With 2024’s Love Island in full swing, Platinum Spas caught up with Series 5 Islander Amy Hart. Discussing her wellbeing routines, from fitness and wedding goals to diet plans, as well as her show predictions for this year, and behind the scenes insights, the full interview can be found below.

Amy discusses her average screen time, how she switches off, how Love Island encourages contestant wellbeing, plus how she plans the perfect summer party.

See the full interview here:

Platinum Spas: First of all, starting with well-being and fitness, what are your current go-to fitness routines?

Amy: So, I’m obviously getting married in September, I’m currently shredding for the wedding, but I just had that awful viral cough that was going around, so I haven’t been able to go to the gym for 6 weeks, but I actually went back today for my first PT session back.

I did a bit of legs, and I’m working with a PT, I’m also trying to get out walking every day with my little boy in the pram, and then I’ve got this app called Sweat with Kayla – I’ve had it for years.

And then there’s this lady that I follow on Instagram, she’s an American mom of four boys – I’m a bit obsessed – and she looks amazing. She gets up every morning at 5:00 AM before her kids get up and does a workout. I’m not that committed.

So, what I do is I do the workouts on the app while Stanley’s having his breakfast and I put on the Wiggles – they’ve got some absolute bangers – and I do the workouts to the Wiggles.

Ellie-Mae Morris

Platinum Spas: Do you have any fitness goals? Is there anything that you’re really trying to achieve?


Amy: Just to feel confident on my wedding day. My dress fits right now, so I haven’t got any sort of pressure to slim into it. It fits right now, and then we’ll just have it taken in and taken in.

I did have a set weight that I wanted to get to, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now. So I just want to tone up my arms, tone up my legs. So that’s just a lot of weights, a lot of walking, and eating really healthily.

Platinum Spas: Oh yeah, that’s always the hard bit, the diet.


Amy: I’m doing the Love Island podcast at the moment, so I’m out three or four nights a week and after Aftersun.

Then I’ve obviously got other work to do, and I’ve got a little baby who’s 15 months now, and my boyfriend is a CEO, a founder of a company – he works more than full time – so we’re both trying to work out how best to manage our time. And on top of all that, I love cooking, but I’m not good at quick meals.

I pour an hour and a half into cooking a meal every night, plus planning out all the meals, plus doing my online shop, plus prepping everything, and then I’m a messy person as well, so Sam then spends an hour clearing up afterwards.

So, actually, there’s a local chef, and we basically went to him and we asked him if he would you do meal preps? And he said yes! Sam wants to put on weight, and I want to lose weight, so we gave him our likes, dislikes, exact calories, and exact macros, and he delivers all our food twice a week.

Platinum Spas: What were the things that you would cook when you did do the hour-and-a-half session of cooking? What were your go-tos?


Amy: Oh, I love curries. I’ve got a Thermomix and I love doing stuff on there. I’m part of the Thermix revolution. But I do just love anything. I love curries. I love pasta dishes. I love cooking chicken dishes. I think a lot of it is that I do get a little bit sidetracked. That might be why it takes so long to cook stuff, but also filming it as well, always got to film – everything is content.

But for Stanley; obviously, Stanley’s not having meal prep. So the other day, I spent five hours filling up the freezer for him. I did 6 or 7 different recipes, but in that time I watched 5 YouTube videos and 2 episodes of EastEnders.

Platinum Spas: With such a kind of hectic lifestyle, how do you prioritise your well-being and do you have any self-care activities that you favour?

Amy: For me, I love telly and I love watching telly. So, when I’m not at the podcast, at 9:00 o’clock I will get into bed and watch Love Island. After that I might do a bit of admin and a bit of editing.

I also love EastEnders, so that’s obviously that four hours a week that I can just chill and watch. I actually got quite behind on it because I bought a walking pad and I said “I’m only going to watch EastEnders when I’m walking”, and then I ended up getting 40 episodes behind on EastEnders because I just didn’t want to walk. So I watched 40 episodes in six days, that was great self-care.

