A Doctor’s guide to eating for your health (a full food reset with Dr Rupy)

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1:09Grace Beverley: what is up i'm grace beverly and welcome back to working hard the podcast shared guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice

1:23Grace Beverley: what is up and welcome back to working hard today i'm sitting down with dr rupee who is a medical doctor who specializes in food and nutrition for a full doctor-backed nutrition reset. We got super, super granular on things. So things like ultra-processed foods, whether they really deserve the reputation they've got, why we've got breakfast all wrong, why all fats aren't equal, and the truth about protein and fiber. The real truth, not necessarily the truth you're hearing every day on TikTok. And I think as I've been getting ready to become a mom for the first time, this felt like even better timing because I've been spending a lot of time in this pregnancy rethinking my relationship with food, what I am eating, what I should be eating right now, whether any of that can help me recover after birth.

2:07Grace Beverley: And so I wanted to touch on that specifically pregnancy nutrition and postpartum nutrition with Dr. Rupi at the end for a bit as well. A little background story for you. I actually met Dr. Rupi through working together at Hyde Foods where he is the scientific ambassador and I am the co-owner and I remember actually his backing of the company was what got me really interested in the first place because he is so on it with his nutrition and very like bullshit free approach to what we should and shouldn't be eating and what we should and shouldn't be demonizing and the fact that he had supported this ready meals company made me be like this must be entirely different to what I see ready meals as.

2:45Grace Beverley: As someone who personally does eat ready meals pretty much every day in and around the office as someone who just like has to grab things really easily. So he was actually the reason that made me think, God, this must actually be really good. Like this must be exactly what a doctor would want from ready meals. So we started working together then. And after chatting to him a few times, I just kind of kept thinking that I needed to sit down and pick his brain properly on here, because he's one of the only people I've come across who very much does this without making you feel more anxious than when you started, while still giving you the full picture.

3:18Grace Beverley: So I am very excited for you to hear this episode. Before we get into it, though, if you please make sure you're following the podcast wherever you are listening to this. This means that every single Monday morning, you are going to have our episode in your feed. And it's also what allows us to keep this podcast completely free for you to listen to every single week.

3:39Grace Beverley: Dr. Rupi, are you currently more working hard of hardly working so I've curated my work to feel like play so I feel like I don't work that hard at all but if you look at my outputs I'm constantly working I love the grind I love what I do and I think it's just testament to me being passionate about the subject matter of helping people feel in control of their health which makes me feel like I'm just playing all day but I'm actually working pretty hard yeah I feel like that is the ideal like I always I always think that is kind of like the ultimate privilege like I I have that too and I feel like that I spent so much of my life trying to chase an idea of balance that had probably been pushed on me from external sources of like well you're not spending enough time on this and like are you partying enough and doing this and doing this and don't get me wrong I love my social life I love doing fun things all of that um but at the same time like if you can really enjoy work and if you have the privilege to be able to it just is the hack yeah like because if you can if you can feel like work is somewhat a game that you enjoy doing yeah yeah then it makes everything so much easier and i think it's like constructing it like a game so early in my career i feel like i was living a double life So I worked in the medical industry now for over 15 years as a doctor.

5:01I was doing A &E, general practice, a bit of ITU. But towards the latter part of that, I was also doing social media. I was building a brand. I was building the app, all that kind of stuff. So I was working as a GP full-time during the day and then ending it, top and tailing it with socials and content and all the rest of it. so i was working like crazy hours but i didn't feel it because it felt like fun for me and i think it's a dirty little secret of creators particularly where they have this ideal like um vision or like this ideal sort of perspective of balance but our lives are pretty imbalanced particularly in the early days and i think you know i want to speak a lot more honestly about that there is no balance and and and a lot of what you do particularly earlier on but i'm trying

5:48Grace Beverley: to inject a bit more balance particularly as i'm a dad now i strongly believe in the saying that to have extraordinary outputs you have to have extraordinary inputs so like to achieve extraordinary things you have to do extraordinary things like you can't expect to do what everyone else is doing and achieve a higher level to it unless you have an obscene amount of talent or privilege or like whatever it might be that would position you there it's being able to choose the parts of that that allow you to be able to as you say like engineer it almost like a game so that like I feel like my career is basically completely reverse engineered for the type of energy I exude and the type of work I enjoy and all of that and don't get me wrong there are shit days like particularly if you're running a business you're like what the fuck but actually it like being able to feel that way I think is yeah I think it's very lucky I think it's really fortunate like I've like the biggest piece of luck I've had in my life is actually the fact that I enjoy work.

6:46Yeah.

6:46Grace Beverley: Because if you enjoy work, then you can also enjoy earning money and do all of the things, like getting the good things out of what is seen as the bad thing. And did you actually, so you still felt this way when you were doing general practice and when you were doing A &E? Yeah. Really? Yeah, I loved it. I love the sort of like dopamine hits of like growth, of opportunity, you know, having this sort of like double life that gave me a lot of perspective of like where people are at and also like how I could sort of engineer my brand and, and, you know, genuinely help people in a different way. And I think, you know, on the subject of privilege, we all have so much privilege.

7:24And I think it's about leaning into that. So, you know, I've got two parents, I'm able-bodied, you know, I had great education. I got into med school. I, you know, have this work ethic that was probably instilled in me by my dad and my mom who, you know, have shown me literally the values and the virtue of hard work. And so these are all privileges that I feel like I need to capitalize on. And I think when we look at ourselves, we should recognize those privileges, but not in a negative way, but utilize that. That's energy, that's fuel. And I just really want more people to appreciate that.

8:00Grace Beverley: Yeah. So onto food, because I want to concentrate a lot of this episode on kind of the idea of eating for health and cutting through the social media noise because there was a lot and there's a lot of conflicting information um but also particularly at this time of year as people are coming into september i think a lot of people think of kind of getting their shit together a bit for the last quarter of the year um so So if you were to look at the idea of like a proper health reset or a food reset, where would you start for most people? It's a really good question. So I would say for most people, breakfast is the place where I would focus my energy.

8:45And the reason why is because on average, most breakfasts are high in refined carbohydrates, high in sugars. And the beauty of breakfast is that it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the day. And I really think it anchors your energy and your focus and all the rest of it. And it's just one thing that you have got a lot more control on. Sort of like making your bed at the start of the day, and you've got something to look forward to when you get back, and there's an order in your day. And so I would say people need to have more fiber and more protein at breakfast, because currently the cheap, convenient options are quite sugary.

9:19That leads to energy crashes. You're not satiating your body because you're not getting enough protein at the start of the day. and you've essentially come off a prolonged fast as well. So you want the availability of those amino acids to rebuild things like your muscles, ensure that you've got enough for your hormonal health and also your bone health and all the rest of it. And it triggers signs to your brain that you are full as well. So you're going to negate some of those cravings that a lot of people struggle with one morning and leads to bad decision-making later on. So I think if there's one meal, it would be breakfast.

9:53and if there's one strategy, it would be removing processed foods as much as possible. A large proportion of our diet, even more so in kids, is actually made up of processed foods. And we know that, again, they're low-protein, low-fiber, they're highly sugary, and they're engineered in a way to make you overeat them and to not satiate you as well, hence the low-protein and low-fiber.

