Some think it was Einstein who coined the phrase, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. Some think it was Chinese philosopher Confucius and some reckon newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane.
Well, whoever did, was wrong! A picture is worth a hell of a lot more! Especially these pictures anyway! Allow us, if you will, paint a no-pretences, behind-the-scenes picture of this, our January covershoot.
It’s Monday morning, Kathryn Thomas has just delivered her new two-part documentary The Skinny Jab Revolution, to RTÉ, and has
raced into us here after. Here is a cold, badly lit box room with roughly painted walls and raw floorboards. Here, in this space below the photographer’s studio, we are doing glam for the next two hours in a place that is decidedly, not glam.
Kathryn’s phone is hopping; she’s fielding calls from RTÉ, from her production team, from her husband Padraig. The computer is on her lap and she’s working away as we work away on her. Two hours later, looking like a bombshell, we emerge, as a team, with Kathryn our muse, out onto a heaving George’s Street in Dublin, for what we have planned: a street editorial.
Across the road we see a young man, possibly still out from the night before, doing a walking vomit. We walk in line with him on the other side of the road. We cross the road, walk down a dirty lane way because Dublin is so dirty these days. It is cold, it is grey and it is beginning to spit with rain. Kathryn is in outfit number one and we have five more to shoot after this. The finish line feels far away and we’re not even the one wearing the skimpies.
Over the course of the following 90 minutes, we do four changes in various hotel bathrooms before dragging her from literal pillar to literal post and back to post again, where Kathryn must repeatedly, strike pose after pose for our camera. And who said this job was glamorous?!
This 46-year-old mum of two would well be within her rights to moan. But not once does she. She is militant throughout, happy for a fast photoshoot that will get her home quicker to her little girls, Ellie (6) and Grace (3).
The following day we chat again but this time she is cosied up in her car, en route to Carlow to visit a friend. She tells us about her new passion project, her two-part doc for RTÉ which she has produced and presented herself from her own production house, Aquarius Productions. We also talk all about her newest job hosting The Morning Show, which will broadcast weekdays on Q102, from 7am-10am. With those consistent earlier Kathryn is not going to know what hit her!
Kathryn, 44 per cent of New Year’s resolutions last two to three months. Only six per cent last beyond a year. Have you a resolution that stuck?
No! I don’t really make resolutions because for me it’s the pressure of having to do it at the same time as everyone else! Also, more than likely in January, you are not going to be in the correct head space. I do try to keep my exercise up and I do try to eat healthily but I need to surround myself with love and fun because life is difficult for everyone right now, especially with the turmoil the world is in. We need to find pockets of joy, even in January!
December is chaos, we do like the clean-slate calmness of a January.
A reset button is great but if you need to hold off until February, do it. Don’t put yourself under pressure. I also think removing stuff from your life is hard and it’s setting you up for failure. Adding things like: one day of batch cooking, or more ‘me time’, or a walk – you can psychologically trick yourself, if you re-frame it. It doesn’t have to be about flagellating yourself which is what I think most people associate January with.
One of those pockets of joy is definitely the stretch in the evenings, which we start to see by the end of the month. Because the darkness can get in on you.
The dark days affect my sister more than anybody I know. She lived in LA for ten years and she has found it difficult. I don’t suffer as much, I’ll get up and go for a run at 6am if I know I need to fit it in. I kind of move with the seasons, that sort of suits me. [Pauses and thinks] When I think about it, I love December, probably because historically, I have slowed down and had more time because I always had Operation Transformation in January and so I’d be back with a bang to work on December 27th.
First January in years with no Operation Transformation (OT), does it feel weird?
First year in 17 years with no OT! Yes, it does feel weird. It has been such a big part of my life. I think the show will be missed by an awful lot of people. It galvanised communities. Whatever taxi I got into, or if standing in a queue in Lidl, people would always mention the show. It was a clean slate for a lot of people, a time to bin the mince pies and selection boxes and get moving. The show will always have its detractors, always have its naysayers. But I will never stop banging on about the importance of health and what we can control, because there is so much about our health we can’t control so what we can control, I think we should. But my time had come with OT, I knew creatively it just was not doing it for me anymore. Sometimes you’ve got to be brave because until you close one door another might not open.
Change is one of the only certainties we have. And change is coming, Kathryn.
You’re going to be a five-day a weeker hosting your brand new breakfast show for Q102!
How are you feeling?
I’m over the moon, I can’t quite believe it. It’s a big move for me with routine and getting up early. One of the biggest decisions was the family because I’m not going to be around in the mornings anymore. I’ll be finished at 10am and will be there in the afternoons, which actually will work nicely for us with the girls the age they are at now.
And what will be the vibe of the show Kathryn?
It’s a new breakfast show, new studio and now with Ryan Tubridy there since last year they want to restructure the entire station. It will be a warm, welcoming, bright show, not high paced frenetic news, it’s me being me in the morning, like me talking to my mates. I’m just so looking forward to it.
How do you think you’ll find your new fixed routine?
For years I’ve been a juggling Jenny! Infact, I have never had a five-day-aweek job – in one place! It is slightly terrifying! I’ve always liked the way I’ve never really known which way my life is going to go. If I’m gonna have a family, if Operation Transformation is coming back. If if if….
But you are cool with instability, just like you are with the changing seasons.
I think being a 46-year-old mother makes you cool with constant change. I think when you’re working in that constant spin of freelance too, which I relish, it does make you resilient…and then an opportunity like this comes along.
