Ep. 96 Why We’re Disconnected From Our Bodies & What To Do About It With Radhi Devlukia Shetty

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1:32radhi dabluchia started her career working as an nhs dietitian before moving to the u.s and studying the ancient art of ayurvedic medicine radhi's ethos is all about bringing together the latest research in nutrition with the ancient practices she is so passionate about and the results are absolutely fascinating she's just released her debut cookbook joyful which was an instant new york times bestseller and it was such a great read so if you're struggling with connecting to your body or just working out what kind of healthy looks like feels like is in terms of nutrition to you then I feel like you'll really really enjoy this conversation we talked a lot about the ideas of health here and around the world how we can perpetuate it for ourselves how we can work out what it really means to us and how we can work it into our every day it was honestly such an interesting conversation I've always been incredibly interested at the view we have in the western world that our version of like health and medicine is the only one that has any value and I think that this was just such a great conversation in kind of tackling that and working out how for every single person we can all form our own view of health and really make sure that we are working and operating to the best of our ability in terms of what we are eating what we are consuming and how we're living every day before we get into the podcast if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on it makes a huge a difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have, the types of guests we're able to get on.

2:58So no, it's probably something you don't think about. But if you could just go rate it now or follow it, it makes a huge difference. Thank you so much.

3:08Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. I just have to say, I've been such a big fan of you and Tala for such a long time. Thank you. I was just saying from way back in the day when I think Tala must have first started to exist or come into the world, I've been a fan. And I just love everything you post and that you share online it really does feel like I know you through your page so I said to have fangirl moment for a second and just say I really appreciate what you do oh thank you so much that really means a lot I always feel like when it's you the person like posting I like I always say this I you know when you follow someone and then you go through your page to see what they would have seen if they just saw you and then I always go through and I'm like oh this doesn't represent me so like this don't like this no don't worry I've been on your journey with you.

3:50So I yeah, I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you so much. I'm very excited to dive into your journey and to get to know you a bit better and to get to know like, everything that you've learned. I really, I find your general philosophy really, really interesting. And I'd like to dive into that and have a conversation around. So first of all, I always ask everyone whether they feel like at the moment, you're more working hard or hardly working? Oh, good question. So I just came off my book tour. And so I feel like I was working so hard that even working at a normal pace feels like hardly working.

4:26But I think I'm in a transitional phase right now where I'm going into areas that I've never done before, where I am trying out and testing new things. And so I'm in an explore phase right now, which feels like I'm not doing enough. But I feel like my days are packed. And I'm doing things that I feel like I'm falling back in love with doing and so yeah I would say I'm working hard but not in a way that I'm used to okay I like that I feel like it's always important to have a kind of I do think you need to shift the balance a little bit sometimes like it's so easy to get so stuck in the way you do things especially like someone like me where I know my exact routine to a T yeah that is the best routine for me in terms of like how productive I am all of this like I'm very very rigid around that and I do feel like Like sometimes like even this trip for me has been such a step change.

5:16Yeah. In that like I'm not able to have like my meeting free mornings doing like all of my deep work. Like I'm literally sitting here right now like knowing all the approvals that are there. And in London that would stress me out no end. Like I would have had to wake up at five to get them done. And here I'm just trying to disrupt what I know. I think sometimes that really helps with creative flow. Like I feel like I've been so, so specific about this is the type of even content I want to produce online. This is the type of this is how much I want to get done in a day and what I want to do in a week and what I want to do in a month.

5:46And almost the regularity and the discipline, although I really appreciate it, it almost makes me feel like I am too rigid and doesn't allow for creativity, like space to breathe. And so I'm really appreciating this kind of in between where actually disrupting that rhythm is allowing me to think in different ways and create in different ways and bringing space and light to things which I didn't have the time to even look at. And I feel like that's the same as what you're saying when you're doing work, when you're doing even in the mornings, whether you're doing meditation or whether you've got moments to yourself, it's the moments that you notice things that you would have never noticed before.

6:24and so I feel like I've got that in my work right now where I'm like actually I don't like creating content like that and I actually don't like what I've been doing here but it's been part of my rhythm for so long it's like that when comfortable when you do something that isn't necessarily great but it feels comfortable so you keep doing it and so I think I'm disrupting that comfort level to hopefully grow a little bit more and change the way I'm doing things that's so interesting and I feel like it is just important to ingrain an absence of routine in our routine like a point at which you change it and i think that either what weekends do that really well for me like i get my best ideas at weekends yeah but also things like just like sometimes there'll be one week and i just wake up and i'm like i'm not gonna have my normal workout schedule this week yeah like i'm just gonna go on five days of podcast walks in the morning yeah and that change i don't know what it is like i went on a walk this morning and i would have rather worked out and i was actually looking for an exercise class in the area and i couldn't find one i was like i'm just gonna an angry little stump yeah and i was walking and it just it all started flowing and i was like it's like clockwork and i don't know why i don't do it more often probably because i'm so stuck stuck in my rhythm yeah and i think there's you know like we said there's pros and cons to that i think consistency and routine and discipline for a certain period of time helps you to create i i see a self-love like discipline for me is a way to show myself that i can commit to myself that I can show up in the way that I need to show up for myself and it builds confidence in myself and so I've really appreciated this because I wasn't like that before having this moment where I'm showing up like oh my god have I really done this five days in a row have I really completed a book that I never thought I'd be able to write have I really you know done all these things every single morning and so I think that has helped me feel confident in myself like I would in a partner showing up for me every single day or every single week and so I've appreciated that But now I'm like, OK, I need to get I need to disrupt this a little bit because I was getting too comfortable in it.

