Deliciously Ella: Why Diets Feel Impossible & How To Enjoy Food Again (It’s not your willpower)

0:00We are in a kind of national health crisis where our health is the worst it's ever been. Our diets get worse by the year. People think it's expensive and then it feels time consuming because you've got so many steps. I think we just set ourselves up for failure. And you don't want to feel like a failure in January. No! Since your illness, you've built an enormous empire just trying to help people be more well. What was your diet like then? If you had asked me at the time, I would have said, that's quite good. And then really out of nowhere, I got really, really ill. I had gone from completely normal university student, living my best life.

0:32and then I was in hospital having MRIs, ultrasounds, swallowing cameras, you name it. The doctors said, like, you just don't have anything else to try anymore. The kind of fear of that really woke me up. What kept you going? One of the biggest markers of longevity and healthspan is I felt able to kind of live a normal life again. But then the world of wellness has exploded, but it's almost become a kind of marketing gimmick. All these kind of gadgets and gizmos. You don't need to buy any of those things. I didn't particularly like fruits and vegetables. And I swear to you, if I can do it, you can do it.

1:04I got to my perfect weight when I stopped dieting. Yeah, I bet you did. Wow. And I'm taking control of my narrative and my life. What are your top tips? I think the first thing is... Eleanor Mills, also deliciously Ella. Hi! Hi! So nice to have you here. I mean, what haven't you done really? You know, the blog, the podcast, the empire, plant-based empire, helping us to all be, I kind of want to say more well, because it's such a holistic view that you take that I really like. But welcome to the podcast. Thank you. And thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. I knew you, obviously, and probably mostly through your brand when your brand came out.

1:58But my daughter, who's a dietician, she loves, loves your podcast. And so she used to talk to me about that quite a bit. Then I kind of looked into you a bit more and realised that actually, since your illness, you've really kind of built an enormous empire just trying to help people through food. And it had such an enormous impact on your health in, when was it, 2012? Yeah, that's right. That's when it all started. Yeah. So can I ask, first of all, what happened to you and how did you get ill those years ago? Gosh, such a long story. So then the year before that, so 2011, I was at university.

2:51I was studying history of art, nothing to do with food, really wasn't interested in food. It just didn't play a big role in my life. What was your diet like then? Well, it's really interesting because I think if you had asked me at the time, I would have been like, yeah, it's normal. Like, you know, I don't get a sandwich, I buy some cereal and just order what I fancy. Like, I just didn't give it much airtime. And I would have said like, yeah, it's quite good. And I think now with the lens that I have, but we all collectively have in terms of starting to think about ultra-priceless foods and realizing like some sandwiches have 38 ingredients.

3:24It's mad, isn't it? Insane. And, you know, same with like cereal, there's a health claim on the front and then you turn over the back of the pack and you're like, oh, OK, there's nothing in here nutritious whatsoever. And most of it's like food like substances, not actually food. And so actually, I think if I look at what my diet was, it was heavily ultra processed, actually like massively lacking in fresh fruit and veg and whole grains and whole foods. But it wasn't like I lived in McDonald's and only ate Pick and Mix kind of thing. I wouldn't have thought it was unhealthy, but actually if you look at it, I think it was that prime example of why food's so hard to navigate.

3:58Because actually there was less nutrition in most of what I was eating. This is the problem, really. And I know we're going to really dig deep into this today, but it's just so frustrating. I was exactly the same. I thought I was doing well. And now I look back and realise I was being fed a lie, literally. Yeah, it's one of the biggest frustrations that I have in terms of the food industry. I just think there's so much misleading information out there. And no one looks at a packet of Haribo or like Lindt chocolate truffles and thinks, oh, those are health food. They're not. We all know that. So I don't actually feel like that's a fundamental issue.

4:36the challenge is obviously it's just the scale of these things but it's so much more on the fact that like something will say like a very sugary cereal says on the front supporting your family's health but actually it has a sprinkle of multivitamin or vitamin d on it and that allows you to make a health claim and actually when you look on the back of pack there's zero nutrition like literally zero nutrition and that's the normal breakfast and it just doesn't set us up and it's not about demonizing ever eating these things but it's just the balance that we have in terms of kind of one in five people managing to get their five a day the majority of calories coming from ultra processed food it's just the wrong way around um ultimately as opposed to kind of being the vast majority of our calories coming from natural like whole food ingredients with a little bit of x y and z added on is great and we just need to switch the balance around essentially sometimes it's even just the word cereal but for cereal cereal sounds healthy doesn't it's like a kind of totally and some of it is and that's why it's such a minefield it's such a minefield um but i'd never given any of this like two seconds of thought um all the way back there 2011 and then really out of nowhere i was 20 20 21 i got really really ill and happened pretty suddenly within the space of say two or three months i had gone from completely normal university student living my best life um and then i was in hospital having mris ultrasounds endoscopies colonoscopies swallowing cameras you know like you name it what were your symptoms literally everything which is really unhelpful and it created a lot of confusion which took a long time to therefore get a diagnosis because i saw neurologists gastroenterologists you know endocrinologists like just so many different specialists you know in a very colloquial way it looks a lot like long COVID in the sense of nothing's really working in so many different ways and no one's exactly sure why and what to do about it so I had really bad chronic fatigue I would sleep kind of up to 18 hours a day I mean we could be all here together doing something and I would literally just be like I can't do this anymore and I would honestly just lie down you could just guys could be having such a loud conversation I would just pass out for like two or three hours next to you I used to do it in the car my mum would get out the car lock the car and go and do like a full shop for food and come back in i hadn't even realized um so really crippling chronic fatigue like a tiredness where the idea of kind of like moving your arm is too difficult um really bad brain fog um pain just kind of full body pain had really bad infections i was on antibiotics with i think the longest break being 48 hours for almost three years because i couldn't get a hold of any infections basically i um had really really bad stomach problems kind of i say bloating but i was more like more pregnant then than i did when i was like seven seven and a half months pregnant with my daughter um and then the one of the defining characteristics of the condition i had was i couldn't control my heart rate so i'd sit down my heart would be completely normal and then as soon as i stood up it'd be 180 190 yeah within a second or so which feels terrifying it's so fine the palpitations that you get it just again it's the sense of your body's kind of completely out of your control and um and you then also feel so dizzy it's like your head's disconnected from your body basically and then just weird symptoms like terrible pins and needles everywhere all the time and just because circulation was so poor so it was this really crazy kind of full body um haywire it's like the best way to explain it so i was prescribed a whole series of different medications like steroids beta blockers kind of I think on like the peak I was on almost 25 different medications a day but they're all repurposed from other conditions so no one promised that they would work but I had completely gone into it with this sense of like someone else will fix my problem I'll take anything I'll take anything yeah whatever it takes and then I'll just revert back to my life as it was I'll see this as a pause and after about I don't know it's kind of about eight months or so after diagnosis I had then cycled through all the various possible medications at this point that I could take and nothing had really changed.

