Juliet Love on motherhood, mindset and living with type 1 diabetes

"It’s a 24/7 job managing it"

Holly Berckelman

3 min read

November 9, 2023 - 2:48PM

Here's how the TV host, Interior designer and mother keeps herself grounded. Image: Supplied

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The interior designer, TV host and health coach sat down with Body+Soul to reveal the strategies she employs to keep her physical and mental wellbeing in check.

You style interiors for a living and are a passionate believer that home spaces heavily impact our wellness. What initially sparked that view?

Interior design is my first love, but I also studied through a New York school called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and became a health coach, as well. It’s so important to not only create a space you genuinely love, but one that promotes health and wellbeing. And for me, that means minimising chemical use in the house. I make my own cleaning products and like to have a lot of plants inside. They’re natural air purifiers so you can clean the air inside your home, but also make it look beautiful and feel calmer.

You work a lot with your husband, landscape architect Charlie Albone. How do you keep the love alive when you’re constantly together?

Charlie and I met working together, so it’s always been a natural thing to work and live together, but having independence outside of work and our marriage is really important. We really only do one or two stories a year together on Better Homes and Gardens, but on other projects we still go to each other for advice. He’ll ask me what he should do with a garden, or I’ll ask if a certain shade of paint is right. I think you need a healthy respect for each other in a work environment, but some dedicated time apart, too.

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With such a busy television job, what are the health habits you swear by?

I love spending time with my family and am also a huge yoga fan. It’s one of the things that helps me find balance when I’m really busy. My faith is a big part of my overall health and wellness – I have a community of people I go to church with on the weekends and it’s a game-changer. I also practice gratitude every morning. Sounds corny, but since I started doing this my mindset throughout the day is so much more positive. Neuroscience tells us that you can’t be in both a state of gratitude and negativity at the same time.

You were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during your first pregnancy. What impact does living with it have on your mental health?

The thing with type 1 that makes it quite difficult to manage is there are no breaks. I have a blood glucose monitor that I wear which might go off as low or high all through the night, and then also during the day when you’re trying to manage a lot of other things. It can be a lot, but if I don’t look after myself, I can’t look after the kids or do my job or anything else, so I try and prioritise it. But it certainly is a strain on your mental health, primarily because it never stops. It’s not like you can ever think, “Oh, this week I’m not going to worry about it.” It’s very time-consuming – it’s a 24/7 job managing it.

The TV host says interior design is her first love. Image: Instagram/@julietlove

It’s World Diabetes Day on November 14. What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to give to anyone who’s newly diagnosed?

When I was diagnosed, a friend reached out who’d been a type 1 diabetic since he was six years old. His mother is also type 1 and at this point he was in his 30s, so he really understood it well. I learnt more valuable information chatting to him for an hour over coffee than I had over the course of several education seminars at the hospital. When you’re first diagnosed, just being around someone who is actually living with type 1, and living through it, makes a huge difference. You really can’t underestimate that kind of personal support, and it’s only increasing.