10:17Grace Beverley: Yeah, and I want to come on to talk about ultra-processed foods in a bit. but one of the really interesting things that um i got from ultra process people yeah was actually that exact engineering like as in it's designed to make you hungry quicker yeah and it's like how the fuck do we outplay that like as in like how even if it's convenient even if it's hitting your protein goals like all of those different things it's like how can you outperform something that is literally engineered to make you hungry to make you eat more yeah um but on the breakfast point i think that's such a good point and it's so funny because like i feel like across my lifespan we've gone from breakfast being the most important meal of the day to breakfast not being that important and you should be intermittent fasting all the way back to okay breakfast is important but it's about what you have in breakfast so maybe not the like granolas and the that type stuff that's like highly sugary mainly carb-based zero protein like all of that and so i actually eat breakfast like a freak i think i'd be bullied if most people knew what i had for breakfast because I don't really eat eggs, but I do have high protein.

11:18Grace Beverley: So basically I eat what a normal person would eat for lunch or dinner. If I, for example, if I'm having like a hide meal, for example, I will have a normal one for my breakfast. I, my friends take the piss out of me so badly for this because they're constantly like, what are you doing? Like on my wedding day, my friend was like, oh, can I make you your breakfast today just to like take something off my plate? And I was like, yes, there's actually some mince she was like you're the first bride ever that's been like oh yeah could you just make me some like mince with this and this and i was like i know exactly please a little cottage pie but it has made the biggest difference like as someone who's had massive hormonal disruption it's made the biggest difference to like i could not do like it is a it isn't now such a non-negotiable And I find it so strange that even when I'm looking at all of the options, like grab and go, or even the high street, the preps and stuff like that, yeah, you can get an egg in a pot.

12:20Grace Beverley: But even then, it's like the hot, high-protein breakfast options are nowhere to be seen. And the culture is not changing, and I need it to change because your girl's struggling with her weird breakfast. breakfast yeah i mean like if you so we've been habituated and and sort of almost taught to think of breakfast as a sugary uh cereal or granola or whatever but actually when you look across the world and this is what i love about leaning into my experience as a general practitioner in london because i'm exposed to so many different cultures around the world sri lankan breakfast is like very savory it's idli it's like sambal it's like these lentils and you know you have fermented foods in there indian breakfast very similar thing you know i come my parents are from punjab and so a typical punjabi breakfast is greek or not greek yogurt but like you know proper typical indian yogurt which is very similar to greek yogurt uh again like spinach which is something that you probably have a lunch or dinner as well and like uh chapatis that are stuffed with potatoes we put paratas with stuffed paratas so you're getting like whole wheat proteins in there you're getting the proteins like casein in particular from the yogurt this is a satiating breakfast you look to korea or japan or mexico very similar they're all like savory breakfasts that have protein as the sort of anchor that's something that we've lost in the in the west because of this sort of push to convenience and commercialized exactly yeah and to and it's sort of reflective of the tastes that we have today which are very much sweet focused so i i think you're right like we need to i have leftovers rips all the time i always have i like if i'm having a salad for dinner like i am right now it's super hot i'll have that in the morning for breakfast with maybe some tuna or maybe some eggs or whatever you know we have savory flapjacks we have there's so many different things that i would have for breakfast that people would think that's just super odd hurry for breakfast it's a thing i'm trying to make it a thing as well but yeah so um which one is it the hide curry one i i honestly my friend said to me the other day she was like you actually can't post your breakfast on your story ever because like you will lose followers like you should make it real because like that i think is it's so reflective of like how we are designed to eat we are designed to have a good sort of savory this whole idea of breakfast being sweet is a complete fabrication like we we're not we don't use if you think back to even in england like 200 years ago do you think they were having cereals and all that kind of stuff yeah they were just having like whatever food they had was cabbage whether it was potatoes or whatever like that's what we would have for breakfast it's a complete sort of i mean i'm not a conspiracy theorist but like the the whole uh engineering of food you know to hit that bliss point which is this perfect balance of sweet salt and fat that leads you to overeat that doesn't satiate you that's purely as a as a product of like profit maximization from a company so if you're a company you're trying to sell more of your product it's obvious that that would be the direction of travel and i think we just need to educate ourselves and like why these products exist and make educated uh um choices on what is actually beneficial for how our bodies are evolved and that is having like shepherd's pie for breakfast like you know protein whether it's mint uh mints or tempeh or tofu good quality greens and good quality fibers that you get from whole grains and pulses yeah i'm gonna start bullying for us to get a good like a you know full action like don't bully me breakfast yeah yeah yeah you know is appropriate yeah yeah still is hitting those things because it's like i don't get it because i know it's right but i can't find it anywhere like genuinely like on the if i'm on the go yeah or like at an airport or something like i you can't find it yeah the only option like the closest options would be sausages and eggs and and like the sausages in themselves like are yeah quite processed like all of this like they're not gonna be even though they're protein they're not gonna be the best protein source all of this like i would still rather have something a little bit more like you know kind of whole yeah um and then the eggs i just don't react that well to eggs so it's like that's what's really shooting me in the foot in my brain in my breakfast yeah yeah like a savory breakfast for most people particularly in the uk is eggs And if you haven't, I mean, a lot of people are intolerant to eggs, as they are dairy as well.

16:44So if you take eggs out of the equation, it can be quite difficult. So I have this overnight oats recipe that is minimal oats, actually. It's like a couple of tablespoons of oats, and then we bulk it with flaxseed, chia. Sometimes we add a protein powder, but otherwise we just add shelled hemp seeds. That's like your foundational base. and then you add flavors like raw cacao powder, whatever milk you want, maybe some dried fruit like raisins for sweetness. We don't tend to add any refined sugar like maple syrup or date syrup or honey. And then we'd like have that with some frozen fruit. Like you're getting protein, you're getting fiber and you're getting all the diversity of ingredients that are going to be great for your gut microbiome too.

17:28Grace Beverley: And so why is it that we're told that like some foods or food groups or aspects of foods are good for us and then we're often told like the absolute opposite the ones i can think of in my head are things like fats yeah which when i was growing up i was like no zero percent fat everywhere yeah even like salt yeah like we were told that you should be reducing your salt because of all of the medical issues yeah however i if i am right in thinking there are far more issues with having too low sodium than there are with too high sodium like obviously you shouldn't be sure you don't need your mcdonald's chips but like as in the demonization of individual ingredients or components like how do how and why do we sway from one side to the other well i think we're very simple beings and we love a story and we want things to be black and white and unfortunately with biology i.e ourselves and particularly within nutrition where we're dealing with imperfect information because the quality of studies aren't fantastic as they are with perhaps supplements or drugs, this is where there's a lot of confusion.

18:38So addressing some of the things that you just talked about, fat is really nuanced. So fat is not just one thing. Fat can be broken down into monounsaturated fatty acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and saturated fatty acids, broadly speaking. But even within those categories, there are different carbon chain links. So there are certain saturated fats that actually might be cardio neutral or even cardio protective. So some of the sap fats that you find in dark chocolate, I don't know if you're a chocolate fan.

19:07Grace Beverley: I am. I'm a massive chocolate fan. I was very pleased to hear about stearic acid being a sap fat in chocolate that is actually potentially beneficial for your heart health, which is why you see an association between good quality chocolate consumption and improvements in cardiovascular biomarkets of health. So there's an example of nuance. But if you look at sat fat that you largely find in, say, red meat, for example, then that potentially has a lipid raising effect. And we know that the higher your cholesterol levels, particularly something called A per B, is certainly associated with a higher rate of cardiovascular disease, so TBD and heart attacks and all the rest of it.

19:49So that's an example of units but we've just lumped all fat together and so that's you know it's very easy for us say just avoid fat but there are certain fats are actually beneficial and there are certain fats that we want to try and steer clear of same thing with salt i mean like salt most of us consume way too much salt in the form of ultra processed foods if you add a bit of salt but you're also getting enough potassium in your food from whole foods like dark meaty vegetables and beets and all the rest of it then salt tends to be less of an issue. The issue is most people are not consuming enough of those dark green, even vegetables in their diet and other whole foods, fruits and vegetables.