8:55What did they say it was in the end? It was a collection of different things but the main thing was something called postural tachycardia syndrome and that's this heart rate problem but then I had something called mast cell activation disorder as well and a few other challenges and no one's sure why it happened or anything and you know I had I tested positive but it was for glandular fever but I'd never had any symptoms I'd had a really really bad food poisoning very shortly beforehand so who knows what kicked it off but obviously something did and I just remember so clearly I kind of had I had this conversation with the doctor as I said it was sort of six eight months into this cycling through the different medications and he said like we just don't have anything else to try anymore and it was just the moment that it like sunk in that this was my life and I couldn't really live you know it's and I there was nothing I couldn't live any semblance of a normal life and I had completely taken for granted that as something that I would do you know I could get a job and live independently and choose if I wanted to get married or have children and I didn't have this like set plan for my life I wasn't someone who'd grown up being like I've always dreamed of doing x y or z i've always dreamed this will be my life i really didn't know what i wanted from life and i feel like it could have gone in so many different directions but i had taken for granted that sense of an independent life with possibility and also i think you were at university you just made loads of friends you'd started going out and having a social life and you just start living at that age don't you it's like suddenly the whole world opens up but yours just shut down and it was such a strange age as well I think to be ill in that sense because everyone is living this life of infinite possibility you know I look at I feel like I'm in that stage now where lots of my friends are very very busy with work or small children or various different responsibilities and everyone's lives are quite small at the moment whereas I think that age in your early 20s everyone's lives feel huge and people are traveling and they're having all these great experiences and I was watching them by refreshing Facebook and just kind of seeing other people's lives unfold.

11:03It was just really sad. This idea of you refreshing Facebook and seeing everybody else living the life you should be living. God. But it was a really interesting one because I couldn't, for that period, I couldn't take any level of personal responsibility and not that it was my fault but I couldn't I was in such a state of kind of apathy at this point that that was the only thing I could do I couldn't really grasp a sense of like what else can I do how how could I also try and help myself I think I so wanted someone else to have the answer and I felt so reliant on that and I remember my dad saying to me like I think you're depressed you know I think you need to talk to someone and I just had this sense of no I can't I can't do that because I can't have something else quote-unquote wrong with me like I just couldn't oh wow so even though much mentally it was too much you couldn't even go and talk about it because that's too much yeah exactly it was like nothing if if someone else tells me I have something else wrong essentially with me I can't take it I'm like so I'm just gonna it was a kind of state of apathetic denial essentially that there was something wrong and there was something very seriously wrong.

12:20I was in a very kind of dark place, but I just couldn't bring myself to sort of recognise that openly. And I still completely disappeared, completely disappeared. And I'm sure it didn't help the situation because I think from a mental perspective, I was so checked out. I didn't have a kind of will and a want to get better. I think if I'm kind of completely honest with retrospect, I had completely given up and just didn't care. I know that New Year can feel really overwhelming and there is so much pressure on everybody to change your entire life overnight and often no one to help you do it. But this year is going to be different because here at Begin Again, we are launching Reset Month.

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13:51Join our gang. Let's get ready for the new year together. So what was the turning point? I think it was a realisation which I had completely hid away from of actually kind of the severity of the situation and the realization through a conversation with my mum that I would never be able to, if I continued like this, live a normal life. And I think in that, the kind of fear of that really woke me up and like, what will I do? How will I live? And so it was in that and I feel like nowadays it's the first thing you would do, but I don't know, the world of the internet was a little bit different. So this is kind of spring 2012.

14:40But I did, I just went about looking for other people's stories. And I wanted to know if other people, I couldn't find many people who had the same condition. But I wanted people who'd also done unconventional things to help themselves. And it... Where did you look? I don't exactly know where I started. I mean, it started on Google. And I ended up on all sorts of kind of weird and wonderful blogs and random tiny books and all sorts of things. because nowadays if you start looking for like the connection between your lifestyle and your diet and your stress and all the rest of it and your health there's so many places to turn and there's so many resources out there and you'd feel kind of immediately part of a community and fear be able to kind of yeah find support but at this point trying to say that your diet was connected to your health felt left field which again I just find extraordinary like we're not It's not very long ago.

