![\"Julia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/83b0405a-3ac1-40bb-bf50-235946c84b5a.jpg\")
\u201cI changed overnight to become the person I needed to be to get through this\u201dNeale Haynes for the times<\/p>\nRecently Julia Bradbury ate a burger two days in a row. \u201cI haven\u2019t done that for a very long time,\u201d she says. Her family were celebrating her twin daughters\u2019 11th\u00a0birthdays \u2014 one at Legoland, where the first burger was consumed. The other was eaten at a trip to the fast food chain Shake Shack. \u201cThat was better because [the beef\u2019s] grass-fed. It was without the bun in a lettuce leaf, though I had some chips, which I haven\u2019t had for about three years. The burger was really good but, honestly, about two hours later I didn\u2019t feel great. I felt sluggish and couldn\u2019t wait to go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradbury took some binders \u2014 activated charcoal (said to help excrete impurities) with a glass of warm water (said to improve digestion). \u201cI woke up the next day feeling much better,\u201d she says. Then she did \u201csome rebounding\u201d on her mini-trampoline, which apparently boosts lymphatic drainage. \u201cIt was all good again.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 55, Bradbury \u2014 a veteran television presenter who has presented everything from Watchdog to Countryfile \u2014 has reinvented herself as what she calls a \u201ccrash test mummy\u201d, exploring everything that might help her live as long and healthy a life as possible, from the woo-woo \u2014 think chanting and barefoot walking \u2014 to good old exercise and lots of sleep.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a response to her being diagnosed with breast cancer, aged 51, in 2021. At the time her twins, Xanthe and Zena, were 6 and her son Zephyr was 11. \u201cI was terrified and sad, it was a very emotionally upsetting time,\u201d she says. \u201cIt must have been very, very difficult for my family. I was in the eye of the storm and changed overnight to become the person I needed to be to get through this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her surgeon deemed chemotherapy unnecessary but she had a mastectomy to remove a 6cm tumour. \u201cI thought, right, I need to get stronger for this,\u201d she says. She immediately cut out sugar and meat, although the latter (albeit normally organic) is now back on the menu and worked out furiously. \u201cI knew after the operation I needed to move and walk as quickly as possible in order to heal. Getting blood pumping around a wound area is very, very important and your heart health also comes under attack when you have anaesthetics. In the moment it was instinct, but from that proactive period I was on a different path and didn\u2019t come off it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This Bradbury is very different from the one emblazoned in my memory as part of the most memorable celebrity Come Dine with Me ensemble of all time,\u00a0in 2009, in which she and Christopher Biggins got uproariously drunk while Edwina Currie observed with pursed lips.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an absolute classic,\u201d she says, beaming. \u201cThe production team said they\u2019d never witnessed anything like it. In fact I recreated it for them the following night, the music, the menu\u2026\u201d The boozing? \u201cEverything!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI changed overnight to become the person I needed to be to get through this\u201dNeale Haynes for the times<\/p>\n
But that was the old Bradbury, who took her health for granted. \u201cI used to live very much on convenience fast food because I was out and about filming all the time, eating at petrol stations, airports. It would be a ham and cheese sandwich, with a bit of pickle if you were lucky, in the back of a car and a bag of Haribo. I was having sugar all day in crazy quantities but I\u2019m naturally slim so I didn\u2019t have the warning sign some people have of putting on weight.\u201d Her cortisol, a stress hormone, was \u201c100 miles per hour and doing all sorts of damage\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt invincible when I was younger,\u201d she says. \u201cHad I been armed with the knowledge I have now, I would have been more cautious about my lifestyle. I would have still done Come Dine with Me but I wouldn\u2019t have recreated it the following night. Instead I might have gone for a walk or done some yoga.\u201d<\/p>\n
We are in a restaurant around the corner from Bradbury\u2019s home in Notting Hill, west London, where she lives with her children and partner, Gerard Cunningham, a property developer. Tall and wiry, with an aura of boundless energy, she orders a green teabag, hot water separately. I order a Diet Coke. Does my choice offend her? \u201cWell, it\u2019s not good for your microbiome or your sugar levels, but hey!\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the only way Bradbury makes me reconsider my behaviour that day. She is fronting a campaign by Vista Health to encourage middle-aged people to be proactive in checking out health niggles. Research by the healthcare provider showed that of 2,000 midlife Brits, 76 per cent were unsure which symptoms they should have looked at, with more than half admitting to ignoring warning signs for an average of 14 months.<\/p>\n
As it happens I\u2019d almost cancelled a GP appointment that morning because I was so busy, and also pretty sure nothing serious was at stake. Only because I was meeting Bradbury later did I reluctantly fit it in \u2014 to be told everything was fine. But I was still glad I went.<\/p>\n