20:27And then the same thing, what was the other thing you talked about? That was sugar. So the other thing I was talking about was sugar. So sugar in the form of fruit, great. You get polyphenols, you get fiber. It still has the same fruit sugar in it. As soon as you process that and you take out the fructose and you concentrate that in something like agave syrup, this has the same biological effect as regular table sugar. And so it mainlines to your liver. And if you eat that in excess, you're going to have the same issues. Still the same sugar, but you're packaging it in a whole food. So it's a very simple principle.

21:04You want to be looking for one ingredient foods and trying to move along the spectrum towards whole foods as much as possible and minimize processed foods, because this is where you get into the danger of like over consuming sugar salts and and certain

21:19Grace Beverley: fats as well and off the back of that then if anyone's listening to this feeling like completely overwhelmed by all the different information that they're hearing from all different sources what would you recommend as maybe three things that they can actually do food wise to move the leader when it comes to their long-term health yeah so so i used to like in my former books i used to really over complicate it by talking about mitochondrial health and chronobiology when you should be eating and all these different fasting methods and why they might eat and now i sort of really simplified it into three core principles of healthy eating so one is getting enough protein um and you want to get the your protein from whole foods as much as possible and lean animal-based proteins.

22:08So chicken, fish, and even red meat, as long as it's lean, I don't have that much of an issue with whatsoever. Eggs and Greek yogurt and other forms of yogurt, great, but also lean into the plant-based proteins. So things like tempeh and tofu, that mild processing is enough to make those proteins a lot more bioavailable to the individual. So I think getting a core protein at every meal anchors your body. and I think we all need to slightly eat more protein, but particularly from whole foods. The second thing is eating gut-friendly ingredients. And that can be summarized in one word, which is fiber.

22:45You want to avoid getting your fiber from things like supplements and focus on getting them from whole foods. Fruits, vegetables, legumes, beans, and whole foods, these are all fantastic. And they've kind of fallen out of favor of our diet. The majority of people in the UK do not get enough fiber. And our recommendation is 30 grams per day, which I think is like the bare minimum should be eating like 40 50 grams plus you want to sort of like titrate that level up particularly if you are used to eating a low fiber diet on average most people are eating half of that like 15 to 16 grams and sorry just quickly why should we be

23:20Grace Beverley: aiming to get that fiber from whole foods rather than supplements so the reason why is because whole foods contain not just the fiber but also other polyphenols so things like fruit for example will have flavanols and other phytochemicals that your gut microbes also feed on. They also provide not just one type of fiber, they provide a diverse mixture of fiber. So instead of getting fiber from one source that's refined from like a wheat grain, you're getting a real diversity. And it's that diversity that's really important for your gut microbes because you have trillions of bugs, not just bacteria, but also viruses, fungi, nematodes, all largely concentrated in your large intestine about you know kilograms worth and they are like bored children you're going to find out about this soon um they need to be entertained and you need to always find like different things to entertain them with and they love finding different foods and like nibbling on these different things so you want to try and provide them as much diversity as possible sorry i'm baffled by the fact i have a kilogram worth of bugs yeah yeah so i got a few kilograms to baby yeah yeah i've got like kilograms of bugs is there any me left yeah like it's all just bugs and baby right and it's all over you as well it's in your mouth it's on your skin it's in your blood it's in your hair it's everywhere yeah we're just covered with bugs and we're like we've we've sort of um i mean there are some theories as to why uh allergies are becoming a lot more common intolerances there's something called the hygiene hypothesis so we've over sanitized our lives and we've lost the connection with the ground and we've sort of taken things out of our food that would have naturally been there.

24:57There's a trade-off though as well because we've made our food supply a lot safer.

25:01Grace Beverley: Of course. And so we're less likely to have foodborne pathogens. But the trade-off is we're not having some of those bugs that would have created B vitamins in our guts and that kind of stuff. And the other thing is antimicrobial agents. So antibiotics that came about, what? 70, 80 years ago now. Phenomenal for our health and well-being. Phenomenal in terms of getting rid of infectious disease and literally increasing our life expectancy. But the trade-off is, well, autoimmune conditions might be on the rise because of that. Intolerances, again, might be on the rise of that. Allergens, all the rest of it.

25:39And so it's all this fine balance of trying to figure out.

25:42Grace Beverley: So much of that is affected by the wider population rather than your individual choices. yeah yeah like you know antibiotic resistant bacteria or whatever is is largely due to how the population deals with antibiotics rather than you individually right yeah so how can we make decisions based on trying to because i find this allergen conversation the autoimmune conversation all of this so interesting because it is like i think it's so hard to ignore when you look at the amount of people with allergies now versus like it wasn't even really a thing even like 50 years ago. Like it wasn't anywhere near what it is now.

26:18Grace Beverley: So what can we do individually to, I guess, make our body as healthy as possible, but also I guess as least like, I don't know, I don't know what word I would use to describe it. As in like, maybe as least delicate as possible. Yeah, becoming more resilient. So it's kind of down to these principles. We talked about protein, talked about fiber, and fiber largely from whole foods gives you diversity and makes your gut microbiome a lot more robust because a large proportion of our immune cells are actually produced in our gut. And because we've seen a gradual decline in that diversity, that again could be one of the explanations as to why we're seeing a rise in things like autoimmunity and allergic conditions.

26:56The other thing is our gut microbiome are innately involved in sugar regulation, inflammation regulation, communication to our brain. like there's so much more to fiber and the gut microbiome than most people realize and this is why it was coined like forgotten organ in this bmj paper from like 20 years ago so fiber i think is like one way in which to make your body a lot more resilient which is why it's one of my core principles and the other thing is reducing inflammation which is a bit of a woolly term like your inflammation is sort of like your body's internal campfire you want it hot enough to like cook food on it and stay clear of pathogens and predators and all the rest of it.

27:41But you don't want it too hot that it causes damage in your body. And so having a general balance of anti-inflammatory foods, things like greens and bread foods and all these different elements that can be directly as well as indirectly anti-inflammatory, this is what you want to focus your diet around. And ultimately, that also means reducing sugar. We tend to eat way too much sugar and reducing ultra-processed foods that can also attack your gut microbiome by the additives and emulsifies that I'm sure we'll talk about later. So if you focus on those three elements and ask yourself every time you sit down, do I have enough protein in this meal?

28:18Are there ingredients that support my gut in this meal? And is the overall balance of this meal pro or anti-inflammatory? If you can answer positively to those three questions, you're looking at a really healthy plate of food that you should dive into. And I'm a real, you know, as a medical doctor and nutritionist, I'm a real big believer and what you choose to put on your plate being one of the most important health interventions that we make every single day. And so ensuring that it hits this balance is going to make sure to get the noise of nutrition science and all the rest of it. If you hit these three parameters, you're looking at a really healthy plate that's going to support your health and wellbeing and make you a lot more resilient.

28:54Grace Beverley: Yeah. No, I think there's a really, really good point and helpful and not too overwhelming. Hopefully. It's still a little overwhelming, but that's fine. There's just a lot of information. Yeah, it's a lot of info. I mean, protein, getting enough fiber, and then making sure you're removing ultra-processed foods, that's the top line. That's how I would explain it to someone in the clinic as well. And when it comes to strategies, like, okay, what does your breakfast look like? What does your lunch look like? What are examples of dinner? This is how I think we get into the nuance. Because I always say the science is complex.