15:32Well, 2012, actually, in terms of the internet, is a very long time ago. You know, there wasn't much around. And we were all just learning how to use it, weren't we? Exactly. But I found stories of people all over the world who had used facets of diet and lifestyle and nutrition to change their lives. And I just felt, well, look, if it's worked for them, then it might work for me. And I have nothing to lose at this point, like literally nothing. but I couldn't cook and as I said I wasn't really interested in food and I didn't like particularly like fruits and vegetables which were kind of major obstacles for turning your whole diet around and focusing on a natural plant-based approach.

16:14I can't believe that of you like you so you went from somebody I'm telling you why I'm amazed by this because I think people watching or listening yeah will be quite pleased to hear that you've not always been like this. Not at all. If we were like, if we are like how you were, we can be like how you are. And I remember that was, no, I do. I remember that was really important to me. And I remember writing that on the blog when I started it being like, I don't know what I'm doing. If I can do it, you can do it. This isn't complicated. This is like simple home cooked food. And I swear to you, if I can do it, you can do it because I can't cook and I've never cooked before and I don't know what I'm doing and this is all a humongous experiment.

17:02And I've always felt that. I think cooking is almost too much of a generalist term because you've got beautiful Michelin star chefs and amazing patisserie and that is a skill and an art and a craft that I don't think everyone can do, goodness me. But good, just simple home cooking, great tray bakes and roasts and stir fries and nutritious pastas and salads, we can all nail that. I really do believe that. It can be simple and delicious and nutritious. And I think that's something that's for everyone. And that was really important to me anyway. But I didn't. So I thought, OK, well, look, I can't cook.

17:38I need to find a way to love fruits or vegetables. And I'm such an all or nothing person. Like I got to commit fully or I have no interest. My husband's like always telling me off about it. He's like at least feign a tiny bit of interest. Like humor people. because I'm either like obsessed and so passionate or just like whatever which is it's not it's not great although I think it served me well in my career because you got it really yes hasn't yeah um but anyway and but I went so all in and I was like right I'm going to change my whole diet overnight and to keep myself accountable I will do it as a blog and this was the moment as you say the internet was just kind of changing and evolving and people started to look at blogs and that slight sense of as you were saying like if I can do it you can do it that home approach be it DIY or makeup or food whatever it was it was this sense of like let's all do it together as opposed to the kind of more elevated approach that I think where you watch something on tv and feel like what's a bit different from me um and again my Instagram was really new yeah and I remember a girlfriend saying to me oh there's this thing called Instagram it might be really helpful so I started a channel and it was called Delicious Yella just because the aim was always to make it delicious I knew this wasn't like a six-week plan this wasn't a you know like a bikini body situation this was I really need to change my diet for the long haul and I knew that that was never going to be possible if you always felt you were compromising or depriving yourself it was never going to work yes it's got to be something where you're like yes this is something I really look forward to and I'm excited about and I think um the other thing that is is amazing is that you made it so simple a hundred percent and I think that's the most important approach like it's so easy with diet and lifestyle and i think particularly the beginning of year where people start getting the sense i've got to overhaul everything i'm never going to do this again i'm going to go to a five o 'clock and run a marathon yes single morning and have a 92 step routine that will be the new me and ultimately it's just life is so demanding of everybody and it comes with all sorts of ebbs and flows and trials and tribulations and the reality is with most of those commitments it's not that you don't have the willpower i think that's such a myth it's just that life will come at you as it does for everyone on different days and it will become overwhelming and the reality is I think then executing those like huge cram plans become so difficult whereas if what you say is I'm going to just make these small tweaks these little changes I'm going to add this in and you ask yourself really honestly like is this a habit that I could do daily-ish weekly-ish for the next decade yes if the answer is yes like get going with it and if the answer is no I would look at a different habit because it's so much more empowering to feel like yes I'm doing it I'm looking after myself I feel empowered in my health and in my well-being than it is to be like oh I've just failed again there's no point and especially around food I mean the other thing I think um that the barriers I think are things like people think that it's too expensive um uh people think that it is too time consuming um that cooking i mean this is the other real problem with ultra processed foods and i would like to get onto this in a minute but these are the barriers i think it takes too long it costs too much money and i think taste comes in yes i guess so because like fat and sugar yeah it's ultimately it's this nervousness like it's broccoli and lentils really going to be a delicious supper it's a valid question because i think these aren't foods we've like heralded as the most delicious items under the sun and equally i think we've had this weird change and i'm sure you've seen this very very much as well where as we were just saying kind of 15 years ago the wellness world as it is today didn't really exist um it was a niche corner of the internet and now depending whose stats you take it's a multi-trillion dollar industry yes you know it's enormous and i think that people now associate wellness with having to buy very expensive gadgets and gizmos and powders and all of these things and ultimately like you don't need to do any of those things like where all of the research really sits is in really simple things like connection with other people one of the biggest markers of longevity and healthspan is being connected and feeling part of a community and feeling socialized with other people that mean something to you and it's movement and some of the most studied movement walking like going for a 20 minute walk on your lunch break with a friend that will do wonders for your health and that's something we could probably all with a little motivation do more days than we don't same with with our diet it's about adding in and it's you know a Mediterranean style diet very plant rich it's like a tin of chickpeas here an extra bit of roasted broccoli there like it's really simple things that are fundamentally the foundation of our health and I think that's been one of the really interesting dichotomies for me over the last 15 years is seeing how the world of wellness has exploded that it's almost become a kind of marketing gimmick yeah and at the same time our health's worse than it's ever been yeah less vegetables than any time the last 50 years so it's like the world doesn't make sense does it so complete failure as i see it and i just think it's become i mean it's become a kind of marketing ploy in so many ways and it's like you must buy this and you must buy that you don't need you can you don't need to buy any of those things because that's i think it's what makes everybody think everything's expensive They think it's expensive and then it feels time consuming because you've got so many steps and there's this whole routine and you see online and people are doing a morning shed where they're taking off like 4 ,000 things and then they're standing on a vibration plate with a red light mask and then they're like drinking a green powder and you know, it's a lot.

