Danielle Peazer Shares Her Diet & Exercise Regime – And How To Handle YouTube Trolls

You might know Danielle Peazer best from dancing for Kylie Minogue and Jessie J, or because she used to date Liam Payne from One Direction, but we caught up with the star of YouTube channel ICON UK about her own new direction.

Creating fitness and wellbeing videos for ICON UK, Danielle will lead you in everything from squat challenges, to dance workouts and arm exercises for summer. Here, she lets MTV Style in on her workout, diet, fashion and beauty secrets – and how to deal with trolls.

MTV Style: How has your day gone today?

Danielle Peazer: Today has been prepping for tomorrow, because I’ve got a big ICON UK shoot, where I’m filming four new videos. There’s quite a lot of prep involved, because most of my videos are fitness and dance-based, so I’ve been holed up in my bedroom trying to figure out what I’m going to do.

MTV Style: What is that process like, of planning your videos?

Danielle: You need to be in the right mindset to plan what you’re going to do in your videos. One of the vlogs I’m shooting tomorrow is heavily dance-based, which I haven’t really done yet, but there’s been such high demand for it from the viewers. It’s so important to focus on that and prep thoroughly to create great content.

MTV Style: What made you want to get involved with ICON UK?

Danielle: The fact that I had experience doing my own videos and had seen the feedback from them made me want to get involved with ICON UK. The scale of what they were planning was so much bigger than anything I had done, but it seemed like a natural progression, and being backed by Endemol was a huge deal. It was a no-brainer for me!

MTV Style: Will you be branching out into any other areas of vlogging, like beauty tutorials, or sticking with fitness?

Danielle: I’d love to do a video with Kaushal, who heads up beauty on the channel, as I’m quite a girlie girl and I also review make-up on my blog. I’ve got a real interest in trying new products.

MTV Style: You’re in amazing shape; what does your weekly workout regime look like?

Danielle: My weekly workout regime varies depending on what’s going on in my life. For the last three weeks I’ve been in Australia, so that interrupted it to a certain extent, although I was lucky that the hotel I was staying at had a gym.

I live in Soho, which is really central for London, so I tend to walk most places. Daily I could do about an hour’s worth of walking and then I do dance classes. I tend to work out 4-5 times a week, but if I can’t get a workout in, I’ll just make sure I’m very active. Running late usually helps!

MTV Style: What about your diet?

Danielle: I’m definitely an everything in moderation type of girl. I tried a gluten-free diet for a bit, but I love pasta and bread, and everything I’m not meant to have too much of. Other than that I like to try and be as healthy as possible; if I do have a day where I’ve had a bit of a binge, I’ll try to balance it out the next day by OD’ing on fruit and vegetables.

MTV Style: If you are having a treat, what’s your go-to junk food?

Danielle: Domino’s is on speed dial for me! Me and my flatmate love it. I like KFC, I like McDonald’s, I’m not massively against them, but food like that is definitely a treat. Food is meant to be fun.

MTV Style: Do you ever worry about the negative comments that come from being so accessible on YouTube?

Danielle: I think you’re going to get negative comments no matter what you’re doing, or how successful you are, or how your videos are. I know from looking at my Instagram and my Twitter accounts that I’ve definitely had the odd negative comment, but I can’t focus on that, because the positives outweigh the negatives by far. If it’s something that I think is valid and they’re giving me constructive criticism then that’s great, but if they’re just being nasty I ignore them.

MTV Style: Tell us your summer style essentials…

Danielle: Denim shorts, a flip-flop or a sandal; I’ve actually got some espadrilles that I love at the moment. And then for me it’s sunglasses. My sunglasses collection is ridiculous, I just seem to accumulate them. I have a whole drawer dedicated to them! I think I have around 40 pairs.

MTV Style: And what about beauty?

Danielle: At the moment I’m really in to shimmer products, especially for summer, when it’s great to give that bronzed, highlighted look. You can never have too much pigment. I go through phases though; it’s nice to experiment.

MTV Style: Are you planning to head out on any tours this year or is vlogging now your focus?

Danielle: I don’t have any tours planned right now, but I am a dancer, and I’m not thinking of giving that up anytime soon. Other projects have come up that I want to go with, and dedicate more of my time to, but I’m still keeping up my dancing. If Beyoncé wants to call me for a tour I’ll be there!

Danielle regularly contributes to ICON UK, YouTube’s ultimate lifestyle destination for young women.