Alex Jones: It’s impossible to stay on top of everything right now
The One Show’s Alex Jones talks to Abi Jackson about kitchen discos, carving out ‘me time’ as a busy mum and letting some of the balls drop
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Your support makes all the difference.If you shudder when asked, ‘What sort of music do you like?’ for fear of not sounding cool, take a leaf out of Alex Jones’s book – she knows a good tune is all about joy.
The BBC One Show presenter says: “If anyone else listened to my headphones while I was running, they’d be appalled! Unless they also like motivating themselves with The Greatest Showman. I have got, by other people’s standards, the worst taste in music. I know my husband certainly thinks so but I think it’s obviously the best.
“I do like a bit of Adele, Michael Bublé, Sam Smith – anything I can sing along to and I’ll be there doing 10 squats. I just don’t care! I maybe get half an hour, 40 minutes to myself and I just really try to enjoy it.”
Jones is representing AXA Health in its Feelgood Health campaign (hence the squats reference). Its survey found 84 per cent of adults say music is important to their mental and physical health. AXA has created a series of playlists, or users can create their own on its hub, to encourage the nation to “get moving with music”.
Carmarthenshire-born Jones, 43, lives in London with husband Charlie Thomson and their sons, Teddy, four, and Kit, two in May.
She says: “It’s not about turning into the next Mo Farah. It’s about looking after yourself – taking a little bit of time in your day to do something for you, so you can balance all the rest of the chaos.
“You can feel pressure with all these people achieving amazing things in lockdown. It’s very easy to give one version on social media, you don’t see the whole picture.
“There are so many people doing the most complex yoga, I’m [thinking], ‘Oh god!’
“We’re all up against it in some way or other – this is about just finding a playlist that puts a smile on your face and helps you get through this shambles. Music changes your mindset and can really alter your mood. Just putting music on in the kitchen can really transform your day.
You look at what your priorities are, in a situation like this, because it’s impossible to stay on top of everything
“For Teddy’s fourth birthday recently, we put his kind of playlist on – Frozen songs and all the greats. Just that, a bit of a bubble machine, and all four of us danced like maniacs in the kitchen. It was really fun. Those little things can really shift your mood.
“Those people who are like: you need to meditate! Lying still? I do that when I sleep! That, for me, might be a nice bath, I try to do that. It’s maybe once every two weeks and that’s really nice.
“And I suppose my meditation, which is really bad, is when the little one is having a nap on the weekend, and we go, ‘Right, let’s watch a film!’
“We’ll get the popcorn and then myself and Charlie will fall asleep. But that’s the down time and I think you’ve got to find those opportunities.”
She says she survives stress by knowing her priority.
“In a situation like this, because it’s impossible to stay on top of everything. Some things have to go aside. I thought: ‘I do have to go to my job every day because that’s always given us a routine and has helped keep things, sort of, normal,’ but my priority is my boys’ wellbeing, really. Even though this is a very odd time, I don’t want them to look and it and think there’s something odd going on, because it’s quite scary and full-on.
“Teddy says, ‘Mama, will we be doing socially distanced?’ And when we go to the supermarket, he’s asking, ‘Have you got your mask?’ It is scary for somebody who’s just become a little boy from a toddler. So our real priority is keeping at home fun, so if they do remember any of it, they remember it as a time that we were all together a lot. I think that’s all we can do. So, I want to try and do a good job there but everything else: if the washing is piling up, or the kitchen looks like it’s been burgled – which is does – you can’t do it all.”
Jones has been looking after her health and wellbeing by denying treats.
She says: “We did lay down an extra layer of misery to January by doing Dry January and Veganuary – I don’t know what we were thinking! But it’s been good. I’m not a huge meat-eater and we try to educate the boys about the planet and practice what we preach with that. You do find you have to cook from scratch more and we were eating vegetables like nobody’s business! I’m not sure it’s something we’ll keep up but we’ll probably try to have meat maybe once or twice a week, instead of every day.
“It’s the dairy really – I can’t give up tea with normal milk. A cup of tea is everything and Dry January… we’re not keeping that up long-term but it’s a bit of a reset. Maybe we’ll avoid having wine during the week.
“Apart from that, it’s just about doing something small. I’ve just started doing beginners’ yoga and I’m so bad but it’s just 10 minutes a day while the ‘munchkins’ are upstairs and feels like I’m doing something. And we have our little discos in the kitchen – you can burn quite a lot of energy doing that.
“I love listening to podcasts, I find them very relaxing – although for a while, I didn’t realise I was listening to them on double speed. One day I said to a colleague, ‘The thing that bugs me about podcasts is everybody talks really quickly’. They were like, ‘You’ve got it on double speed!’ I swear it was making me run faster.”
Her approach to looking after herself has changed over the years.
She says: “I’ve always eaten quite healthily. Growing up, if we wanted dessert, it had to be fruit. You find your way by your late-thirties, early-forties, you understand who you are and what you need.
“For me, having two young children – which is full-on but I wouldn’t change it for the world – it’s about finding a little bit of time on my own and having that reset. I have to get outside, because I can’t just sit still and be in the house too long. Getting outside resets me. Just going for a walk – that feeling of being out in the elements – really grounds me.”
Alex Jones is the face of AXA Health’s Feelgood Health campaign. For more information and to create your unique motivational playlists, visit AXA Health’s Feelgood Health Hub (axahealth.co.uk/feelgoodhealth/the-hub)
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