23:10And it's a lot and you can do all of it, but you don't need to. You can prep some overnight oats and take them on the train. Like that would be excellent. I mean, God, it's so funny because you just sound like my daughter. So good. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of our new sponsor. No, it's not a chiropractor business. It's Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate, expertly crafted by the Lindt Master Chocolatier. I absolutely love it. And when I want something delicious that isn't so sweet that I feel like I've face-planted a cake, this is what I reach for. Lint Excellence Dark Chocolate is made using the finest quality ingredients, so you get a richer, smoother and more flavourful dark chocolate experience.

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25:40But this idea, like you were saying, the simple things but how come we're so unfit and i am going to start talking about ultra processed food we can't wait any longer because there was something like 55 percent of the general population no that that 55 percent of their diet is ultra processed food yeah for one in five people it's 80 and one in five people 80 yeah i mean what is going on i know and yet and yet here we are in the world of wellness and wearable tech and all of this and it's still such a massive problem. I know it is and it's just this I think it's I mean there's so many facets to it there really are but I think it is this and there's not one simple answer or solution or kind of place to blame but I do think because we live in this clickbait society where everything is like hot to gather eyeballs really quickly I think that has pushed wellness into the kind of slightly like weird wacky and sometimes ridiculous fear because ultimately like a video saying the five things will kill you tomorrow it's going to get more yes so annoying then like this is a really easy thing to do with your leftover carrots yes you know it's like it's just not that sexy is it it's like it's quite boring but actually the foundations of health i think they are quite boring and it doesn't create this kind of huge like media friendly clickbait conversation to be like here are nine things you could do with a tin of lentils um but that is a shortcut to health in the way that yeah all these kind of gadgets and gizmos aren't and it's not to knock you if they help you and you like them that's fine but it's the removing the people's need to buy them to feel like that's what wellness is because that's not what wellness is wellness is trying to get your five a day and i think the world it's really interesting the ultra processed food because when i did change my diet and i remember talking about it and being like look we didn't call it that then And I was like, we need to eat more whole foods, less additives, preservatives, stabilizers, flavorings.

27:40I mean, you were just thinking about it now. You were one of the first earliest adopters of being anti. Much like flack for it. Did you? Oh, my gosh. I was like absolutely torn apart for it. And I don't think it helping a young woman saying it. Like, I don't think that I don't think people necessarily loved that. But I really got quite a public lashing for it. How old were you then, 21, 22? No, I would have probably been about 25 at that point. It was a few years ago. That's quite young. It was so young. It was really, really tough. I mean, it was really tough. But I would now approach it so differently because I feel like I would approach it now with confidence and an ability to say, like, so sorry.

28:28This is like a misogynistic because every single person that's being criticized is a woman. And the men who work in this industry have not been criticized once in any of this kind of media frenzy, criticizing healthy eating, which was kind of a fun part of sort of 2016 to 2017. I've never spoken about weight loss. This is all about health and wellness. And, you know, lots of people do. And again, they're not included in this. It was very misogynistic, first of all. but second of all it was also the sense of like this is absurd we are in a kind of national health crisis where our health is the worst it's ever been like we are in this you know headlines a few weeks ago kind of pandemic of chronic diseases caused by ultra processed foods our diets get worse by the year like we've got to learn to love broccoli and lentils like we've got to change our diets you don't have to never eat a mars bar or a snickers ever again but you've got to base the majority of what you eat now in proper food and we have to be honest about that and I know it's not easy to hear and I know it's not easy to do and when life feels tough and overwhelming that's really difficult and equally there is a section of the British population where actually also healthy food is too expensive and that is absolutely wrong on every single level so there's so many facets to it but it is also wrong to demonize healthy food like this is so wrong we can't do it and I always felt if what I had done is like make double triple chocolate cakes no one would have ever criticized it which I just find really odd but I just didn't have the confidence then to stand up and be like hang on a sec this is absurd I mean you I want to go back to you starting to cook for yourself and using whole foods and beginning to like whole fruit and Whole Foods and going on that journey, how quickly did you notice a difference in your health?

30:20Did you stop taking the medication? No. So you carried on with the medication but better? Exactly. Carried on completely with the medication. It took me just over two years to kind of slowly come off it. How did you know you could do that? I had just got to a point where my health had got better and better and better and better. And I did it with the doctors and, you know, nothing kind of like rash in that sense. Um, and it was all very gradual and, you know, tapered off and everything. Um, I did an exercise program that my doctor was doing as a study, which, you know, I still remember it was like two minutes literally on a reclined rower to start with.