29:30The solutions are simple. The implementation. that's the really hard bit. This is where people fall down.

29:36Grace Beverley: Yeah. Because you throw in kids, you throw in stress, you throw in financial insecurity, you throw in like all these other elements like cooking skills. And this is where people fall down. So it's the implementation, not the science or the solution. Yeah, no, absolutely. This episode is sponsored by Aerie. If you know me, you know that my philosophy is all about looking good and feeling good every single day. And that honestly comes down to the first layer. I'm talking about bras. If your bra is digging into your shoulder, or maybe it's riding up in the back, or you are dying to take it off at the end of the day, then that bra is not the right fit.

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30:59Grace Beverley: And talking of ultra-processed foods, obviously this has become probably the most discussed topic in nutrition right now, I would say. Where, as a summary, do you stand on the debate? So the issue with ultra-processed foods is that we don't really have a very good definition of it. So we have something called the NOVA classification that groups them into four core groups. Like on one side, you've got a whole very easily recognizable ingredient. Let's just call it a potato. It's completely unprocessed. And on one other end of the spectrum, you've got something like a refined potato starch, which is completely different to what the original ingredient looks like.

31:43But in the middle, you've got all these like gray areas. So cheese is technically a processed product because it's gone through a number of processes that's turned it from the meal. sheep's milk goat's milk into the product that we we know and love but you know that doesn't necessarily mean it's unhealthy in fact some cheese has proven to be potentially healthy for us same thing with like tempeh tempeh has gone through a fermentation process and technically that that's sort of a processed food particularly if you add a bit of flavoring to it like miso soy sauce but the whole fermentation process has made the legumes that you're using a lot more available in terms of the protein and the protein amount has gone up.

32:27So that's technically a bit more healthy. And so there's a whole lot of gray area in the middle of this classification. So even nutrition scientists can't really define exactly what an ultra-precious food is. So what do we do? A very simple strategy that I always point people towards is try and make sure that you're using one ingredient foods as much as possible. So go for the whole potato, the whole tomato. Go for the whole rocket leaf and then mix those and make your own meal scratch as much as possible. And when you do have to buy something from the store, as a general principle, try and get in the habit of looking at the ingredients list.

33:06You should be able to recognize all the ingredients. You should be able to isolate whether it's using emulsifiers or additives or any other enhances for texture and flavor. And as a general rule of thumb, I would avoid those as much as possible. Again, there's nuance to this conversation. There are nutrition scientists that would say, look, if it's got soy lecithin in it, it's not actually that bad as an additive, and it's actually doing more good than harm. I get it, but most people are not going to be able to recognize the difference between soy lecithin and polysorbate 80. As a rule of thumb, just avoid those as much as possible and then the other thing is look at the nutritional like numbers so get into the habit of recognizing how much added sugar is in your product and that should be less than five grams per portion and so if you if you sort of get into the habit of doing those things you'd be avoiding ultra processed foods as much as possible without getting into the sort of scientific debate and pontificating about whether something is truly ultra processed or not.

34:09Grace Beverley: Sure. And a question I have on that then is because the protein conversation has become so big and we should be eating more protein and most people aren't getting enough and all of that, a lot of the protein-rich foods that are advertised here, there, and everywhere are also ultra-processed foods. Of course, there are whole versions, but when we're talking about convenience, lots of people mostly out and about in the day got their jobs grabbing things here and there. What should we be doing about that? Like, as in like, is it better to get the protein or is it better to avoid the ultra processed foods?

34:45It's a really good question. So like when you go out and you go to a supermarket and you see a bottle and it's like high protein, or you see a bar and it's like high protein. When you look at the ingredients, you should be able to recognize whether they've just gamified this whole process. And I think protein and fiber is coming up now. It's actually overtaking protein as a search term on Google. A lot of companies are gamifying this and they're just simply adding a protein powder or a protein isolate from pea or whey or chicory root that can boost the fiber content of a bar just to give the impression that this is a healthier product they'll charge you more for that as well again you want to get into the habit of reading the ingredients isolating what they're doing don't be fooled and go for one ingredients options where possible and if you're buying something like a product like hide meals, for example, you should be able to recognize exactly what's in it.

35:39And then if you don't know what's in the sauce, flip the pack and read the ingredients of the sauce. There will not be, there should not be additives, emulsifiers, sugars, all that kind of stuff that's added to it. And so if we get into the habit of these health reflexes and we educate ourselves on what the playbook is from big food and manufacturers, then we can steer clear of these ultra-processed foods. as a general rule like you know if you're eating a bar or you're eating a milkshake or something that pick it off the battery exactly yeah you're not picking it off the the one ingredient trio what are good options then for protein on the go so protein on the go is a it's a tough one um i tend to and it's gonna sound super boring but i always have like nuts and seeds with me i always make my own trail mix i make it with like 80 dark chocolate raisins and like my go-to right now are almonds because they tend to be high in protein fiber obviously not in this heat because it would melt everywhere uh i tend please i have my uh i have my chocolate covered i do okay great seeds over there yeah and i make i make them from scratch as well like this is bark that we make at home we just whack it into the oven or air fryer with just like nuts and seeds and then you make your own sort of like rather than going bar i make these savory flapjacks that i prep ahead loads of stuff um but then you know if i'm on the go and i'm not having a main meal i sort of do ask myself am i actually hungry on my board or am i just stressed or am i eating something because i've seen an advert for like a burger and suddenly i've got like a hangering like you know so i i I kind of try and keep those moments clear because there is some evidence that you don't want to constantly graze all day long because it keeps your gut working on overtime.

37:30And every time you eat food, your gut has to sort of process that food and open up the gut lining ever so slightly to allow nutrients to go in and go into your bloodstream and absorb all the rest of it. And in that opening, it is a mild inflammatory process that means that your immune system is slightly triggered as well, completely normal. But you want to maintain those periods of time where your gut is working to mealtime, but you're not stressed, you're not running around all the rest of it. If you consistently do this, which used to be the fashion a few years ago, like just graze all day. If you consistently do this, your gut is working overtime.

38:10And it's no wonder that some people, if they do this for a long period of time, might fall into the trap of like having a very low level of inflammation all day long. So this is something I want people to avoid as well.

38:23Grace Beverley: Unless you're pregnant with lots of indigestion. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Which is something my wife was like, no, I need to graze all day long. Yeah. I'm still, like, I've still not adapted to that yet. I'm still doing the, like, bigger meals thing, but as in just, like, normal meals and then a few snacks in there. But as soon as I have, like, a too big meal, I'm like, fuck's sake. Like, you've really fucked yourself for the day. I think the other thing is, like, I do like protein shakes, but I make them from scratch. So I'm lucky that, you know, in my studio, we have a NutriBullet, so there's all the kitchen gadgets.

38:52But if I know I'm going to be around, like on the go that day and I need something, then I'll make it first thing in the morning in five minutes and I'll make it from Whole Foods. So it'll be a one ingredient peanut butter, it'll be shelled hemp seeds, it'll be something like cacao. It'll be maybe a one ingredient protein powder that could be whey or like a blend of pea and pumpkin, berries uh maybe some cacao water blend it up and i put that into a thermos with an ice cube so it just keeps it fresh the whole day so that's my grab-and-go shape because otherwise you're going to grab something from the supermarket and they've just used some cheap filler a whole bunch of sweeteners a multi-vitamin that they've just like a 2p multi-vitamin that poured in so all of a sudden 26 vitamins and minerals for your whole day right isn't that amazing and a high amount of protein and that's it it's just you're just buying cheap fillers

39:46Grace Beverley: yeah okay so really interesting then because i've i've heard you speak about protein powders a few times i since going on a kind of anti-inflammatory journey i have tended to avoid having protein powder every day yes um obviously it's sometimes needed supplement but is it needed supplement so like would you recommend someone take a protein powder as some part of their day if that's going to be the only way they're going to hit a good protein goal? It's not ideal. Okay. It's really not ideal. I would always encourage people to get their proteins from whole sources as much as possible. So things we talked about, chicken, fish, eggs, tofu, tempeh, all that kind of stuff.

