Current European and Indoor champion, as well as silver medallist at the world championships. Jessica is the unofficial "face of the Games"

"People expect athletes to eat a certain way. Everyone says: 'You must be on a really strict diet. Do you only eat salad?' Are you not allowed to eat chocolate? But that's really not the case. I've got salad and vegetables in my shopping trolley but there's always some chocolate in there, too. Athletes eat normal food – they all love Nando's, like everyone else. One thing the nutritionist did tell me, which I never realised, is how bad for you flapjacks are – they are really high in calories.

The night before I compete I make sure I've eaten enough carbohydrate and protein to perform well, then on the morning of competition I get so nervous I feel really sick so I have to force myself to eat so I'll have enough energy for a long day. We start warming up at 8am and our last event is at 9pm, so we don't get back to the hotel until midnight to eat again. You have to make sure you're fuelled up for all that time. What I eat depends on the event. I'll eat something quite heavy before I do the shot put because the digestion time doesn't matter too much, but I don't eat or drink a lot before the high jump because I want to be as light as possible.

Sometimes I get those days where I don't want to be so disciplined. You think: 'I've trained really hard, I just want to have a Chinese.' It's OK to have a little relapse every now and then but I can't have a chow mein every day or I'd be rolling round the track! I'm so hungry and so tired by the end of the heptathlon that I just want to indulge. If I could eat whatever I liked I'd go out for a slap-up Italian meal or a Chinese takeaway. Anything bad for me, basically.

I do most of the cooking at home, because I'm a better cook than my fiancé Andy. I make a nice lasagne or Italian meatballs with spaghetti. My mum and dad are both really good cooks so I've been brought up with good food. I'm not picky – there's only a couple of things I don't really like – fish and milk. My dad's Jamaican so he made a lot of Jamaican food, and my mum did lots of traditional shepherd's pies and homemade quiches, but I was brought up on some really minging things as well – my mum gave me liquidised tripe when I was a baby. How disgusting is that?"

Jessica Ennis is an ambassador for Aviva