30:58And I would sleep for two hours afterwards. And over about six months, I built up to being able to do, I think it was like 20 minutes on the cross trainer, which was unbelievable for me. Um, and I started to really focus on stress. I started to do meditation and mindfulness and breath work and I completely overhauled my diet and went to a kind of fully fully natural diet and it was really slow at first like it wasn't like I woke up the next day and was like I'm healed it wasn't some kind of miracle in that sense it was over two or three years and there was be like one step forward three steps backwards four steps forward you know it was a dance and it was not a linear trajectory in any shape or form and my mum was such an amazing support throughout she used to always say like because I'd get really disheartened I was like I'm trying so hard I am doing everything I can do um but I'm back in bed today and she was like I know but your bad day today is so much better than your bad day was six months ago where you would be in bed for five days unable to do anything but lie and stare at the ceiling she was like now you're kind of having a rest day it's quite different and she was so helpful with that kind of sense of perspective um but yeah after about kind of two two and a half years I felt able to kind of live a normal life again which was just absolutely extraordinary I am I feel like community is the greatest gift that the internet has given us you know that if ever anybody feels different or alone you can go and find your tribe if you look and that's what you have gifted other people yeah um but that sense of shared experience yeah it's very and like I'm sure you felt that when you know because life does throw you really hard things like that that is life and I think that sense of like but I'm not alone in it is so powerful and I certainly felt so alone and I think once I opened up and I remember writing down because my friend who helped me kind of get started with the whole thing she was like what you're doing is a bit weird isn't it like cooking this kind of thing it's a bit weird so it's good to say why you're doing it and so I wrote the about page and I was like I'm Ella I've been ill I'm gonna see if like changing my lifestyle and changing the way that I cook it helps my health these are my experiments if I can do it you can do it too essentially and I wrote that whole thing and I you know what happened in my illness and it was so empowering it was like I'm taking control of my narrative in my life and I had just felt that I had completely lost control of it for the go so long and I think there is something so powerful about when you feel in the driver's seat even if life's going against you it's the sense of like no I'm holding on to this this is mine I think uh I want to talk to you about your cafe so how did that come about the first one and why did you why did you start a cafe it feels like somewhere to gather it was exactly yeah so kind of fast forward a little bit so that the site had lots of hits there was clearly someone something there and I wanted to I wanted to write a book because I think I then started to feel pretty evangelical to be honest Were you with Matthew at this point?

