successful health and fitness business, Pure Results Bootcamp.
It’s little wonder that she chose to hunker down, light the fire and savour a quiet family Christmas before Operation Transformation returns to our TV screens this week. Her sister Linda flew in from LA and her brother Stephen came home from the Isle of Man to enjoy Christmas at Kathryn’s house. “We hadn’t had a Christmas together for three years, so it was nice to be all together again. Facetime is never as good as the real thing. I’d like to think they came home for me, but I know they really came home for Ellie’s first Christmas.”
Now that she has had a chance to recharge, Kathryn’s focus is firmly back on Operation Transformation, which will consume much of her time for the next two months. She admits that becoming a parent has been an eye opener when it comes to putting herself in the shoes of the leaders on the show. “It’s certainly a different perspective for me this year as a mother. I would have been banging on for the last couple of years, saying: ‘You’ve got to make time. You’ve got to make time.’ And then you have a baby and you think: ‘Jesus, now I understand.’ They must have been looking at me going, ‘It’s grand for you. You’ve no kids hanging out of you. You have all the time in the world to go to the gym, to go running and do everything else.’”
However, it’s not just motherhood that has given Kathryn a new appreciation of the Operation Transformation leaders. She too has been on a journey back to fitness after having Ellie. “I remember being in LA. Linda was minding Ellie who was about three months old and I said I’d try to go out for a run. Usually I’d knock out a 5k without even thinking about it and two kilometres in I just couldn’t... my legs... I hadn’t run for months.” Cont=>
Kathryn explains that although she trained all the way through her pregnancy, doing body weights and yoga, running was not something she felt happy doing. “Psychologically, I just had a block, and I felt I really wasn’t comfortable. It was just a protection thing, which was unusual and that weighed a lot on my head. en, psychologically, for me to get back to it, took a lot longer than I thought.”
She says that getting back to her previous level of tness took longer because she had a C-section. In a funny twist of fate, Kathryn found herself on the receiving end of motivational messages from OT’s leaders. “I got texts and messages from previous leaders like Siobhán McKillen from the 2014 series, saying: ‘One step at a time. You’ll get back there.’ It was so lovely to have that support. I know how hard it is to start. at’s what I’ve been doing over the last couple of months, getting back to where I was, not beating myself up about it at all because I think you have to do things at your own pace and listen to your own body.”
Kathryn acknowledges that no matter what she does, being in the public eye opens her up to criticism, especially from keyboard warriors out to nd the negative in everything she does. She was criticised for working out during her pregnancy and then for exercising a er the birth. Kathryn insists that she never lets those comments bother her, but is glad that she started her career in television before the advent of social media. “I’m just glad that I’m strong enough, that I’m not impressionable enough to let it get to me. I o en think about girls starting out at 16, 19 or 20, who are living in a social media world. In a job in the public eye, like I do – whether it’s modelling or on TV – would I be as strong? Probably not. Because when you’re younger, you’re much more impressionable.”
Kathryn has always relied on her instincts to guide her career choices. In fact, if she hadn’t followed her instincts and dropped out of college in her late teens to take her rst presenting job on the RTÉ 2’s Rapid TV show, she wouldn’t be where she is now, 20 years later. ose instincts have never led her astray, so that’s what she listens to rather than unsolicited commentary on her lifestyle choices from social media. is allowed Kathryn to focus on what felt good for her, both in terms of her physical and mental health. During an appearance on e Late Late Show last January, she revealed that she had two miscarriages and as a result, she felt anxious right up until the moment she held Ellie in her arms for the rst time. Exercise was a coping mechanism as well as a way of preparing her body for its toughest challenge yet. “For me to stay strong and to cope with my anxiety throughout my pregnancy was to get on the mat, do my yoga, do my squats, do my bit of training, and walk the dog. at kept me sane. Of course, it was also to do with staying t and healthy, but you’re about to give birth. It is one of the most di cult things your body can go through. For that reason alone it is the time you should be working out and trying to strengthen your body and to keep mobile.”
Kathryn explains she has always felt that we need to treat our bodies like our best friend – mind it, check in with it, but now and then, let loose too. But since having Ellie, she says she has gained a massive respect for the female body, its strength, resilience and adaptability. “People asked did I feel under pressure getting back on my feet. Not a bit of it. A er having a baby, nobody can make me feel pressurised to do anything. I’m in a great place. I love my body. I love what it was able to do.” She says that it’s taken her until now to feel like she’s almost back to where she was. “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as bouncing back. Ellie is nine months now and that’s how long it’s taken me. I probably lost the weight quite quickly, but getting back to feeling yourself, getting back to being strong and getting back to being able to run, that was a long process.”
With a renewed appreciation for herself, Kathryn is looking forward to turning 40 on January 20. She says, however, that she receives birthday messages from New Year’s Day on, because her date of birth is incorrectly recorded as January 1 on Wikipedia. Regardless, she plans to postpone her celebration until Operation Transformation has wrapped for another year. “We lm Fridays and Sundays, so we’re lming on my birthday. In fact, we’ll actually be doing weigh-ins that day, so I’ll probably just get a bunch of grapes. Anyway, that’s why I’m postponing until March, until the whole season is over and then I’ll have a big shindig. I can’t wait. I still feel like I’m 30, actually I still feel about 21, and turning 40 isn’t going to bother me one iota.”
I love my body. I love what it was able to do