If you find exercise boring or have made countless fitness resolutions only to break them, you’re in good company. Dame Prue Leith has revealed her relationship with exercise ‘for the sake of exercise’, saying she finds it ‘painful and unbelievably boring’.

‘Being tortured on a Pilates reformer machine, forcing oneself out into the rain to go running or doing push-ups on the bedroom floor are all variations of hell for me. Ditto yoga, steps, spinning and the rest,’ she says. ‘I greatly admire people who stick to these regimes, even profess to enjoy them. At various times in my life, I’ve joined gyms that I never went to (I think they probably make as much money from back-sliding members like me as they do from active ones), I’ve hired personal trainers and soon un-hired them, and made countless resolutions about exercise and diet that I’ve never stuck to.’

I’ve made countless resolutions about exercise and diet that I’ve never stuck to

So, how does she stay healthy and fit enough to endure long days of filming and cooking in her 80s? ‘I do, it’s true, a dozen exercises and stretches religiously every morning,’ she says in her new book, Being Old And Learning To Love It!: ‘They were prescribed by a physio to hold back the effects of old age. But I hate them so much I have got the routine down to less than 10 minutes,’ she says.

Dame Prue reveals her exact routine.

As well as bouncing ‘up and down on my toes until my ankles ache’, she explains how she ‘gallops’ through the rest of her daily exercises. ‘The drill consists of rolling your legs from side to side 30 times while flat on your back, then 30 leg lifts, 30 bicycling your legs in the air, 30 wiggling toes and feet, and so on,’ she says in her book. ‘That lot happens while I’m on my back on the bed before I haul myself out of it in the morning. Then there are 10 squats and half a dozen standing leg and body and balancing routines, all done at a gallop. Better than nothing, I tell myself.’

As she’s got older, Dame Prue’s had to curtail her two great loves, tennis and horse-riding. ‘As I’ve got older, I’ve reluctantly adapted,’ she adds. ‘I like to think I get plenty of exercise. I’m on my feet a lot, in the garden or filming, cooking and so on. Once, I bought a Fitbit, thinking it would prove that I did plenty of daily steps. When it declared I only did 4,000, I gave it away – I don’t like bad news!’

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