After all, Bradbury very nearly didn\u2019t attend a follow-up appointment regarding a lump she had found in her breast a year previously. Then the scans flagged nothing and she was told to return 12 months later. By then the lump was more painful but she was reassured everything looked the same. The consultant she had seen previously was on holiday so, she says, \u201cI nearly didn\u2019t bother going to see him when he got back six weeks later. I was busy, he was busy.\u201d Eventually she decided to go simply to tick boxes. The consultant repeated all seemed fine but then he suddenly decided to do another ultrasound. \u201cThis time he found a tiny pinprick. And that\u2019s probably why I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s now a fan of full-body preventative MRI scans that can pinpoint dangers early (at her exhortation, as soon as I leave I book in for one with Vista Health). When Bradbury had one last year a brain cyst was spotted. \u201cI was quite calm. They said they didn\u2019t think this was anything to worry about and I should just have another scan in a year. But I messaged Davina McCall [the TV presenter, who had a brain tumour removed in 2024] and got the details of her neurosurgeon.\u201d He reassured Bradbury that all appeared fine. Six months later she returned to double-check. \u201cAnd it\u2019s definitely nothing. I probably won\u2019t have it looked at again for another ten years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradbury knows the cons of such testing: they can lead to more, potentially unnecessary or even dangerous procedures. They also can result in \u201cscanxiety\u201d once people discover they\u2019re at a higher risk of something. \u201cBut the argument if you have a genetic mutation that shows you might be at an increased risk of Alzheimer\u2019s, there are things you can do,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be, \u2018Oh my God, I\u2019m going to get Alzheimer\u2019s!\u2019 You could take care of your brain health a different way, exercise a different way, be wary of foods they suspect are contributing to Alzheimer\u2019s. I feel empowered with this type of information.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has taken a genetic test to calculate her personal risk of breast cancer (or in her case recurrence), finding that hers stood at 13 per cent compared with an average of 10 per cent for women in her position. \u201cHad I had that test when I was, say, in my twenties I would have known that I was at a slightly increased risk of breast cancer when I first discovered a lump. Instead of being sent away I\u2019d have pushed harder to have it triple checked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Science informs Bradbury\u2019s regime, which includes various forms of exercise (this reduces her personal chances of cancer recurring by 30 per cent), getting outdoors for daylight as soon as possible every morning and reserving three-minute periods every day for \u201cbreathwork\u201d: breathing through the nose. It all takes effort to organise.<\/p>\n
![\"Julia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0c489b6e-a5ed-4efb-8ade-78e8b77429f0.jpg\")
Bradbury tries to get outside as soon as possible in the morning ITV\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life is much harder now from a socialising point of view. I have to have to pre-prepare,\u201d Bradbury says. \u201cYesterday I was at a wellness event but I didn\u2019t know what the food was going to be like and it fell across the time I have my first meal of the day, so I prepared mine and took it with me and ate it on the way. It\u2019s not the ideal, but it was my food and I knew that I had my steamed vegetables, my green tea, yoghurt and nuts. I\u2019ve done a DNA test. I\u2019m not very good with herbicides and pesticides and toxins, so my blueberries are either organic or washed in bicarbonate of soda, which they certainly wouldn\u2019t have been elsewhere, even at a wellness event.\u201d<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t eat gluten or drink alcohol because that would increase her personal cancer recurrence risk by 28 per cent. \u201cBut people think you\u2019re weird,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Generally people \u201cget very hot under the collar\u201d at her lifestyle. A recent article outlining her typical weekend was widely mocked, not least for her revelation that her children\u00a0\u201csometimes stash sweets away in their rooms, which I silently remove\u201d. \u201cIt was as if I was going round their bedrooms and scouring for sweets. Honestly, my kids \u2019fess up: \u2018Mum, you might want to look under there.\u2019 The moment I was actually talking about in the article was about how they\u2019ve got all these Jellycat cuddly toys, which I don\u2019t let them have on the bed because they\u2019re full of microplastics. I picked up one from the carpet and it was hiding this box of sweets. My daughter smiled. She\u2019d already obviously eaten half of it. I didn\u2019t berate her, I just picked it up very quietly and put it in my pocket. I didn\u2019t do it secretly or horribly. I let my kids have pizza and ice cream and the food their friends eat. It\u2019s just at home they eat very healthily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snipers don\u2019t deter her. \u201cI\u2019ve got the biggest motivator in the world for trying all these things out \u2014 I want to stay alive for as long as possible. But I don\u2019t want everybody else to have to get into my position to be as motivated.\u201d She understands not everyone has the money or time to do everything she does \u2014 but every little behaviour shift helps. \u201cPeople don\u2019t like to hear it, but there\u2019s so much we can do to protect ourselves from not getting ill in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recently Julia Bradbury ate a burger two days in a row. \u201cI haven\u2019t done that for a very…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-376972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}