Nutritionist Sarah Ann Macklin: Modelling, Burnout & the Healing Power of Nutrition

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me, Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid on what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello sir, good morning. I'm the Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their stuff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

0:38Now, you actually knew Princess Anne. I think one of the ways she acquired power was through that relationship with the president. But before that interview, no-one had really spoken and been so open. Was that a game-changer? So join us every week wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube and on Saturdays on 5, as we catch up with the Royals.

1:02At Boar's Head, we've been going back to school for over 115 years. And this year, every school lunch is reason to celebrate with the flavors your kids love and the exceptional quality you expect. Helping you make school lunch fresh, easy, and delicious. Ring the bell. The deli is open.

1:31Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden, or maybe on the golf course, can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

2:14Hello, and welcome back to The Unprocessed Truth, the podcast where we dive into food and lifestyle choices of our amazing guests so that you can take little tidbits and health hacks about what they're doing so that you can live healthier too. I, for years, was getting ill and catching everything going, so I decided to take things into my own hands and change my life. So we're here to share some little tips and tricks with you that can help you live a little bit healthier. Join us for more of the good, the bad, and the healthy. Today, we're joined by Sarah Anne Macklin Model turned nutritionist, founder of the Live Well, Be Well podcast and the Be Well Collective, a not-for-profit organization supporting mental health and nutrition.

3:04This one's going to be really interesting because Sarah is an expert in her field and has talked to some of the world's leading experts in the nutrition space, as well as being a TEDx speaker herself. So let's get into it. Thanks for coming in, Sarah. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this one. It's going to be interesting. We've known each other on and off for a few years in between stuff. We've got probably some interesting views on nutrition that I want to get into. So let's start by going back to the beginning. What are your first memories of food and how was it growing up? my first memories of food i think that's a good question um everything translates back to childhood always i i loved food growing up actually i mean there you go that basically very much lines with how much i look at food today but i think i was a bit of a picky eater if i go back i remember being a bit funny about certain foods but my parents really were like you know big cheerleaders of five p.m.

4:07meal times all together as a family like that was just kind of integrated and every Sunday both my grandparents would come over so it was a really lovely like family unit and I remember my grandparents would both also cook on my both my grandmas would both cook Sunday lunch every Sunday so they were both really good cooks and I used to spend a lot of time with them in the summer holidays and so one grandmother was an incredible like baker and she used to bake all these amazing like pastries and cakes and huge dinners and then my other one would be also incredibly great but also more kind of like big dinners and like roast dinners and things like that so I was very lucky that both of my grandparents actually taught me to cook but they actually stepped in and said yeah we're going to teach you yeah they were the ones so whenever I was I was a really active child um which I felt like you would probably be quite similar yeah um but you know my mind was always active and so i always wanted to do stuff and for them they channeled that through food my parents were working my mum didn't love to cook that was never her passion but my dad was pretty good but they didn't i guess maybe have as much time as grandparents do so they really i remember just spending all of my summer holidays learning to cook with them how old were you when you started really young like five six oh wow yeah they used to get me in making everything using my hands and it's quite lovely as a kid because i guess you can kind of like see the result at the end of it um and so yeah food was like very cherished in our house growing up but it was never elaborate it was always just really simple food i basically grew up on like meat and two veg that's how i the classic british staple right british staple um and i do remember like one day coming home to my I think my parents because they used to at one point when I was quite picky they'd be like we can't cook for your roast dinner every night because at one point my mum would cook for your roast dinner every night and she was like we've got to like give you something else and I was like I just love a roast dinner yeah so my dad made like this chicken tonight which was like a spicy tomato sauce which I remember this so clearly and then when we first found like fajitas and things like that was quite different because it was like spicy and there was like different flavors coming And I just always remember like begging him to cook foods with like these different flavours because British food doesn't really have those herbs and those spices.

6:29That's quite like Middle Eastern. So I always remember being really attached to that, but not getting it that often. And then it wasn't until I left home that I just, I moved to Brixton. I mean, that was like a diversity of culture and culture and different cuisines. And I think, you know, I grew up just on the house, go to Portsmouth. and so we didn't really have different you know those different cultures and different types of was it chicken tonight from the tv ads like chicken tonight it was a bit other but my dad did it health like did it himself oh he did it himself like fresh chicken breasts and then he'd get like um fresh tomatoes and then lots of herbs and spices and then roast all the peppers and put them in um and so he was very good and he wouldn't say this but he is because i can even see him now He'll just chuck things together.

7:16He can never follow a recipe. And that's what I do. I can't follow a recipe. So I'll just kind of make something from my memory and how I'm feeling. And he was very much like that. So I do remember watching him do that. And I think that was a bit of an inspiration for me. But my grandparents, I think both of my grandmas were like the people who really taught me to cook. And then my dad was the one doing it in the household. fantastic that sounds like you've had a good education in food from a young age were there any sort of naughty family traditions takeaway nights oh my god yes i don't know if i should admit this 100 you should i mean my parents don't do this now they have also really changed their habits but i mean this is going back 30 years ago yeah but takeaways were quite like a treat for us and I remember every Saturday night we used to have a takeaway we'd all sit down together and watch like Britain's Got Talent my mum was going to die if she is this and we used to order a Chinese and an Indian both whoa that's controversial and we used to come round I remember my best boyfriend he used to come round and be like my mum would be like Chinese or Indian pick which dishes you want and he'd be like what from the Chinese or from the Indian and we're like no both my first boyfriend would be like wait why are we mixing these two together it goes really well that's it

8:49I don't eat that anymore but I mean I wouldn't do that now and now they don't do that but I have this conversation with Jeff's like why did we for like 10 years mix Chinese and Indian I can't even figure out how that works. What are you doing putting a poppadom with your sweet and sour chicken? There's no rules in our household. That's absolutely bizarre. That is what, I mean, I don't, yeah. No one questioned it until someone new came into the house and then a friend would be like, this is weird. I'm like, it's completely normal. It's completely normal. Completely weird. It's like when someone puts banana in a curry.

9:26I'm like, what are you doing? It's all pineapple on a pizza. It's all the same thing. I think you said that really controversial. Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. But we loved it. You loved it. Yeah, I mean, now I actually wouldn't order, I mean, unless it's kind of a treat, but I wouldn't order like a takeaway on a Saturday night now. But, I mean, back then I bloody loved it. Yeah. Well, as a kid, you're a kid. Yeah. But now my parents, like my parents might order an Indian, but they don't order a Chinese with it. They don't. They've changed. What's that weird thing? Something changed. I started eating nutrition and it all changed.