And podcasts as well. I drive to and from work, and lots of people go to me, “I can’t believe you have to drive”, and it’s 3 hours a day I drive, but I love it. That for me is my self-care time. I have Jeremy Vines’ Radio 2 show on, or the Before the Many podcast on, or the new This Is Us podcast, I just love those. So I put those on and it’s just my me time.

Ellie-Mae Morris

Platinum Spas: Do you have any activities you like to do, anything like yoga or Pilates or any sort of Zen things to bring you down?


Amy: No, I’m not great at yoga. I’ve tried yoga and Pilates and it’s not for me. I wish it was. I see all my friends at Yoga Girls and they look absolutely amazing, but it’s just too slow for me and I find it a bit cringe, all the names of the positions. It think I don’t need to know it’s called the praying mantis, just tell me how to stand.

So no, I don’t really do much Zen, but I love a nap. That’s what my my other big self-care thing is, I love a nap.Yeah, if I ever do a yoga class, I’m always wonder why am I here? Why do I do this? And then at the end, when I’m asleep on the mat, I remember why I do it. Because it completely shuts my brain off, and I can just fall asleep on the mat.

Ellie-Mae Morris

Platinum Spas: So, what is an absolute must for you to do on a day-to-day when it comes to mental or physical well-being?

Amy: I like to write lists, just so I know where I am, I know where I stand, because, where my anxiety comes from is, it’s weird. I’m an organised person, but I’m also a very unorganised person. We always say if I spent more time completing the previous list than writing a new list, I wouldn’t have to write so many lists.

So for me, my anxiety comes from being unprepared, and if I think, “Oh no, I’ve got so much to do”, and I’m not in a position to be doing it. So for me, writing to-do lists which are broken down as “This is stuff that needs to get done today, and this is stuff that if I get it done, it’s a bonus, but if not, it can go on tomorrow’s list”.

You do have to remember to put it on tomorrow’s list because if not, then three days later, you think, “I didn’t do that, help, I ruined it!” So yeah, for me, the big thing is writing lists.

And because I’m nosey about other people’s lives, one of my favourite things to do is watch YouTube vlogs of people’s lives, and Sam says, “What you watching”, and I say “I’m watching someone pack for their holiday”. And he asks, “Oh, is it a holiday that we’re going on?”, and I say “No”. Honestly, I just like to see what they’ve packed.

Also, scrolling through my phone. And I know people call it doom scrolling. No, no, it’s joy scrolling. Absolute joy scrolling.

I remember, when I did panto a couple of years ago, when I finished the panto, me and my mum went to Spain for six days for me to not do any work, and to get away, and just to chill. And, obviously, the weather in Spain wasn’t great in January, so one day I just sat on the sofa and watched TikTok for 5 hours. And I was like, “Do you know what? That was amazing”. I really enjoyed that because I don’t get much time to do it now.

Platinum Spas: Do you know what your average screen time is? 

Amy: Oh, it’s about 11 hours I think. But it’s the work. It’s for work.

Yeah, and also, for me, with screen time, I’m like a child. But it’s so funny though. I don’t let Stanley have an iPad at the dinner table or anything. The only time I’ll let him have an iPad is if, for example, we’ve just been on holiday, and in our bedroom, there wasn’t a TV. 

Platinum Spas: What are your standard breakfast, lunch and dinner meals?


Amy: Ok, so breakfast. I’m not a massive breakfast person if I’m honest. If I’m on holiday and there’s a breakfast buffet, then of course I will, but I’m not a massive breakfast person. I’ve basically unwittingly been doing intermittent fasting for my whole life because I’m just not a breakfast person. But what am I going to have breakfast? I like boiled eggs. If I’m in Vegas, I have steak and eggs because, you know, it’s very socially acceptable there. It’s not as such at home, you know, you can’t randomly get out a 6-pound steak and cook that for breakfast.

For lunch at the moment I’m trying to go for a bigger lunch. At the moment we’re having things like paella, today I had salmon pesto and asparagus pasta. What did I have the other day? Vegetable and prosciutto pasta.

And then, for my dinner, I’m trying to have a lighter dinner. So some of the stuff that I’ve had this week include prawn stir fry, I’ve had salmon with homemade piccalilli. What have I got tonight for dinner? I think I’m gonna have salmon with piccalilli again because that was so good.



