Dame Helen Mirren, 81, reveals she's traded her military fitness workouts for yoga after crediting the 'exhausting' regime with keeping her in shape

Dame Helen Mirren has revealed she has ditched her 'exhausting' 12-minute military workout in favour of more relaxing yoga sessions.

The Oscar-winning actress, 81, previously swore by the regime as her secret to keeping in shape and has long championed the workout style.

Helen adopted the Royal Canadian Air Force military workout, known as the XBX programme, which was developed for women in the 1950s.

However, after mentioning the XBX programme several times during her career, she revealed she now takes a softer approach to exercise.

She said: 'I used to [do it],' she says. 'I don't any more. It's too exhausting. I do yoga, I do about ten, 15 minutes a day.'

Helen first promoted military fitness in 2014 when discussing how she keeps fit in her sixties.

She confessed to being a 'classic yo-yo dieter' and said she has always fluctuated by 10lb and is currently 'at the top end of those 10lb and I have got to get back to the bottom end'. 

But rather than hit the gym, she said that it takes her just 12 minutes of exercise a day to become fit.

It is a stretching and toning regime originally designed to keep the men and women of the force fit in a quick way without gym equipment.

The routine comprises five exercises for men and ten for women such as push-ups, sit-ups, running on the spot and arm circling, which work all the muscle groups.

There are targets to aim for, with more exercises at a harder level to be completed within the 12 minutes once strength starts to improve. Dame Helen said she returns to the plan whenever she feels her fitness slipping.

'I'm not very fit at all actually,' she told Hello! magazine at the time.

'Just this morning I started my exercises, which I haven't been doing for months, maybe years. I do a thing that leads me into exercise. It is the Royal Canadian Air Force exercise plan; it is 12 minutes and they have charts you follow… Each day, you have to do the exercises within the 12 minutes and until you can, you can't move up.

'It is the exercise I have done off and on my whole life. It just very gently gets you fit. Two weeks of doing that and you think: 'Yeah, I could go to the gym now.''

In 2021 during an interview with British Vogue in October 2021, she said: 'I'm a big believer in the Canadian Air Force women's exercise regime, which is 12 minutes.'

She explained that it starts at a very easy level but gradually becomes more challenging.

Interestingly, she admitted: 'I've never gotten past the second level, but it's a nice little exercise program.'

She also said it needs to be done every day and that she herself is 'incredibly lazy' and sometimes has to pull herself back into exercising.

Dame Helen was photographed in 2008 wearing the red bikini on a beach in Italy where she has a home with her husband Taylor Hackford.

The picture went around the world and cemented her reputation as a sex symbol at 62.

But despite the shot being very flattering, Dame Helen has previously said it will 'haunt' her for the rest of her life.

She said: 'I don't actually look like that and I know that that is going to haunt me forever and I'll be forever trying to bury it unsuccessfully.'

'The truth is I don't really look that good, it was just a flattering picture. I am beyond the bikini-wearing age, really. I wouldn't normally wear one. I look like a woman in her 60s. I've always looked awful in a bikini, even when I was young.'