9:58So was there any interest on their side from health or wasn't that a thing? It wasn't a thing, but like my family are all a healthy weight. So, you know, they're all very active people, like insanely active. They can't sit down and they just eat. They just eat really balanced, like three regular meals a day. So for them, it was never really like a cause of concern in the way that. right if you eat meat and vegetables i mean you've got nothing to be worried about exactly they just ate really well and yeah like my mom loves cake but she's she's that type of person as well which my dad was like i don't understand how your mom does this but she'll just you know buy a bar of chocolate and then like have two squares and be like just put it away now but she has to hide it from my dad because my dad sees it it's gone and so they yeah and it was quite funny because i went out for dinner with a friend the other night and i've got a bit better at that now with like actually I'm full and I try to be intuitive and we ordered it and this dessert came out and he was like how do you do it and I was like I think I've learned from my mum anyway he just got hot sauce all over the dessert because he was like if I don't do something to destroy this dessert I'm just going to consume the whole thing oh well that was just quite funny watching different people's behaviors and how they like so what did you pick up your dad's or your mum's tricks how's your willpower pretty good now yeah yeah pretty good two pieces of chocolate yeah I'm pretty good at that now i mean it depends unless i'm about to come my period then i'll eat the whole bar and get another one so like it depends on the time of my depends on the mood depends on where we're at i mean i'm definitely the whole bar i'll destroy the whole bag of crisps if there is one 100 there's no way any are surviving which is why i just don't buy it i just don't put it in my trolley basically um but okay so then moving forward you were a model you started your career as a model and you were quite young how old are you so like originally i was spotted at 13 which is a child um but i didn't know that so i was staying at my cousin's who actually lived in london in barnes and we went out one day and one of their friends was a model booker at models one and was like she should be a model told my mom my mom was like she's so young she's not modeling um and then when i was 15 i went to this thing called power in the park which was run by like Capital FM and it was the kind of self-paced version of Party in the Park or what I would say is like you know those big festivals that happen in High Park they were the ones that were on the south coast and I went with my friends and I had like five scouts there from London basically say like oh you should look to be a model it was that time when Nokia 3210s were just coming out I think so like I'd have my phone to call for emergencies but you didn't have the internet to look up these things so i had yeah business cards like given to me so you're like i don't know if this is legit or whatever and then i went home and my mom just found them in my pocket because i was like oh they're probably just like rubbish and she was like oh how much more like day and i was like yeah it's weird like these people kept coming up to me like asked me to be a model i didn't know i was spotted when i was 13 because she never told me and uh and i was like yeah these obviously aren't real are they and she was like oh and it was like all the big agencies in London and she was like oh no these yeah they are real so we had that kind of discussion and she wanted me to wait till I was 16 and then they were very like concerned I guess because they weren't from that world I was obviously insanely curious but at that time I also loved photography and that's what I originally wanted to do so for me it was like well it could be quite cool if I'm working with like good photographers on set it's better than learning from a textbook so um we came to a decision that I could sign but I could own at 16 but I could only shoot at like weekends and not disturb school and then when I was 18 if I got good grades then I can make the decision if I wanted to go all time or not so yeah they were more school focused than modeling focused but it did did change my life change your life but so let's get into then what happened at that moment I mean you've been scouted you're doing it part-time on weekends it was there I mean modeling I guess has a bit of a bad reputation for food and diet and culture you know it's all about skinny and making sure you look right in front of camera it's very you know I guess super superficial industry in many ways what was your first introduction into that side of it that world it is I think it's um it's a really interesting to pong to poach for my story anyway you know I would shoot at weekends and I but I was you know my first shoot was with a very kind of big stylist called Henry Holland who ended up becoming quite kind of big name in himself and you know I shot the M &S campaign the same time when Rosie Anderson-Whiteley was shooting it and take that we're shooting it like this is all the stuff I was going up on weekends and to be fair the industry were really supportive on making space to do it all on weekends as opposed to in the week and there was only like one or two times that I missed school but the weird thing was I in sixth form didn't tell anyone because I was really ashamed of people maybe becoming jealous or judging me but I also spent a lot of my time at school like never feeling good enough um and unbeknown to me at the time I was neurodivergent so I had dyslexia and only recently if I found out I've also got ADHD so like my concentration levels are very low um and I could just zone out but also with dyslexia I would write things backwards a lot of time anyway so I didn't know that and obviously school is very much fitted to you to like sit still and like not move and in that time it was like Sarah please leave the class because you're talking so I was like okay so I felt this kind of push and pull that I always really wanted to learn because I had such curious mind and I always wanted to kind of expand that but school unless you understand your brain can also be quite a hindrance and so if you don't really understand yourself your confidence can actually deplete very quickly so although I found that quite difficult and I didn't have the language to explain my frustration and because I just went to a very normal school it was just not really picked up on because I wasn't a bad kid yeah so the modeling kind of arrived that's like the two-pronged kind of approach that all of a sudden I was taking into a world where I could like express myself where people were like oh you're pretty good at something and I know it sounds a bit silly saying you're pretty good being a model but you also do need to build a business and a brand with that like you know I set up a limited company at 16 you know I had way an accountant I traveled all the time my mum sometimes was there but a lot of the time she wasn't because she was working um and so I kind of built a business pretty young of like understanding all of this stuff um and I was great like I realized that my strengths came with like communication and like being on set and being around to be different types of people like that's where I really came alive and you don't get that kind of like exposure at school so for me I all of a sudden for the first time in my life I was told that I was good at something like I was actually been shown results and i was like wow and then i go back to school and it would feel like a hindrance and so basically that just gave me huge force to try and understand myself so that's when i figured out different ways of learning like spider diagrams and all that type of thing i think having modeling there gave me a bit of a boost that i needed like a confidence it gave me a confidence boost and so although that it can be kind of meshed within as you said like so many different issues when it comes to food and other self-worth issues which i'm saying are still there it weirdly gave me the opposite to the beginning because i didn't immerse myself in it fully it was kind of and i was still living at home and i was well 16 and then i guess when i got to 18 and i finished my emails and i got my good grades um and i kind of went to her and showed her the like top grade that i got for that thing i said there you go i actually am smart um which was like that like a really big thing for me i then decided to go full-time i was like right that's it i've done everything i want to do i want to go to london and i really want to explore this that's when the world like really opened up for me i mean that's when like i wasn't with my parents i found a place in london to rent you know i was a flying to paris milan new york like i was like full steam ahead and so i think that's when like the ecosystem of that safety net kind of went a little bit and i was like wow i feel like a full-blown adult yeah at basically 18 just turned 18 flying all around the world having different apartments and also i was working with people that like 20 30 years older than me so i was never really hanging out with people my age um so you mature very very quickly but you you also jump to that emotional maturity without getting those stepping stones of like how to really look after yourself or like how to understand rejection to like a level that could be 18 times a day or it's like how to space out your meals properly or like what does a healthy diet look like like all of those things like kind of weren't taught to you or just kind of like chucked in and it's a bit of like traveling and you're hopping from city to city and in an apartment with no food in it so you're also competing with everyone around you you know like you might arrive to an apartment i remember arriving in new york and i mean i didn't stay in it but there was like 10 girls living there all in bunk beds no way and i had like a like a really big panic attack so i was like i also just need like my own space um and they were like no this is who you're kind of sharing with and then it just felt like wow these are all the girls you're also in competition with you know so you're kind of at 18 19 that's what you think right yeah you don't have a perspective of it and how it all works so what were the kind of things going on when you felt like that when you're in competition i think um it was also such a different time back then because i i actually explain how i felt then is how i think the majority of people growing up or even people our age feel now with social media so back then there wasn't social media so like we take ourselves back like there was facebook but people were posting about the perfection of their lives every minute of every day people didn't face a food food nutrition was never spoken about ever I know that sounds such a weird thing to say but it just wasn't a thing and so I remember kind of being in those ecosystems and also just trying to like understand you know well what is healthy eating what does that look like like how do I do that when I'm traveling what does that look like in different countries in different settings and also you know a lot of the time you're in a hotel room or you're in an apartment that might have like one hob so you're like never really in your own space to like understand how to cook and things like that and I was lucky that I had like different like certain skills from growing up but it was all kind of a learning process and I think like during that time when you are constantly comparing yourself every body shape is so different and so I was naturally always quite a boy figure shape with like my hips but I would always then be next to a girl that was like six foot and be like wow oh, I feel not as thin as her or as long as her or all of these different, you just naturally compare yourself because you're also being compared on set the whole time.

