If you think Gregg Wallace gets excited after sampling a perfectly-cooked MasterChef pudding, wait until you hear him enthuse about losing weight.
The BBC cooking contest host, 58, has shed 5st and transformed from what he calls the “fat, bald bloke who likes puddings” to a slim, toned specimen posting snaps of his six-pack online.
He talks passionately about how he has the answer to the obesity crisis in a nation hooked on junk food.
And he claims his weight loss programme, ShowMe.Fit, can help save pounds on food shopping while shedding pounds on the bathroom scales.
Gregg says: “For most people, food is happening to them by accident – most people don’t know what they’re going to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“And every time that happens you’re going to spend more than you should and you’re going to end up getting fatter.
“There are basically three horsemen of this apocalypse – excessive booze, takeaways and snacks. It’s not going away. But I have the answer.”
Gregg’s own weight-loss journey started four years ago when, after ballooning to 17st, a photo of him with co-host John Torode convinced him he needed to take action.
He says: “My life was the same as many people’s – lots of grazing, no proper meals and lots of takeaways.
“I was watching myself getting fatter and fatter and getting more unhappy about how I looked. I had really high cholesterol, too. My doctor told me I needed to do something because I was heading for a coronary.
“There was a picture of me and John in India, my belly was coming over my trousers, and this big puffy face. For lots of overweight people it’s often a photo. They think, ‘Is that me?’ That was my moment.”
Gregg – married to Anne-Marie Sterpini, 36, better known as Anna– says he began trying out “nearly every diet” but without success.
He adds: “They were all uncomfortable, made me unhappy and left me hungry and dissatisfied.
“That was when Anna said, well, let’s just eat healthy food. It worked.
“I realised that’s all you need to do – you need to know what your breakfast, lunch and dinner is going to be, and you need to be full up after every meal.
"You’ll lose weight and save a fortune on shopping. And you don’t need willpower.”
Fans were amazed at how different he looked when MasterChef returned after lockdown.
Gregg says: “Everybody started to ask how I’d done it. I realised there was a massive interest because so many people are on diets that don’t work.
“As I started to look at it more, people’s shopping and eating habits, I realised what a terrible state the nation is in. The snack culture is so bad that people don’t ask, ‘Should I snack?’ They ask, ‘What should I snack on?’“
“I go to work in many different places and see snacks spread across the desks, it’s become so standard.
“Far too many people go to work in the morning with no idea what they’re going to have for breakfast, so they grab a pot of yoghurt or a croissant, which in no way is going to fill them up, so mid-morning they’re hungry and grabbing a packet of crisps.
“Come lunchtime they’re in a supermarket looking for a meal deal which doesn’t fill them either. And at dinnertime they open the fridge, think, ‘I can’t do this’, and phone for a takeaway. On and on it goes, in epidemic proportions. It’s a real problem.”
His solution? “Firstly, please don’t go on a diet. Don’t do anything that makes you hungry or uncomfortable, or start anything you don’t think you can maintain for the rest of your life. Get a piece of paper and write down why it is you want to lose weight.
“On another sheet write down your dream – is it being able to walk down the beach in a swimsuit or go to the wedding in a size 12 dress? Keep them on you and refer to them regularly, because that’s your ‘why’.
“Now you need organisation. You need to plan three healthy meals a day and no snacking in between.
“People will say, ‘But I deserve my snacks’. No, what you deserve is a better body.
"Motivation wanes, but habits will keep you going. What you do every day is more important than what you do occasionally.”
His ShowMe.Fit platform, with menus, advice from nutrition experts and workouts from fitness professionals, has over 2,000 subscribers.
Gregg does regular live workouts and Q&As and even often phones followers to encourage them.
The platforms are run by Libby, his daughter from his second of four marriages, with recipes from Anna, mum of his son Sid, three.
He says: “I go to a gym up the road and there’s a big guy who’s overweight and he just approached me for advice.
"So I started mentoring him and he’s lost two stone in two months.
“I’m having these conversations every day. This is the direction my life is going, it’s become my passion.”
He jokes: “Your grandchildren are going to drive past Trafalgar Square and there’ll be a statue of Gregg Wallace in a toga holding a pineapple, because he saved the nation!”
- Visit Gregg’s online subscription website to follow healthy balanced eating plans at www.showme.fit.
