Saturn Returns with Caggie - 9.7 Sarah Ann Macklin on rock bottoms, wake up calls and her journey to wellness

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

In this week's episode of Saturn Returns, we delve into the multifaceted journey of Sarah Ann Macklin, one of my dearest friends and a former fashion model turned acclaimed nutritionist who has worked within the industry for 10 years. She founded a Mental Health Organisation called the ‘Be Well Collective’ which predominantly began within the fashion industry and is the host of the ‘Live Well Be Well’ podcast. Sarah opens up about her dynamic experiences, from the highs and lows of the fashion industry to her profound insights into health and nutritionSarah recounts starting her modelling career at just 15, sharing her journey from being scouted at a music festival to her bustling life in New York. She offers a candid look into the challenges of the fashion world, including constant scrutiny, dealing with rejection and loneliness, and the impact of these pressures on her mental and physical well-being. A pivotal moment in Sarah's life was her admission to intensive care, a wake-up call that led her to reassess her lifestyle. She also shares how a health scare of her father further catalysed her shift towards a deeper understanding of wellness, driving her fascination with nutrition and health. Overcoming Dyslexia: Sarah shares the transformative experience of being diagnosed with dyslexia during her nutrition degree.She discusses how this revelation reshaped her self-perception and learning methods, ultimately leading her to excel academically. Sarah takes us through her quest to understand human nutrition and the psychology behind eating disorders. Utilising her personal experiences, she explains her efforts to foster a more health-conscious approach within the fashion industry, focusing on promoting mental and physical well-being. As a qualified Nutritionist, Sarah explores various aspects of nutrition, including its impact on conditions like Dyslexia, Autism, and ADHD. She discusses the misleading nature of wellness marketing, the crucial understanding of our relationship with food, and the intertwining of self-compassion and dietary habits. Join us as we explore Sarah Macklin's remarkable journey from the runways to the realm of nutrition and wellness, uncovering invaluable insights into health, self-compassion, and the power of transformative learning. Thank you Dr. Hauschka for making this Episode possible. Use the code CAGGIE10 for 10% off your first order. Here's to glowing skin and a greener planet!  --- Subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and receive more empowering insights and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. In today's episode, I am joined by a very dear friend of mine and that is Sarah Macklin. Sarah started her journey in the modeling industry and she is now an established nutritionist. She is the founder of an organization called the Be Well Collective and she is the host of the Live Well Be Well podcast. In this conversation Sarah discusses her journey in the modeling industry starting out at just the age of 15. After being scouted at a music festival she was catapulted into the fashion world which I think we always believe is a very glamorous one from

the outside so she shares some of her insights into the reality of what that world was actually like. She shares how she got into nutrition and health and wellness which essentially started firstly with her own personal health care and then one for her father. Hello Sarah. Hi. Welcome to the Saturn Trans podcast. I am so excited to be here. It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? Yeah, it's been about four years. Well, for the audience that doesn't know, obviously you're one of my dearest friends,

but would you be able to introduce yourself in your own words? I'd love to. So apart from being one of CAG's dearest friends, I am the host of a podcast as well. So we are both on our podcast journey together. It is called Live Well, Be Well, and it's a mix of my seven pillars of health. It's entwined with storytelling, which I believe is one of the most important areas of any change in health behavior,

linked with leading scientists around the world on kind of studies that are coming out surrounding mental health, physical well-being, emotional well-being, linked with leading scientists around the world on kind of studies that are coming out surrounding mental health physical well-being emotional well-being and combining all of that together into kind of your own health journey so that's the show live well be well that we have on similar to Saturn Returns and on YouTube which we've taken on this year which feels yeah it's a beast quite a bit of a beast and alongside that I'm a registered nutritionist and I've been in that field now for crikey nearly 10 years um and I also have a mental health

organization which you know really well called the BeWire Collective and I set that up five years ago I founded that and we started off within the fashion industry because that was part of my history of where I kind of started my whole journey in the fashion industry as a model. And so we basically built this independent, not-for-profit organization. One, to help create structure, mental health structure, support and advice within the fashion industry. Because in the whole history of the fashion industry there's never been any support and then that extended more to creatives working in the music industry working um in the film we did a lot with Netflix and then when COVID hit which was a really pivotal part for us everybody like the whole nation or the whole globe basically started

connecting with their mental health and I think then, mental health was only looked at from the lens of mental illness, which was a very stigmatized lens. But now mental health feels like a much more open concept. And everybody started to connect to stress, to loneliness. All of these are factors that kind of harm our mental health and so we had a huge influx to our sites in in covid which basically allowed us to extend our help to more people so now be well do a lot within the creative industry but we just do a lot nationwide now as well i try to sum up which i know you do kegs as well it's like really hard to kind of pinpoint this like one thing that we do but it's a lot about communicating storytelling and disseminating kind of that sometimes very scientific structure device

into accessible empowering information because that's what really kind of transformed my health journey because before any of this this is when we met each other when I was I don't know 19. I always forget that we met yeah so young and then we didn't see each other we just teach for ages and then we became really close in our paths went back to help me mode but I was in the fashion industry yeah working full-time as a model then full-time yeah full-time and um and you had a huge amount I mean you still are very successful as a model what was that experience like because I know from the outside it's always very glamorized and I know I've met so many models in my life and I've always thought it looks like quite an appealing industry but then

the more I hear about it I'm like oh and also I would say that perhaps the most beautiful women I've ever met in my entire life often are the ones that are the most insecure because you know by the nature of the job they are being put against one another being sort of pulled apart and pinched and scrutinized and therefore inevitably it gives you a bit of a complex so firstly like let's tap into that part of your career a little bit and what that journey was like because I know that that opened not necessarily opened the doors but led you to the path that you're on now it did you know what because I came from just like a really small town where none of this industry was accessible and then all of a sudden you're from Portsmouth yeah

literally like one mile outside like there's a place called Portsdown Hill, which is where I'm from. And literally this just does not happen to where people I'm from. Literally, you know, I had no concept that I would ever go into the modeling world. I loved photography, wanted to go and study that, be on the other side of the lens.