40:26If you really struggle to get your protein in, maybe that's where you might want to introduce a protein powder. The issue I have with protein powders is that the majority in the market are really poor quality. They're not tested third party for things like heavy metals. There is like a bit of a scandal at the moment with a lot of these whey proteins that have high amounts of lead and cadmium. So you want to be avoiding that for obvious reasons, particularly if you're pregnant. So you want to make sure that your manufacturer has got a third party certificate on their website that demonstrates this has been tested.

41:00And the other thing is like the additives, the sweeteners that make it taste like banoffee pie or whatever. like these over a long period of time i'm a pragmatist i don't think that these are going to be great for your gut everything that we know about additives and synthetics and how they interact with each other of which there is not too much that is well known i'm going to be honest about that um i i would just err on the side of caution so i try and avoid those as a daily

41:29Grace Beverley: so if you were buying a protein powder what would you be looking for one ingredient or two or three if you're looking for a plant-based protein powder. One that has a good amount of leucine in, so this should do a breakdown of all the different amino acids on the back. And one that is third-party tested to be free of heavy metals. There's also a certification in the States, I believe it's NSF. So if you're buying an American brand, NSF certification is usually the highest tier. So it should be free of some of those heavy metals as well. It's funny, since having gone to America and lived there for a while, I'm terrified of anything American food related.

42:03Grace Beverley: like as in i i genuinely and maybe this is a controversial opinion i don't understand why people are not rioting in the streets in america for how bad the food is yeah just because i don't mean like taste i don't mean all of this although like a lot of it has been ripped of it yeah i mean genuinely the fact that and again i am not a conspiracy theorist the fact that you're paying for your health care yeah totally and on the other side of the scale you literally cannot even buy an apple in a supermarket that has not been sprayed with so much shit that is going to inflame your body to lead to you paying for healthcare it literally like it's it's my roman empire like i'll rant about it till the cows come home it is quite great i mean so we were in la for a month last year i was doing a podcast tour and we lived there for like a month that we want to experience and just see like you know whether we could eventually potentially maybe live there and the food was a big sticking point for me i mean there's loads of other things that's wrong but like the food for me even though we went to some of the best stores i went to sprouts we went to whole foods went to farmers markets like there was something that wasn't quite right and maybe it's because my gut is habituated to you know the riverhood box that we we love here and and all the other foods that we we cook from scratch and like the relationship we have with our fishmongers and butchers but like there was something off and then when you went to some of the stores i don't know if i can say the name but like some of the like ultimate health destination stores i wonder what you're talking about and you and you look at some of the ingredients that they're like not the ingredients that some of the brands and you just see fructose uh this sort of serum this i was like how is this even allowed like who's doing the vetting no genuinely like it doesn't make any sense it honestly and it i could feel it there has not been one time there were a few years where because we were doing our us expansion at tala i was in the us every month and there was not one time i did not and i consider myself a resilient person i've not been sick once this year i don't like i i touch wood yeah not as i give birth um but like as in i it sucks me up like as in like it truly causes me some real issues and it's like how the thing like i i honestly think it is a it is such a scandal like it's such a privilege to be european and have the like european laws around food which are amazing um and god forbid we lose those as part of our brexit but like it just I think about it so much I think about the like no wonder people struggle with their health so much no wonder people are spending so much on their health bills no wonder like it if I can't go there for a week without kind of being like oh god I feel like I'm wading through water every day because I'm literally just so fatigued or whatever it might be it's anyway it's a whole other topic yeah especially when you eat out I think we you know we we stayed there and we were able to cook for ourselves and all the rest of it so we're able to mitigate any of that as much as that stuff as we could but even like the fact that your health reflex had to be even more like heightened you know it's just it's just testament to how this like the like how privileged we are to be in europe to the point you know we have a lot of protections our water's like some of the safest in the world just from straight from the tap i know people don't like the taste of it it's funniness and all the rest of it but like in general like we're doing very good in the in the uk and the fact that we have this incredible universal healthcare system so yeah we've got a lot to be grateful for yeah no absolutely um and so talking about the gut then there's a lot of noise about having like 30 different plants a week for example um where do you stand on that how does it hold up versus your kind of experience of it yeah i think in general it's a it's a good thing to be aware of but i wouldn't want to over fixate on it and the reason why is because this research actually comes from an american lab uh the american gut project it's the night lab and what they showed was on average those who ate 30 different plants a week there was an association with that better health outcomes and better diversity within their gut microbiome so it was an association it isn't pointing to the fact that if i have you know a quarter teaspoon of different herbs and spices and just a quarter of an apple and a quarter of a pepper and all the rest of it every single week, I'm suddenly going to have those magical outcomes.

46:28I think what it was an indicator of was exactly what I was saying with point number two in terms of fiber. We want to try and get high fiber variety of different ingredients into your diet as much as possible. So I think in general, the idea is rather than a number of getting 30 different plants a week, just think about trying to get variety as much as possible in your day and i have this thing called bbgs every single day so you want to get berries beans greens seeds and nuts every single day so bbgs every single day try and get like ibs even not this does not feel like probably not ibs friendly but for a lot of people particularly who might feel that they have ibs but actually they're just on a low fiber diet so whenever they have something that's high fiber immediately the the symptoms are here so you want to titrate up if you're going from a low fiber diet like if your diet is peppered with you know a bit of mcdonald's and a bit of like you know these bars and stuff and actually when you do the math you're you're actually eating on average 15 grams of fiber per day and then you suddenly have like a bean stew like yeah of course you've got my it's like it's the equivalent of going to the gym having not been to the gym for a year and then trying to deadlift your own weight like you're going to get injured it's the same thing when your gut microbiome they they need to be coaxed they need to be sort of like welcomed to bear and so there's a number of different strategies that we talked about on the Dr.

47:53Christian podcast but one of the things that I love is just having starting with rinsed a teaspoon of beans every single day just just as like a nice way to increase the resilience of your gut microbiome and so when you have bbts every single day berries could be a handful of berries beans could be like a small handful of cooked beans any beans you like carlin peas or butter beans or white beans whatever getting your greens in these could be kale could be swiss chard it could be whatever green you'd like rocket spinach and then nuts and seeds they're just powerhouse ingredients nuts and seeds so many studies looking at how they're cardioprotective they're great for your brain they're good in terms of gut microbiome benefits they add fiber they're full of protein I mean, yes, they have a lot of calories because they're high in fat, but these are the kind of fats that we want to get into our diet.

48:44And there's also nuance with this whole calorie in, calorie out sort of calculation as well. So yeah, PBGs every single day, I think is sort of like a better thing to focus on rather than like, I've got to hit 30 plants a week, which sounds a bit overwhelming as well.

48:59Grace Beverley: Yeah, taking off your plant by the day. Yeah, yeah. As an aside, have you tried bold beans? Oh, I love bold beans. Oh my God, that's so good. They're great. I'm obsessed with them. Yeah, they're really good. I'm so glad that there's a cool brand that is bringing beans back and actually diving into the archives of beans that we have in the UK. Like Hodmer Dodds is another great company that champion beans that otherwise people don't know about, like Harlem Peas. You know, we grow quinoa in the UK. I know that's more of a South American kind of staple, but we literally grow corn. We grow quinoa.