8:22Yeah, no, I absolutely love that. I feel like that's that's a great way of looking at things. I before we dive into more of those specific things, because I really want to evaluate a few of those. I'd love to hear from you for anyone who maybe doesn't have context on your career or who you are or how you got to where you are. If you could give us a little bit of a kind of whistle stop tour of how you got to where you are today. Okay, sure. So I was born and raised in the UK in Hertfordshire. Watford to be exact, I only claim to fame as the Harry Potter studio. And some might say the football club.

8:52A great Harry Potter studio though. But a great Harry Potter studio. Yeah, really good. Everyone should go. It's the actual set. Yeah, it is the actual set. So grew up there and I actually wanted to be a paediatrician, a children's doctor. That was something I always wanted to do. Quite typical for an Indian person in the UK wanting to be a doctor. but then I honestly didn't get the grades and so at that point I didn't know what I wanted to do and my mom actually said you know there's this new degree that's out the government's paying for it why don't you try nutrition I was like you know sure I'll do nutrition whatever at this point I loved food but I hadn't thought about how food affected my body like that wasn't a connect for me I enjoyed food my mom was and is the most incredible cook she had a full-time job but she made homemade breakfast, lunches and dinners for us every single day.

9:40And it wasn't just food to like put onto a plate. It was like she poured the love that she had for us into the food that she was making for us to nourish us so deeply. So whether it was, by the way, she was making us carrot juice and green juices in the morning back in that time. And at that time, I would go outside and like throw the juice out into the plants because I was like, who wants to drink this? To just bringing everywhere that we've traveled onto our plates. And so I definitely had an elevated palate growing up, especially being Indian, the spices that we were using. So I had a love for food, but I didn't really necessarily connect that to how it was affecting my body.

10:12And so I went on to become a nutritionist. I then did a postgraduate degree to become a dietitian. The difference between the two is that as a dietitian, I can work in a hospital to treat everything from diabetes to cancer patients. And I really wanted to work in a patient facing environment. And so I did both of those degrees. I went on to work in a hospital at Watford General hospital. And during that time, I honestly can say I thought I was going to remain a dietitian for the rest of my life. I bought a home that was well, me and my husband bought a home that was like walking distance from my mom, my sister and my grandma, which is exactly where I saw myself being.

10:47And then my life kind of got very oddly disrupted in a way I never thought because my husband got a job in New York that was like his dream job. And so at the time he was like, you know what, you can you can stay here. I'll go like I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do. We'll go back and forth. We'll figure it out. But I, there was a part of me that knew I had to take a leap out of comfort. And I took that leap with him, moved to New York. And when I moved to New York, I couldn't then use anything that I'd studied because I didn't have a worker visa. And so I went from studying pretty much for six years, working for a year to then not be able to use anything that I had done.

11:25I know, no, I couldn't use it. And so I got there and I was, again, And it felt like I was back to figuring out what I can even do with my spare time. Because I thought I'd have a nine to five job for the rest of my life. And I just suddenly didn't. And so there was a lot of crying that I did walking around New York aimlessly for hours. But then also a lot of realization that I have no idea who I am because so much of my life was molded by other people. What they thought I should do, what they thought I should be, who I was, was based around everybody else's view of me. and so that's when I started deciding to throw myself back into study and so that's where I found Ayurveda probably go into that later and what it is but it's an ancient health science that like 5 ,000 years old probably the oldest one and I did a course there and studied culinary Ayurveda there like learning how to cook in that way and I also did my yoga teacher training there and so all of these things have and I have now ended up in LA and I just share a lot of health wellness content online.

12:25I've just written my first cookbook called Joyful. And I'm basically just trying to share everything that I've learned over this years and years of studying in the best way that I can because it's changed my life so much. That's such an incredible story. And I feel like you can you can tell all the different parts of this, you know, it's a it's not the it's an unorthodox career trajectory for what you're doing now. But actually, you can see how every single part of your career has built you towards this point and how it's positioned you so well, because I think that you know we have this especially in western media we have this like real obsession with western ways only being being the best ways or being the only ways when it comes to like health when it comes to science when it comes to the way we see our body and actually it's so powerful for you also to be able to kind of say like throughout this journey you've you did what you originally thought you were going to do and ended up working in a hospital and then to have this and to go okay well this is how I actually want to treat my body and this is what I want to do and this is what I want to talk about I feel like that's such a unique and powerful standpoint and I can completely see why people would be able to take so much from that I'd love to know I mean you I know you've spoken especially in your book about how you feel people are disconnected from their bodies especially having especially having studied the power of Ayurveda yeah I'd love to hear a little bit more about that idea and why you why and how you feel people are disconnected from their bodies yeah absolutely so fire means life or longevity and veda means knowledge and so essentially it is the science of life and so like I said it's 5 000 years old it's a practice which incorporates everything from mind, body and heart.