Never in a million years would I think I'd be alongside the photographers that I shot against. And then all of a sudden I was at a pop festival and I think it was like one of my first times I was allowed out on my own. I was 15. I went to this big pop concert. I loved Blue. Went to go and watch them. I remember being this like 15 years old and being like gosh this is like the best moment and I went and I remember there was like six of us and one of my friends was insanely tall as well and so when I got this tap tap I actually thought oh no you mean her and they were like no no we're talking to you I kind of couldn't even like get my head around that somebody would say that to me I don't remember this but my mum was always like don't

speak to strangers it's really weird when the first time you're allowed out to this pot festival and everyone's like giving you their business cards and you're like is this real and I went home and showed my mum and she was like yeah these are real agencies in London I was like really which agency was it so it was select storm and models one all of them and IMG yeah all of them scouts do you have that day wow yeah wow it's basically like when any big pop concerts are going on this is going back like 15 years ago which is the only so it's pre-social media pre-social media they would all go to Topshop on Oxford Street which is now not there and they'd all go to like these different pop festivals um so some in Hyde Park and some of the South Coast and like anything that

T4 did they would go there and so yeah I got scouted and I went up and I remember Henry Holland was my first ever casting and I'd walked into the agency I ended up going with Select because I knew my brother knew Daisy Lowe who was signed as a model back then and she said oh I going with Select because I knew, my brother knew Daisy Lowe, who was signed as a model back then. And she said, oh, I'm with Select. I trust them. So I went with her advice and went to go and see Henry Holland. And he was really sweet. And I walked out, I was like, oh God, they hate me. They absolutely hate me. And then 10 seconds later, I'm walking down the road and my agent was like, you've got the job. And that was like the start of trying to understand how this industry works. And you're so young at that age. I don't know if you remember what you were like when you were 16, but you don't really have that emotional capacity to really understand. So on the outside,

I obviously looked into this industry as this kind of amazing sphere of success and things that I could be catapulted into, which is what happened. But that does come a massive cost because there was no infrastructure to support my mental health or how I looked. And what I had to really quickly learn was every single job that I went to, for me, leaned on financial success. So every time there was a no, I didn't get paid. Every time I didn't get booked, I didn't get paid. So the pressure of being accepted for what you look like is huge. And then you're also on that trajectory at that age of all of your friends are going to university, they're starting to form these big bonds. And I was on a plane, on a train, in a hotel, just totally on my own. And back then, the concept of loneliness just wasn't spoken about

at all because you'd have your phones but you didn't have social media or anything like that I still wasn't around and so I barely saw my friends and family because I was just flying all the time and they get to a point when you're meeting a new team every day half the time they don't speak the language they're speaking a different language on the side of you and you just feel really removed and so you're really self-conscious and I think that's why some of the biggest models are the most insecure because it's like every day you're going to an interview sometimes you're going to an interview 10 times a day to maybe be rejected directly to your face on something that you just can't change. And that pressure mounts up because you start getting a taste for that success. And I think that's why a lot of models can get quite caught or anyone in

that kind of industry, because it's something that it's so hard to know if you're ever going to make it. And for me, I have so much gratitude for my career that I managed to do and the success that I built. But I remember living in New York and just feeling so removed and living in a model apartment, which sounds really glamorous. And it really wasn't. It was like mice infested. We were paying like through the roof. We were sharing rooms. And some of these were like the biggest girls in New York. You know, it's not like none of these people were they have like huge names but you were always in and out so you know you wouldn't know where you would be living what country you'd be in and the pressure was so immense and you were around this like ecosystem of really poor mental health you didn't

really have any kind of role model or structure or support at all it was just all of it was an ecosystem of kind of a poor mental health bubbling pot and you say poor mental health what do you mean by that what does that actually look like so it's like a whole range of things so it would be things from eating disorders like eating disorders are rife in our industry for copious amounts of reasons you're signed when you're 16 and then by the time you're 21 and you've got hips you've still got to be competing with 16 year old girls but you're given no nutritional guidance no nutritional support and if you think about a normal 21 year old girl that's

not a model they still suffer with complexities around body shape and body size and body dissatisfaction and comparison but you're so heightened when you're in that industry so you're hyper aware all the time and you're and you're also competing with the people you're living with which i think is really unhealthy a really unhealthy environment so it's everything's on steroids when you're in that industry then you've got depression like lots of girls really suffered with like severe depression just from the the enormity of the pressure that was on people's shoulders anxiety like never knowing where you'd be one day to the next not having a support structure around you that's something that I suffered really really badly with was anxiety

I mean if you can just kind of think of like somebody who has a very kind of healthy mental health structure I kind of want to say is somebody who might have these moments of anxiety or might have these moments of self-doubt but it doesn't consume them but you were just consumed with that all the time you know every single person around us it was like on steroids that we that we'd be around so we never kind of I would never go home and see my friends because I was in a different country so having that kind of that groundedness was never really there and I think then a couple of years of me living in New York you're also around people that are 15 20 years older than you that you're going to work with every day so you're in this you know New York is I found it so much faster than Europe it's like steroids and so you're just not really

getting a chance to think and so yeah kind of mixing that and then I remember a couple years after Instagram launched and that was like a whole other level of comparison and then the wellness culture which for somebody who is needing to like look their best and be their best obviously gets completely sucked into this side of things and I remember trying all of these different kind of wellness healthy alternatives that actually just made me not in a very healthy state because I would not be feeding my body correctly I'd be putting more stress on me I'd be feeling more anxious and it was just basically a recipe for disaster and I see that still now this kind of wellness culture it's marketed in a really poor way I think and it's not done by people that know what they're talking about. And I think when you're looking for answers

or wanting to look better, feel better, all of these things, you can be really sucked into it. It's like a void. And I was really sucked into it. And that's when, you know, kind of my whole pivot came because at that point, my whole body just kind of gave up on me. And what did that look like? I remember being 23 and I came back to the UK