21:35You know, you're getting measured the whole time. And so any fluctuations, it's very kind of specific. And so I think like now people have that every day when they wake up and look at their phones. Like every day you wake up and you are comparing yourself to somebody online that either has like Photoshopped themselves, done a filter has done a certain angle because angle trust me i know from being one of so many angles make you look longer shorter thinner it's like i would be standing like on stages at certain points with a photographer like on a closed set pointing up and i'd be so tall but it would make me look so long yeah and then i like be bending over a chair so my whole body would be like massively elongated so i know like all of those positions um i do that on my social media because I try to just be normal.

22:24Like a lot of times I did my makeup on social media and all that stuff because I was around a world which portrayed perfectionism, which kind of broke me. And so you were around that ecosystem, but now I think everyone opens their phones every day and it's in their bed the moment they wake up of this kind of comparison. So it's interesting. The ecosystem I was in was like, was very specific at that time when no one else really around the world had it. No one had a smartphone. Nobody was looking at their phones and they were waking up. But like you jump 20 years now and I'm kind of like, well, now everyone's kind of in the industry I was in 20 years ago.

22:58It's been a really interesting shift for me to see. Yeah. Whereas for me, it was like I was on steroids and everyone else was kind of getting on with their life and might log on to like Facebook in the evening. But like now I feel that what I was in is now what everyone lives. Interesting. And that to me is a really interesting comparison. Yeah. Fascinating. But so what... There's 10 of you in an apartment in New York. What were you eating? How were you surviving? I mean, you had the cooking education from a young age, but I don't expect there was really time or space to... No, I got addicted to coffee when I went to New York.

23:35So I didn't drink coffee until then because I'd arrive on set and everyone would be having a black coffee. So black coffee was a big thing just to wake you up. And also I flew a lot, so you'd be knackered. um cereal like brown flakes i remember eating which like now i would never eat but it was like a low calorie fiber fiber i don't know if like i want to say that was if you're watching on like youtube or whatever but if you're not listening already i'm doing like comma marks around that it's not fibrous food um yeah i mean i'll be having that then i'd be having like a kale salad from like a like a shop like a spring green or something in new york with um with fish or some like lean meat but then i stopped eating meat at like 22 i think quite early and then and then i would just like have sushi or something in the evening yeah like for me it was it wasn't like food wasn't nourishment which i also feel is crazy now because being a model you need to have amazing skin amazing hair energy like that's that to me is how i look at food now it's all about like how much nourishment can i get how much more can i put in my diet and take out at boars head we've been going back to school for over 115 years and this year every school lunch is reason to celebrate with the flavors your kids love and the exceptional quality you expect helping you make school lunch fresh, easy, and delicious.

25:13Ring the bell. The deli is open. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where Liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated.

25:51Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you. But back then, food was like this random fuel afterthought. I didn't think about how it would make me feel that was never a thought I never thought how it would make me look apart from like fitting in the right clothes yeah I didn't think about my hair and my skin which you don't really think about when you're like 19 you know because you kind of can survive it's like people can go out and not have much sleep and they look fine you get away with it when you're that age yeah but you know I guess I grew up pretty quick and I guess around 22 which is when I felt like my strain of my mental health of the stress of the pressure of like the constant on the go was becoming like a real issue for me.

