Cheryl Cole: 5 wellness wins that keep my body and mind on track
She doesn’t like reformer Pilates or meditation apps, and finds her Oura ring a bit of a nag – so how does Cheryl Cole keep healthy and happy? Here are her 5 top wellness wins
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Cheryl – formerly Cole and Fernandez-Versini – is a woman who wears many hats. Quite literally – she dons a baseball cap to drop her 8-year-old son, Bear, at school, she says, because she doesn’t have time to brush her hair in the mornings.
She is, of course, famous for being one-fifth of noughties pop sensation Girls Aloud, as well as being a judge on TV talent show, The X Factor, where she met the father of her child, the One Direction star Liam Payne, who died tragically last autumn.
A year on, after a period away from the spotlight (and who could blame her), Cheryl is now back in business, in brand ambassador mode for Nivea. Featuring in TV adverts and on billboard posters (her dad recently called her up to say he’d seen her her plastered over a bus stop), she’s the face of the new Nivea Cellular Epigenetics Age Rewind Serum.
When we sat down to chat, the conversation soon turns to wellbeing. Her focus is on looking fresh (the new Nivea serum is helping with that – her family and friends have told her how glowy she looks since using it), and feeling happy and healthy. “I’m 42 and I have no interest in looking 25, in fact, you couldn’t pay me to be 25 again!” she says. “But I think nutrition, monitoring stress levels, and sleep are so important. Equally important as what you’re putting on your skin.”
Here are five ways she keeps her wellbeing on track.
Cheryl with her son Bear (left) and on her 40th birthday. Images: Instagram @cherylofficial
Cheryl’s wellness wins
1. Monitoring her sleep with an Oura health tracker (although it is a bit bossy!)
“I got a black Oura ring, from £349, for my most recent birthday. I previously had a FitBit, and I kept that on while I was getting used to the Oura, and to make sure I was still doing my 4000 steps a day. I was getting quite obsessed with comparing my step and heart rate between the two. But now I’ve got to grips with the Oura, I just wear that. I feel like it’s telling me off quite a lot! I don’t really want to be shouted at, I prefer to be encouraged, but it’s constantly telling me that something is disturbing my sleep and my heart rate is too high. But I love it really and I’m still wearing it!”
Cheryl and her Girls Aloud bandmates at Race For Life, in honour of the late Sarah Harding, and (right) an Oura ring. Images: Instagram @cherylofficial and Oura
2. Starting the day with a greens powder – and slapping on vitamin patches
“I have always taken supplements and I’m really good at remembering to take them. I have started my day the same way for the last 15 years, if not longer, with a glass of Green Vibrance, £44.77 for a 30 day supply. It’s a green powder that you dilute in water, juice or smoothie. It tastes like you’re chewing the earth. I used to have to psych myself up to drink it, but I’m so used to it now that I can say to myself, ‘Here comes the soil!’. I swear that as you’re drinking it, you can feel it doing good for you.
“Through the winter, especially here in the UK, I wear a vitamin D patch. I had really low levels at one point and was not well at all, so I’m always conscious of that. And I prefer a vitamin patch to a spray or a tablet, because I find the absorption better.”
“I also alternate between taking turmeric, iron and vitamin B and will flip-flop throughout the months depending on how I’m feeling and what I need.”
“I saw a big bottle of magnesium on TikTok, with three or four different types in it to help with sleep, so I bought it. And at night, I peel off my vitamin D patch and then stick on a sleep vitamin patch. I call myself the Cabbage Patch doll!”
Images: Instagram @cherylofficial and Unsplash
3. Regular YouTube mat Pilates sessions (rather than reformer)
“I’ve been injured for the last eight months which is so annoying – I did it overusing a muscle while walking the dog. That is what being 42 is like! But before that, I was doing mat-based Pilates three times a week. I prefer mat Pilates to reformer because I can do it at home and it’s less hassle. I know you can get reformer machines at home – Nicola [Roberts, her Girls Aloud bandmate] has one, but I think mat is harder for your core and you can add ankle weights for resistance to make it even harder. I follow classes by Move With Nicole on YouTube. She’s an Australian girl who is really calm and peaceful.”
Cheryl’s Pilates instructor of choice: Move With Nicole on YouTube. Image: YouTube, Move With Nicole
4. Meditating to the sound of silence
“I used to be quite a hectic person and always had a million thoughts going through my head, so I never thought I’d be able to do meditation. But I tried it and was surprised at how good I was at it. I started with guided meditations using an app, but then the woman’s voice started getting on my nerves so I changed to trying to listen to the silence, which I know sounds like a weird thing to say but the ultimate in meditation is nothingness. Nothing is happening, you are nothing. And it’s really hard, especially when you’ve got dogs barking! But if a thought comes into your brain, acknowledge it and then let it go by, as if it’s on a train. And thoughts will keep trying to come into your brain, because your brain can be a bit of a bully at times, but meditation taught me to let the thoughts go. I got to a point with it where I could feel something switch in me when I got into a meditative state.”
Image: Unsplash
5. Running a doggy daycare – which means long nature walks are mandatory
“Everyone who works for me brings their dogs over so my house is like doggy daycare, plus I have my own, a sausage dog. So I am out walking every day. And while I do it for my dog, I’m really walking for my mental health. Where I walk is beautiful. We go past horses, I find their energy so calming and I love this time of the year where we’re heading into autumn and the leaves are falling. I find there’s a sense of calm in the air.”
Cheryl with her mum and son – but her pet pooch takes centre stage and (right) she loves long autumnal walks. Images: Instagram @cherylofficial and Unsplash
Nivea Cellular Epigenetics Age Rewind, was £34.99 now £17.49
Image: Nivea