and I was shooting American Vintage and I woke up in the morning and I had like a severe temperature severe temperature and it's one of those things that I never I never ever signed in sick I never called my agent I was like I can't make you shoot because you've got like 50 people waiting on set for you so if you don't turn up not only do you mess everyone's day up but the whole campaign goes out the window and you're kind of looked at as you know unprofessional you won't be you'll be booked again again so I remember going and I remember taking norepine on the way and I had this excruciating back pain and I was just like what's going on so I took more and I took more and nothing was numbing it and then when I finished that shoot and I remember it was

oh god I remember that shoot because there was another girl and she got sent home and they were like oh no you're gonna now do all of the looks and it was that one day we were just thinking I just I just don't know if I can get through this day and so I remember having like double the workload got home and collapsed my housemate was in at the time called an ambulance ended up in A&E a couple of hours later I was in intensive care and they didn't they didn't know what happened and basically after 24 hours they took me down to a CAT scan I was internally bleeding inside and what happened was that my kidney had stopped. I had sepsis all through my body. I was riddled with E. coli. I'd had five birth cysts. My whole body had just completely stopped working. And I think that was what the terrifying thing

was because when they picked me up in the ambulance, it's not a seizure, but it's, I can't pronounce it properly. It's like Raygze I think it is where your my kidney was flushing everything back out because it was starting to fail so my body was going into what was like a seizure a convulsion a convulsions and I probably had that like seven times before I got into intensive care and I remember the whole kind of mixture of this was I think like such intense stress like people talk about a lot about burnout now that's called like that's on the spectrum of like habitual burnout where your whole body just literally completely stops and Garber Matty talks a lot about this in his books with how stress manifests in the body and it's something that I learned

at 23 from having this like six years of build-up of just suppression and trying to cope and my whole body just completely stopped but the weird thing is like that wasn't my you would think that that moment would be my wake-up call like a rock bottom but it wasn't that is what I look back on and go how the hell did I not go wake up something's wrong I remember going back to New York and I was cycling around Hyde Park with a friend of mine and my phone kept ringing and I remember my mum always does this she's just someone who like if you don't answer the phone she just keeps calling you until you answer doesn't really get you know someone's busy but she just kept calling but this was like 10 times just call call call and I was

like what's going on so I answered I was like mum I'm just like cycling can I call you back and she was like your dad's had a brain hemorrhage and he needs to get home and I remember being like it was probably the first point in about six years. And this is, I think what still really hits me was the first point in six years where I had a feeling in my body because I was like, is he okay? And my dumb mom was like, I don't know. And I remember being like, like not knowing how to deal with it, but just having this like really intense emotion through my body. And I think that was something that really jerked me because I don't think I'd felt anything for so long I think I completely numbed myself into survival mode into just working as hard as I could proving myself as much as I could all of those things and my dad is literally like one of my best friends like I adore him and I remember there was probably like

a huge like void of sadness in that because I hadn't spent much time with my family because I'd been in New York and I'd been striving for this life and I had no idea what values meant I had no idea what purpose I had no idea of any of these things like I literally just went straight into the modeling world and just tried to survive but knowing back now that's something that obviously I'd been really missing the strangest thing is that I nearly lost my life but it didn't wake me up but I nearly lost my father and that's what woke me up and I remember calling my agent in New York so not in London and saying I need to go on a flight I need to get on a flight now. And I'd booked a really, really big

job the next day. And I remember like the fee and the photographer and kind of the vastness of this job. And it was something that I'd been wanting for about a year. And my agent was like, well, you've got this really big job tomorrow. You know, sure. Why don't you go the day after? And just that like conversation with something where you're fighting in your body to be like I need to go home to see someone who might not be alive like when I touched down like when we honestly he was like rushed into intensive care everyone was like we don't know if he's going to make it back out so then having this complex like complicated conversation of like do I stay and shoot like having that moment made me realize actually how much I'd put towards this and completely

disassociated anything I needed from myself. And also how sort of out of whack the values were. Completely, but on both sides, like realizing for the first time that I guess like when you're growing up in that industry, you look at those people as a bit of a mentor and you kind of hope that they would go, right, all action stations, let's get on a flight what can we do how can we look after you and that wasn't and it wasn't there and I think that really made me I remember I remember like just being I'm getting on a plane and then that month my New York agency were like I don't know if you're gonna be spending much time here you know you seem to be kind of preoccupied and they dropped me and it was that moment where i was like

you know a wake-up all of that wake-up and i and i remember sitting with my dad and i remember the consultant i mean he was in a really bad space about two years after that and it completely changed him as a person but i remember the consultant coming in and saying the reason why your dad's had a brain hemorrhage is because of the severe amount of stress he's been under and I just remember them saying that and thinking six months earlier I was in intensive care and didn't even give it a second thought that's why when I think you can be so consumed and so disconnected from yourself that it's actually a really terrifying place to be because you can be. And also in an industry that sounds like kind of encourages that in a way at the time.

At the time they did, but at the time it was like this fast pace. And I mean, I was hyper grateful for what it did give me because it also gave me an immense amount of confidence connections network like a whole different life but what I lost is I completely lost myself and then when you had this wake-up call what were the changes that you started to implement I'll be really honest because I always find it really hard when I listen to people who have like gone through something and they give an answer I'm like great I'm gonna go and do all these things because that's kind of how that person got to this place I had no idea what my next step was all I knew is that my body was suffering and for me to kind of just support myself just me without no mindset about work or anything. I needed to understand

how that worked. And I need to understand like, how do I look after myself? So the next kind of part of that was I applied for a Bachelor of Science to go and do a human nutrition degree to become a registered nutritionist. But so much of my life at school as I hated school I mean I loved the social element the social element was like my best part but the school itself I absolutely detested learning because I just felt like I would always be kind of at the back not really processing understanding things correctly and I always just thought I had really bad attention but when I went back and I and I got into my nutritional science degree within like the first week my professor pulled me out the class and I was like oh god this is going to be a moment where they're just like you're just not cut out

for this and I remember feeling like quite removed because I'd kind of come from a kind of a New York high-flying world sat into a classroom kind of going is this me is am I meant to be doing this you know I kind of didn't really know who I was and she looked at me and she just said look I can feel that you're really struggling and I was like this is really odd I've only been in class for like a week. How does this person know that I'm really struggling? I haven't said anything. And I'd handed in a paper. She noticed that so much of my wording was backwards. And she said, look, you're doing biochemistry.