Platinum Spas:  And then finally, on this section, are there any snacks or naughty treats that you can’t live without?

Amy: I love fast food and this is the thing people say to me “You should just eat what you want”, and I say “If I eat what I want, I’m not going to make old bones”, I would have three meals a day, lunch, dinner, 2nd dinner, on delivery, every day.

It’d be McDonald’s, KFC, Wingstop, every day. I love chicken wings, but then do I actually like chicken wings, or do I just love blue cheese dip? I have a lot of things like that.

When I used to drink tomato juice at work when I was cabin crew, I started to wonder “Do I actually like tomato juice? Or do I just really like Worcester sauce?”. Because I used to put that much Worcester in the glass and then fill it up. But I love McDonald’s, McDonald’s is my downfall.

I hate it when people say, “How can you eat that? It tastes disgusting”. No, it doesn’t. It’s not good for you, I’ll admit that. It’s not good for you. But you cannot say it tastes disgusting. It doesn’t. It’s amazing.

My favourite thing ever is a ten-thirty-one burger, and that is, you get there at 10:30 on the dot when it switches from breakfast to the main menu, and the burgers are all cooked completely fresh, and you can still taste the salt and pepper on them. The best. The best.


Platinum Spas: So, obviously, the new series has just started. Have you got an early favourite contestant?


Amy: Oh, I really like Jess. I just think she’s really funny. I think she’s really down to Earth. She’s very normal and I love it.

I was looking at her last night, and with Love Island, me included, you think, “I’m on telly. I’m on Love Island. I’ve got to wear eyelashes up to my eyebrows. I’ve got to, cake the makeup on”. And she has a really fresh, really nice Dewey makeup look.

And she’s got these beautiful eyes. She has a little bit of mascara, and she just looks like a model, even though she’s just a girl from Stockport. I love her.

And boys-wise, I really liked Munveer, but he’s gone already, which is a shame as I’d loved him to have found love. 


Platinum Spas:
 Have you got any early predictions for winners?

Amy: Oh, I think, Ayo or Mimii will definitely be in the final, they seem really sweet. I don’t know about anyone else because it’s still so early days and I make mistakes every year where I think“They’re definitely gonna win. And the next week I think“Oh, ok, maybe not”.

Especially with All-Stars, every time Chris Taylor, my fellow podcast host, coupled up with someone, I was convinced, “That’s it. They’re going to win. They’re going to win”. And every time I was wrong.

Platinum Spas: So, how did Love Island help support people’s well-being during the show, this is your experience, when you were on?

Amy: So, they’re really on you with things like drinking water, and obviously you’re in the sun all day, so they remind you to fill your bottles up and stuff”. And I’m really bad at drinking water. I am a full-fat coke kind of gal. But I’m trying to drink more water. I’ve moved on to Prime now because it’s supposed to be hydrating. 

They have a welfare team that are on hand the whole time you’re in the villa, and they have a list and they go through with every single person, like, “How are you feeling? Is anything upsetting you? Can I support you in any way?”. And when I was going through my really bad time, they’d come and get into bed with me at lunchtime and give me a cuddle.  

Then you also have the psych team, who are available at any time. They have sort of an appointment book, so you can book in with the psych.

At Love Island there is a big focus on mental health, and I was a bit like, “I can’t book a session with the psych because this is week one. I can’t book a session with the psych because they’ll think I’m not OK to be here”. And then someone else said to me, “Oh, I had one with her and it was really, really good”. So I thought “Ok, I’ll have one. As soon as I had one, I was like, book me in, book me in for every Wednesday, please. It’s amazing, I love this”. I now understand why every American has a therapist.

So they’re there at set times, but then also, they are just round the corner from the villa. So if you need them, they’ll be there within 5 minutes. And even if you don’t ask for them.  I remember the second day I woke up, and it was just a bit of a release I think because I knew that I was going on eight weeks in advance, it was all very heightened, and the first day is so busy because you get ready, come in and it’s full on, then then next day I thought “Oh my God, I’m here”. And I just cried, and straight away they said “Someone from the welfare team’s coming to get you now. Do you want to see the psych?”, they’re just amazing.