34:06No, so that's about to happen It's all very exciting So I went out and I found some people spoke to literary agents and I was like I want to write this book, wrote this book came out in January 2015 and that was the moment It was the first one called It's just called Deliciousie Ella Super simple and the book kind of took off in a way that nobody was expecting it to and it became this fastest selling debut book ever it was amazon's best-selling book that year and suddenly like it was a big community online but it was niche where suddenly it was like picked up by all the press and the media and i was 23 and i was kind of doing all this yeah all these interviews everywhere and it was i mean i was such a deer in headlights but i did an interview in the times and matthew who's my now husband and business partner he read this interview and he had been working with a friend who had this farming business in Sierra Leone and various other parts of West Africa I mean this is so so random they had been really badly hit by Ebola and they were looking at different things they could do and he was like well we have so much produce maybe we could create a snack maybe we could do it with Ella because his mum and my dad had worked together we'd never met we'd led these like parallel lives that's so random so random it's just like one of those moments where like all these bizarre things line up and so yeah we'd live like 15 minutes away from each other our parents had worked together for a decade or so um but he's i always say eight years he says seven and a half years older than i am so we hadn't ever met but kind of knew had just had very kind of like very very similar lives and so he said okay well i'll see if i can get in touch with her this could be super interesting to create a product together um so he emailed my dad my dad um put us in touch and he was like he's interested in in your work but like ps he's super super handsome so like you should definitely meet him um good old dad yes it's really not what i was expecting in my life and so when people like how do you met it's like literally it's an arranged marriage um so anyway so we we met and so there's a whole irony as we then ended up building a essentially like a snacking company together but we we met how long did it take together for you three days okay well no immediately but then after three days i was like three times of meeting for work i was like and then and then the next day he asked me out and so we've worked together we've never not worked together essentially but after about weeks we moved in together after a week wow yes this is my first book had come out it was everywhere it was kind of having this moment I then met him I had moved in with him and was so the like speed at which my life had changed was absolutely enormous and how quickly did I mean did he go straight into working with you essentially because I was working and I was running I had the book I had an app I was doing cooking classes supper clubs lots of workshops but I was then getting approached to do lots of things and people saying would you license the brand for food products and I felt so strongly like no because I felt as we were saying this like really deep commitment to the community that had created had kind of transformed my life in every sense um and and I knew at this point like no one wanted to make food without additives and preservatives and ultra processed food and I was like so it wasn't like I just don't trust that that would ever happen and so the more opportunities came in the more he also hated his job and was so bored and was one of those people that was like desperate to do their own thing and so we you know we would just end up every evening talking about it and looking at it and then I was like what are we doing like why didn't you just like quit your job let's do this together we're so different we're so similar in one way and so different in the other like for me it was always about the food and the community and that part of the brand and he is so sensible and brilliant and clever and kind of loves finance and operations and like the real crux that he built the business and if I built the brand it was two very very different things and the kind of collective would never be possible without both sides so it was really so yeah so he quit his job we started working together I mean can I just say this is kind of amazing because for a couple to get involved that deeply so quickly and then work together and then have two kids the pressure between the two of you but you have a very healthy respect and love for each other right oh my gosh I mean I think it's been I know it's not for everyone people like I'd kill my partner if I worked with them and I totally I can I can see that but for us it's like created this level of depth that's kind of just what we do like we we're so together and probably frustrated sickeningly so to some nauseating no I just think we're such a team like we're such a kind of yeah we've sort of only ever done everything together yes that I don't really know another way to be yeah but it was just so you know you don't get opportunities in life very often and it was so obvious like delicious yellow was having a moment people had started to think about food and what was in our food yeah and we weren't going to have that opportunity again like it was a kind of now or never moment and so we started two things in tandem yeah one was because we it was never clear which way the business would go one was food products because as we talked about i started turning over backs of packs when i changed my diet and was like why isn't this flavored with food why is this flavored with flavorings like why are we using these products there's got to be a different way to do it so we started looking at retail and then we wanted a space to bring community together and so we also opened a cafe and we opened a tiny tiny space um near edgware road in london had 16 seats like it was absolutely tiny and it was a way of really testing the water the rent was very low and it was a sense of like we can completely service the rent through the app and the cookbooks and other things we're doing so yeah this doesn't work we'll be okay like we can make it work until we can pass the lease on um but we need to test the water like because moving a community from online yes to offline like will people really buy goods and services or do they just really like reading the blog two really different things and it was important to us to kind of test the water and see is is us yeah will people really come and actually spend that hard-earned money with us in real life so we opened it this is the end of 2015 now we open on the 12th of December and it was this sense of okay let's test it out it's before Christmas no one cares about healthy food before Christmas so we'll have a few weeks to kind of get up and running we had a really lovely manager starting in January she couldn't start till then we were like it's no problem there won't be anyone here over Christmas we're not even going to tell people it's open then after three days we had like 100 yard queues for our 16 seats and this like beautiful brand experience was just like a sweaty scrum for sweet potatoes oh but it proved the concept yeah in a in a fantastic way and it was so amazing it was this sense of like okay this is something and like we should go all in and what did that look like going all in so then we started developing the food products and talking to starbucks and waitrose and tesco's and sainsbury's and all the kind of first retailers that we had and started to find manufacturers and most manufacturers did not want to work with us yes i mean that's such an interesting concept that they don't have the way of making the ingredients that need to go into your product it's not efficient enough yeah it's not gonna work a smoothie it's not cost efficient enough like we just don't see the point like no one cares i mean that's terrible no it's honestly it's we don't see the point essentially because it's like it's more expensive and it's more difficult to make things without emulsifiers for example so why bother like it's cheaper and more efficient to use those ingredients so like we don't want to work with you essentially and then we found this tiny tiny place that did like it was absolutely mini this amazing guy that owned it super entrepreneur and he was like i'll take a chance on you guys my daughter reads the blog she loves it um i'll take i'll take a chance on it so um so and and we we then eight years later bought that factory and and make our products all there now so it's a kind of all's well the ends well story but they really took a chance on us and we started manufacturing the products and you know it was this sense of like a giant science experiment you know can you actually scale something that is genuinely natural and it is only kitchen cupboard ingredients and to start with again like you we were there and we were so passionate like this is so important the food industry is so broken like there's got to be a way of doing it differently like generally people didn't really care they kind of either they'd be like what a waste of money um to to put that into it or like no point like no one looks at back of pack like it doesn't matter what's in what's in it um but kind of little by little we kept going and we kept going and you know learning to make genuinely natural products meant a lot of trial and error some big successes some huge failures but last year we were the fastest growing snack brand in the uk sold 150 million products like we outsell the very large concommerates and it's amazing and it's it's it's not been straightforward in any shape or form but it was this sense of like there's got to be a better way of doing it and i really believe there is and i feel like the food industry should be held to account in that sense because it is possible to make products differently it's just more expensive and it's more time consuming um do you know i feel like um you're very good at kind of manifestos and i and i did love you had something written in your first cafe yes um on a blackboard and it was there for everybody to see it was kind of like it kind of felt like a 10 commandments yeah i remember exactly right it was like right behind and the counter is the first thing you see.

44:17I actually have a picture of it. Have you? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Let me see. I was just wondering. It's like don't eat food that your great-grandmother didn't eat. Yeah. A sense of like back to real food again. Exactly. So the May philosophy. I love it. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Number one, eat real food. I think that's very important. Two, enjoy every mouthful. Yes. I really feel so strongly about this. Yes. like we're never mindful about eating no and it's joyful and it's part of our kind of social fabric it's such an important part of our life in this sense that like healthy food needs to be the sad miserable existence or people will say like what's your guilty pleasure and it's like no no no no no no if it's making you feel guilty it's not a pleasure like sit down with your chocolate cake and enjoy it go out for margaritas and pizza with your gals and like enjoy it like doesn't need it's not about being perfect it's just about having the right balance where you're rooted in like nourishing food but then enjoy everything else if you feel guilty what a waste of time like enjoy it food should be enjoyed and if you stop for a moment and really feel the food you're eating it tastes so much better and you're also going to do things that are good for you like chew a little bit longer or savor a flavor eat slower I was literally food was a way for me to get back to it was like a barrier to me playing yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly you know um and i've had to grow out of the habit of eating too quickly it's been terrible yeah okay buy food with thought eat it with care focus mostly on plants that's always been really important to me in this sense of you know it's not all or nothing like i've never i remember to start with i didn't say it quite so eloquently but like it's not about becoming vegan or vegetarian or plant-based like it's just about eating more plants like we just all need you know 30 plants a week okay eat organic can i say something about that because i think sometimes people hear 30 plants a week and they're like i know like how on earth do you do that but just explain how you can do it in easy ways yeah okay so eating 30 plants a week in a nutshell is really like just an easy way to think about looking after your gut health yeah um you know it's feeding your gut bugs everything that they need for a delicious life um and you need that diversity of plants and but it's so many things count like every different nut or seed count so if you buy from booze or honobarra or a supermarket you know one of the mixed bags of nuts and seeds yeah and they have like six or eight in there so that's six done done sprinkle up on salads on soups you know whatever it is easy peasy same you know make some granola you can get seven plant points with the random packs of things at the backs of your cupboard so easy every herb counts so you know have pesto you've got basil in there like you're winning yeah um obviously your nuts your fruits and vegetables count um but don't forget like garlic counts chili counts um and do different colors of the same things so like if you do a pepper um red green yellow orange you know all the different colors peppers all of them are different coffee's giving you a point yeah yeah yeah i know everyone loves to hear that dark chocolate so when you start to kind of wait now this is an issue right how dark kind of 70-ish percent not like 90 yeah is that okay 70 yeah it's a good day i thought it was like no you don't need night but again this comes back to like enjoy it right yes most don't eat all day enjoy 90 % chocolate.