I think you're dyslexic, but this is going to be really difficult if you are, because it's very complex wording. And obviously the big thing with dyslexics is that you get everything mixed up did you know you were dyslexic no idea and so what I then went on was this like insane transformative journey I mean that was the first time in my entire life by the way I'd ever been seen I ever felt seen someone had like watched me saw me bore me out and said I can see you're struggling and something and I remember when she said that to me it was like this such I remember it was such an emotional moment because I kind of couldn't grasp I could be dyslexic I got to 23 24 and for the first time in a week somebody had just said like I can see and then I went on this like three hour test and

within five minutes they were like like you're like extremely you were like the one percent severity of dyslexia I was like how have I got here being such an extreme dyslexic I guess if if we're gonna get by in any industry without them noticing it'll be the modeling industry but I mean I still like to do my own accounts at 16 you know like painful like being 16 and being self-employed and trying to find an accountant like all of these things and like rents in five different countries and you know there's like it's weird because the fashion industry does shed this light that you're meant to be a bit cheaper but you have you're like a proper business person at the age of 16 I grew up quicker than anyone else I know because I had to figure it out had to figure it out and I remember and that took me on one of the biggest journeys because everyone says oh you

must be so resilient and so thick-skinned from the modeling industry and yeah I am because I had so much shit to deal with but I also think the biggest thing for me and understanding this now especially in the last year of all the work that I've been doing and collaboratively the last 10 years that I've been doing is that that was probably my most defining moment for me finding out you were dyslexic finding out I was dyslexic because for me it made me understand that so I naturally think I'm quite a confident person I'm'm quite an extrovert. I really like being around people. But I always had this feeling of never being good enough because I was told my whole life that I wasn't good enough in school. sets I had a brother and sister who who were really intelligent who'd just been top sets for everything and they didn't work very hard but they were just naturally very bright and when you're in the bottom set for everything and kind and I remember I had glandular fever when I was 15

and they just said to me I just don't think I'm gonna pass your GCSEs and literally being told that as a child you just don't feel good enough especially especially against all of your peers and then going into the modeling industry and again kind of not being told in many ways you are not good enough and you're constantly like fighting for survival but I remember everyone in my life saying why are you going back to do science you were never good at school and me and my brain game oh god what am I doing I love that you did do that though, because the way that our education system is structured, I think it's evolved quite a lot, but at the time, you know, I struggled a lot at school and you speaking about it right now does

make me think, oh yeah, that's probably where all those sort of complexes have come from. All of them. Of not feeling good enough enough being scared to ask about something I don't understand in case I sound stupid because it's really straightforward and easy and also having a mind that works in a slightly squiggly manner it's all about squiggles and my family's like linear thinkers you know they're like you just go from here to here it's not just straightforward why have you gone like out the back and around around the world to get there but it's just you know and it's I think when you realize that it's a beautiful thing and to embrace it but at the time

there wasn't that perspective on it at all it was sort of you know my stepdad always he's dyslexic and he said at my age he was just called thick yeah so I was called thick at my age but it's true and like how detrimental is that because dyslexia has nothing to do with your IQ and like what I've realized is like in my later years when I've embraced it I've actually excelled in so many things because I know what my strengths are, but I don't know what my strengths are when I'm in a maths class. And I'm like, I don't know what the square root of that is. Like my brain doesn't work in that way. And it's one of those things that if you don't get it, then get out. You know, it's one of those things that you can't embrace

into a conversation because usually it's so linear. And I just remember her telling me that. And I mean, I got a first in my degree I got one of the top grades in the country from a girl that was nearly going to drop out because she felt so left behind but did they support you a lot once they once you figured that out hugely and did they shift the whole experience of how you were learning how you were I would never have got that grade that I did if they didn't support me and it made me understand just my my brain I learn in colors I learn in audio hence why a podcast I love you know I would record my lecture and I wouldn't be

listening in my lecture because I would get very overwhelmed and my processing just wasn't working so I'd record everything. I'd go for a run, the movement, the running, the listening. Listen to that in audio, I'd come back and I would just be able to disseminate the information like that in a block. And I'd do it into blocks of colors. And I remember looking into-

What's that look like more specifically? I'd have these huge A3 pieces of paper and I'd have different rows of colors. And I would have each different mechanism or each different chemical structure that I was observing was done in very segmented forms of different colors. So when I would try to understand any type of process, I would look at it in blocks and there would be in color codes and so I could visually bring them to the front of my brain very very quickly whereas when I was looking it on a powerpoint it was just black writing with a picture and I would just be so well not just

uninspired but I just wouldn't process it and so for me I would need to listen to somebody's voice without looking at the writing and so I would then imagine it in my own for me, I would need to listen to somebody's voice without looking at the writing. And so I would then imagine it in my own sense. And then I would come back and write that down. And that completely transformed how I learn, but also like how I, how, how my energy was. Because I remember feeling so de-energized and so frustrated and so alone like the alone concept was there as much as it was in the modeling world I felt so detracted from everything because I just feel like why can't I get this you know I felt just felt really slow and I just thought well there's got to be something wrong with my brain like why does what the way I would describe is that my brain actually hurt

and I would be like why does this why do I struggle and then you look around everyone else and they're all just they're like writing away like this and you would get a complex because you'd be like well I don't know what to write and I don't know what they're writing what are they writing and you would leave with a blank page and then you'd sit at home and just stare at your screen and try and understand it and so when I learned that way of learning for me and like really small notes for me that's what really kind of excelled my learning but then I just got really imaginative with it and creative with it and we've put it into different contexts and so for me that was something that that really helped but I think understanding that that was such a big block for

