When Amanda Hamilton walks into the coffee bar in Edinburgh airport, there is no mistaking the queen of television detox. With her perfect peaches-and-cream complexion and her shiny blonde mane, she stands out amid the pasty faces and paunches of the airport cafe.
Dressed in a bright yellow sweater and a lilac scarf, Hamilton is relaxing over a cup of earl grey tea — organic, naturally — before boarding a plane to Birmingham, where she is filming a new series of the popular BBC1 health programme Should I Worry About? The past 18 months have been busy for Hamilton — as well as landing a primetime slot on BBC1, she has been commuting between her home in Edinburgh’s Grange area and Malaga, where she runs holistic detox retreats, and giving birth to her first child, daughter Janna, now one.
Since the launch of Should I Worry About? (which looks at the hidden dangers of everyday foods and drinks) she has become a regular on ITV’s This Morning and BBC Radio’s Expert of the Hour. She has also been lined up for further presenting work and a detox documentary next year.
Despite her hectic schedule, the 31-year-old single mother still looks a picture of health, combining the fresh-faced good looks of Carol Smillie and the no-nonsense approach of the television nutritionist Gillian McKeith.
Although she does not believe in ramming her views in other people’s faces, when she gets started on the subject of healthy living, there is no stopping her. “You definitely find yourself functioning better all round after you’ve been through a detox. Your metabolism is better, you absorb nutrients better, you just feel so much healthier,” she says, before adding apologetically, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help sounding a bit evangelical.
“It really has changed my taste buds. I instinctively crave the right things now and I know I cope better with the stresses of day-to-day life.”
Whether discussing the finer points of colonic irrigation or a chronically constipated client, Hamilton’s enthusiasm never wavers. This is because, unlike some so-called television experts brought in to add a touch of glamour to an otherwise dull, worthy subject, diet and detox is for her a labour of love.
“Watching clients go through a detox in every sense of the word — emotionally, mentally and physically — is so fulfilling. Some people come back and quit their job, set up a new business, start a new relationship. The results are that dramatic. A detox really can change lives,” she says, sipping her tea.
To listen to her you would think Hamilton was born with a cup of green tea in her hand, but she confesses she wasn’t always wise to the benefits of a good diet. In fact, she owns up to a former lifestyle of innocent-sounding everyday toxins associated with many off-the shelf diet products and low-calorie ready meals. “I was doing that typical British thing of choosing low-fat, supposedly healthy options. In fact, I realise now that they are completely the wrong things for your body.”
Like many people, Hamilton became interested in nutrition as a means of maintaining a healthy weight. She had represented Scotland as a badminton player in her teens, and saw first-hand the negative relationship many people have with food, with several of her fellow competitors suffering from eating disorders. She made up her mind to keep a healthy outlook while staying in shape. Educating herself about nutrition seemed like a good way of finding a more balanced approach.
After travelling in Asia, where Hamilton got the chance to sample ayurvedic traditions in India and health retreats in Thailand, she returned to Scotland and qualified as a nutritional therapist and homeopath in 1990. Her first job was as a nutritional adviser in Napiers on Byres Road in Glasgow. Her easy-to-swallow nutritional tips went down so well with customers that she decided to branch out into personal consultations across Scotland and the rest of the UK.
The leap into television came about after a chance meeting at a party, where she wowed a BBC executive with her impromptu health-food advice and landed herself a screen test. Her only previous television experience was a brief stint as a news anchor in America in her early twenties.
A year and a half later, Hamilton is clearly delighted that she can do her bit to make the world a healthier place as well as carving out a television career.
Despite her zeal, Hamilton tries not to preach. Since she gave up dieting and a faddy approach to food, she says she has found maintaining her ideal weight “effortless”, even after the birth of her daughter last year. But she is keen to point out that shedding a few pounds through a detox is just a rather welcome side effect to having a body that works infinitely better.
“We do get clients coming along to our retreats because they want to lose half a stone in a week, and that’s totally fine. But we stress that the detox is not a diet. It’s a holistic thing. We look at stress levels, addictions, fertility, skin and hair, and give people a chance to re-evaluate their whole life if they want to.”
Those who sign up for one of the £1,250 detox retreats Hamilton has been running in the mountains of Malaga for the past three years are in for a lot more than a week of lounging by the pool sipping carrot juice. In fact, the retreats have a strict set of rules and are not unlike a boot camp. For starters, mobile phone calls home are discouraged, as Hamilton believes the most dramatic results come when clients completely remove themselves from their routine and begin an intensive life laundry.
The daily menu consists of five organic fruit juices and two plates of home-made soup per person. Hamilton describes the former as “delicious” and the latter as “an electrolyte broth — sort of like a potassium and sodium rich consommé”. The sound of the strict regime — boosted by fistfuls of vitamin supplements — is enough to make most reach for a comforting bar of chocolate, but Hamilton insists her method is the easiest way to cleanse the system and regenerate a healthy body.
She says: “If you do it at home, you get all the horrible side effects like headaches and bad breath. People stink when they detox.” But with a tempting range of treatments on hand in Spain such as hydrotherapy massages, mud wraps, and yoga, as well as a team of counsellors, spiritual healers and general hand holders to get you through the worst, Hamilton thinks her sunshine approach takes the sting out of fasting.
An announcement comes over the loudspeaker that her flight is boarding. Hamilton drains her tea and, scooping up her bags, adds: “I’m not a complete extremist. I mean, I’ll eat pasta or bread if I go to an Italian restaurant and I like the odd glass of wine with friends.”
Yet for her, the detox way is much more than a passing fad — to get the best results it has to be a way of life. “The reason detoxing is so popular, especially right now, is because it gets results. Sometimes pretty dramatic ones.”