And the support carries on afterwards, for a year after we came out I think, the welfare team would call us up periodically to check. You have their numbers too if you need them at any time, and they support you with therapy afterwards. I had lots of therapy with Lou, who’s the amazing psych. I nearly said she’s the amazing pychic – but she’s a psych not a psychic.

She’s the amazing psych who was in the villa with us. So I chose to go to her because she knew me and she knew my story. And we worked together. Eventually she said to me, “You know, next week will be your last session”. And I said, “I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for it”. She said, “No, you don’t need any more. You’ve worked so hard. You need to go and live your life and enjoy it”. And I always said to Sam, my fiancé  “We wouldn’t be together if I hadn’t had that therapy”.

The support when you come out, it’s just amazing.

Platinum Spas: What self-care did you prioritise during the shows? 

Amy: Well, because I’d been on a vegan diet plan before I went in for eight weeks, I was living out of Tupperware’s, eating the same meals. I had a two-week rotation. I just ate the same meal for lunch, the same meal for dinner, and the same meal for breakfast.

Then we got there and I treated it like it was an all-inclusive buffet. They’d bring in pasta and curry for lunch, I’d have pasta, go and rinse my plate off, and then have curry. It was like I’d never been in a restaurant before.

But I made sure I drank lots of water because I had kidney stones, and they said that I could only go in if I agreed to drink something like10 bottles of water a day. So I was like, “I will do this”.

And sleep, we used to nap and it was so funny. We used to nap every day on the day beds, and one night, I think Yewande got dumped from the island. She went home and we’d all slept all day, and we said “We’ve slept all day and this could have been our last night in the villa”.

From tomorrow that’s it. We are not sleeping in the daytime. Absolutely not. Then the next morning we got up and we were like, “Maybe we could sleep in the mornings and then we could do activities in the afternoon”. So we did a lot of napping.


Platinum Spas:
 What 3 tips would you give anyone entering the villa?


Amy: Just enjoy it. Don’t take it too seriously. I took it very, very seriously, and it was sort of like I couldn’t really see the wood for the trees, if that makes sense. I’m glad I did that because I feel like it all contributed towards my story, and it’s contributed to the fact that I’m still working five years later.

I didn’t go in there for work. I went in there to find love. But then all the time I was thinking, “I just want a boyfriend. I just want a boyfriend”. And I was so scared about it not happening.

And my other piece of advise is just believe in yourself. I was quite insecure and I was worried people were going to laugh at me when, like you have to choose two people to snog. Luckily, I never got given anything like that because I would have been like, “Oh, God, what if I pick someone who doesn’t want me to snog them”.

So yeah, I’d just say just enjoy it.


Platinum Spas:
 And have you got any tips? you mentioned therapy, but are there any tips for people when they exit the villa to look after their well-being post-show?


Amy: Still live at home, still live where you lived before. You can commute, unless you live in the back of beyond, like very rural Scotland or somewhere like that. I mean you can commute to London.

I think my absolute saving grace was still living at home, still being surrounded by all my friends. Don’t ditch your friends. I’m so lucky that I’ve still got all the same best friends from before.

And just think about, when the jobs come in, don’t look at like the money. Think about it, think does it align with me as a person? does it align with my views? Don’t just do things for the money.

Obviously, when you first come out, you don’t know your followers very well. But five years later, I know my followers and I know what they like. I know they like discount codes, I know the sort of content they like, and I know the brands they want me to work with.

I know things that they would find helpful. I know that, like, if a brand comes to me and I think, “Actually, I think my followers would like to know about that if they don’t already know about it”, then I will work with those brands.

Ellie-Mae Morris

Platinum Spas: When you got home, how did you detox? So whether that’s a physical detox or a social media detox, was there anything you did to get away from the showbiz TV world?


Amy: I didn’t really have time because it all went a bit wild when I got home. But I learnt very quickly. So I got home, straight to a calendar full of different interviews and shoots, and I the following weekend I got invited to Kisstory on the Common, and I said to my best friend “Oh, I haven’t got any work that day. Should we go? itt’d be a nice way to spend my day off”.

