Gary Barlow - “If Rob ate one lettuce leaf, I would eat a half” - The Daily Telegraph
Ahead of Take That’s 30th anniversary tour, Gary Barlow reflects on how he overcame obesity and bulimia to find his perfect recipe for midlife fitness
Gary Barlow has noticed a change in Britain. “There is one thing I have really enjoyed in the last few years and it is people – and increasingly men – not being ashamed of trying to make themselves a bit better,” he declares, relaxing cross-legged on a sofa in a West London hotel suite. Looking lean and trim in a white T-shirt and jeans, with sharp cheekbones, grizzled stubble and his trademark dyed blond hair, the 48-year-old seems to be an emblem of this revolution. “I just mean spending a bit more time doing your hair in the morning; a bit more time in the gym; a bit more time looking for the right top to wear.
"If I look at the generation above me, as men turned 30 they have given up. ‘Ah, I am married, I have got kids, I can’t be arsed.’ I am not ashamed to talk about how I work a bit more over it. I love it. I encourage it. And if anyone would take the p*** out of you for doing that then they f***ing shouldn’t.”
Barlow is understandably passionate about this issue, having navigated the full spectrum of midlife health crises, from obesity, binge-eating and depression to bulimia, exercise obsession and burnout. Today, with major milestones on the horizon – from the start of Take That’s 30th anniversary Greatest Hits Live tour, to his 50th birthday in 2021 – he appears to have found peace. “I now enjoy being 48. I never look in the mirror and go: ‘I’m perfect’. But I go, ‘Yeah, I’m alright with this. For now, this will do me.’ I might want to lose a couple of pounds but it is not life or death.”
When Barlow ballooned to 17st 2lb, he was mocked with headlines like ‘Take Fat’ and ‘Relight My Fryer’. Now he and his two remaining bandmates Mark Owen and Howard Donald routinely discuss yoga, weight loss and juice fasts. “Mark and Howard like the fitness and for this tour I am thinking of doing a yoga and meditation class in the afternoon for all the dancers,” he enthuses. “On the work-up to a tour, they will go, ‘Oh, what will you do this week?’ Because they want to get in shape too.
"It’s funny – I am known as the healthy one now. I can get away with anything and nobody will question it.”
Even the infamous rivalry with Robbie Williams has switched from record sales to weight loss. “The competitiveness is always with Rob. He is the worst for that. And I am the worst when I am with him. If Rob ate one lettuce leaf, I would eat a half. When I saw him at X Factor (in December 2018) I was quite light. I had been doing some intermittent fasting which I am a fan of. But he was like, ‘Jesus, where are you going? There is nothing left of you!’ He was doing this Weight Watchers thing. So we were trading tips.”
As he chronicled in his autobiography A Better Me, Barlow suffered severe depression after the failure of his second solo album in 1999 and sank into a state of obesity, gorging on Chinese takeaways and wasting days lying underneath his piano. In his darkest moments he would enter his recording studio and calmly place a towel by the toilet. Then the fingers which had played exquisite piano riffs to sold-out arenas would be forced down his throat to make himself sick. He says the sight of a towel still chills him. “I will never go back there. I think it was a moment in my life. And I am glad that the memory sometimes chimes because it does tell me that I will never go back there.”
Now he adheres to a balanced routine of gym circuits, runs, yoga and meditation and a healthy but sustainable diet of home-cooked whole foods. He says he has more energy when performing on stage and, with fewer mood swings, he has become a better father to his children Daniel, Emily and Daisy. “I don’t ever feel like my emotions are heightened and I feel like it keeps my stress levels down. I don’t want to sounds smug but I just feel on top form. I really do.”
Barlow has learned to adapt his exercise sessions to match his work commitments. “It is quite seasonal. I am not one of these people who runs three times a week, all year. At the moment, because I am doing rehearsals, I am trying to stretch and do yoga to make my lungs bigger and have more capacity for oxygen because I will be singing while running around the stage. So I am training as though for a marathon. When I’m sweating on stage for two hours, my cardio is taken care of. But if I just sat in the studio all day I would need to run in the morning and do some weights in the evening.”
Planning a sleep routine for Take That’s 52-date tour is his latest fixation. He now lowers his bedroom temperature and takes a hot bath before bed, as research suggests the subsequent cooling of the body can promote deeper sleep. “Alcohol is tricky because I come off stage and it is just the most incredible thing to have 20,000 people all singing. You come off and go: 'I need a glass of wine'. It is just keeping a check on that without sounding boring because you want to enjoy yourself.
"I am also aware that 20,000 people have bought tickets for tomorrow night. I would love to stay up drinking but how much disrespect am I showing all those people? You want to have a laugh but" – he lowers his voice to a confessional whisper – "I need to get to sleep.”
His meals on tour are organised with military precision. “It is quite scientific,” he says. “You want to eat around 5ish because you are on at half eight and you don’t want to be burping and feeling full. I don’t want anything too spicy that is going to repeat. Really plain food. And then something light like a tuna or chicken salad for after.”
Barlow’s lifelong quest for a healthier diet is a familiar tale of yo-yo dieting. He tried everything from the Atkins diet, which left him constipated, to joyless low-fat meals. His epiphany came when he met Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, who promoted nutritious but satisfying wholefood recipes such as beef stew and butternut squash curries. His secret is to eat enough to blunt the edge of hunger, leaving him satisfied but never bloated. “I have a night now and again where I will go to a restaurant. And I love pies. And there will be a chicken and mushroom pie on the menu and I will say: ‘I am going in, everyone! He is going in!’ It’s a big occasion. Invariably I feel like s*** afterwards. And it is no coincidence that because I have overeaten it makes me feel a bit depressed.
"Listen, I am not shy with food. I eat a lot of food but it is a really well-cooked, good, balanced diet.”
Barlow says he loves cooking for his family at his home in London but his culinary skills were rapidly elevated when his wife Dawn was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. “The menu shrinks when you are a diabetic. There is even sugar in tomatoes, carrots and beetroot so you think: how can I make this tasty? It has been a real education. I learned spices are a great way to get flavour so I cook with Persian, Isreali and Middle-Eastern spices.
"By cooking I feel as if I am looking after her as well as looking after my family."
Does he fear turning 50 in two years' time? “I’ve never been bothered by age,” he shrugs. “There is nowt you can do about it, is there?” In fact, he says he is considering taking an adult gap year to explore new music or meditation. Is the man who has spent his life obsessively seeking control of his weight, health and career now excited by the unknown? “I really have no plans," he confesses. "I am making some new music at the moment. I don’t know whether it’s a band thing, a solo thing, or for someone else. But I have been saying no to a lot of things. I know how much stress something will involve, and how many school hockey matches I will miss. But I am going to say yes soon to something. I just don’t know what it is.”
The singer hopes that Williams and Jason Orange will return to the Take That family in the future – for the company, if not the lettuce-related rivalries. “I don’t know when it will happen next. I don’t know if it will happen at all. But if I was a betting man I would say it would. Just not this year.”
A Better Me by Gary Barlow is out now. Visit Takethat.com for tickets to Greatest Hits Live 2019
(C) The Daily Telegraph
Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/gary-barlow-years-turmoil-finally-found-health-balance/