Joe Wicks celebrated with his proud mother on Tuesday after receiving an honorary degree from Loughborough University in Leicestershire.
The country’s favourite fitness guru, nicknamed Body Coach, looked delighted as he posed with his mother Raquela on his back after the performance.
Joe recently spoke about his childhood and said his behavioral problems at school were caused by his high-sugar diet.
Appearing on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Headliners podcast in April, Joe, 38, also controversially claimed that ultra-processed junk food may be behind the explosion in childhood ADHD diagnoses.
Joe Wicks celebrated with his proud mother on Tuesday after receiving an honorary degree from Loughborough University in Leicestershire.
Joe recently spoke about his childhood and said his behavioral problems at school were caused by his high-sugar diet.
Joe, who rose to fame with his PE with Joe workout videos during Covid lockdowns, told the podcast: ‘Looking back now, there’s no doubt that the food I was eating was directly related to my behaviour.
‘I was never diagnosed with ADHD, but I think it’s a common thing these days that all kids seem to be getting diagnosed with.
‘And I think a lot of it can be traced back to diet and the foods we eat.
‘So when I think about my diet, I thought it was breakfast cereal, concentrated juice from the milkman, Sunny Delight, Wagon Wheels, sandwiches with just jam, Nutella, very few nutrients – just sugar.’
She said dependence on junk food can lead to a lack of energy and difficulty concentrating in young people.
‘They’re having a hard time concentrating in school, they’re gaining weight, and they’re probably having very low energy dips because these foods just aren’t going to give your kids the energy they need to maintain a healthy day, a balanced energy level.’
Joe said he suffered from constant anxiety as a child while growing up with his heroin-addicted father and his mother, who suffered from severe OCD.
The fitness guru revealed his troubled childhood in his 2022 documentary Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood.
The country’s favourite fitness guru, nicknamed Body Coach, looked delighted as he posed with his mother Raquela on his back after the performance.
Joe has said he suffered from constant anxiety as a child growing up with his heroin-addicted father and mother, who suffered from severe OCD, but he is now close to his mother.
Raquela left him in the care of her heroin-addicted father, Gary, when she was 12 to get help for her OCD.
Joe praised his mother for being “brave” enough to get him the help he needed in the form of five months of therapy, while his older brother, Nikki, tried to shield him from the daily horrors of living with their addicted father.
The fitness guru explained that his mother feared that he and his siblings would be taken to a foster home if she told people about their problems.
“I was born in 1985 and she was only 19 when she had me. I had this fear that if I told people I had an eating disorder or that I was going through a difficult time, they would take them away.”
Joe recalls that he was always “aware” of his father’s addiction and explains the impact it had on him as a child: “Heroin addiction is a really destructive thing.
Joe’s mother, Raquela, left him in the care of her heroin-addicted father, Gary, when he was 12 to get help for her OCD (pictured with her mother and brother Nikki)
‘I was anxious all the time, scared and nervous. I misbehaved at school. I was disruptive, I was the naughty kid because no one would stop me and say, “What’s going on?”‘
On his mother’s battle with OCD, Joe revealed: “She would mop the house three or four times a day, I would vacuum my room twice a day. I had to teach her the rules. Those things weren’t normal, but in my head I was like, ‘All mothers do this’… Every day was an argument.”
She continued: “I went through a lot of stuff, nobody talked about it, nobody said, ‘What’s going on? ’ So your mother and father just didn’t want to talk about these things and that’s what the documentary is about – when can we bring children into the conversation?”
Joe and his wife Rosie welcomed their fourth child, Dusty, last month.
The couple are also proud parents to daughters Indie, six, and Leni, two, and son Marley, five.