49:32We grow so many different ingredients. And this is great for a market. it's so good so we need to lean it's like uk-centric yeah oh i like that i really like

49:41Grace Beverley: that um and how much of a quick fix is getting your gut in the right place because i think there's a lot of talk about it and there's a lot of kind of reset type content how quick would it actually be to get your gut into a good place if it's maybe just something you haven't been paying attention to so there's real nuance to this conversation so i'll answer it in two ways scientifically, your gut microbiome can radically shift within days. Some people even say hours. I think what you eat, particularly, actually no, it's probably hours actually, because there's something called the secondary meal effect.

50:17So if I have a high fiber meal, that will shift my gut microbiome in a way that makes me feel fuller for the next meal. So when you have high fiber for breakfast, you're naturally going to eat less energy for the remainder of your meal is because you've satiated yourself. So that's one thing. There's also this really interesting study where they swapped diets from Africans in South Africa living in rural areas where they were having a traditional sort of diet, which has pulses and mainly whole foods. And they swapped diets with African-Americans who are largely having an American ultra-processed diet.

50:54And just after two weeks, they saw these phenomenal shifts in their gut microbiome, but also health parameters as well. So within a couple of weeks, you can genuinely shift your gut microbiome to have a more favorable profile. Here's the nuance. The health of your gut is not just determined by what you eat. It's determined by how you sleep, how you move, stress levels, what you drink as well, how you breathe, speed at which you eat. There are so many different things that can lead people to have gut issues, whether that's bloating, IBS type symptoms, allergies, all these different things. And so I don't want people to lean into, if I just change my diet, I'm going to change my gut because your gut is sensitive to so many other parameters within your life.

51:44We had a really good conversation with Dr. Rabia on the podcast, who is a gastroconsultant, but she also did her PhD at the Wingate. And her entire PhD was all about how we breathe and how that affects bloating. And how we breathe and how we consume food and the state of which we consume food can be just as impactful as the food that we consume as well.

52:08Grace Beverley: I've unfortunately heard this before. As a shoveler, I'm really disappointed it's coming up again. We've all been there. I mean, like, you know, when I was working at A &E, you had to shovel. There was no, there's no, you had to eat on the go and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And that is how food is consumed in this house. I get it. I get it. And now, like, as a chronic shoveler myself, before shoveling food into my, into my mouth, when I sit down at my desk, particularly at dinner, like dinner between me and my wife is really protected. We try and eat with our kid as much as possible, but invariably we, we tend to eat a little bit later.

52:44and I try and like take a few breaths and just put my hands on my ribcage here and just breathe into my diaphragm. So my hands should be able to like widen. So if I take a deep breath through my nose, I should be able to breathe into my diaphragm and feel my hands literally like pulling apart. And I'll do that five times before pick up my fork or spoon before eating. And just that triggers to your brain like, okay, it's time to calm down and we're going to change our state of mind before we consume food. And that has a definitive effect on how that food is going to be interacting with your gut.

53:23Grace Beverley: That's so interesting because I feel like that's something that's actually not talked about a lot at all. We're looking for fixes with something that we can control, right? Yeah. Like just let me eat that and then it'll fix this. And actually we need to be a lot more intuitive and step back out of ourselves a bit and just think about all the other things that have an influence. and I got my goodbye. Yeah. And I helped. Hey guys, it's Mary from Two Judgy Girls. This episode is sponsored by Aerie. If you're counting down the minutes until you take your bra off when you get home, it's probably the wrong bra.

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54:30Grace Beverley: And I want to come on to a topic now that is entirely selfish. and ideally in an ideal world i would have loved to do a full episode like full separate episode on this um but time is of the essence both mine and yours and someone down here so you know don't know a lot of lead time whatever um i want to talk about pregnancy and postpartum nutrition okay um i feel like pregnancy as a whole anyway you're very overwhelmed you're trying to do everything right you're reading a lot of different things yeah some people are saying you're eating for two some people are saying oh amazing it's the one time in your life you can eat whatever you want yeah women haven't been able to do that the rest of the time um and then you have some people saying you know you've got to completely avoid this all of that what actually matters most when it comes to pregnancy nutrition i i think about this through the lens of um not eating for two but nourishing for two.

55:25So when I think about the principles of healthy eating, it's still definitely getting enough protein. Your protein needs actually do increase during pregnancy and breastfeeding as well if you choose to breastfeed. So this is something to be very aware of. Fiber, you're not just feeding your own gut microbiome. Eventually you are going to be feeding for the child's gut microbiome as well. The first thousand days is very important for shaping that so that comes a little bit later um and then in terms of like uh all the other elements that you've probably heard of before getting enough iron-rich foods in things like vitamin c combined with those iron-rich foods like um dark green leafy vegetables and citrus this would help with the absorption of iron and making sure that you are taking folate-rich foods as well like b vitamins.

56:14I mean, in the UK, we do have supplementation guidelines now. Those are genuinely the best things. Getting enough energy into your day as well. And this is going to be very personal because depending on whether you're nauseous, you've got complications, this is going to have an impact on whether you are able to nourish yourself at all. I would say in times where you do feel nauseous, don't overthink it because the nausea is going to prevent you from consuming the last thing you want to do is spiral into this negative self-talk like i'm not giving enough for my baby i'm not giving enough for my child and i'm a bad parent because of because i i understand obviously i have not gone through that person's process personally but as someone who is married to someone who's very fastidious about what they eat and how they work out i can see this having a negative effect as well so i would say protein getting a fiber reducing a reliance on ultra-processed foods, we're also having fun with it as well.

57:15This is a time where you're going to have a different relationship with food. Some of the people that I've come across, not only across the clinic desk, but also in my personal life, they've gone off broccoli.

57:27Grace Beverley: Oh, I've gone off broccoli? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so weird. I've completely gone off broccoli. I used to go off broccoli. And I don't have a good explanation for that. There is this hypothesis that your body is craving certain nutrients, which is why it changes its preference from bitter foods to sweeter foods. You have these hunger patterns. The French have this incredible way of leaning into the intuition of the mother and the intuition of the child and stuff. We don't have that so much in the UK and the US. We want rules, and we want to know exactly what we should be doing every single day, exact amounts of stuff.

58:03Actually, I think we need to be a lot more intuitive with ourselves. But the two things I would say is definitely those. And omega-3 rich foods as well. So omega-3 you can definitely get in supplementation from fish oil, but also algae. You can get some omega-3 in the short chain from walnuts and almonds. The best sources are fish. And then we have issues with fish, particularly pregnancy. Smaller fish are better because they're not as concentrated in some of the things that you want to make sure you get out of your diet. again looking for third bite testing is there there is another brand i think it's called fish forever and they do uh a lot more work in terms of sourcing and you can get smaller fish like sardines and herring and uh anchovies that are less likely to have some of the heavy metals in

