JAMIE’S MID- LIFE CRISIS
After years of surviving on three hours sleep and watching his waistline expand the TV chef admits he’s had to make some drastic changes since turning 40
PUT the terms “Jamie Oliver” and “thin” into Google and you get half a million results. Unfortunately for the mockney foodie, in the vast majority of cases the word thin is referring to thin rice noodles, thin- crust pizza or thin pasta rather than the notoriously corpulent healthy eating campaigner himself.
However all that could soon change as Oliver, who turned 40 in May, appears to have undergone something of a mid- life crisis. The workaholic TV chef, who was no stranger to a pint of lager and once admitted to getting by on three- and- a- half hours sleep a night, has called time on his old ways and is now a convert to proper pukka tukka.
In an interview in Radio Times he reveals he is now in bed by 10pm every night, his new superfoods are seaweed, nuts and eggs and that he has cut out drinking during the week. It is a strict regime that has clearly worked. He has lost two stone and never looked better.
“Sleep has become profoundly important to me,” he says. “I was never getting enough of it and I didn’t understand the value of it. And I treat it like work. Just like I do with little Buddy [ his fouryear- old son] when I tell him to get to bed, I get to bed! I have little vibrating things that shake me when it is 10pm.”
Of his new consumption habits, he adds: “Your average Brit drinks booze. I’m not telling you what to do but my rhythm now is only to drink at the weekend. It is about a consciousness and knowing you are doing something and being more mindful.
“A handful of nuts a day will qualify you for three extra years on the planet! And they make you half as likely to have a heart attack. Feed them to your kids as well. Eggs are great and you can have them every day. Just don’t go bonkers. Swap them for meat in a meal.”
But it is seaweed, which contains a substance that blocks the enzymes that digest fat into the bloodstream – that sends him into transports of ecstasy. “I thought seaweed was hippy, globetrotting stuff but our ancestors ate seaweed,” he says. “It has got a load of iodine and it is the most nutritious vegetable in the world. I’m saying lose it in a minestrone because that stuff is really, really good for you.”
HE CONTINUES: “It is like dynamite – fi bre, nutrients, all the minerals, aids digestion – unbelievable.” It is, in short, lovely jubbly. And there is no disputing that it has made a difference. When Oliver fi rst graced our screens in The Naked Chef he was a freshfaced 23- year- old who threw together meals with all the energy of a Duracell Bunny. He juggled vegetables, slid down banisters and everything seemed either “wicked” or “easy peasy”.
But over the years the strains of juggling TV shows, recipe books, a restaurant chain, a £ 1.2 million- a- year supermarket advertising contract, healthy eating campaigns and a family of four children took their toll. His waistline grew, his face became puffy through lack of sleep and the relentless enthusiasm began to look a little forced.
The young man who had once epitomised Cool Britannia, to the extent of being invited to cook lunch for Tony Blair at No 10, occasionally appeared to crack under pressure. In 2010 he was reduced to tears by the hostile reaction of the locals when he attempted to change the eating habits of the people of Huntingdon, Virginia, which had been named America’s least healthy city. And two years later when an Australian reporter suggested he had been piling on the pounds during a promotional appearance in Melbourne he branded her a “b*** h”.
It was only when Oliver started to wear a digital body tracker at the beginning of 2014 that he realised his lifestyle needed to change. The tracker monitored everything from his sleeping patterns to blood pressure and weight – and all the numbers were going in the wrong direction. He was heading for burn- out unless he changed his ways. “It is not as if I felt bad at the time,” he said earlier this year. “Or I didn’t think I felt bad but with hindsight I didn’t look great. I didn’t feel… alive. I was functioning, don’t get me wrong, but looking back there was this feeling that I had to rev up to do it. I was exhausted all the time – and no wonder.”
He added: “The most shocking thing was having it there spelled out for me that I was surviving on an average of three- and- ahalf hours sleep a night. And I was just exhausted all the time. When I wasn’t at work I could fall asleep at a minute’s notice.”
This way of working has net- ted him a fortune estimated at £ 240 million but for a man with a wife and four children – Poppy, Daisy, Petal and Buddy ( 13, 12, six and nearly fi ve) – it was hardly an ideal situation.
However, since he embarked on his new regime he has become a man transformed. Thanks to his dietary changes, twiceweekly visits to the gym and a new enthusiasm for parkour – a form of freerunning that involves climbing buildings and trees – the weight has fallen off.
As a result he has more energy to play with his children and, perhaps most importantly, time to administer foot massages to his wife of 15 years Jools.