Happy Valentines day Hip & Healthies! To celebrate in true Hip & Healthy style, we caught up with the ultimate and healthiest power couple behind the super successful Bodyism brand to chat about all things fitness, life and love. Read on for the lowdown…

We are so exited for Valentines Day! Are you doing anything special to celebrate it together?

We are going away with some friends to Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk. We’ll do some long walks, eat good food, horse ride and enjoy time with our family and friends.

James, if you were going to cook a romantic meal for Christiane, what might you choose?

I cook a great lamb curry but I know that Chrissy would want to have a treat, so I would order in a 4 cheese pizza and peanut butter chocolate cake which was our wedding cake! Recipe in our Cookbook.

How do you juggle work commitments with raising a young family?

We have a lot of exciting things happening in the business at the moment including an expansion in to America which is all done with the motivation of our children in mind! We always get the kids ready for school and are home for dinner, bath, bed. We now also have a brilliant team so the weekends are purely dedicated to spending every moment with the children. We even get to have a dinner night just the 2 of us once a week too.

Being married as well as business partners must get tricky, what are your biggest challenges?

The challenges were mostly at the beginning and finding our roles within the business. Now they don’t really overlap and because the vision is the same and we work on separate things and (mostly) agree! It’s important to us that we switch off work after 9pm but because we love what we do, we don’t mind talking about things at any time.

And what are the best bits about working together?

It gives us another common interest that helps strengthen our relationship. We are working towards the same goal and vision so this makes it so rewarding. We also get to see each other all day!

James – what skill does Christiane have that Bodyism could not do without?

She’s a total boss hero and a wonderful example to me of strength, beauty and intelligence. A proper power woman! She is compelling evidence that you can live a healthy, happy life with a healthy energised body, mind and combine it with a job and family.

And Christiane – what do you most admire in James?

James is an inspiration to me. He has so much passion, strength and persistence in everything he does. He has an ability to build relationships like no one else i’ve met. He challenges me to always be better and brings out the best version of myself.

What are your top tips for couples going into business together?

Consider this carefully before you do! Before we started working together, we wrote down on paper and made a list of our visions for the business and the approach we would take to make this dream come true. It happened that everything matched up exactly. We didn’t jump in straight away as Chrissy would dip in and out of helping out from accounts, HR and marketing until it became a full time role, but wasn’t from the beginning.

 Do you ever work out together? If so, what does this consist of?

We enjoy long walks together whether it be through the park, on a beach or a hike but we do very different types of exercise! James loves doing Brazilian Jiujitsu, in fact he is British middle weight champion!

J: For me, it’s like a meditation, I feel so present, strong and calmer.

C: Nothing has transformed my body like ballet has, so I do a combination of this and yoga – the perfect combination for a long, lean body.

How do you like to unwind together at the end of a long day?

We’ve just moved in to a house that has a fireplace, so we often have an ‘I am Relaxed’ tea in front of the fire and chat about the day. We then sometimes take a hot bath.. (with pink sea salt of course!). Perfect way to end the day.

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