58:55Grace Beverley: there as well and is there anything that i can be eating now that will genuinely help my recovery post birth there isn't anything that i can point to in the evidence base that will be like oh if you eat this your recovery is going to be better but protein is definitely very very important and i would say that particularly during breastfeeding as well if you choose to breastfeed protein is going to be like very very important i think this is where a lot of people fall down they don't have enough of this and more macronutrient because your needs do i mean it'll be double the recommendation of the rda so i always look to get 1.4 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight for postpartum postpartum it's so hard i know no i was gonna say um wait before or after because it's gonna be very different yeah i should have put this that's a very good point uh ideal body weight so your your general body weight before pregnancy just this is the sort of uh number that you should be game okay that's really interesting because i think that you know like i mean i'm very close now so i'm at the stage where yeah you know i'm looking at even things like the freezer meals and um preparing kind of like snacks to have ready and all of that and it's so obviously like all of the most convenient things particularly if they are less processed they are not high-end protein so it's that's really interesting for me to know that actually like the rest of the time i need to be making sure that like all of my meals totally of high very high protein that is honestly one of the biggest hacks that me and my wife did we made loads of freezer meals i'm going to plug my own app here but so in the doctor's kitchen app we have um freezer meals and we make sure that they're high in fiber and high in protein because a lot of freezer meals are ready-made meals not high enough in protein and we like we we did this green bean like chicken stew we have this other cannabinoids being one that we put some mints in and we make them into these blocks and then we just froze them and put them into the freezer and you just like warm them up i've actually done a youtube video about how i do this whole process but that saved us because you won't even if you've got help at home grandparents and the rest of it for a privilege to have all these different things your nutrition does for it it's like the last thing you think about because you're just constantly thinking about baby and so freeze meals that you make and you bulk up and you just have stocked in your freezer.

1:01:16It's one of the best gifts as well. Yeah. So people are looking to gift something.

1:01:19Grace Beverley: Those are always the gifts I send people post-birth. Don't put another name blanket. Yeah, yeah. No one needs another one of those. They're great. I get it. But like, send freezer meals. Make them for yourself. Like, you know, obviously make sure they're clean and everything. You know, like freeze them and then send them because they're like, that's the best gift. So my next question was actually going to be around what freezer meals I should be prepping now. So you'd recommend kind of, what would they be called if you're doing them in blocks? They're like freezer blocks, is what we call them.

1:01:49So one that I made on YouTube the other day was a base of curry chickpeas. It was like turmeric and cumin. We had onion in there, some green pepper. You fry that up. You add your chickpeas, you add a different lentil, and then you add some stewed chicken and then coconut milk. bring that to temperature so the chickens cook through and then you pour that into these molds so there's this brand called um they're called super cubes and so they're these big like molds and you pour those in and then you shove them into the freezer and when they're set you can just pop them out like this like brick it's literally a brick i've seen this before i didn't realize it was a thing they're amazing honestly they're amazing like i was really you just have it with like rice or like yeah right on its own yeah i have them on the own because that is essentially a complete meal you've got beans and then you've got i put spinach in there as well and you've got your protein and so you can literally just put that into a pan lid on with a little bit of boiling water and it just bubbles through and it's great and we still use them even now but like that prepped wonderful and it's really good for postpartum because like i was saying it's got it's got your protein it's got your fiber yeah and it's got these anti-inflammatory uh spices as well as the greens as well that is going to be my first mat leave activity i'll

1:03:06Grace Beverley: send you the video please do and i will send it on to my husband and obviously there's a lot of pressure on women to bounce back yeah bounce back yeah this whole yeah which is ridiculous in many many ways yeah um what would you recommend to women who are kind of feeling that pressure you know what so as the husband of someone who bounced back and she my wife is one of these annoying women who she won't mind me saying this i'm gonna hate her i can tell already within six weeks she was like ow and like you know killing it everything like so i had the baby like going back into a regime and all this kind of yeah she couldn't go back to pilates because like it takes a little bit longer she had a c-section so she's one of these people that that did bounce back and when i look at her through the lens of what were the things that she did to quote unquote bounce back which i know is a horrible term she exercised as much as possible um and she was very intuitive and aware of like the importance of weight training and she annotated what she did to her weight training towards the end as well so she wasn't training all the way up until obviously uh delivery day but she was doing as much movement as possible again want to recognize privilege in that respect you know um she uh was very aware of her body and like she trained like her whole life as well.

1:04:31So that was really important. I think that had a carry-on effect in terms of recovery as well. She'd built up her muscle stores. Again, very fastidious with her diet, eating enough protein, which she didn't mean eating enough protein, getting enough fiber, and then she had freezing meals afterwards as well. Stress, very, very important. Up to that point, she was very, very nervous. But her mom was there, and she came all the way from Sydney, and she was there for four weeks afterwards. A lot of people don't have that. and that again just took some of the stress off her and i think stress is very very important for recovery and a lot of people don't have that attention sleep was all over the place you know if you can afford to get a night nurse or some cover during night great but like your sleep is obviously going to have an impact and how well your baby sleeps during the day it's going to have an impact in your recovery rate as well so all these things compile and then also financial stress luckily she works in a corporate job where she has like maternity cover and she has the ability to have a job to come back to.

1:05:32These are things that we kind of take for granted. These are all things that actually affect your recovery as well. And so if you can get all these things in a row, then you're giving yourself the best chance to bounce back. That aside, I would say with the sort of caveat that she was very lucky to have all these ducks in a row, your nutrition is going to impact your recovery, the mode of delivery, the speed of delivery, the complications that unfortunately lots of people have. A lot of people go in for a natural delivery and they end up having a C-section or a long delivery. There could be issues postpartum as well with feeding, sleep, all these different things.

1:06:15So control the controllables is what I say. Try and get freezer foods in there, eat enough protein, rest when you can. And if possible, move as much as possible. There is now a push towards getting people moving after just regular surgery as well. I've sort of lived through this transition. When I was at med school, it wasn't really a thing. And now, since I became a junior doctor and all the rest of it, we're trying to get people moving as much as possible because we know that that extended rest is not great for your body and recovery. So trying to get out as much as possible as well. So these are all the things that I would say would give yourself the best chance to, I don't want to say bounce back again, but you know, it gives yourself the best chance to.

1:06:56Yeah, yeah.

1:06:56Grace Beverley: Because I think it's hard because it's like, say, myself going into this period, it's kind of on the one hand, I look at the concept of bouncing back and I'm like, honestly, fuck you. And, you know, shouldn't even be thinking about it and all of those different things. At the same time, like, I know that I've tried to make as many decisions as possible in order to be able to put myself in the best place possible so that well for a number of different reasons so that hopefully my postpartum mental health can be the best it can be like all of those different things so it's like I want to make sure that I feel as good as possible post that time whilst also you know hoping I'm not doing it for the wrong reasons but it is a lot to balance and I always thought going into pregnancy that I would eat as much as I wanted and not exercise and all of these things.

1:07:42Grace Beverley: And I actually, I don't think I've ever been more conscious of my diet. Not necessarily, not in a restrictive way. Actually, like probably the first time in my life I've been thinking, have I had enough? Like, you know, is that, and obviously you're not meant to be eating for two and I'm not, but like even just, you know, sometimes when you're hungry for a snack and you're busy and you're just running around at this stage, particularly like third trimester coming up to full term, I'm kind of like, oh God, don't want to leave myself hungry for too long. Like it could have a worse effect. all of those different things.

1:08:10Grace Beverley: I've been working out my entire pregnancy. I've been very, very consistent with it because even like I noticed the difference in my hips if I'm not working out or walking a lot. Like I feel like I could lose it in one week if I don't keep consistent. And it's so interesting because it's like, there's so much pressure on women from all different sides. Like there's pressure your whole life to be as small as possible. And then there's that pressure to have as healthy a pregnancy as possible whilst also enjoying it whilst also then being the best mum postpartum and you know trying to breastfeed and you know having the right delivery and all of these different things and it's like so much to concentrate on it's it's nice to have a kind of distilled view of actually just try and concentrate on these things and obviously main thing is staying as happy and kind of healthy and you know for you and the baby as possible particularly in the weeks post-birth i'm glad you mentioned mental health as well because i think one of the other things that okay i'm making my wife sound really annoying now but she's she sounds great she's really good yeah so she meditates 10 minutes every day she didn't meditate before meeting me she didn't think it was a thing but like she made it a thing to meditate in the mornings pre pre-baby because she wanted to get into this habit of like getting clarity and and being aware of the potential for post-marchive issues as well, which is really common.