26:37And so, you know, it's interesting how none of us realized that connection like 20 years ago we were never speaking about the mood. And so, yeah, I was just very deprived of all of those things in the sense that I just didn't think about it. It was just like an afterthought. It was just like, well, I'm going to grab and go. I'm traveling again. I'm going to grab a cereal bar. Like all those like things that are fully ultra-processed. yeah but it was just convenient and easy and quick and it would be like low calorie high fiber and you'd be like oh great i'll have that you know all of that stuff yeah all about calories which is something i just don't think about anymore um but i also think health 20 years ago was just relayed in such a different way like that was when it was the do you remember the um special k diet yeah yeah of course yes that was like 20 that was about 20 years ago and i always remember that being a big thing like all those low-fat yogurts all the like two bowls a day of special k to like lose however much weight and like that was like our messaging like that's kind of what like i was around and then i remember being around this thing which in the uk wasn't a big thing but in america it was the tracy anderson method and i remember getting her dvds because that's to see what we have up and like putting on i sound so ancient now we're talking about this we're like putting on putting on and I remember her always saying because this is where I would get my information from girls never pick up more than three pound weights because you're bulk so I always remember like having like these like two pound weights and like doing all these exercises because this is like the messaging that we were getting and I you know she's still going now it's not I kind of don't want to I don't like taking anyone down because I always think people are doing their own thing but health information back then was just so limited well I think the interesting thing because you talked a lot about social is in a way people go on about misinformation and there's wrong information all over social but actually back then if you're giving the wrong information on a dvd no one can challenge you because not everyone's got a dvd right so your world of health information was that dvd it was yeah and you weren't exposed to anything else no nothing like i didn't even know what a nutritionist was when i was 20 yeah you know it was basically just like low calorie foods that's kind of what you know the early like 2000s was about um and you know i was in that era of modeling which was just it was a whole different era back then you know it was about being super thin and it was about going 100 miles per hour and i think you know when you're also living in a place that while i was staying a lot of the time which was new york things were a little bit more extreme over there like the green juices were there and like soul cycle was there but they they were things that hadn't been in the uk so i was like well this must be the healthy like way to do it and but i had no idea the science behind it but it's only when i started feeling like crap well i was like but wait i'm kind of having the model diet but you know is that like super lean green juices extreme exercise um because we would also sometimes have chefs on set on the really big jobs um you know and everyone would just be having like just clean eggs and like egg whites egg whites egg white omelets were massive cut out the nutrition yeah cut out all of the good yolk yeah exactly all the vitamin d out don't need any of ourselves yeah exactly and it's crazy but that's what i think i thought was healthy was like oh you know i'll eat that because it's it's low in fat and i think i also grew up with that mentality that fat was also really bad because that's the era that i grew up in so going into an industry which was all about how you looked at a very high performing level like without having any kind of kind of just I mean I just made it up but until that I felt so bad so what you said at 22 was your turning point and you're feeling pretty bad what happened so I remember being um on set one day was for American Vintage actually and I woke up in the morning and I felt awful I had I felt really bad for the last few days i remember seeing my friend that didn't like for dinner before and she was like you look really ill and i was like i think i'm just knackered because i've worked a lot and the thing about like modeling as well is that if you don't turn up to set you let down 50 people so like you don't really have an option and uh i woke up the next morning i was like i feel awful and i had a really high temperature took some nerofen drank some water i remember were sitting in the makeup chair and there was another model and into an hour into the kind of shoot they actually sent the other model home and this happened a lot and they were like we're actually going to shoot everything on you and I was thinking oh my god my energy is horrific like I actually felt really bad and I remember going to the bathroom and like trying to hold on to the sink and being like feeling really dizzy and I was like I can't faint so I remember like trying to have some food taking more norepinephrine taking more norepinephrine and like you shouldn't take neurofem only every four to six hours yeah but i was like i can't make that i just need to keep going um so i'm completely dissociated from my body i'm just like how can i keep going and this is basically was my mentality for a very long time um until like i got back home and just like collapsed so you made it through the shoe i made it through the shoe but i was like sweating profusely and like not not well um i got home and i collapsed and then i yeah i ended up in hospital with sepsis e coli rigles which is when like your kidney like slows down and pushes everything back into rejects everything and pushes it back into your bloodstream um 10 birth cysts i was like bleeding internally i mean i was your body was my body stopped yeah my body stopped they had to helicopter two antibiotics from scotland they had to call my mom like immediately as like a guardian to sign her to get them to bring it down it was going to be 12 hours for them to helicopter it down my god um but i had all of these different doctors around me and you know there was like a kidney doctor then there was like a gynecologist and there was a gastroenterologist and um you know it was like hematology and there was all these like different doctors trying to figure out essentially like what was wrong with me um and for me like you know i now look back on that as like extreme habitual burnout which is when my body had just basically like given up and they all say like you know or one part was sepsis one part was and that you know you can label it all yeah in that way but that's when i started to be like no this is a prolonged like breakdown basically in extension and it's interesting that it happened for me at such a young age because i went so quickly like most people can get that after building for 10 years yeah and that's why i think like i always believe there's a purpose and why something happens i didn't know that at the time and my whole thing wasn't like i'm gonna go and figure this out my body just was so thin because it was just running on empty it was just like let's just keep going let's just keep going and i think if you have a very strong mindset you know i have a very like strong purposeful mindset where I'm like if I commit to doing something I will 100 % do it and to me I never wanted to let people down but in the process I totally forgot who I was and like what was making me happy and like how was I looking after myself but it was like to such an extreme extent and so I was in hospital for a while like when I got better and then that was kind of the start of the pivot into my into like changing the whole career basically I just knew that i couldn't sustain myself um at that point and my dad had a brain hemorrhage very closely after that um and i remember you know seeing him in hospital for a very long time and i don't know if you've ever had this but when you want to like shake someone and be like i really want you to get better and i feel like you're not looking after yourself and he also run his own company and he was under a severe amount of stress like i believe like part of a part of what happened to him was a massive amount due to stress and you can kind of like when you look at someone you love it's so easy to be able to like tell them but when it's you doing when it's like you in it it's harder to make that change yeah and so like that part of seeing my dad also shifted something in me to being like wow you're really like not looking after yourself at all um so i like yeah i basically went back to do some hnds on like chemistry and um biology and physics to then go into a bachelor in traditional science straight away you was like after that it was done straight away i did some stuff online first to get like the chemistry and all the other things i needed because i didn't originally pick the grades to go straight into that and then i went into nutritional science but i remember when the first I went to university it was like legally blonde walking in with my mulberry everyone was like who the hell is that because I'd lived this like completely different life different world yeah yeah and I just remember like sitting down and you know I said to the in the beginning like I didn't like school so my mom I do remember my parents are you sure this is what you want to do and I was like I'm sure and I you know I'd had a mortgage and I'd had you know i had built a certain life for myself as a successful model and i was like i'm sure i think everyone in the family was like we like this is not how we ever kind of are you really sure you want to do this and i was like yeah i don't know like yeah what all i want to do is be so ethically trained that no one ever goes through what i went through i wouldn't be able to be a source of like really ethical information because i've never been able to find it and now this sounds maybe like quite different because it says so much health advice out there but when I started this there was nothing even my granny didn't know what nutritionist was she was like what is that and I was like okay so basically this is what it means so I all I knew is that I had a purpose that I thought I wanted to do and I knew that I had to do it for myself first and I really wanted to help other people but I remember being in that and then I went to my professor six weeks later and was like I want to drop out oh really yeah and she was like my mom was like oh god here we go again and I was like no I I literally do not understand what's going on like I'm I have no idea what you're talking about because they basically like we want you to stand up and do a lecture on oxidative phosphorylation and I'm like what the huh yeah I'm like this is going over my head and so I then sat with her and it was the first time I'd said to a teacher I was like look I'm just like not quite out to be I'm really not very smart and she was like huh and I was like I've been told this my whole life I've made a massive mistake coming back to school like I'm just gonna I'm just gonna like leave and also I had this like kind of identity crisis at this point I was like what the hell am I gonna do and she looked at me and she was like why would you say that and I was like well I've kind of been told that my whole life she was like you are smart she was like i think you're just very neurodivergent i think you really suffer dyslexia and i'm like just let her what's that word and she was like okay would you come and do this test for like two hours and so i did and then they said yeah you've got like quite severe dyslexia but you have a really good iq and so these are the methods that you're going to do when you're learning and if you're struggling when you're listening in class you're going to like record it on audio and then you can just zone out and like listen to it when you get back and it changed my life like I would listen to it on a run afterwards so my body was moving and then I'd like picture it in different scenarios and I'd write it down in different maps and diagrams and I ended up getting like 100 % on my tests no way it went from like like school dropout to like topping class amazing all from like how I understood myself and so like this like those three years gave me such a shift on like food nutrition mental health self-worth self-compassion like this whole like filter system of everything that I'd lost like I didn't have self-worth I didn't have any self-compassion didn't understand who I was like I didn't understand what they'd be happy I didn't understand food and I didn't understand mental health it was like three year journey that was just meant to be about nutritional science ending up like opened this whole thing for me yeah but you're a uni what about the partying i was none i was like a mature student by the mature student by that point yeah i was like 24 when i went so you weren't in the student union on the way like honestly i had no friends i literally because also at that point i still was i was still dab i was still modeling in the uk i'd like left america and i didn't go back to New York and I was still doing shoots in the UK to fund myself to get through school because the tuition fees were quite expensive back then and I paid for it all so I still shot everything on the side and still did school to try and pay my way through um and a big part you know into my journey was that I wanted to first off help the industry so for me it was really important to stay connected to the industry because I was like there's so many young kids coming up through this if i can be a source of like health information that's educated then that's because i couldn't like relate to anyone even you see a doctor they would be like well your bmi is x and you were like okay well that's not a reliable measure and also kind of this is the this is like the stress and the industry that i'm in so it's like an athlete you kind of have to give them different advice so that was always my entry point so i stayed connected to the industry and I was also really grateful for what it gave me like I learned so much and it did ultimately give me the confidence in the beginning you know it gave me that self-worth but when everything goes very fast and you're very young and you're away from home and you don't have that support like things do break and I think anyone who's like listening to this who's ever been under extreme pressure whatever that is like you know unless you actually like take charge yourself you just break yeah you've got to have that like self-awareness i think a lot of us don't which is why it happens well and you had a really good grounding from your grandparents and your parents cooking at home feeding you real food and then you still get sucked up into that new world right exactly it's very hard when you're 18 in kind of new industry and thrust into oh this is what we should be doing because that's what everyone's doing exactly but okay let's bring it a little bit further forward then to now you got your degree top of the class got my first top of the class top of the class good work who would have ever have thought that well i mean it's a testament just to how individual things need to be for people you are where you are your brain works in a different way you know your life is totally different and i would say it's the same with food and nutrition right exactly you're on your own journey take what works and what's relevant for you and apply it to your life don't just follow everything strictly right and that just shows it in your education as soon as you tailor it to the right way that you work you're flying right rather than being bottom of the class and teachers telling you you're dumb which is just horrendous that a teacher could even utter those words sadly but okay so what you're now qualified nutritionist you started the be well collective what does food look like for you today food for me is you know somebody asked me this question that they're like what what is food and i'm like wow that's quite a hard question to answer in this kind of environment that we live in yeah um food to me is a mixture of things food to me is about enjoyment number one like food needs to feel fun like it should never feel restrictive yeah um to me that just doesn't work because we will never remain in like an equilibrium homey status if we're always on the restriction so to me it's about enjoyment and it's also about pleasure that's really key it's about variety diversity and color so i always try and think whenever i build a meal like how much color is on my plate that's just like a really important area for me to even think about focus on yeah um and to me it's about 80 20 but basically 80 percent of always being pretty good of home cooking whole foods limited ultra processed food as much and then like the 20 when I want to go out with my friends of course have dinners I'm traveling and I do travel a lot for my work so in that way you know I always need like a bit of a buffer but generally like I really enjoy food and I really enjoy cooking and that's also a real relaxation technique for me like it's being very mindful it also disconnects me very easily when I'm in the kitchen I know some people hate cooking but I actually like get a lot of enjoyment from it so for me it's actually quite therapeutic so I try to do you know 80 % of staying pretty healthy so what's a go-to meal now when you're cooking at home oh so i'm obsessed with a chickpea stew because i quite like middle eastern flavors so i put a lot of different herbs and spices um in that for me that's like otolengo is one of always my go-to is like i'm obsessed with it i'm obsessed with him yeah um i sat next to him with a plane once and it was like i was completely starstruck um and i love you know the whole middle eastern cuisine it's like my favorite if i go to a restaurant that's one that i want to pick because it's just a diversity of flavor bomb in your mouth.

