Nadia’s skating on thinner ice (From The Northern Echo)

Nadia’s skating on thinner ice

11:57am Thursday 30th December 2010 in Features

Viv Hardwick chats to Nadia Sawalha about the weight loss exercise DVD which inspired her to enter the challenging world of television’s Dancing on Ice.

MAKING the DVD, Fat to Fab, about l o s i n g three-and-ahalf stone with exercise saw TV presenter Nadia Sawalha go from the unfittest she’d ever been to the heady heights of entering ITV1’s Dancing On Ice.

“It’s quite an extraordinary transformation in six months.

It’s entirely insane for me to enter Dancing On Ice because every time I have another fall I smash my head or smash my knee. It’s so painful and complete idiocy because basically you moving around on knives on ice.

“I’ve watched the show, but you have no idea how hard it is. These people who are our skating partners have gathered this skill over 20 years. It is extremely dangerous. I banged my head so hard the other day that I thought I was going to be sick. You’ve got no choice, you have to get back on the blades and go off again… I think the TV director was more annoyed because the camera wasn’t on.”

she jokes.

Her partner is a new face to Dancing On Ice, Mark Hanretty, who has competed for Great Britain at ice dancing.

“I’m old enough to be his mother, so that’s great and we’re just having a total ball,”

says Sawalha, who told show producers she wanted a similar experience to when she did her school concerts.

“So you’re terrified, but not so terrified that it’s your whole world. Then you have a good friend who you ring up and tell ‘oh my God, the costume’.

You’re basically in a leotard because you can’t wear anything long, but the stuff I have is very demure.

I’ve got my mutton alert on the whole time, but we have some beautiful girls in the show who should show off everything they’ve go,” says the mother-of-two.

North-East star Denise Welch, Kerry Katona, Angela Rippon, Chloe Madeley, daughter of Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, Nickelodeon presenter Laura Hamilton, Hollyoaks actress Jennifer Metcalfe and Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard’s ex-girlfriend Ellen Rives are among Sawalha’s female challengers.

“I’m the worst skater in the competition, that’s for sure.

People will be watching me to become the next Todd Carty. I only went for the audition to keep my agent quiet. I actually thought it was far too stupid to do something so dangerous.

At the audition Karen Barber, who used to be one of the judges, held me in such a way that I felt completely safe.

Then I was thinking ‘I love this, what if I don’t get this job?’ and didn’t hear for weeks. I actually think I was on the reserve list and got the call at the last minute. The training is a whole different ballgame because you haven’t got Karen Barber holding you up. I’m scared every single day until the moments when you get things right. Come January 9 I’ve got to be on a stage covered in ice in front of a live audience on TV.

“Mark wants to do an arm and leg lift and a counter-balance lift, so the pressue is on.

Thankfully Ann Widdecombe has given us all hope.”

Forty-six-year-old Sawalha, sister of Julia and daughter of actor Nadim, moved into presenting after starring in EastEnders for two years as businesswoman Annie Palmer.

Loose Women, Passport to the Sun, Heir Hunters, City Hospital Live, Living in the Sun and Wanted Down Under have made her one of daytime TV’s most familiar faces. But it was probably winning Celebrity MasterChef in 2007 which helped her weight to balloon.

The result was Sawalha’s decision to do something about her weight.

“It wasn’t that hellish losing the weight because this time I didn’t go on a diet. I’ve done all the boiled eggs, bloody boiled grapes, boiled cabbage, boiled banana skins and God knows what other idiocy.

I love food, I’m a real foodie, and I thought ‘I’m not going to do that’ and I’m going to eat really well but not going to eat rubbish or keep picking when I’m making meals, because I’m a massive picker.

When I’m making a family meal I’d have a piece of baguette, a lump of cheese and a glass of wine and then when it comes to sitting down I say ‘I’m not hungry’.

“What I did was to sit down and have the same meal as everyone else, but I forbade myself from picking at all. The exercise was really hard at the beginning I was so unfit. But you get to that stage when you’re fitter and it’s not hell at all. Then it becomes totally addictive.

“If somebody told me now that I couldn’t work out or exercise I’d beat them up. It’s so precious to me because it’s lovely that I’ve lost weight and now a size 10, but the best thing is having more energy.

It’s rare when you read about people losing weight that you’ll feel like you’ve got ten times the energy you had before.

“I’ve got a three-year-old child and I was basically caring a child that size around to whatever I did. I’m in my mid- Forties and saying to myself ‘I’m 40 now and should be wearing kaftans and get lots of big jewellery’ but that’s rubbish and I literally feel 20 years younger after losing the weight. Every day I now have extraordinary energy,” she says.

■ Nadia Sawalha’s Fat to Fab workout, is out now (Universal, £19.99).

■ Dancing On Ice, ITV, Sunday, January 9