Gregg Wallace motivated to keep fit by younger wife who ‘revolutionised’ his life

MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace has said he wants to be as fit and healthy as he can for his wife who is 22 years his junior and their three-year old son Sid.

The 58-year-old TV star is a health and fitness advocate after losing almost five stone since 2017, and alongside his wife Anna and a range of experts he launched the website ShowMe.Fit.

Wallace previously revealed he was warned he was “heading for a heart attack” and had watched himself “getting bigger and bigger” on TV before a doctor cautioned him about his high cholesterol in 2017.

On Wednesday, he appeared on Good Morning Britain praising his wife, who he met in 2013, for being his motivation.

He said: “That young woman has absolutely revolutionised my life. (There are) 22 years between us, we’ve been together 10 years, we’ve got a little three-year-old boy called Sid and I want to be as fit and as healthy as I can for her and for the baby.

“She is beautiful and I do love her very much.”

Wallace said he has been helping people on their fitness journey for “nearly three years” since showing off his dramatic weight loss.

He said: “Here’s what I’m going to say to you right now. Don’t go on a diet. Don’t do something that’s really difficult that you can’t maintain. We’re logical people. If it’s so difficult and so uncomfortable, you won’t keep it up.

“What I tell everybody, and this is the key, eat three healthy meals a day, reduce the snacking, reduce the takeaways.”

The TV presenter said that Britain is in the middle of a huge “snack culture” problem.

He said: “People don’t say to me now ‘should I snack?’. They say to me, ‘what should I snack on?’ I think for too many of us, food is happening by accident.

“By that I mean, who knows what they’re having for breakfast when they leave the house, who knows what they’re having for lunch and then grabbing for a meal deal, that’s a packet of crisps and a sandwich.

“They haven’t planned their dinner, they come home, look in the fridge, not sure what to do, phone for a takeaway. Meal planning will make you eat healthily.”

Wallace added that he has “never ever” counted his calories.

He said: “Eating sustainably and healthily is something that you can keep up forever, you don’t need willpower to eat nice food.

“There are three horsemen I think of the get-fat apocalypse – snacking, takeaways and booze. Now I love a glass of wine, I love a glass of whisky and I love a pint of beer.

“It’s my Italian wife who taught me an Italian way of drinking… It’s knowing the effect that you want from the alcohol when you start and understanding when you’ve got there, and then slowing down to make sure you maintain that feeling.

“When you carry on drinking because you want to maintain that, you go somewhere else.”