47:59No! It's pretty intense. It's so intense. Yeah. Thanks, Ella. I'm here to help. I'm really happy about that. So actually, and if you start making like, you know, a veggie stew or a bean chili or something like that, you'll find you can get 10, 12, exactly. That would be four or five, depending how many are in a tin. Okay. So actually, and then you've got onion, you've got garlic, you've got tomato in there, you've maybe got some chopped up spinach, you've got some various different herbs and spices. If you go different coloured tomatoes. You're certainly at like 12 or 13 in a single meal. You get your mixed nuts and seeds, you sprinkle them on another meal.

48:35Suddenly you can see how you get up to 30. Buy like, you know, berries, a mixed bag of berries, frozen bags. Again, you've probably got blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc. in there. Again, like quite easy to do. I'm just going to quickly talk about this. Yes, quick wins. because it came out last year yeah um and this is full of really brilliant very simple recipes that's the thing about it 100 and quick and easy to make exactly and full of all of these plants that we yeah so there's eight weeks of meal and really nice pictures thank you i feel it's really important so pretty with your eyes yeah good i mean it's just so important but what What I also started to realise was the mental load for people was so big.

49:22So it wasn't necessarily that you didn't have 20 minutes to make supper. Yes. But when you've been making decisions all day and you're so overwhelmed and stressed, the mental load of doing it is so big. So I've done eight weeks of meal plans, basically focused on dinners. It's not like every single thing you're going to eat over that eight weeks. But then you've got your shopping list, you've got all your suppers for the week mapped out. So then you get home from work and you're like, right, I'm going to make this super easy supper. I have everything that I need in the fridge. it's going to take me 15 minutes i'm ready to go because as i said it's not necessarily you don't have 20 minutes to do an easy tray bake or something like that it's just the like mental load at the end of the it's like one more decision which is a bit much you are so right people are just so tired aren't they yeah and it's that sense of like just tell me what to do yeah you've got us covered you got it covered thanks which i think really helps and then the other thing that i did which has been a win for me is i love batch cooking i just find it's really helps when you then get home from a long day and you've got everything sorted and ready to go but if you've got two ways to use it i used to find i'd like reheat the leftovers and my family would be like we had this the other day oh yes and so with the leftovers i've given you a different way to use them so it will feel like genuinely different meals you can turn like a stew a stew into a kind of minestrone type thing or you know you've got different ingredients all very easy you haven't you know you're doing like a pulled aubergine ragu one day stud you pass it in the next day you're going to pop it in tortillas and so all you've really done is like warmed up some tortillas repurposed but you're repurposing it but in a way that feels like a genuinely different meal that's another win that's a quick win what a quick win like the name of this book coming out do you know if a meal is all like that empowerment we need those quick wins like it needs to be like yes i've done it this feels great yes i mean i just love the plan i just think that's so good i think it's that mental load as i said for people it's not that we don't have 20 minutes It's just that at the end of the day, toast feels like an easier answer.

51:17Yes, I know. And that's terrible. Yeah. Please, can I, actually, can I just say toast isn't terrible. Toast isn't terrible. But you just want to kind of add in something that is. A hundred percent. Toast is not actually, I think toast is a brilliant thing because what you pop on top of it means actually a quick win. But ultimately, like plain toast every day is not going to give you that diversity. But if what you do is you make like one of my favorite recipes is a fancy beans on toast and you literally just saute loads of garlic with chili flakes, cherry tomatoes. Once that's soft, you stir in some butter beans, a bit of lemon, a bit of yogurt, stir it all up, lots of salt and pepper, pop that on your toast.

51:59So yummy. Ten minutes. All you've done is chop some tomatoes. Like it's so easy. One pan to wash up. But, you know, it's so straightforward. But you've had a nourishing meal with no effort whatsoever. Or I'll do some like quick whipped greens. I'll literally just get like my frozen peas and edamame and you'll mix them up again with like garlic and lemon. It's a really nice dip. Frozen. You just said frozen peas. I know that frozen for most of us is a very easy thing to have in the freezer. It is good, isn't it? Frozen is amazing. Yeah. Such a misconception, which lots of other countries don't have.

52:33Like a lot of Europe sees frozen in a much more positive light. We seem to see frozen in a negative light. Frozen is amazing because often you have more nutrition in there because things are frozen immediately. So you kind of lock in all the nutrition of the fresh fruit and batch. Pop it in your freezer, but it also means it's so sad. Like you get home, you're like, ooh, what have I got to cook? And you're like, oh, great. I've got X, Y, and Z in the freezer ready for action. So good. Right, continue. Okay, the next one. Do you know what? The next one I would actually say is the only one I would sort of slightly renege on, which was eat organic when possible.