44:55So for me, like I love cooking sea bass at home as well. I also just love getting like a whole sea bass when I have friends over, which sounds really elaborate, but I think it's the easiest dish to cook. And you just wash it all, you stuff it with like loads of herbs, loads of olives, loads of lemon and all the goodness. And then you just put all of your vegetables underneath and it just seeps through and there's olive oil on the top and you just put it in like half an hour. yeah with like a big old fish in it yeah and it honestly people are like it looks very impressive when it comes out on that platter yeah exactly and they're like wow and you're like honestly i just put all of it on one dish and then you met like a little chimichurri on the side just do a little bit more i mean it's such a good tip i always do it i do chicken tray bake with chicken thighs but the concept is just chuck everything in a pan in the oven for 30 40 minutes and you're good to go don't have to worry about lots of prep complication chuck it all in no dishes is like easy.

45:50We're all busy, right? So that's a great tip. Yeah, exactly. It looks like a showstopper though. Well, give us a quick rundown of what you eat in a day then. So breakfast, lunch and dinner, coffee, snacks. What's your bag? I have a lot of coffee. So I wake up, I have a big litre of water. The one kind of big obsession I've got, which I feel very attached to with my water bottle, comes everywhere with me. is it Stanley? it is no it's not it's plastic I'm really funny about microplastics especially since I've recorded an episode on Lip or Be Well with one of the top microplastic experts who flew in and yeah so I'm very aware of plastic within my diet and I'm not obsessive about it if I had to have a water bottle that was plastic I'd have it but for myself I try and reduce it as much as I can so I've got a stainless steel water bottle um and so i'll have a litre of that with like i have some supplements in there that i kind of chuckle in um have that straight away in the morning and then i walk straight outside to get my morning light which is really essential for me without sunglasses i walk to the coffee shop at the end of my road i get a coffee and i walk back to me that just like helps set my circadian rhythm did you bring your own cup no i don't bring my own cup so you're getting the microplastics in No, it's a paper, but I don't have the top.

47:18There's no such thing as a paper cup. Okay. They all have a plastic lining. I know, but then so do a lot of the takeaway cups. That's what I mean. They all do. All takeaway cups have a plastic lining. No, but even the keep cups, a lot of them have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's also really similar. You need to either get a metal or a glass one. Yeah, but even some of them, like even plastic, even there was a study that came out that there was even glass bottles because of the tops of them have more microplastics in than the plastic ones. Yeah. I mean, there's one study that said that. I can't quite imagine how there's more plastic coming from the lid than the whole bottle.

47:59Something about the seeping of it. Yeah. Anyway, we spoke about that recently on the show, and I was quite mind-blown by the whole thing. But again, it's just one study, so we can't obviously draw a position. We can buy you a glass takeaway coffee cup. Maybe that's what we should do. I should really actually thinking about I should really just take a mug down with me because that's actually like down my road down the road you have to just bring a mug with me that's what I should just do easy the guy who lives next door does that and I was always like that's quite a good idea I should do that 100 % and you can make it a bit bigger as well so you get bigger exactly I agree okay that's what I'm going to do and then I come back and have I always have like a protein-fueled breakfast so that's really important for me nice so I either have I try I struggle to have eggs in the morning.

48:43I'm getting better, but there's something about it that I really struggle with first thing. Yeah. But normally I have like thick root yogurt and I also put some protein powder in there and then I mix it with Yo Valley because I have all the probiotics. What about that, confere? Yeah. Nice. And then I have like a kind of a homemade mix of like chia seeds, black seeds, goji berries, like lots of nuts in there and then a big handful of blueberries. Perfect. And that's always my kind of favourite go-to breakfast. And then I'll probably have eggs for lunch. That's like normally my go-to. Like today I had it in like a pitta with hummus and avocado and tomatoes and rockets.

