'I was on BBC Breakfast for 20 years – here's why it destroyed my life'

Louise Minchin opened up about her struggles with the early morning schedule required for a presenter working on BBC Breakfast. A staple on the programme, Louise sat on the red sofa for more than 20 years after first joining in 2001. She became a main presenter in 2012, sitting alongside the likes of Bill Turnbull, Charlie Stayt and Dan Walker. Due to the programme's 6am start time, Louise would have to wake up at around 3:45am most week days, interrupting her sleep schedule.

In 2021, the 56-year-old announced she was stepping down from BBC Breakfast, citing the demands of the job and early mornings as "utterly gruelling". Louise has often spoken about how the exhausting schedule impacted her life and recently admitted she felt "triggered" when it came to just thinking about it. Speaking on The Energy Equation Podcast, the BBC presenter confessed: "My sleep, it was horrific. There was nothing [I could do]. I tried really hard, all these strategies that I have like exercise, yoga, and lots of different things that I do were to really try and help myself for being sleep deprived.

"I was getting up at 3:46 in the morning. Having two children, two dogs and a husband that I wanted to see. If I didn't want to see them, you can hear my voice rising already, then I could've gone to bed at seven o'clock a night but I have a family, I couldn't do that so I was constantly struggling with it."

Louise "had no idea" how badly it affected "so many different parts" of her life. The mum-of-two admitted she even struggled eating healthily because the early wake-up call meant she would have two meals by 9am.

"I tried to eat healthily but it's really difficult to eat healthily at that time," she said. "I genuinely did because I learnt very early on."

"It sounds so silly but I took my own overnight oats every day, because otherwise I found I would eat something like a croissant at 6am and then by 9:15 I'd need another meal. I was eating another meal a day when I first started which is not great."

Louise was also forced to nap every day after work, admitting it left her feeling "constantly jet-lagged".

"I didn't know how bad it was until I stopped doing it and I thought I'd recovered," she confessed.

Louise revealed it took more than two years for her sleeping pattern to return to normal, recalling: "For two years, if I didn't have an alarm on I would wake up at 9:15 in the morning, so having over 10 hours sleep a night which is a lot.

"I reckon it took me two years to get back to what I would call a normal sleep pattern which would be seven or eight hours and actually waking up."

The TV star concluded: "It was really bad but there was nothing I could do about it."