14:12So every single thing that we allow into our senses, through our mouth, through our eyes, through our ears, through our nose, every part of us, everything that we come into contact with has the ability to not just affect our body, but our mind and our spirit too. And so I fell in love with that concept because when I studied nutrition, it was purely you eat this, this is what happens when it breaks down and then when it goes into your body. Whereas in Ayurveda, it just expanded everything into how it energetically affects you, how it affects your mind, because our food doesn't just affect our body physically, affects our mood and our mental state too.

14:47But then also our interactions with nature around us. And so when I said that we're so disconnected, one, we all believe that we live in nature, we're not part of it. We think that we are just here existing, we don't realize we have a symbiotic relationship with nature, and that nature fuels us and that we have the ability to also give back to nature. And two, we are so told, we are all told from such a young age, from pretty much the moment that we're born to, and this isn't me saying we shouldn't listen to doctors, but that we're told whenever you have health issues, don't listen to your body, go to a doctor.

15:20Whenever you, when you don't know something in school, ask your teacher. When you want to figure your finances out, go and ask, you know, business guy or a finance manager, or whatever it is, I think we're constantly told to give our power away over and over and over again. And so the disconnect comes because instead of being told, sit with yourself and listen to what your body is telling you, where do you feel pain? Where do you notice that when you're eating something, how does it make you feel? Does it make you feel lethargic? Does it make you feel happy? Does it make you feel energetic? We're not told to do that.

15:53And so we're constantly feel that, oh, I feel like I've got a cold coming on. Let me quickly run to the doctor so they can diagnose me and tell me what's happening. And then on top of that, you throw social media in. And with social media, someone says, you know what? This is the best salad that you will eat in your whole entire life. It will change you in every possible way. You will get six-pack abs from this. It will give you all the nutrition you need. And so you think, oh, I'm going to eat this salad and it's going to do the same for me. And so you eat that salad and it makes you feel terrible.

16:23But you're like, no, this person has said it's going to give me six pack abs. I'm going to eat the salad every single day. And so instead of listening to what our body is telling us, we start to dampen that voice and we start to make everybody else's voice louder than ours to the point that you keep eating something over and over again. And it starts creating bad health in your body. But we don't even realize because we're not used to listening and hearing the symptoms of our body. And so I think that process of coming back to ourself and allowing our voice to be louder, our body's voice to be louder than everything else around us is a really important place to start the beginning of your health journey.

17:02And the beginning of, I think, the start to good health is connecting back to yourself by listening to what's happening in your body. so anyone who's listening to this who thinks oh that sounds a little bit like me or like maybe I maybe I am feeling quite disconnected from my body or maybe I you know I just haven't been in touch with myself and I don't really know what to do if I am feeling a bit sick or whatever I do just run straight to like the medicine cabinet what would you recommend for someone to get better in touch with their body yeah I would the first thing I would recommend is let's start off with food because a lot of us feel like feel like we don't know what we should and shouldn't be eating I would recommend starting from observation and so I think that's the best way to start whether it's your mind or your body or your heart start with observation and what I mean by that is go through your day and if you're starting with food write down what you're eating and then notice at that moment in time how did it make you feel and three hours later how did it make you feel because a good indication of whether food is sitting well with you or not is food should be providing us energy it should be making us feel energetic and like we can do everything we want to do throughout the day that we can use our body in the way that we want to and so if you're eating a bowl of rice and it's making you feel lethargic and tired afterwards that's either an indication that your body's not digesting it properly or that this food not saying rice does that but if you had eaten rice and it made you feel like that that this food isn't necessarily something that is benefiting you how it should and so having an having that observation for like a week where you are sitting and writing down the foods that you're eating and how it's making you feel and then you can kind of that can pour into every other part of your life when I'm spending time with these people how did it make me feel when I'm in these environments how does it make me feel when I'm doing my work and my job or these workouts how am I feeling and so it's a constant point of reflection and observation that keeps circling back and if you think about it that's honestly how you interact with a partner you see what makes them happy when you see what makes them happy you do that more when you see what makes them sad you try not to do that again and so essentially when you think about yourself think about yourself as you dating a partner and see yourself dating you how can i get to know myself better and on the one extra part i will add is how does it make me externally feel because a lot of the foods and the things that we are eating we don't realize that there are so many micro things that happen externally that is an indication Actually, it's our body screaming.

19:32Our skin and our hair and the external body that you see is the last layer of seven layers of tissue in our body, which means that when it gets to the face fronting part of us, it's your body screaming at you saying, hey, I need you to listen to me. So I'm going to show you that something is not right right now. And so our physical symptoms are also really important to be looking like, how does my skin feel? Is it dehydrated? What's happening to my skin right now? How does my hair feel? So many different things that we're used to just getting that we just get used to versus seeing it as indication that my body's telling me something.