me really helped me understand more about my sense of self of all the triggers and all the worries I've got of my weaknesses all the times when I would dumb myself down all the times when I wouldn't want to go and do something because I'd be so afraid of being like found out and that was basically just this ball of nerves I'd have and that was just built from complexes over the years of never feeling good enough or worthy enough in those moments. And, you know, that related to modeling. You know, I would be so terrified that I wouldn't be successful in that job that I would then have to go and do something else. And all of these complexes just kind of drove one another,

all of these worries and all of these triggers. And it, you know, I still get these moments now. I still will be on a show and be terrified of saying someone's name wrong or interpreting something in a more of a different way and being a little bit terrified about how that person might react. But actually you just have to embrace it. And I think that's such a big thing. Whereas before it would just hold me back and I think we all have those things but I think for me the dyslexia was so deep yeah and then once you got that first then what did you do after that so it was really interesting because I knew when I was studying I wasn't like I want to become and go and do a PhD and be a researcher and be stuck behind books because that just also isn't me but I really wanted to understand the science around human nutrition and then I went on and

looked a bit at the psychology of eating disorders because for me my vision was I want to first of all go back into the industry and be a bit of a speaker and not campaigner that's not the right the word but a bit of an advocate. But don't forget, like, all of this now sounds like quite a linear, normal route. But back then, I don't know anyone that studied nutrition. Like, I remember going in and them going, so you study nutrition, and then you go into band one if you want to go in to do any kind of work in hospitals or you want to go and do an extra year of dietetics. And then you'll start on, like,000 pounds a year. Then after two years,

you might go to band two, and that's what this looks like. And it was a very like formulaic response. And I was like, I don't want to go into that. I really want to take the information disseminator and help to try and relay this to people to encourage them more on the preventative side. I didn't want people to go down this route that i went to and i and i mean i hit rock bottom at like the complete extreme at a super young age i feel like a lot of people have these stories around midlife but i feel like i had it hyper early in my 20s when you ended up in hospital yeah and i never wanted people to go down this confusing route of health because I remember back then I was looking for help yeah but nobody apart from the NHS which you don't go to for preventative care it was all quite marketing

in this wellness bubble there was nothing that was like authoritative but also inspirational and empowering that I related to so I was like I really want to come back with something that is going to give this to people and for me that was having to understand the signs first because if you don't it can be quite toxic to people that you can take them down the road that I went down because we're all so individual and I think that is like such a key part that I figured out and that's why I rarely talk about how I live my life because it's so personal and we're all such complex humans. And that's why when I see patients in clinic, you know, our first session is over an hour and a half and we go so deep into things and every single individual that's come out they

never have the same plan because they're all so different and I think it's so easy to google something and kind of go I'm going to try this extreme diet or I'm going to try this product but actually there's so much complexity that comes with that and so for me a lot of this was okay I want to go back into the industry first of all and help a lot of these kind of young people coming up into this industry and give them some support and work with the agencies and work the agents and try and really understand a procedure that we can implement to support mental health and physical health and then kind of through that like my own development I was just developing myself. And so after the Be Well, for me, a lot about this was bringing the podcast to life, like actually having these conversations, knowing the top scientists that are out there and bringing them onto the show and helping inspire people on their journey.

And taking it out of just the model industry and making it accessible to everyone. I'm curious to know, was there resistance from the model industry initially yeah oh my gosh yeah huge i mean there was resistance from everyone like even i remember even my parents like no one spoke about this you know like having this type of conversation was really really difficult um what type of conversation anything around mental health and anything around nutritional health. My dad was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I don't know, about nine years ago now. And I was on, I was studying at the time. And I was obviously learning all about how insulin resistance happens from a high load of carbohydrates.

And there's loads of lifestyle factors that go along with that and actually how with the right diet you can actually help reverse type 2 diabetes and i remember even trying to have a conversation with my dad and it was so freaking painful was it just dismissed completely dismissed but i guess that's because as well you know when you go to the doctor i don't know i rarely go i don't like go to the doctor, I don't know, I rarely go to, I don't like going to the doctor, but they don't ask you about your nutrition or what your diet is like. So if, would you be able to, you know, you just said that you can actually help diabetes by diet. and discovered and were kind of blown away by in terms of the connection with nutrition and diet and things that people just take as oh well I've got this and I can't do anything about it probably most illnesses but the thing that I got I mean diabetes is something that was

very close to my heart because of my father and we did take him off medication and we did reverse it and that for him was quite mind-blowing and it was one of the most painful experiences of my life working with a family member and trying to tell them what to do is like not something that I would advocate to do for everyone unless you've got a really good relationship but for me the biggest area where my research has gone down is mental health and diet and that's why I'm so passionate about these two things because I started off looking at dyslexia autism and ADHD and that's where like my fascination in mental health grew because the first part of my dissertation that I looked at and this is so long ago now but obviously ADHD is quite a common conversation these days, whereas back then it wasn't, is that I really wanted to look at, okay, well, I'm dyslexic. How can I help my dyslexia apart from the conventional methods of learning? And I really wanted to look at like what nutrition

can maybe help with the formation with the dyslexia in the brain. And I looked at fish and I wanted to see whether having more oily fish, which is basically 25% of your cell membrane. So if you think about this as like bricks on the wall, and you think every third brick is an omega-3, which is a fatty acid, but it's a longer chain omega-3. So you only get it in fish, which is DHA. So you have like your walnuts and chai seeds that you might see have omega-3, but they're these shorter chains, which don't convert down to these longer chains. So if you think about every third brick, okay, that's your DHA. Now, if I take that brick away, every third brick and a storm comes, what do you think happens? All falls down. All falls down. That's what our cell membrane is.

So we have these fatty acids, 25 25 is made up of this dha now we need to replenish that if we don't have enough oily fish in our diet what happens is you know our bodies are super clever they'll just take another type of fat like a cholesterol and they'll just shove it in there so it's then like kind of shoving in something else into that brick that's not a solid brick maybe it's like some tissue paper or something else just to kind of like cement that hole, but it's not going to be a strong foundation. And things like cholesterol is they're much more rigid and not as fluid in structure. And so what we know is that when I was looking at this, dyslexics that were given oily fish,

especially children, overcame their processing reading age and their chronological reading age just by having oily fish so i started like looking at this i started looking at alex richardson who is a professor at oxford and understanding more she's kind of dedicated a lot of her studies to dyslexia especially in children and then i was like what happens with pregnant mums i mean this is this is part by dyslexia i was, what happens if we just keep going down this chain? So I remember calling my mum and saying, mum, what was my, my mum doesn't mind me talking about this in podcast, but I was like, what was your pregnancy like for me?