49:25Yeah. That always feels quite comforting to me. Then I'll probably have another coffee. Need a coffee after lunch, always. And then I'm pretty good at like, you know, always just making sure that if I'm in and I'm working, I've always got like nuts and fruit and things just like hanging around but I just drink a lot of water as well like through the day and then do you know what I think about a lot of the time like I'm either out for a dinner with a friend um and I'll just have like fish or something like vegetarian or if I'm at home I'll cook like a chickpea stew or just like I basically have like 10 go-to meals that I just rotate all the time and I think that's something that's really important when people say like they really struggle to eat healthily like one of the kind of biggest barriers i see with friction is that people just don't have like staple meals that they really enjoy and so i always try to i think it was about six years ago i said to myself one new year's day i was like what are the resolutions i want to make this year and one of them that i said to myself was like every month i want to learn a new recipe that's not complicated that's something that i can kind of entwine into like a weekly meal and i think when you give yourself just like that once a month it doesn't feel exhausting it's when someone goes every week i'm going to learn a new meal and you're like okay that feels like quite a lot because that's four weeks you're like another one whereas if you try and do it once a month by the end of the end of the year you've got 12 staple meals that you can then kind of refer back to and if you're cooking them quite a lot they just embed in your memory and then that's when you can kind of play around with them and go oh well i haven't got new potatoes so i'll try sweet potatoes oh i haven't got a broccoli so i'll try some like mong too so you like you play around with them a bit as well i think that confidence in the kitchen is a really important thing though because often people go well i can't make that recipe because i don't have this and i'm always like yeah but you could just swap it for that you just do it anyway and there's always like a barrier to cooking that healthy meal i always try to say to me when people say that i'm like do you know how great that is because that then means that you're going to include a different vegetable in your diet which your gut microbiome's gonna love there you go you know it's like i always say like try and mix up the vegetables or whatever is in your plate with a different one or add a different one in it's not going to spoil the recipe it's just going to create more diversity and the more that you become confident with being like i don't know if this works i mean now we all are obsessed with chat gbc physically say like how do i cook this it will give you an answer in seconds but just like the best way that you learn to cook is just from mistakes yeah so it's like maybe it isn't the most like delicious dish that time but maybe you go okay well actually i've now realized that that has too much water when i cook it so i've now realized that that's maybe not a thing i'm going to use but it's never going to destroy a dish no and so i think just having that confidence and i'm always like if something doesn't ever feel that great i'm just like chucking more herbs and spices because i'm like well that the flavor will help even out you know the taste of it when i learned to cook i was in kaila and traveling and it was continual tasting throughout the entire cooking process you always had a spoon and you were tasting balancing the the sweet and the salt and the acid and really just learning the kind of almost that feedback loop of this doesn't taste quite right what do i adjust and i think having that in your cooking arsenal was just so key to being able to just be flexy and cook whatever and making it really simply simple but your what i eat in a day is basically perfect you are a nutritionist so i guess we were expecting that a little bit um but let's get into the good the bad and the healthy i want you given your why in a day was so healthy i want you to start with something bad what do you do other than your plastic micro yeah that's just so you're gonna hate me for this oh go on i hate the word bad oh okay i think it really stigmatizes shame yeah and so i think like Like as soon as we start labeling things as bad, our mindset shifts.

53:18So like it feels a very forbidden item that we shouldn't have. And then either we kind of crave it and want it more or we feel so much shame and guilt, which also affects our metabolism of that food. Yeah. Because I'm very connected now at the moment in my research with like how our mindset changes our physiology. And so by literally just thinking something is like bad and shameful, like it does change your stress hormones. It does change how you metabolize that food. and so for me i'm all about like actually if i really want to indulge in something so for me i would say the thing that would be on the the lesser of a healthy spectrum would maybe be alcohol because i do drink um i don't drink excessively and so i think you know that's why i would never say it's bad because i would say that's when i feel like if i'm drinking a bottle of wine a night then like actually that's really not going to be very good for me but having a few glasses of wine when I want to relax at a weekend and enjoy dinner or whatever.

54:11Like to me, that's like actually kind of healthy because I'm getting a lot of enjoyment from it. The wine's not healthy because it's not good for me. But the social occasion, the enjoyment, the stress, anti-stress. All of those things. And so, but I'm really aware of, you know, not allowing myself to be like, oh, wow, I had that on a Friday night. And so today I need to, you know, go to a sauna and sweat it out or do all these type of things or kind of counterbalance it for x y and z it's like actually you know the term bad can can really label a lot of stigma and shame when it comes to food and then people can have this like push and pull um which i'm always like that's more detriment on the food itself yeah just from what you're telling yourself so for me i'm like very aware of thinking about food and that's in that way and they're always like life happens there's always going to be moments when you're going to stray more towards the things that you know aren't great for you because you're sleep deprived or maybe really stressed you just had a really really hard day you've got on a fight with somebody at work or your partner or whatever it is yeah and so it's like in that moment like your self-soothing mechanism like needs more support or maybe it's lower because you're under more stress than normal you know so you don't have the same kind of like responses in your brain to handle situations well and so that's why i'm always like very aware of kind of people never feeling bad about what they're having if they're having something bad yeah yeah no makes sense and it's a very like fair perspective which i can totally understand because you know i can relate sometimes on a friday night you need that glass of wine because damn it's been a stressful week and you just need to unwind and then the social occasion slash the wine will help you relax which at that moment in time is more important i think where i come from because a lot of obviously my content is this is the good this is the bad this is the healthy this is junk you know and i face into it where i come from with it is you know whilst i agree with everything you said is actually for a long time i think we've been too scared to have the brutal conversation, the truth of it, which sometimes is hard to hear, sometimes is difficult.

56:27And I see people use the word like, oh, there's no such thing as bad food. And that drives me insane because I look at it like, well, but that's just fundamentally not true. Yes. In the context of if you have it once, it's not going to kill you. It's totally fine, whatever and I try to be quite moderate in my views like that but at the same time if we're not prepared to go do you know what the way that we make Pringles is just bad like there's nothing good about them we really should do better for our food system I think we need to be able to front into that conversation and have it which yeah and I don't want people to take away and go oh my god this is bad food and then that one time they eat it they feel guilty and then it causes other emotional issues but at the same time i want to push the food industry to do better because we can we know how to make good healthy food we know how to make things that are real food without all these artificial ingredients they are and they will ever shift because it's like you know in 2026 or seven i can't remember the year the wellness industry and i'm saying this because is this relates to the quote bad food that you're talking about because it's ultra process is essentially what i feel like you're talking about as the ultra process industry it's going to be worth eight trillion and i now see food that isn't a pringle i think most people and everyone listening to this podcast will know that a pringle is not a healthy food like i know this when people come into my clinic people know how to eat well okay now i mean maybe 20 years ago it was very different because the information wasn't out there but i know that most people that walk into my clinic know what healthy food is they know what ultra processed food is and they know what healthy food is and if we actually slim down nutrition to like a very basic level it's actually not very difficult but we are surrounded by ultra processed food and where i get like the bee in my bonnet about it is i think people are aware of putting pringles in their in their trolley and being like that's ultra processed what i do think people are aware of and what i see when people come and sit with me is that there's so many other healthy foods that are completely ultra-processed just as aligned to the same perspective nutrient perspective as a pringle but people actually think that they're eating well and that for me is what i feel is really really misled because even like oh well i know i've had a binge because i've had a takeaway or i know i've had that or whatever because i know i'm very aware of it but people like having certain protein bars that are just full of emulsifiers and sugar and actually aren't healthy protein but people are like well I've done this because this is more expensive like it's more elitist right so people are like spending their money on on food that they think is really good for them and actually that's where I feel that there's an injustice with the food industry as well as kind of obviously making cheap foods very accessible but I now think the landscape's become so skewed that people are just confused confused about like what actually is healthy and what's not well i mean that's the you're absolutely right that's the bit in the middle where it's like your belvita breakfast biscuit which is high in fiber all natural and everything else but it's a biscuit fundamentally with sugar in it and you're eating it for breakfast no protein no fats but it's low calories so don't worry about it and that's where consumers are fundamentally confused but i guess that's goes back to my point of like we should be calling out bell vita and saying that's a pretty bad breakfast do you know what i mean yeah but then it's this whole but then you're looking at a bigger cultural social issue which is why i'm like i struggle i mean i'm not saying that that's not bad food but i think then we look at like time convenience like how much time do we have how much are we trying to push into our days like there's so many things where people will then be like well i can't I don't have the capacity, like the financial side of things.

