Shirley Ballas says she plans to keep dancing until the day she dies, and in her own words that means in her dance shoes. The One Strictly Come Dancing head judge, 65, says daily movement, cold water and strict eating habits are how she stays fit now, not a short-term burst of discipline.
That message lands now because Ballas is speaking plainly about how she manages her health in her 60s, and she makes no apology for the routine. She says she drinks a lot of water, takes ice baths and freezing cold showers, and has not been in a warm shower for years. She also says she dances every day because it gets her heart rate up and uses every muscle in the body.
Ballas said she keeps herself healthy by avoiding junk food, reading every label and treating that as a simple test of what belongs on her plate. “I’m a little bit of a health freak,” she said. Even so, she draws the line at perfection. She says she will still have a teaspoon of her mum’s trifle now and again, which is about as far as her discipline bends.
The balance matters at home in south-east London, where Ballas lives with her 88-year-old mother, Audrey Rich. Rich was diagnosed with COPD in 2022, after Ballas says she noticed in 2018 that her breathing was not great and that she was constantly getting sick. Rich had bowel cancer in 2018 as well, which gives the family a very different view of health from the one Ballas projects on television.
Ballas says her mother thinks she goes too far with the cold showers and ice baths. Rich prefers a roast dinner and what she calls proper food, while Ballas keeps to her own rules and tries not to fight about it. The judge says they meet somewhere in the middle, with each woman sticking to the habits that make sense to her.
That is the clearest line running through Ballas’s routine: she sees dance as exercise, identity and future all at once. She says she wants to dance every day for as long as she possibly can, and for now she is treating that as the best measure of health she has.