She was like, you were like a demon child. I couldn't eat anything. I was sick all the time. I'd only live on crusty bread. So I was like, what happens in the development of the brain in the womb? And in the third trimester it's when the baby's brain's developed and we know that it's so important for women to have oily fish in that third trimester and if they don't there's a real association with women having

children that have learning disabilities like autism ADHD dyslexia because they're not getting enough of this Dha in their bodies as women to give to their children which is part of their brain development so you really start going oh my gosh nutrition is so critical to our mental health but is sorry to interrupt but is dyslexia not just a different way of thinking as opposed to being sort of mal nourished yeah it's it's it's a deaf it's a one it's also genetically linked as well so there's also that so it's not the sole reason but we know that the having nutrients that support our mental health and dyslexia or learning disabilities are critical so knowing if you've got

maybe a dyslexic child or an autistic child knowing that you can actually help with certain nutrients doesn't mean it's going to cure it doesn't mean it's going to make it easier but can really help support that cell membrane structure is critical because when what you're doing is then compromising it for no reason but a lot of people don't actually try to think, well, why is this so important? Well, actually, our bodies need fuel. Our brain needs specific type of nutrients. And if 25% of our cell membrane is made up of that, that's a really critical component. So you're saying from the studies of pregnant women that you could see a connection between children that had learning

difficulties and their diet during pregnancy with dyslexia yeah with dyslexia but then is dyslexia a genetic predisposition can be so i think the nuance of the conversation here is there's a lot of associations which is different causations so everything with learning disabilities with autism adhd dyslexia they're all multifactorial so a lot of it has a genetic link a lot of it can have links from when you're in pregnancy especially in your third trimester a lot of it can have links with how you're nourished as a child all of these things play into into the interim of the context of the situation an environment environment a really really big one but that's what i found fascinating right i was like okay well i know i've got this but how else could i help myself then speaking to my mom about understanding how she was pregnant with me was such a big kind of

realization i was like well my mom didn't eat anything i mean she was she lost so much weight she was so sick and all of her teeth fell out because she was so ill with me. She wasn't getting any nutrients. And I think now she would have been kind of taken into hospital, but back then they didn't really understand the importance around that. And so just, I remember kind of looking into this and this was about 10 years ago when I looked at this, so it could have changed, but a lot of the research around them was that there are huge links with nutrition in this sector. And there's a lot that you can do to support yourself. And I also think that's a really positive lens because it's like, well, what else can you do to support yourself? Well, this is one thing that you can try.

And I think what's really important here is just saying this isn't the sole answer, but it's one piece of the puzzle. And what that then led me down is okay well I now understand a bit about dyslexia I can now see that there's definitely links on how nutrition and mental health can go hand in hand how else can it go hand in hand and then around that time maybe it was just before a trial called the smiles trial came out which was the first ever trial. So we're going on to a different sector of mental health, but the first ever trial that was released, which looked at people that had chronic depression. So they were chronically depressed, not just a bit of low mood, they were chronic depressed. And they basically split them into

two groups. They had the modified Mediterranean diet, but a lot higher quantities of the foods. had the modified Mediterranean diet, but a lot higher quantities of the foods. And then they had a social support group. And so they wanted to see what happened. And what they found is at the end of that trial is that the people in the support group, they did see an improvement, but it was a very, very small percentage, but they did see that it did help. But the people that were in the modified Mediterranean diet so the high amounts of Mediterranean diet type of food it was like a third of them or maybe it was two thirds it was a really high percentage overcame and went into remission for depression pure remission. And for those that don't know would you be able to explain what the Mediterranean diet consists of? The base of it is kind of whole grains, pulses, beans, that type of thing.

And then it's layered on with a bit of meat and a bit of fish. And then it's kind of olive oil is trickled all the way through. And the base of it is vegetables, legumes, greens. So predominantly plant-based with a little bit of meat, a little bit of fish in there and lots of olive oil. That's the typical mediterranean diet now the modified mediterranean diet was kind of ranked up a lot more so i think it was something between five and eight portions of like whole grains a day so it was a lot there's a lot of food to consume but basically because it was so much food to consume it basically took out

all of the processed foods because when you're eating that much whole food you naturally take out the processed foods so there was very limited processed food in their diet um but what i found really really interesting is that that was the first ever study it was a smiles trial done by um professor felice jacker from the food and mood center was phenomenal that that was the first diet that actually showed that chronic depression could be reversed could go into remission and so that was such a pioneering study of the moment and I think that really opened the doors into nutrition and mental health a real link to what the Mediterranean diet kind of shows and what that did show is that a lot of this also works in the gut microbiome. So when you're thinking about the amount of pulses,

the amount of fiber that's in that diet, amount of prebiotic foods, they're all working with our gut health. And so when we start looking into our gut health, that's where our neurotransmitters are made, which is like our serotonin, our dopamine, all these feel-good hormones that are really important for our mental health are all made within our gut and we know that we have this gut brain connection right and so we know that 90 of our neurotransmitters are sent up to our brain but we also know that 10 of our brain health of how we're feeling goes into our gut so every time we're stressed we have this bi-directional connection and so that's why people that might have IBS or IBD suffer more so with anxiety and depression right they're feeding into each