20:06Yeah, I found that really interesting in your book when you spoke about things like your hair being brittle and what that might suggest and all of these different things. And I do think we, I mean, there's no, I don't think there's any debate in the fact that the Western healthcare system is purely based on cure rather than prevention and fixing disorder rather than preventing disorder or rather than going from okay to great. and I feel like that's the type of thing that unless something's really wrong we generally disregard fluctuations in all of these different things and don't get me wrong especially as a woman we're going to have hormonal fluctuations and all of these different things but I do think it's really interesting when you pointed out something like brittle hair that you know there'd almost been even if you did have some severe symptoms of that type yeah if you walked into a doctor yeah if you walked into a doctor and you were like you know I've got these symptoms and all of this no one's looking at anything other than doing internal scans or whatever it might be.

21:07You go to the doctor I've got brittle hair and dry skin give me something for it then I go to Boots and get moisturizer. No it really is an indication you know in Ayurveda it's another reason I fell in love with the practice and when I was studying nutrition and dietetics and when I became a dietitian I did notice such a disconnect of what I wanted to share versus what I had to share and I think it's because you know as you said everything is cure rather than prevention I wouldn't be in a clinic where I was teaching people how not to get diabetes I was in a clinic teaching people who are already diabetic how to manage it and in Ayurveda it talks about how there's six stages of disease before you even get to the point where in western medicine they would diagnose it as something and so Ayurveda teaches you how to start recognizing those symptoms from digestion to brain fog and your mind feeling restless to your skin and how it feels and looking at your, like I said, your hair, like if your hair starts to fall out, it's indication you may not be getting the nutrients that you need.

22:06And so learning all of these little micro symptoms can actually prevent you from getting the condition that you're diagnosed with when you get into a doctor's surgery. And so I think it's really important to start viewing yourself as that, like as your body telling you something is wrong like a baby would start crying it's your body crying crying and screaming at you and starting to listen like I remember I went to a massage recently and they asked me at the beginning how does your body feel I was like you know what it feels okay actually I don't feel like there's any aches and pains this guy starts pushing on different parts of my body and I'm like oh my god that hurts so much oh my god that hurts so much and it it constantly that every time I go and get a massage it reminds me of how we are in our body because I don't think I've got pain somewhere.

22:51But as soon as someone presses down, I'm like, oh, wow, I had no idea that I was dealing with that pain. And I think we've all become a little bit numb and oblivious to it. And so that's always a good reminder for me whenever I go get a massage. I'm like, oh God, I actually have so much pain all over my body and I had no idea. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to upwork.com today. and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them.

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24:07Learn more at capella.edu. Dr. India Woods here. As a veterinarian, I demand a lot of my scrubs on the job. That's why I show up in figs. Figs are made for the sometimes crazy situations I find myself in. It doesn't matter if I have to squat, sit, bend, or even chase after one of my patients. Figs moves with me and keeps me comfortable in the highest pressure situations. Figs gives me one less thing to worry about. Get 15 % off your first order by visiting wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. and so if we've started to notice these symptoms because i feel like it's you know it's all well and good everyone trying to be more in touch with their body and trying to you know asking themselves over and over like how do i feel what feels good how does this make me feel what do you do though when you start to realize that maybe you know your skin is feeling really dry your hair is feeling really brittle or any of those things what would you what then because you know if we're not equipped to deal with this totally in terms of you know you wouldn't go to the doctor for it how can we start to address those things from things like nutrition yeah I would say the basic thing that I would start doing like when I notice certain symptoms for me I know if I feel like I've had a good amount of sleep and I still wake up feeling sleepy if my skin feels really dry and same as my hair or if I'm feeling like my body is aching in certain places that I'm not used to, that's an indication for me that I need to go get a blood test done and see what I'm deficient in.

25:38Because a lot of the time it is just basic nutrients that we're lacking. I am forever low in vitamin D. And so instead of even just taking tablets, I go and get vitamin D infusions because my vitamin D is that low. I haven't had one in a while because I've been traveling and I'm waking up every morning feeling it. And so I know it's time for me to go and get a checkup and see if my vitamin D has gone low. And so that's just one example. But getting an extensive blood test done every single year should be part of our regular checkups in my opinion there's one thing about eating the food that you that you should be but another thing is whether it's absorbing into our body and so getting a gut test getting a blood test done it can be such good indicators indicators of where you need to start from and then once you figure out what you're deficient in you can decide you can look up and see oh these are the foods that that i'm lacking for this this is what i need to implement into my daily routine every single day to make sure that I'm sufficient in this vitamin, mineral or whatever it is that I'm lacking.

26:34And so I definitely recommend that. I don't think people do that enough. And then it's such an individual thing. Like for example, if it's your hair and let's say you've got really dry skin, one, naturally hydration. But where are you getting your hydration from? Yes, of course, drink water. But then the foods that you are eating could also be drying out your body and your digestion. And so I keep going back to this observation thing, but noticing when you're eating certain things, are you getting more thirsty? Are there certain foods that you've got in your life where if you're eating a lot of foods that are like salads where they are difficult to digest.