1:00:20So I, because I see it in clinic where people are really like struggling with time aspects as well. And so I think as soon as then we start saying, well, this is a really bad food. And then all of a sudden they just feel like they completely give up because people are like, well, I just feel that I'm facing this uphill battle. I actually don't know what to do because I feel so shrouded in like everything I'm trying to do is bad. Like, well, what's right. and so you see these people feel like super lost but and their intention like i honestly believe like most people's intention is to always want to do the best for themselves with the limited capacity they might have and so that's i mean i think kind of telling the food companies that is completely fine but i think on the individual perspectives we have to be really careful it's tricky and i mean we get tons of comments on our content where you know people are like if i just say this is the bad now what's the bloody alternative they want to know um and they hate being just told something bad and so we do always try and come up with a like healthier swap that sits within the same category so it's not a convenience trade-off it's not a price trade-off it's very much uh that there's actually just a easy step to the left here that will make you that little bit healthier and we try and do it within whatever category that is so if you're having crisps swap to bake crisps because it's going to be a step in the right direction for you but it is it's hard I there's so many nuances to this conversation and everyone's also in a different psychological place in their life where some people can probably handle me calling out the crap they're eating other people can't and then how do you deal with those people yeah it's like I mean I don't know if you've seen my content recently or whatever but a lot of the stuff that I talk about now when it comes to health is actually something that I feel fundamentally we all kind of missed which is and it's a term that I struggled to connect to for a very long time until I went to the scientific kind of proof and evidence behind it but it's the term self-compassion and it's basically for me that means like non-judgment to yourself that you can actually then step into like well what is it that I'm beating myself up about because actually that's a very courageous like brave thing to do to step forward into wanting to change something is a really courageous act whereas the other one when you're very critical kind of just keeps like like basically punching you and pushing you down and just being like no this isn't good enough so it's like trying to get up but constantly the thing is just constantly hitting at you and so for me you know when I started realizing there was a huge connection between mental health and food I was like okay well this is interesting okay well I've got microbiome can change like how we think and feel and also it can treat things such as depression and anxiety and then interestingly like how we think and how we feel can also influence our gut microbiome and our physiology and how we metabolize food and our hormones and our immune system i was like wow there's this whole like thing happening that you know we're so focused on like one thing but we're not focused on the other and actually if we can like use these two together and actually go okay right i really want to get healthy like i actually really do want to get there and i'm not going to get there overnight but like i also know like how i treat myself and how i talk to myself is also like not in a very good place like and maybe you think you're in a good place because you're like a type a functioning person but you're also going to be treating yourself properly like shit too because you're like constantly like always feeling like no there's never enough you always need to be a bit more a bit more a bit more a bit more you've got to perform better so i call these two groups like the lapses and the optimizers the two very similar people that i see in my kind of all the time also kind of fundamentally facing the same thing always beating themselves up and so i think when we can address this part first the mindset part of like well how do we speak to ourselves because that impactful stress that you had the best diet in the world like the model diet but if you are literally telling yourself every day like you could be doing better you're not doing good enough you fucked up we're doing i'm a loser all of this stuff it ignites a completely different hormonal response in your body yeah so it's like well then like what's the point in doing all of that so actually we've got to start with like how do we talk to ourselves around this like what is the conversation we're having like with ourselves is it how you would see a friend and say well actually i can see your diet is probably like 80 ultra-brapeas yeah it's not that great it's really not that great but what could we do like how can we approach this what how would you say that to a friend yeah down well not what you're saying to yourself no i mean we can be pretty nasty to ourselves right and it's unconscious that's also the other thing like we're not consciously telling ourselves this we're unconsciously telling ourselves this it's just this thing that's just been living in our minds and it also was filtrated constantly by the noise we're hearing outside not good enough it's not good enough it's not good enough social media so all of it and so i think that's like the biggest step when it comes to food and comes to health is that part and then if you match that with a with a whole food like healthy whatever that word typically means like a limited ultra processed diet you're going to be doing blooming well because they're going to be self-working in harmony but the problem i see is we're only focusing on one thing and we're not focusing as much on the other i think that's very fair i mean my missus will hate me for saying this but we had an argument the other day and you know she then went out with the kids and I was at home lunch for myself and I was just busy at work and I was just like literally there was a pack of crackers in the cupboard and I couldn't even be bothered to burn myself an egg so I literally just ate crackers and cheese for lunch and then had a protein shake and got on with work and like there's an element of self-worth in that of like oh it's just for me so it doesn't even matter I'll just carry on with my day kind of thing uh which yeah it happens to all of us right we we tell ourselves these stories and elements that fundamentally drive what we eat on a regular basis right and I know I'm much healthier when I'm cooking for me and the missus than I am if I'm alone and you want to give her good food right and especially imagine if you're for your children would you just give them crackers for lunch oh god no right and why wouldn't you well yeah obviously because you love them you value them you want them to be healthy and strong and you know whatever else so there's yeah we can't do it to ourselves i always give this really good analogy i want to play it with you because you've got children okay so and it kind of it's a bit similar it kind of plays off from what you just said but this is a way that i get people to connect to this and it's normally like a moment that happens but so what are your children's names Jackson and Bodie.