other they're feeding into one another what are some of your observations at the clinic of people at the moment in today's world that you've observed are problematic in terms of their diet and relationship to food? Actually, let's start with just their diet. There has been a huge rise in nutrition over the last few years. I mean, from when I started studying it and nobody cared about it and no one wanted to talk about it to now we're kind of becoming the forefront of a conversation, whether you're at like a dinner party or whether it's kind of a founder wanting to kind of execute more in their workload and wanting to know what to eat or whether it's somebody wanting to eat to help their hair or whatever it is. There's a multitude of reasons of why people are talking about nutrition, because we're really understanding how important it is to our health physically mentally and emotionally I think we now know that when we don't eat well we tend to feel worse so that kind of emphasis on mental health has really started to shun through but one of the biggest things that for me really stands out is still this disconnection so I see

a lot of people trying to wanting to try and eat really, really, really well, but becoming really derailed by mismarketing of foods that are out there. So they think I'm eating really, really healthily because this is what the marketing label is telling me. But there it's the complete opposite. And so I'm seeing a lot of that where people just feel like they're hitting a brick wall all the time and they're just hyper confused around it the biggest thing I can say to people is if I say to the sexist let's do this together how many processed foods do you think you eat I don't know a few how would you define a processed food something that's not natural okay something that's bit I've never really thought about it to be honest but would you say you're quite healthy yeah yeah but I'm not um that

puristic about food so it's interesting right the dynamics there is i'm not that puristic but to be that i've got to be really healthy what do you mean to be so there's this kind of like ideal of having to eat this really clean diet yeah and that's healthy yeah and that's healthy and it's not because that's also unhealthy trying to feel that you need to eat this like very clean way is also not a really healthy relationship with food so a lot of people also feel there's a massive barrier to eating well because it can feel very elitist at the same time and so i think the biggest way to break it down is trying to understand how much nutrition you're getting in your diet like how many just whole foods doesn't have to be clean

but it can be like a can of beans these are the things that make up the staples of our diet. But with the rise in nutrition, it's also become increasingly complex. And I think it's a lot of the frustration that comes through my door. People are just confused about what the hell they're meant to be doing. When actually in simple terms, it's really not meant to be that confusing. It's meant to actually be quite simple. But we've made this thing into something that's so complex because there's so many voices on social media that conflict with each other that conflict with one another and so people are like i don't know what i'm meant to be doing so i just give up and that's what i end up seeing and then also we get these kind of really mixed marketing messages on the fastest way to lose weight the top 10 boosters for your skin health the top 10

supplements to take for your hair health the top 10 ways to debloat and all of that is nothing that's kind of aligned with where you are right now yeah and so people are trying to do these things and becoming really overwhelmed in the way on the process and then give up because I guess I just I'm someone that like you know I eat intuitively but that was a very foreign concept for me for a lot of my life so within that I just I'll eat whatever I want but I also know that if I'm eating something that's unhealthy I won't have like a huge amount of it and that's totally fine it doesn't really disrupt my system in any capacity but before I had this um sort of feast or famine where I would be like I can't have I can't have those kind of things in the house because I'll eat the whole thing and then I would have something

like that and I would eat the whole thing and then I would feel really bloated and like awful and then it created this sort of chain reaction that was deeply unhealthy but again it was because I was trying to abide by all these rules of like okay bread's bad for you okay I won't have bread you know all this stuff which I realized now is just absolute rubbish and to be honest I think if you're feeling good in yourself and it's working for you then like you know each to their own but a lot of that also kind of aligns with a destructive behavior food is so easy to kind of be the armor in that yeah it's so easy to be the armor in it or to be the the weapon well yeah maybe that's a better way of putting it i was

thinking of it that it can kind of control it can kind of come on as your force to protect you to it doesn't show that you're being as destructive it's a very easy way to kind of come on as your force to protect you so it doesn't show that you're being as destructive it's a very easy way to kind of hide the self-destructive behavior because people don't really see you do it it's kind of the relationship that you have with yourself during that time and that's why it becomes so complex it's not always the food that's the issue it's it's the way you're relating to it it's the worthiness that you have with yourself it's the self-kindness that you have for yourself that's such a big area the self-compassion and the self-kindness is such a big interlink when it comes to food well within that because obviously you know you've said you have people that come to see you and they've they're sort of hitting

their head against a brick wall and they're like oh I've tried all of these things it's not working do you get into the sort of nuts and bolts of what's going on in their psychology I think one of the biggest things that I've learned and I think yeah so much about food is not just telling somebody what they should be eating or trying to navigate them through what they should be eating so much about it is understanding their relationship to self but why is that such an untapped area as it relates to our body because it's huge it's huge i don't know why there is it's so unspoken about but it's something that i've really started to see within myself and my own journey within my patients and their own journey,

but also just within the research. There's a very limited amount of research around self-compassion and food. And there's a lot that goes into kind of disordered eating, body satisfaction, body dissatisfaction, body image, but there's a very limited area of research around self-compassion to self and self-kindness and self-worthiness. And I think, one, it has to be done in a very individual approach. Two, it's quite terrifying to start understanding that relationship with yourself. Unraveling it, yeah. It's terrifying. But I think it's one of the biggest things, especially when it comes to food. So much comes down to how we see ourselves. We're never taught about this. It's something that we

kind of go through our journey ourselves of having to understand how to be kind to ourselves. Quite easy to be told how we can be kind to one another and how I can be kind to you, but it's quite hard for me to understand how to be kind to myself unless I think that I'm really worthy of it and that unravels something completely different and when we look at how people talk to oneself and this is something that I've become really interested in there's a lot of conversation around gratitude at the moment and there's a lot of conversation around positive self-talk and I've always been really interested in that but never really understood like the scientific lens on it and I always want to know you know is this just something that is meant to make us feel good but or is it going to really have an effect and there

was a study it was completely randomized where they put two sets of groups on a running machine on a treadmill test and then they came off and they said to them you've got the gene that's really good for endurance and made them feel that they were really good at endurance running because they've got the specific gene they said to the other group remember this is completely randomized this is not true said to this other group you don't have the gene for endurance running so you're not very good at it. They got them back on the treadmill test. The ones that were told that they had the endurance gene, which again, they didn't because it was randomized,

