If you’re a fan of scooter-tootling, child-lecturing, Gordon Ramsay-provoking celeb super-chef Jamie Oliver then you may have noticed that he’s been ‘packing on the timber’ somewhat over the last couple of years.
This slow-but-steady expansion of Jamie’s once-svelte form has not, apparently, been down to a shameful Turkey Twizzlers habit that he’s managed to keep hidden from the public. Instead, Jamie blames too much booze, comfort food, and nightly sleep patterns better suited to a 19-year-old on a bender in Ibiza.
But, just in time for his 40th birthday, Jamie’s managed to turn it all around, dropping a pukka two stone in just three months.
It was Jamie’s fitness tracker that alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t sleeping anywhere near enough. “It spelled out for me that I was surviving on an average of three-and-a-half 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.”
I was just exhausted. I could fall asleep at a minute’s notice
We’re not sure why it took a fitness tracker for Jamie to notice that he was only getting three-and-a-half hours a sleep a night, but maybe there’s no clocks in his house or something, so we’ll let it go.
Anyway. He’s still using fitness tech to monitor and maintain his fixed-up sleep patterns. “I have little vibrating things that shake me when it’s 10pm,” he tells Radio Times. “I make sure I get the right amount of sleep. I feel completely different now. I’ve lost weight.”
Got a fitness tracker sat in the back of a drawer gathering dust? Get it out, charge it up and stick it on – if it’s good enough for Jamie, it’s good enough for you, goddammit.
Besides the sleep thing, Jamie accredits his newfound slinkiness to the regular consumption of seaweed (“The most nutritious vegetable in the world”), nuts (“A handful a day gets you three extra years on the planet”) and eggs (“They’re great – just don’t go bonkers”).
Plus, he knocked school-night boozing on the head. “Your average Brit drinks booze,” he says. “I’m not telling you what to do, but my rhythm now is only to drink at the weekend.”
Yeah we were 100% with you up until that point, Oliver. We’re going to pretend you stopped talking after the thing about eggs. Be on your way, sir.