27:06Oh, sorry, actually, I want to go back to digestion because that's a huge part of everything that we don't realize. If your digestion has been weak for a while and by weak, I mean you don't have stools that form as they should. You are constantly feeling discomfort and agitation in your stomach. That could be an indication that you are not going to be able to digest food in the right way. And so having foods which are easy to digest can really help your stomach and your digestive enzymes to rest in order to repair your stomach. And so what I mean by that is in Ayurveda it recommends not having raw foods if your digestion is weak, not having foods that are too cruciferous and raw vegetables.

27:45So avoiding raw food completely and having food that's already been partially cooked before it goes into your body. So succulent vegetables, courgettes and carrots and basically stripping everything back to what nature gives us. And so I think those your digestion, your blood work and then incorporating spices into your life. That's a big part of what I share because spices help with digestion so much when you're eating food. You have to see spices as your medicine. And so every single week, try and experiment with different spices that you're adding into your meals because that will help to strengthen your digestion, boost your immunity and also give you more energy throughout the day because you're digesting the food better.

28:27No, that's all so interesting. And I think that the point you said on blood work there, I'd be really interested to hear the because obviously, I mean, you live in the US. You are from the UK. I find the attitude towards health really interesting in the UK versus the US. In what way? Well, I was actually talking about this this morning in the way that obviously in the UK we have the most incredible healthcare system and you get everything that you need, like need, for free. So if you have a disorder of some form or you develop a cancer or if you have a baby or like whatever it might be, you get that all for free.

29:06And I think that that is incredible. And I personally think that is the way it should be. And I think that that is, you know, a beautiful thing that we should be very, very proud of. But I also think that what that in the US, you obviously have to pay for all health care. So all of it. So you have to pay for if you were to get an MRI, you have to pay for if you were to get an IV, you have to pay for if you were looked in the eye at the doctors. But what I also think that develops is I think it develops a higher willingness to participate in things that people wouldn't necessarily participate in in the UK.

29:39I think you're more likely to spend more on supplements. I think you're more likely to spend more on preventative health because it's often even cheaper than going towards curative health. I find that really interesting because I think that it's how it should be in the UK. But at the same time as that, I think that it means that we're quite stubborn and resistant towards investing in our own health because we believe that it should be given to us. Yeah, we're not active participants in our health. Right. We're not. Yeah. We just go along for the ride. And I don't know if there's a solution because I think that part of the solution everywhere should be free health care.

30:17And so it's kind of it's a tricky one because I don't want to demonize the UK system. But at the same time, I think, yeah, of course, no one's going to spend£100 on something that would help their health when they don't have a disorder. Whereas in the US, people are so willing to do it because they have quite a complicated health care system in that they're going to be spending thousands on it if they don't get it right. I actually think a lot of it is education, if I'm honest, because, yes, we get everything for we get things for free. but who wants to be at the stage of disease to get I think people don't realize what it actually means when you get to the point of having diabetes having coronary heart disease having you know all the key conditions that we seem to get later on in life or or nowadays earlier on in life because once you get get to that stage it's very difficult to move move back from it or to get better from it and so I actually think it's lack of education around it or the willingness to learn about it and then it's too late.

31:15So I actually think having a free healthcare system is incredible if it's paired with education of prevention. But I also think that's complicated because if there's more prevention, there's less drugs sold and then pharmaceutical companies aren't happy with it. And so it's such a complicated system. Yeah, because that's worth saying as well. I think in the US, they're also more trigger happy with medical drug usage because obviously it is more of a profitable enterprise whereas in the UK the NHS are paying one price for it yeah but I think that I do think that it's really interesting as a whole and I actually think that as someone who would consider myself quite curious and well-versed in a number of different topics one thing that I only learned I would say well actually in when I first started the podcast which was about two years ago now or a year and a half ago now and I just remember a physiologist coming on and just basically describing the difference between saying the healthcare system makes sure you go from not good to okay yeah it does not make you go from okay to good optimal or to great or to optimal and that's the distance that we need to do and I hadn't even thought of it like that and I do think that's part of the way we're educated on health yeah is that we genuinely in our minds we don't think of health as anything other than a lack of disease yeah which I find I find it so weird that I've only even thought about that in the past few years and I've thought of myself as generally healthy because I'm I mean I would say I am generally healthy but like and very privileged to be so but like as in generally healthy rather than am I living at my optimal exactly like am I feeling my best am I putting things into my body that make me genuinely feel good like i i one of my least favorite things ever is brain fog like my eye it will ruin every part of my day and like as in i i hate nothing more and i think that i really one of my favorite things about me is like my insanely hyperactive brain like as in it allows me to do what i do and it's a fucking nightmare at times but like it allows me to do what I do and it allows me to operate at a certain pace and without that I genuinely feel like I've been stripped of my entire identity and something like brain fog was coming up again and again and again based on foods I was eating based on ways I was sleeping based on you know all of these different things and still I kept assuming it was linked to something much bigger than that rather than just the fact that like yeah you cannot consume a large amount of carbs without having any fats in it or whatever it might be because your body does not digest it properly and therefore you cannot concentrate.

