Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
Food to make you feel good
Fitness expert and author Joe Wicks chats to Katie Wright, as he launches his latest cookbook
Two years on from the first UK lockdown, when PE With Joe got thousands of kids s (and grown-ups) moving, Joe Wicks looks back k on those four months with fondness.
“It was like my moment to shine – I had so much purpose, I was living my dream… It was really everything I’d dreamed of doing,” he tells me on the phone, chatting while ambling g around a lake near his home in Surrey.
The 20-minute workout videos, intended to help school children who were missing PE lessons to stay active, earned Joe an MBE in the Queen’s 2020 Birthday Honours list and a Guinness World Record for most viewers for a fitness workout live stream on Youtube (over 950k).
But the fitness expert – who gained a huge following after he started posting 15-second recipe videos online back in 2013, and has written multiple e cookbooks since – says he started to struggle when the high began to fade.
“I mean, everyone suffered. For me it was delayed, because when we went into lockdown, I was straight to work,” he says.
“It wasn’t until it all stopped and I processed it, [that I] felt quite sad.”
The 36-year-old, who lives with wife Rosie (who is pregnant with their third child) and kids Indie, three, and Marley, two, is pleased many people – himself
included – are now more open about their mental health as a result of the pandemic.
“I think it’s just become normalised now, [to recognise] that actually everyone has mental health. And some days you feel really, really happy, but on other days, for no reason at all, you don’t feel yourself.”
That’s also why his latest book, Feel Good Food, highlights the link between diet and mood. It recommends seven building blocks for a healthy diet, including ‘eat more plants’ and ‘minimise ultra-processed foods’.
It’s a message he wants to pass on to Indie and Marley as they grow up, which means fun in the kitchen and meals enjoyed together – a distinct contrast to his own childhood.
“My mealtimes were sandwiches and frozen meals thrown in the oven, then you’d
come back, sit at the table or quickly eat and go to your room, or take it to your bedroom,” says Wicks, who has spoken about his father Gary’s heroin addiction, and his mother Raquela’s struggles with OCD and eating disorders.
His family will be the focus of a forthcoming documentary fronted by Joe and produced by Louis Theroux, who he became friends with during lockdown – and who went viral with a topless, post-joe Wicks workout selfie he shared at the end of last year.
“I found out he was doing my workouts, which I loved,” says Joe.
“I’m a big fan, I’ve always loved his documentaries. He came to my house and we watched it together for the first time and I was sitting there like, ‘This is Louis Theroux sitting on my sofa’ – it’s really weird!”
Revisiting the tumultuous years of his youth was, he admits, a challenge: “I was interviewing my parents and going back into my childhood a little bit, so I found it difficult. I’m glad it’s done, it was hard at the time.”
He hopes when the fififilm is released later this year, it will strike a chord with viewers and continue his mental wellbeing message.
“It’s not a sensationalist thing,” he adds. “It’s a really open and raw documentary about parental mental health, so I’m hoping it really helps people.”