outperformed their personal best from the first time, but also outperformed the other group. The group that were told that they didn't have the endurance gene went back on the treadmill and underperformed. So just by simply telling them a statement that isn't true, but that was more positive, and underperformed. So just by simply telling them a statement that isn't true, but that was more positive, they outperformed. And they gave that same group again, but again, completely randomized. They said to one of them, okay, you've got an FTO gene,

which means that they've got more of a predisposition to obesity, but they didn't have it, but they said that to them. And they said to the other group, you don't have that FTO gene. And then they gave those groups these meals and they both reacted completely differently in their hormonal response. Whoa. Just from them thinking that they had that gene. So the hormonal response was that of the one that was told that they did have the gene would be more inclined to put on weight because of the hormonal response was that of the one that was told that they did have the gene would be more inclined to put on weight because of the hormonal response wow that's wild isn't

that well obviously you know the nature of this show and and myself is along the more woo-woo side of things so I've always thought this must play a huge part because I also know in my own experience in my own body how it has how my self-talk has impacted my body over years but I've never been able to fully understand or speak to anyone about it and it's and it sounds really like oh if you speak to yourself in a certain way but if you if you take that particular story and think about what I was saying when we get into that quite destructive cycle, for every person that might be listening to this that has that situation where they start eating something that they've given a morality piece to, so they've labeled it as bad, right? And they start eating it and they start feeling that feeling in their, oh, that thought in their head of, oh my God, I'm going to put on loads of weight from having this. Are you suggesting that even having those negative thoughts is therefore going to predetermine that you will therefore be, which it kind of is, right?

Well, what these studies show is that it does change your physiology. So it does have an impact. What these thoughts and these beliefs yeah it changes your performance it changes the physiology that's in your body and so much about how we talk to ourselves is fundamental because if we talk to ourselves in a negative way yes okay those those are scientific studies that can show that it can have an effect in our body from how we metabolize food to how we perform in a race but also you're just constantly telling yourself negative thoughts you're constantly telling yourself you're not good enough like that was like what i was like in the modeling industry i was constantly told that i wasn't great that's what i was told at school i was constantly told

that i wasn't smart enough. And it completely broke me. The science does show that that is a really important element, just from how you're eating and just from how you're performing. But we don't speak about that in society. So if you're telling yourself every day, I didn't eat well today. I let myself go today. You're constantly putting a cap on that self kindness. You're not letting any room for error appear. You're becoming like your harshest critic every day. And having that heavy element of not feeling worthy because you haven't done something perfect every single day. You've maybe had an off day or an off week or an off month. every single day you've maybe had an off day or an off week or an off month there's no room for that growth into that long-term thought perspective of what you want your goals around nutrition to be

or what you want your goals around exercise to be but i think this sort of irony of the whole thing is that actually when you master or begin to practice the self-compassion piece the other stuff doesn't really matter because you don't really care because you know you might yeah because you're like yeah i feel a little bit squishy today okay like you know it doesn't you take that pressure off because you'll know that's no longer the goal totally and then you have a more harmonious relationship with yourself consequently because of that yeah you learn to live more in self-kindness when you get to that space more acceptance of yourself and I think as long as there's an understanding of what your body and mind needs right we all we do need good nourishing food

we do need that to feel well but as long as there's an understanding of, I want to feed my body to support it well, taking that harsh critic off is one of the best things that you'll do for your health. And what would your advice be for anyone listening that is struggling with that self-talk right now, Bea? I think it's one of the hardest ones to give a really specific, easy answer to, because everyone's going to be on a completely different stage of that but i think one of the biggest things that i would say to anyone who's struggling with that self-talk is first just try and write a list of like the 10 things that you love about yourself and try and keep them on your phone try and keep them sit

them on your mirror if you if you live on your own or you're not afraid of someone seeing them. And I think it's trying to constantly remind yourself of those things that you love about yourself because the only things that are going to stay in your mind are the things that you hate by yourself or the negative comments. If three good things happen in your day and three bad things happen in your day, you'll probably remember the three bad things. You'll very rarely remember the three good things. And we know that for every bad comment made we need three positive ones to balance it out and so if you think about that logically for every bad thing that you hear you need three positive ones so it is a practice of telling

yourself the things that you love about yourself when you're in that negative state it's so hard to bring that up so hard to think about it because all you can think about is that negative lens and so having those things running down somewhere I think is is really important and I say 10 you can do as many as you want but for some people that can be really really hard to store a couple down and then within that and it's something that I think has been so misconstrued in society right now, but it's adding in your own time for self-care, which I think has become a language that's become a spa day or, you know, going to get your nails done or having a bath. It's actually taking something which brings you complete peace and joy.

And I think sometimes I say to people, what does bring you joy in a moment that's free? And some people really, really struggle to answer that question. And it's because we've completely lost that understanding of what's really important for us. But we need those moments. We need them every day and we need them in our day to help us keep going. So I'd also write down the

five things that you feel actually bring you a lot of joy and happiness that don't involve finance and it's going to be a journey right it's not going to be one of those things where in two weeks you've lost your negative self-talk I still get self-negative self-talk but it's just about catching it when it happens because most people are going around with it all the time in their heads and then being like I don't know why I'm feeling like shit because they haven't acknowledged the impact that that voice is having but I do think when you're especially not in that specific negative self-talk starting the work on this then but it's building in it's building that habit and it's it's really really hard but it's like trying to build a new highway so at the moment you've got one highway that's

kind of rooted in this negative self-talk and it ends there it's quite a firm structure and you know when any maintenance is done on a road any road works it takes so long for this new highway to be built and that's what you've got to think about it as you're building this new highway and it's not going to be done in a day and it's not going to be done in a month, but it's going to take continuous work to build that stretch. But the more that you do it, the more that you'll have that neuroplasticity working to build that new highway. Yeah. I love that. Well well I think that's kind of all we have time for today but Sarah thank you so much for joining me I love this and I think our audience

are gonna get a lot from this episode so thank you for your insight thank you for having me thank you so much for listening to this episode of Saturn Returns and for your continued support of the podcast. If you haven't followed the show yet, please hit the follow button. And if you feel so inclined to do so, please share this episode on social media or with a friend who you think might find it useful. As always, remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.