34:00Yeah and you end up feeling like it's what you were saying you end up disabling yourself from curing yourself because you think it has to be something bigger because all these things have to be cured by a medication or by a doctor telling me that I need to take this or that versus us being educated on the food that we're eating how we're consuming the food, what we're eating different things with and how they combine with one another. And I think that is the main issue where we constantly think it's a, oh, it's just me. And we get used to feeling this way where we're like, oh, it's just a me thing.

34:34Like I just feel like this and there's not much more I can do about it. When actually you come to realize it's such simple, potentially simple things that you can change and adapt, like you said about your carbs, that can make a world of a difference. But you have to be an active participant in your health and you have to be okay with the extra effort of exploring and experimenting with your body, with the food that you're eating, with the workouts that you're doing. And I think that level of extra effort is sometimes not what people want to do. And so the choice is you put in the extra effort to prevent getting to the point of getting a disease and having to take medication or you get to the point of disease where you just have to keep taking medication for the rest of your life.

35:16And so those really are the only two options that you have. And I'm really interested. I remember my friend originally teaching me about the three modes within Ayurveda. And I remember finding it, I don't remember all of it exactly, but I remember genuinely like finding it kind of life changing, like the way she described it. I would love for you to describe the difference between those and what they mean and what they mean for each person. Yeah, sure. So there's mode of goodness, which is sattva, mode of passion and mode of ignorance. And essentially in Ayurveda, it says that everything that we allow into our body, into our senses, fits into these three categories, goodness, passion and ignorance.

36:02And these three modes, I'll go through each one. So mode of goodness, let's just stick to food for now. But mode of goodness are foods which make you feel good. They're the foods which have the most amount of, we call it prana, which is vitality. So by vitality, I mean the most amount of nutrients and it's really nutrient dense foods that make you feel lighter, happier, healthier, more vibrant in your body. And so foods like that would include everything that you can pick from nature, essentially. So fruits have the most amount of prana or vitality when you pick them from a tree. Versus if you leave an apple on a lorry for three weeks, it gets to your fridge, you leave it in the fridge for a week.

36:42the difference in the energy and the vitality that you will end up ingesting will be completely different to it being picked from the tree and so food can be in the mode of goodness but but move through the different modes depending on how you keep them and how you cook them so anything that you can so fresh fruits fresh vegetables whole grains essentially all the things that you're told keep you healthy on a plate that that is that is what mode of goodness is and how does that translate to your body in your mind it makes you feel like you are energetic in your body it makes you feel like you're energetic and it yes and she just makes you feel happier in all areas mode of passion are foods which almost agitate the mind and the body but also make you feel aggressive stimulated passionate and so foods like that would be chilies spices things that are really pungent in flavor sour really sour foods really sweet foods foods which essentially have that big punch to them and so when you eat them it says ideally you eat the most amount of foods in the mode of goodness in the mode of passion you eat smaller amounts because yes it helps to stimulate blood flow in the body and it does all of that but at the same time it can cause agitation to the mind because food doesn't just affect our body affects our mind too and so having spices and all those pungent things sour foods all in moderation and then the mode of ignorance are foods which make your body feel ignorant and dull and heavy and that goes from everything from highly processed foods to deep fried foods so you can take an apple and then you can batter it and then you can deep fry it and it goes from being in the mode of goodness to the mode of ignorance because you've essentially stripped it of all its nutrients and so technically according to ayurveda meat and anything that is somewhat dead matter would fall into that category because you were taking that lifeless energy and putting it into your body and so yeah all the foods that make you feel stagnant in mood body and energy would be considered mode of ignorance foods And I'm really interested in terms of how you, obviously you have a deep knowledge of Western food and diet.

38:55And then you've also combined this with your kind of understanding of Ayurvedic nutrition. And I'm really interested because I always think about how in Western medicine and nutrition and kind of media in general, we're very, very, very ignorant to the way the rest of the world sees things. You hear of someone having an issue with something and not being able to fix it with Western medicine and trying acupuncture or trying a different form of Chinese medicine or trying something Ayurvedic or whatever it might be. And I'm always really interested. I always think that we just don't know everything.

39:38It's really ignorant to assume that we know everything and the way we've got things has to be completely right in every single sense. but I'd be really interested in terms of like how you've combined those understandings and whether you feel like if they're at all at odds with one another there's beautiful synergy between the two I think each can help you know you can't lean fully into one way or another we live in a western world and mixing it with eastern philosophy and eastern ways of living that you can create a really good balance because I use both I don't live a fully Ayurvedic life but at the same time I don't buy into the fully western way of living and so I think there is a beautiful balance look without the western diagnostics you wouldn't be able to find out half the time when someone has an illness or a disease but does that mean that you have to only use western medicine or are all of these incredible ancient medicines that we have learned from ancestors and ancestors and have been used for thousands of years something that we can also incorporate and use and again again, Ayurveda may not work for someone, but Chinese medicine might.