1:07:09Jackson and Bodie. That's so trendy. So Jackson and Bodie come to you and they're like, Daddy, I really want an ice cream and it's a Saturday and it's a treat. Can I have one? What do you say? Yeah, let's go. Yeah. Great. See, they have it. They love it. They look at you with their eyes and go, oh, my God, Daddy, I love that. Can I have another one? Absolutely not. And they're like, please, please, please. And you're really stressed and you're like running around 20 minutes. You're like, if I just give them this, it will shut them up. What do you do? No, I don't. I don't give it in. don't give it to them they're having one that's it having one and they're like begging you and they're begging you and they're begging you they're crying and they're tantrum they're rolling all over the floor and what do you say i'm just like you're not having it and i leave them to have tantrums i'm pretty i'm pretty brutal i think there's a level of like you have to make the hard choices as a parent for them to understand the boundaries and why do you do that it's not because you're being cruel i assume right you're doing that because it's for their own good for their own development especially from a kind of like psychological perspective of like you can't just kick and scream your way to what you want you know that's not how the world works yeah so ultimately like you do it because you love and care for them right yeah not because you're being cruel and evil and manipulating no exactly so like when we go and have an ice cream or a chocolate bar or whatever it is we'll have a bit very back to the beginning like how much can you have with that chocolate bar and after half an hour you're like i really want more like you would say to a child that you love you've had enough because i love you because i know that this isn't going to be good for you and some parents might give in on the second but i can tell by the time it gets the fourth most parents would be like no like i also can't deal with the sugar crash that you're about to have and you do it because you love them and so when we flip it to ourselves it's really interesting that we know and this is what i was saying that most people know who come into my clinic they know what's right and what's wrong they know how to eat well and they know the things that are treats yet when it comes to ourselves we really struggle to have that same perspective we'll crush that tub of ice cream exactly i mean we'll just and sometimes we might order another one and then we might order another one and i know that sounds extreme but a lot of people find a huge amount of self-soothing in this that's that's something that means huge amounts to them and so it can be from a different type of food it could be to alcohol with anything but ultimately we know it so we know that we do it to someone that we love and we know we can do it to our children and we know that we can make a really healthy lunch even if we're limited time for our partner because we love them so we make that time but for us there's a break when it comes to ourselves there's a break we don't do that healthy lunch we don't say no to that second portion and that's what i find interesting that's where i find the self-compassion piece to be so relevant because if actually you can have that same care to yourself that you can have to someone that you love we start changing the whole picture around all of this amazing so going back to a bit the healthy side if we can label something healthy i love the compassion focus of psychology behind it but what's one tip that can help people on that journey yeah i would say for people to be compassionate to themselves i mean there's a very like quick way of asking yourself like would i treat myself this way if i would i treat my friend the same way that i would treat myself that's like a really really quick answer but the second thing is like taking a really deep breath and sometimes allowing like a visualization technique so allowing you to step into that person's shoes so i always say that if you're going to go and work out imagine putting on that person's shoes that you love like visualize stepping into them and ask yourself like what does that person that i love like need today so there's two ways can i would i speak to a friend or someone that i love in this way it's a really good way it's a very quick way but normally it's no i wouldn't yeah and the other one is a visualization technique of being like okay like actually I'm going to think of my partner today and I'm going to put myself in their shoes and like tie it up and honestly what's your bodily reaction when you visualize being in someone else's shoes it's freaky you everything changes because you just have this like different respect in someone else's body yeah so they're two really interesting ways you can even do that when you're thinking about like cooking for yourself it's always harder when it's for yourself isn't it Always.

1:11:39Well, that's a lot of what my work's about. Amazing. I think that's so valuable and so important for people to have that self-worth to look after themselves first, right? I mean, everyone says put your oxygen mask on first, but the reality is none of us ever do. Never do. And that's what I believe is the bigger question about what's going on upstream. Interesting. Okay, we need to move on, Sarah. quick fire time we've had a good deep conversation around the psychology behind health and what you eat in a day which is pretty perfect but let's try and catch you out on some quick fire favourite guilty pleasure takeaway not Chinese and Indian pizza ok favourite on the go snack nuts very healthy Yeah.

1:12:36What about if you're out and about? I carry nuts with me in my bag. Solid effort. In your mulberry. Yeah. I've learnt that from my modelling days, never be without food. Never be without food. You never know if you're going to get fed on set, so you always pack something in your bag. Fair enough. One food you can't stand. Oh, feta and goat's cheese. Feta and goat's cheese. Come on, they're like two of the best cheeses. Oh, I can't. Really? It smells like vomit to me. Not that bad. It's really fat. It's just a bit salty. No, it sounds like vomit. Wow. I thought you'd have feta on your roasted Mediterranean veg and see that.

1:13:14Oh, you do halloumi, but not feta. I have halloumi, but just something about that. Apparently it's quite a common thing. Is it? Yeah, well. I don't know anyone apart from you now who doesn't like feta. I love feta. I put it on everything. I'm going to cause a huge uprise on that, aren't I? Feta drama. Okay. If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

1:13:37oh if i could eat one meal for the rest of my life what would it be um something with salmon in it wild salmon wild salmon yeah obviously yeah i was thinking whether i should say that because i'm worried about the fish supply and i don't need it that much but i do really love salmon maybe i say trout how do you cook your salmon oh multiple ways fry it bake it air fry it what flavors quite like um i quite a bit love smoked paprika on mine oh interesting yeah and a lot i also love tomato based milk i'm not a very creamy person but i like it all the tomato like romesco and all that type of thing interesting i'm much more of an asian salmon guy ginger that lime yeah that kind of garlicky oh yeah nice that's my go-to um all right one health hack to you health hack you've learned and you now live by um one health hack i've learned oh gosh that's a lot i'm gonna say something really simple because i think it's simple but i don't think enough enough of us are aware of it hydration amazing so for me just having a water bottle or a queue of water tells my brain to drink whereas if i before i wouldn't have it around me especially when i was on set so i would go like hours without drinking and when your thirst mechanisms switch on you're already two percent dehydrated so you should never really feel thirsty because that also means you're already on the way to dehydration so for me like a lot of people confuse and i've also done this a lot confuse our hunger signals with thirst signals yeah and so a lot of us can overeat but we're actually just really thirsty and we're craving the water from the food so for me like one of the biggest things is it's just constant hydration like huge hydration in the morning when i wake up like you'll see i have my water bottle with me now i could carry it with me everywhere and I think because it's so simple and it's free we don't talk about it enough but I actually don't believe that most of us drink enough water so that's a health hack.

1:15:36Very good I mean I totally agree with you it's so fundamental water and sleep are probably the two that are the easiest the most free non-sexy health tips but so fundamental and most of us create a ritual around coffee but then never get anywhere near the water yeah exactly and it's a diuretic so coffee's a diuretic so explain to people what that is oh it makes your frequency of p increase so yeah you go to the loo more so it can doesn't make you dehydrated but it does increase the amount of times you go to the loo so if you're not drinking enough water then you're more likely to become dehydrated all coffee and no water doesn't make for a good combo it's not and also stress hormones i always feel way better if i have my coffee with a like glass of water or i have tonic but you know whatever just i need that hydration and the coffee those two combined i always feel way better than just one on there yeah because you're like refueling your brain with all the fluids that you need our body needs water to survive so one thing that we literally can't survive without so amazing essential well thanks for coming in today sir it was a wonderful conversation.

1:16:45I was fascinated to hear all about your modeling stories, but then most importantly about food and compassion and the psychology that goes with it. I think it's super interesting and I think a lot of people would have got some good value out of that. So thank you for sharing and thanks for coming. Thanks for having me.

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