Yep, it’s a new chapter; do you see life in chapters or as a continuum?
I’m just chapters, [she calls out] what’s next? What’s this stage of life gonna throw at me?! What am I going to love, what am I going to learn?! This new opportunity is a little outside my comfort zone, but I love that.
You are eternally optimistic and eternally ambitious, Kathryn. But your ambition is driven by financial purpose, no?
100 per cent. I think people think that if you’re in TV, you don’t have to work a day in your life. My work is very much about paying the bills and ensuring myself and Padraig are providing for the family. But at the same time, I’ve never taken a job that I haven’t given 100 per cent to.
You’re a pragmatic person, as opposed to a dramatic one, which is a great trait to have. But what’s your worst trait?
How long have you got?! I tend to overcommit; I’m forever losing things; I lost my glasses last week; my bank card the other day, I’m running around and I never give myself enough time to get from A to B. But I’m not happy unless I have a million things to do. I let myself down by not being more organised.
Do you like having a million things to do or are you just used to having a million things to do?
I think you’ve just uncovered my bad habit! If on the rare occasion my family decide I need a lie-in and let me lie there, I’ll be out of the bed in ten minutes with FOMO! Or I’ll be on the phone trying to book gymnastics! I just can’t.
You’ve just loads of energy for life and living and you are grateful for it…
So grateful for life and living and health. One of my best friends has come through a life altering, life changing illness – that teaches you. It’s why I bang on about health so much. But it’s about balance really because you’ve got to drink the wine, you’ve got to have the fun and the late nights because life is for living.
What has five years of marriage taught you?
That I’m not always right!
Don’t be mad, of course, you are!
[Laughing] Marry someone kind and patient, which Padraig is! It sounds smushy but we’re a happy house, there’s a lot of love in our house. Even in this chapter of our life with young kids and busy jobs, we still make time for fun and for ourselves.
All beginnings are intrinsically happy said Norah Ephron in Heartburn. But your middle with Padraig sounds like it’s pretty happy too.
Aw that’s a lovely way of looking at it… I do worry about what we’ll do when the kids grow up, but Padraig reminds me that we’ll be 110 by then [laughs like a drain]!
Okay, back to business! Let’s talk about your new two-part doc The Skinny Jab Revolution produced and presented by you, for your own production house, Aquarius Productions.
This documentary series came about because of what is happening in our world, in terms of food culture. We are living in a world of Ozempic, of Wegovy, of Mounjaro, of all these revolutionary weight loss drugs that have hit the global market and have knocked it off its feet. They originally started out as Diabetes drugs, Ozempic in particular, and obviously one of the side effects was huge weight loss so it skyrocketed. Now in the US kids as young as 12 are being injected. Is this going to the situation in Ireland too because 24 per cent of adults and children in Ireland are living with obesity? Donal O’Shea, the HSE clinical lead for obesity, told me that for anyone now living with obesity the treatment here is these drugs. But no one has done long term tests on this. It’s frightening.
Where did these investigations take you?
We travelled to America, to West Virginia, which is the most obese state in America, in a town where they do not have access to fruit and vegetables for a 30-mile radius. There I was in the land of the free in what they call a food desert. Everything is in a packet or frozen or canned. After that I went to Japan where there is little obesity, where obesity is at 3 per cent, and their food culture is entirely different. In Japan nearly 100 years ago they revolutionised their food culture and then in 2003 there was a new law passed where every school must have a nutritionist, and every school must cook meals on site. It was a different world.
What were the learnings?
We now know so much more about obesity than we did ten years ago. We know how the body physiologically changes and how these drugs counteract that. We know that once you have put on a huge amount of weight, the body is just striving to put it back on. We now understand there is biological drivers for obesity that is hugely impacted by the food environment we live in. We know that in America more prescriptions are written per capita than any other place in the world. But what do we do about it? We need to be educated, and we need more legislation. In Ireland we’re not too bad, we have great dairy, great agriculture, great meat, we are moving in the right direction, but it needs to be consolidated, have uniformity and be government led.
In Chris Van Tulleken’s bestselling book, Ultra Processed People, he says that until we frame obesity like lung cancer, we will not solve the problem.
Yeah, and that’s what Donal O’Shea will say as well, it is a disease. The World Health Organisation classified obesity as a disease in 1997. It is a chronic disease and it’s a disease that spawns many other diseases. It’s an area that is still so nuanced and an area people are still triggered talking about.
Chris also says that the average adult in the UK consumes 57 per cent of their calories from UPF (ultra processed food). It rises to 67 per cent for kids. But it’s everywhere and it’s so hard to get away from.
Do I eat ultra processed foods? Of course I do. Do I give the kids chicken nuggets? Of course I do, but that is not 95 per cent of their diet, but in West Virginia it is and that’s the problem. I don’t deny my kids anything, but I do try to give them fruit and veg every day, five portions if possible. But it’s a fight in the supermarket, I don’t know how many times in Lidl when I get to the till and I have to say to the checkout person, ‘sorry we’ve already had two donuts’. It’s another part of parenting that is hard. And we’re all time-poor. We’re all so stretched.
We sure are. But education is the way through – we hope! Anyway, we must let you go as you’ve now arrived in Carlow! Tell us adventurer, what’s the next adventure?
We’re off to a surfing town in Morocco for a week now looking for balance and fun before the next new job adventure begins in February. I’m ready for you!