40:41Acupuncture may not work for someone, but then cupping might. So again, it's experimenting. And what an incredible opportunity we all have to have all of these at our fingertips. People don't have that. If we live in the Western world, we are so, so privileged to even have the opportunity to come into contact with all of these different sciences and health systems. And so it's almost like I see it as let's my way of feeling gratitude for the privilege that we live in is let me at least create my body use use these things to help optimize my health so I can help other people and I think one way I've really shifted my view of my own health is seeing my body as a vessel in a gift rather than something that is mine and that's really shifted my mindset of health and I noticed when my friends have had babies and my sister you know has had a few and she came to this realization where she said look if I don't look after my body she suddenly realized she's like if I run myself to the ground looking after these children I cannot provide for them I cannot serve them in the way that I'm supposed to and in the same way if you see yourself as an instrument of service or as an instrument of someone that wants to give to other people you then will fuel your body in in in the best way possible you will feed your body the things that it needs to be able to be of service in the world in that way and so I I think that shift of mindset really helped me where it wasn't like, how do I look and how do I want to make myself feel?

42:05It was, how do I want to be able to help other people? And how do I need to keep myself well to be able to do that? How do I need to keep myself well to run my business? How do I need to keep myself well to be a good partner? And so when you kind of shift out of that, almost, I don't want to say selfish, but that mentality of everything being, this is my body, this is how I want to look after myself. It can help you shift how you look after yourself too. Yeah, I think that's such a beautiful way of looking at things. I do think talking about the kind of partner aspect really puts it into perspective where like if there was something that you ate that made you like, like bad example, but made you like really grouchy.

42:42Like you just wouldn't eat it the evenings that you were spending time with that person or someone you love or whatever it might be. And we don't have the same approach to ourselves. No. We're like, okay, well, I'm going to eat it anyway. It's like, that's fine. And that's absolutely fine, you know, as and when you want to. but this understanding of like self-respect as part of a way that we like treat our bodies and I'm like one of those people who I know certain foods don't react well with me and I know I won't get a good night's sleep if I eat a mix before bed and I'm afraid I just don't always bear that in mind and like that's fine but it's also like the the more I've grown up and the more I've kind of been like I mean that sounds like I'm a literal child being like she's not allowed sweets in the evening but like as in like the more I've grown up and also been like yes you absolutely can do that but also like how do you want to feel and how like do you want to sleep tonight and maybe that is fine maybe you do deprioritize that tonight but like the 80 20 rule is like my favorite right yeah 80 of the time i'm gonna do all the things i can for myself and then there's 20 if i want to eat pizza at 12 o 'clock i'm gonna eat pizza at 12 o 'clock yeah and then i'll be lethargic when i wake up but i know that's gonna happen exactly and i think i because i was the next thing i was about to ask you actually was that obviously being in la it's very much like within it's cemented within this very like there's a lot of this wellness culture there's a lot of kind of longevity culture there's a lot of all of this which is like it's fantastic and health is health and that's brilliant but at the same time I can imagine that can be quite overbearing as well and wondering how you like bear all of these things in mind and at the same time avoid it becoming and obsession i think that you know particularly i mean online in all different countries we've had issues of things like orthorexia like that haven't necessarily presented themselves early on because it feels like a good thing to be doing all of these different things i can imagine somewhere like la where there is so much of this and like this is it is enabled and enabled which is you know as i say health is brilliant and like we want help but health also encompasses not being so restricted yeah so you can't yeah that you can't live a happy life without feeling like you've got that one specific nutrient today or whatever it might be how do you balance eating and living intentionally and also with a kind of balance and without it being restrictive i think a lot of it comes down to feeling contentness and joy in your life and if you're constantly like obsessing over something and longevity I heard you know Dr.

45:16Gabba Marte have you heard of him before yeah yeah he's incredible he was talking about longevity and he said that when you're constantly thinking about your future and that's what longevity is it's thinking about how am I going to live longer live more quality of life in the future you strip yourself of the present moment and how you can actually enjoy and appreciate and cultivate this moment in time and so I've been thinking about that balance too because you're right especially in LA everyone's thinking about this obsession with like being younger or looking younger this obsession with like especially for women because they always say men age well like men can be models till they're whatever men can do but like for women especially there's such a pressure of like god forbid we get a gray hair god forbid you get a wrinkle near your eye god forbid you somehow start someone tells you that oh you actually look your age forget even like looking older they just say you look your age and you feel like what do you mean I don't look 10 years younger and so this horrible feeling of constantly trying to to feel young and he said this a beautiful thing about how in a lot of cultures we say growing old versus getting old and the difference between the two is growing old is like you think of it as something where you're expanding you are learning more you are creating more in your life whereas getting old is a is a negative form of that where you're like oh I'm just getting old and it's getting on and I'm baking inside and bacon outside you know it's just constantly a negative aspect of growing older and so I've battled you know I've been in the U.S.

46:49for seven years now and I'd say it's been really difficult to keep coming back to myself and remembering I don't need to get any of these treatments I don't need to get any of these you know things that are gonna make my face look like I've been shocked for the rest of my life I don't need to do all of those things for me to be happy And I think the way that I have to keep coming back to myself is one, at the end of my life, are people going to say how tight my skin looks? Or are they going to say what kind of person I was? I know that feels like a cliche, but it's so true. Every day I have to be like, do I want to look at myself in the mirror 30 times a day and keep telling myself all the things that are wrong and strip myself of the joy that I could be feeling right now?