53:06I think that well this is interesting yeah okay because I've just had cancer and I feel like oh I'm gonna go organic everything am I is that silly it's not silly it's just there's not huge evidence okay to say that it's necessarily so I should get uptight about no and look I think there's you know if you can and it's available like great but it's not a prerequisite so I think I would actually and for lots of people it is a bit more expensive a lot more expensive yes so i think not more expensive it would be a big ask i would scrap it okay scrap that because i think that if you feel you've got to do all of that that comes back to making it just be like it's not going to happen so i would scrap that one okay the next one i think is really important is don't waste share or keep for later wait i was interested i was interested in that um share what did you mean by that like give it to you know if i don't i'm obsessed with making bread at the moment and it's like give it to a neighbor give it to a friend like you've got too much of something oh i love it don't waste and then it says share but i was reading it like don't waste share don't don't share stuff like there's that point like give you more stuff than you need like give it away give it away don't that's lovely yeah or keep it for later leftovers and nice your community people will love you give them some food great next one i would say is absolutely essential find balance don't diet i think that's probably like one of the most important ones i got to my perfect weight when i stopped dieting yeah i bet you did isn't that interesting i mean ultimately diets don't work and they don't work because they kind of take over our life and they're too restrictive and ultimately like life gets in the way and then you fall off the bandwagon and you feel you have no willpower yeah whereas if what you're saying is like i'm just gonna look after to myself yeah you know I'm just gonna try and cook a little bit more I'm going to try and add in more fruit and veg when I can I'm gonna get that sprinkling of mixed nuts and seeds in my life like I'm just gonna do little things I'm gonna try and go for a walk on my lunch break I'm gonna try and you know do something that I know manages my stress like these little things are brilliant in terms of long-term health whereas I think when you focus on like a diet it's just it's too restrictive it just doesn't last you've got to have flexibility in your life and that will look different to all of us but you've got to find the flexibility that works for you um i think it's quite interesting that um you know it's all about trying to just find something that works like something that can you can fit into your life well that's so important i think it's got to fit into your life and i guess you're talking about the wins earlier yeah you've got to feel great and maybe the win is like i'm going to get up 15 minutes before the rest of my house and I'm going to do five minutes of something that makes me feel really calm.

55:55I'm going to sit and drink a cup of tea or coffee in silence and just have a moment of peace. That's a great win. Like that's so good for you. It doesn't need, you don't need to get up two hours beforehand, but it's just these little, yeah, it is your quick wins and what you can fit into your life in a reasonable, manageable way. I like the way that you talk about wellness, not just being about food and looking good. I just don't think it lasts. like ultimately like that's not right maybe you're getting married and you want to like like your best and feel your best on your wedding day fine for most people on a day-to-day basis like i just don't think it's a motivation enough of a motivation to shift your life whereas i think what's much more motivating is like i want to live as long as i can like i want the best health span i can have where i still feel great in my 70s and my 80s and i can play with my grandchildren Like it's about these, I want more energy so I can get more from my day.

56:48Like I want to improve my general mood, you know, that motivation when I wake up in the morning. Like these, because these have real world repercussions. It's like, so I have a better relationship. So I'm like more present with my kids. Like I think for most of us, that why means so much more than like, so I can fit a different pair of jeans. I just don't think that's motivating enough as a long-term pillar. I loved you just saying 15 minutes earlier. I mean, what's interesting is that sometimes I will do that for exercise, but I would never do it for peace. Yeah. And actually, you've inspired me there because I think having 15, 20 minutes on my own in silence would actually be kind of magical.

57:31I'd never even thought about that. I always feel like I have to just be on, on, on all the time. You know, what am I going to do with this spare piece of 10 minutes that I've got? I've got to go do something. and actually when do I ever sit and do nothing exactly and I just I'm not saying like quit life but I just think there's something in stress you know I think if you look at the four pillars of health it's diet and nutrition it's exercise movement it's sleep and it's stress management and I think stress management is that it's much less tangible than the others exercise it's like right I'm going to go on a run go on a walk do a youtube whatever it is exercise class diet right I'm going to make a veggie stir fry tonight, easy, whatever, you know, sleep.

58:15Okay, I'll go to bed a bit earlier. Stress management, I think we all get to, and we're like, a bit stressful. But what's interesting about stress, and I'm really looking at that at the moment, is that I have always perceived stress as being one of my superpowers, that I enjoy feeling that adrenaline and I feel like it drives me to get more in my day. And actually now I'm realising that if I take moments to try and be calm or do nothing throughout the day, which is really hard, my productive moments are better. Yeah, but it's so difficult to do. I really, really recognize that. You know, I feel like we should have another.

59:08Well, actually, why don't we have another one of these from your manifesto? So we did find balance, don't die. It's so important. Eat a rainbow every day. I like that as well. Just as a simple, we don't need rules and you don't need to be on this diet or that diet. But I think having like gentle principles or like guidelines is helpful. And I think if you were thinking about gentle guidelines, it is this sense of like, Eat real food for the most part, as in like proper whole food as opposed to ultra processed food. Try and get your rainbow in in terms of like loads of different colourful fruits and veg and plants, because that will, you know, naturally help get your 30 a week and feed your gut microbiome and all the rest of it.