1:09:33And I'm glad a lot more people were talking about it. The other thing that she's really faciliate about is getting off social media. Because when you find yourself with a lot of time in between, like baby sleeves and all the rest of it, you won't have that much time. But if you steal that pocket of time with a scroll, and then you see what other people are doing, and then your feed is obviously super magically curated to be everything to do with baby and recovery and like you know she she was getting loads of stuff she made the conscious decision to not engage with that and it's really tough because i know these things are addictive yeah i've been looking forward to my post-birth scrolls i know this is the thing like i would say like trying like think of other ways in which to feel that time with other entertaining things she actually started watching peep show from season i don't know if you've seen uh peep show it's like an amazing it's such a good girl she never watched it before and it's like it really appeals to Aussie humor and she just watched that instead so she didn't scroll she watched like something just super funny and like just took her out of that space as much as possible but that I think that was another thing that helped her on her most part

1:10:36Grace Beverley: of journey amazing well that is all very good information I will be stealing and um yeah hopefully doing as best as possible we'll see um I want to do just a quick a few quick fire questions before you go. So, five pantry essentials that you will always have in your house. I always have shelled hemp seeds because they're high in protein, high in fiber. You put them in everything. Raw cacao. I think it's a great flabonol-rich product. Really good for brain health. Really good for heart health. I always have high-dose omega-3 supplement for heart health. What else do I have? I have coffee. uh excel coffee um which i'm scientific advisor to as well um that's clean pesticide free uh and i love coffee i got really nice coffee when i was living in australia and what's the last one going through my my pantry i guess i would say um like it's hard to say one spice but the spice that i'm kind of obsessed with is uh turmeric uh i always have turmeric ready i always like use it and loads of different things not necessarily always indian and i think the evidence around curcumin and and all the different like the the chemicals that you find in turmeric is just so inspiring i think there's there's so many others that are just waiting to be explored from this ayurvedic pantry and so turmeric is like like an amazing loads of people using for anti-columptory benefits i think there are loads more in the pipeline but turmeric is definitely my go-to my pantry right what would you say is your favorite snack that actually keeps you full favorite snack uh so i actually make energy balls from scratch i didn't used to be a fan of energy balls uh but now we make it with uh ground flaxseed um which is a really good gut-friendly ingredient chia seeds that we've um sort of hydrated uh a bit of date for sweetness uh peanut butter and then we dust it with cacao and it's a very simple little high protein high fiber snack that i tend to always have in the fridge at home and it lasts for like weeks a week so it's probably my go-to snack if i had to like say it's that otherwise just literally handful of nuts and seeds.

1:12:59Grace Beverley: Yeah. Sounds like another postpartum, I mean, madly inactivity for me. What would you say is the most overrated health food? Ooh, overrated health food. Gosh, there's so many. I'd say gummies. Okay. I think gummies are like, I mean, there's, there's so many out there and I don't, I don't see the appeal for gummies. I can see why people like love sweets, But I just think it's gelatin, full of additives generally, loads of sweeteners. I don't see the appeal for gummies, and I just wouldn't recommend them. So you don't sell gummies, do you? No, we don't. I was going to say it last time. No, I didn't.

1:13:42We don't sell gummies.

1:13:44Grace Beverley: You're like, shit. I'm sorry. No, no. But yeah, gummies. No. Not gummies. Not health gummies. There's no such thing as healthy. Enjoy your gummies, but don't think it's a healthy thing. Right. Yeah, yeah. What's one nutrition rule you personally ignore? So again, this is a bit of a nuanced one, but I ignore the health rule about fasting a couple of times a month. I do think there's some really interesting research looking at fasting. I think whenever there is something in traditional wisdom, if you look at different cultures, every religion, every country has its own mode of fasting, whether that's Ramadan, whether it's Lent, whether it's traditional Chinese medicine, there are lots of texts around fasting and why it's good for the body.

1:14:29I personally ignore that because I hate fasting. I'll get gastritis after 16 hours of not eating. So I personally ignore that, but I do think there may be some interesting benefits to people. Certainly not pregnant people, but like...

1:14:48Grace Beverley: I was about to start my 24 hour fast. But definitely, I think there's something interesting there. We interviewed a whole bunch of scientists looking at intermittent fasting and the potential immune-enhancing benefits of fasting as well. So not just from a weightless point of view. So there's definitely something there, but I personally just can't get on board of it. And is there specific advice for women versus men? Because I feel like a lot of this stuff, particularly when it comes down from the Huberman-type route, as much as it can be, you know, amazingly backed by all this data. It's like, okay, how many women were in those studies?

1:15:24Grace Beverley: Because there is this, like, if that's going to cause the inflammation or the cortisol or whatever it might be, that would interfere with the cycles, all of those types of things. It's like... Yeah, yeah. I think there's like a general issue with science in not being inclusive of females in the cohorts. And I think that kind of came from rational reasoning, but it doesn't help the fact that we still don't have clear data on the impacts of things like fasting but also supplementation and all these other like medicine or conditions yeah exactly yeah so uh i think there is definitely nuance to fasting with women i think there would be different times in the cycle where it might be beneficial and maybe less beneficial uh but we don't really have the data to suggest like there is a nuance so i think it comes down to like healing and intuition and you know whether fasting is right for you regardless of whether you're made or female you should be able to intuitively feel is this serving me is this not serving me because if you feel like you're forcing yourself to do something that you're generally not enjoying and you don't feel the benefits then it's really not worth it and i also think like this is where we major in the minors and we minor in the majors and what i mean by that is people might still have like an ultra-processed diet people might not move as much as they should do people haven't looked after their stress and before doing any of that stuff that actually we do know moves the needle for most of us they're going to perron fast or they do like a 48 hour you know water fast or whatever don't major in those minors this is where the data is let's focus on these first perfect i think that's very good advice yeah and on the topic of advice i'd like to end by asking the question i ask everyone which is what is the best piece of advice that you have ever received oh doesn't have to be nutrition related can be yeah something my old boss told me uh when i was working at a &e and i was like constantly trying to see as many patients to um try and help out the department as much as possible like no one else will understand this unless they're in medicine but like when you flick your name next to people on the list waiting to be seen like i would always try and do as many as I could and just get through them and try and lessen the burden on the department.

1:17:42And he just said to me one day, he was like, I know you're trying to get to the bottom of the list, but trust me in life, you're never going to get to the bottom of the list. And that stuck with me because as someone who's constantly trying to juggle a lot of things, and I get stressed out when there's something on my to-do list, or there's something that I've been planning on doing, and I'm constantly putting something off, it really does irk me. and I have to especially now I'm in my sort of parent era I have to remind myself that I'm not going to get to the bottom of this and that's okay you don't need to force yourself to be super dad and be super man in your business and be super present on socials and you know try and explore these different things and help as many people as possible like it's okay to not complete things just know that you're trying your best yeah so that's the kind of advice that i received via that message that i really needed at that moment in a busy any ward but also in life as well yeah

1:18:40Grace Beverley: i think that's great advice i need that it's like the kind of you can do anything but you can't do everything yeah absolutely i must absorb yeah at some point i remind myself of that as well yeah oh well thank you so much thank you it's been a pleasure great advice absolute pleasure

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