47:31Or am I going to obsess over looking at myself over and over again, telling myself what's wrong with me? And so I guess the balance is, what is bringing you joy in your life? Is eating the way that you are eating bringing you joy in your life? And by the way, joy doesn't mean let me eat everything and feel good in the moment and feel terrible after. Joy means it's a longer process. It's like, am I going to feel good now and later? And so it's not about eating anything that you want whenever you want. I think part of feeling joy in your life is restriction, is the ability to say no to things. because do you want to control how you live in your life and how you eat or do you want the food to be able to be in control of you and that's the same with anything in our life like do you want your plastic surgeons to be in control of how good you feel or do you want to feel as good as you want about how you feel and so I think I keep coming back to that notion of one this body is so temporary but two this body is a vessel that I want to look after in the best way possible to be in service of others?

48:30And three, how do I feel when I'm eating these things, being around these people, living the life that I'm living? Is it bringing me joy and joy for the other people around me that I love? I feel like there's always this two sides of everything, right? You can go past one point and it becomes sour and bitter and you go the other way and it can go sour and bitter too. And so there's a beautiful balance that you have to learn for yourself that creates these moments of joy and look it's never going to be stable like joy is not something that just stays constantly you will go up and down and flow all over the place because that's just what growth and learning is but that's part of growth and learning about yourself um is seeing what those little bouts of what does bring you joy in your life and doing more of that and yeah I think that's just that's how I really try to navigate it but it's hard yeah it is hard I think it's especially hard for women to not buy into all of these things that collagen everything and everything yeah there's a there's a difficulty with being in a place where there's perceived unlimited opportunity and also perceived unlimited options to increase that opportunity when it comes to how you look when it comes to how healthy you are when it comes to how connected you are like all of these different things I can imagine it is a hot pot for like feeling pretty miserable if you don't get it right and what healthy looks like by the way right because like I remember constantly having this obsession with wanting to be super skinny as I'm sure many of us women have felt throughout our life right and I remember going to a Barry's boot camp and I saw this girl next to me who was super skinny and then another person who was super like wedge and like just hench next to me and I realized that like I thought this girl would outrun me because in my mind back in the day health to me was the skinny you were the healthier you were and in that in that thing I started running and I started lifting weights and I was like hold on I'm running faster than her and I'm lifting heavier weights than her.

50:27And it wasn't saying that she was bad at what she was doing. It was just such an eye opener to me that and the person next to me, she was a beast. She was running so fast. She was lifting heavy weights. And to me at the time, that wasn't a physique I was even looking to have. And it was such an eye opener to me that what what is your definition of health? Because externally health can look completely different to what you're actually feeling inside. And that's always a reminder for me where I could probably get to a point which I I don't have the desire to anymore but get to a point where I was complete skin and bones but what would my health be at that point in my life how what would my joy and my quality of life be at that point and so there's always that way up of that as well yeah and understanding that we all have different happy points exactly like our bodies all tend to different things and like if we all like I often think it's helpful to think like if every single person in that this room right now ate the exact same diet for the next 10 years we would all look completely different and I think that that puts a lot of it into perspective because it's kind of like okay well you could all be here and you could all eat exactly the same thing and you could all do exactly the same thing and you are still all gonna look different that's what Ayurveda talks about a lot as well is how food you eat a tomato I eat a tomato everyone in this room eats a tomato and it will affect our body in completely different ways right and that's what I love that it's also individual it's not one size fits all and that's why it connected with me more because I saw exactly the same thing I followed the same diet as someone else and I have completely different results what does that tell us our bodies are digesting assimilating and moving and interacting in completely different ways so how can it be that this medicine will solve everything in everyone right how can it be that this one food will change everything for all of us because we look and and act so differently right and so ayurveda is really individual and the individualness comes from learning about yourself and what you're what you're feeding it yeah i think that's i think that's really beautiful i'd love before we end to know what the best piece of advice is that you've ever been given.

52:24Oh my gosh, the best piece of advice. I'll tell you one that's helped me through the past year of doing a lot of uncomfortable things is that knowledge is useless unless it's shared. And I really appreciate that because I was someone who kept collecting knowledge and kept wanting to constantly study because I was scared of going into the world as someone who didn't seem like they knew what they were talking about. and it allowed me to feel like I can share and be a bridge for a lot of the things that I've learned without being an expert and actually when you feel like an expert that's when you're probably you know going a little bit wrong when you feel like there's no more left to learn and also when you end up having so much information in you you start to believe that it's yours if you don't keep sharing out into the world and I think we're constantly in this cycle of receiving and giving out and so when I learned the when I heard that where knowledge is useless unless it's shared I was like yeah that's so true we receive to be able to give out to other people everything I've learned from the teachers I've learned from it is to be able to give out to other people so that they I can also help others as other people have helped me so yeah that's probably been a really that's been really useful for me to be able to write my book to do all the things that I've done without feeling like an imposter oh I love that I love that as a trick to help imposters in jail yeah well thank you so much for sharing and thank you so much for coming thank you this is great

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