And I literally did pictures with people for 8 hours.

And on the train home, Hannah said “Right, your days off now, we’re going to stay in the house, we’re going to choose whatever restaurant you want, I’ll call them and get them to deliver the food. You just need to chill because your social battery is just going to drain”. It was crazy.

There’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember from that time because it was so busy, and I wish I’d kept a diary. So my advice to anyone coming out of the villa is keep a diary of all the cool stuff you do.

Ellie-Mae Morris

Hosting

Platinum Spas: How do you normally host your friends and family in the summer?

Amy: I cook a big meal. I love cooking. My real je ne sais quoi, piece de resistance is a 16-dish BBQ.  I do a Thanksgiving dinner every year, but in the summer, a big BBQ, a big table full of stuff is my thing. It’s a two day thing, one day prep, and one day cooking.


Platinum Spas: What kind of activities do you like doing in the garden with friends and family? 


Amy: Stanley loves his football goal at the moment, but because he can’t walk yet, he holds on to the top of it, kicks the ball in, and shouts “Goal!”.

For me, I love just sitting around, very Love Island. I love sitting around, a bit of music on, a few glasses of wine, just chatting with my friends, and we can sit outside for hours and hours.


Platinum Spas: What is your garden’s essential item? Have you got anything in there? Like a hot tub or a pergola or something that you love?


Amy: I’ve got a Love Island-style day bed that I love.
My garden’s on two levels, so it’s like I’ve got a stage in my garden.  Everyone else in the road calls it their decking, because we’ve all got them. I call it a stage.


Platinum Spas: 
What’s your favourite part about hosting?

Amy: Just bringing everyone together, Sam voiced when he met me that he didn’t really understand the whole, “I have big birthday parties every year”. For Father’s Day I’ll host everyone, you name it, I’m up for it. He didn’t really understand why I put so much effort and time and money into everything, but he said “I realise now, it’s because you just love bringing everyone together”

Platinum Spas: Is there any kind of advice you’d give to someone that’s thinking about hosting for the first time?


Amy: I am a stickler for if people give me dietary requirements, they will get the same amount as everyone else. And people say to me, “Oh, I’ll just bring my own”. I say “If you’re coming to my house. I’m hosting you. You will not bring your own food. I will sort you. Don’t worry”. And then if they say “I don’t want to put you out”. I tell them  “You’re not putting me out. Everyone else is getting a meal. You’re getting one too”.

And then there are lists again. I write down everything I’ve got to do, work out how long it will take, and then rewrite the list in the best order, so I know what I can get prepped the day before etc.

Platinum Spas: Have you ever had any funny hosting nightmares? Has anything gone wrong?

Amy: Hmm, I mean, one of my birthday parties absolutely tipped it down all day. And it wasn’t supposed to. So we didn’t have any gazebos or anything. The first time it rained was when one of the drag Queens was on, because we have all the drag Queens performing in the garden. Everyone ran inside. And then the second time it rained, everyone was so drunk by then they were just dancing in the rain.

Platinum Spas: Is drag Queens a normal theme for you?


Amy: Yeah, I love Drag Queen Sundays in Brighton. So, basically, it’s like a circuit. You start off at Legends, then you go to Affinity, then you go to the Queen’s Arms. Then you go to Charles St, and then back to the Queen’s Arms. In each one there is a different drag queen on. And that’s your Sunday.

Platinum Spas: How do you switch off after hosting? 

Amy: Everyone else cleans up because I’ve cooked and that’s the rule. In my immediate family, me, my mum and dad, my brother, the rule is, if you’ve cooked, you don’t do the washing up.

So then when I do Thanksgiving or a BBQ or whatever, other people will say, “Oh, shall I start washing up?”. And I say “Yeah, You do that”. And the next day, I don’t move off the sofa, mainly because my hips have seized up from standing up for two days.

Platinum Spas: Thank you so much Amy! 


Amy: Thank you.

Ellie-Mae Morris
Ellie-Mae Morris