Dr Eva: I hope my ‘weight loss prison’ fixe sour marriage
TV’s Dr Eva has a new project – rebuilding a farmhouse, and her life
DR EVA ORSMOND has revealed that she hopes to repair her marriage as she and her husband Wyatt renovate a tumbledown Portuguese hotel into a ‘luxury weight loss prison’.
But in the first episode of Dr Eva’s Great Escape, their dream of a new life in the Algarve veers into nightmare territory as they are hit with one snag after another and a spiralling budget.
In the wake of their high-profile split, the reconciled pair open up on their new RTÉ documentary series about their desire to breathe fresh life into their marriage by taking on the massive refurbishment of the run-down, 19th-century building which is due to open this year as the Solar Alvura Health Hotel in Moncarapacho.
‘I almost feel my life is starting again,’ Dr Eva says emotionally, after putting her Wicklow home on the market.
‘The last 17 years has been so busy. While it has been so exciting, I just think sometimes it’s too much work and you don’t really maybe put enough time and effort in the relationship.’
Wyatt, an engineer who is project manager of the hotel rebuild, admits he wasn’t too happy about their marriage breakdown in public but says the love never died between the couple.
‘Life in Ireland, we were stuck in a monotony. We were so busy living life day to day we kind of forgot about each other in a way.
‘This project is a combination of a new lifestyle and getting things with Ev and I to work better.’
In the unflinchingly honest portrayal of the ultimate home improvement, Wyatt does admit he had a ‘bit of a knot in the tummy’ about the huge financial outlay on the build.
‘Ev and budgets don’t go too well together,’ he says wryly. ‘She’s impulsive.’
The couple are seen later coming close to an argument over her desire to buy a statue for the hotel while the build is still under way.
Her expensive tastes in interior design are a clashing point for the newly reunited couple.
At one stage, Wyatt ruefully muses on the tenet that ‘opposites attract’.
‘I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing as well because too much opposition is too much conflict,’ he says.
Ireland’s best known health guru explains the couple want to build a ‘luxury weight loss prison’.
‘There is no alcohol, no chocolate bars, there is no way out,’ says Dr Eva in her typically frank manner.
The three-part series, which veers through the highs and lows of their life-changing move across the continent, will see gardener Diarmuid Gavin flown in to oversee the landscaping of the grounds of their dream hotel.
Dr Eva says that she has no regrets about leaving her family home in Wicklow – which has its
‘We kind of forgot about each other in a way’
own swimming pool – for a second chance at life.
‘I don’t do regrets. It’s like any family home, there have been lovely and happy times but there has also been fights and arguments and sad times,’ she says.
‘Myself and Wyatt are the type of persons who always want a new challenge.
‘This is almost like getting to know him in a new way which is very exciting.’
Meanwhile, the couple’s two boys, Chris and Evan, are also roped into helping to clear out the site.
But gambling most of their life savings on the 10-acre plot in the sun is not all plain sailing.
With a renovation budget of around €500,000, the couple had initially planned to open the doors in May 2018, a date which gradually looked more and more unrealistic.
‘You need to have a certain level of craziness to go and do a project like this,’ admits the medic.
‘It’s an old Portuguese farmhouse, totally damaged and vandalised, which I want to bring back to its glory,’ Dr Eva says.
And while she says this renovation is her ‘dream’ and a chance to really enjoy ‘these moments with all my boys together’, the documentary shows the couple and their sons living in fairly primitive conditions while mucking in with the manual labour, as well as experiencing major setbacks. In one scene, the family are stunned to discover the building has no foundations, and in another, Dr Eva is forced to fly home and work in her clinic so the family has an income.
During a bleak moment she tells the cameras: ‘I have worked so hard for the last few months and said many times I’m actually on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
‘I thought the hotel was in a better nick and there are moments I’m asking, “have we paid too much?”’
‘I’m actually on the edge of a breakdown’