The Uneducated PT Podcast - Ep 147 You Can Eat That - Joshua Hills

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

In this episode, I’m joined by Joshua Hills to talk about the deeper psychology behind the way we eat — and why so many people feel more confused, anxious, and disconnected from food than ever. We get into:why Joshua felt this book needed to existhow his personal story shaped the work he does todaywhy so much nutrition advice online is making people worse, not betterwhat food freedom actually meanshow food anxiety often gets disguised as “discipline”why guilt, restriction, and all-or-nothing thinking keep people stuckand what a healthier, more realistic relationship with food actually looks likeThis isn’t a conversation about perfect eating.It’s a conversation about peace, permission, and unlearning the fear around food

Before we start and get into your book, we need to ask the very important questions because the two lads are very chronically single and you just got engaged. Congratulations, by the way. Cheers. Yeah. Were you sure that she was going to say, yeah? Yeah. She was mentioning it for about the last three years, most days.

Yeah. I had to say to her just before, well, I was asking her for her plans in the lead up to Christmas. And she was like, why you're trying to figure out a weekend to propose? And I was like, yeah, maybe. But then she was just mentioned it every day. And I said, Mel, if you mention it every day, I was like, I can't do it. It has to be somewhat of a surprise.

Yeah, because the more she mentions it, then the less likely you're going to do it. You know what I mean? You did it on the beach, yeah? Yeah, down in Chedony. So, nice beach. Yeah. Down in Cork. How has life been in Cork since moving?

It's great. I love it. I like Ireland in general, but yeah, Cork's nice. It's quite slow. It's peaceful. Is that the biggest difference that you found from moving from the UK to Ireland? Yeah. Yeah, so.

Like where I'm from originally in England, Weymouth down south, like seaside town kind of thing. We call it a seaside town in England. In Ireland, you call it Kinsell a seaside town. Yeah. Like, Weymouth is like probably at least ten times bigger than Kinsale. So we call it a small seaside town. but it's it's a lot bigger than than uh kinsale but yeah like down there it's right it's quite like slow pace it's more like a bit more community vibe but just living in and around london for the last 10

years you know i'm not not mad on the whole hustle and bustle everyone's in a rush you come to island no one's in a rush um so so you're not homesick or anything like that no no i i won't be going back. I much prefer it over here. Cancel is a great spot. There's one of my favorite little towns to go on a rip-up. Chair, where's your fate other than where you live, where's your favorite place in Ireland

to go for a night out? Oh, well, I might actually cancel the sevens that are on, it's normally on, is it the May bank holiday weekend? I think it's actually on usually. The sevens tournament down in Cancel is loose enough. Like,

Like, it's actually probably tamed down over the last few years, but I remember going there when I was 19 and, like, people were getting up to things in the bushes at, like, one o'clock in the day already. Like, the place was fucking manic. Who was in the bushes? People were riding in the bushes. There you go on it.

You happy now? I was trying to be polite. I don't think Kinsel has enough pubs, though, surely, to host, like. They're normally up in the, they're normally up in the rugby ground. for a good chunk of it and then people disperse after that a lot of people go back down to court but if I was going to say

if I was going to pick another place Galway yeah I've yet to be I've yet to go I want to go this year Galway is a good spot for a night out nice people good mix of people and there's never any there's never any hassle up and go out

yeah do you know where I think is a good night out Enis and Claire I thought you were going to say Wicklow well Wicklow's a great night out as well I thought you're going to say Bray you've all been to Use of all the internet Marlato.

Atello. That's the only place I know for that. That's Rob's favorite place of the world. Anyway, before we get, before we get cracking on your book, Josh, the lads want a little bit of dating advice. They want to know how can they get into a successful. They want to know how to get into a success.

As a man who is in a successful, healthy relationship, can you pass chair any advice? Because he says he just keeps going for buddies with tattoos. And I'm like, I don't know if that's the approach you should be taken. Yeah, that's the only approach I should be taking. Do you know what? I don't have any advice other than,

I always think if you go looking, it's never going to happen. I think it just happens. Oh, we've tried that. We've tried that already. It doesn't come to mark. Yeah. Tell that to Rob he'll travel halfway up the UK for a day. You could talk about you and your situation ships.

That's what we could be talking about. Right. Will we will we move on to the, will we actually move on to the book and get actually cracking a little bit of value for people? Right. So Josh, I went through this book as quick as I could to get the best quotes that I could find for you to kind of dive into them. And I suppose the first one that I wanted to go through, which is basically in the intro was I'm writing this book because it needs to exist. What did you mean by that? Well, I think you've only got to spend a day on social media. just see all the crazy kind of, I don't even know how to describe it.

It's just loose, isn't it? It's just like crazy. At the moment there's trends like, especially like wellness trends of like all this expensive stuff that just does nothing. At least people feeling like they need to spend a load of money to be healthy. And almost like being healthy is reserved for the wealthy. And I think, of course, if you go into any kind of bookshop and you look at, you know, what books are on the show.

shells in terms of like when it comes to health or nutritional fitness they're either written by celebrities or they're written by you know quacks from social media who have just developed a large following yeah um and i just think there's there's a bit of uh i would say there was there's a bit of a hole missing with kind of like books being written there's a few really good ones out there but at the end of day you know most of i think there's some great like nutritionist dietitians and that who could write amazing books but unfortunately uh you have to be asked to write one. I just think it's kind of like a bit of wrong. So I didn't want to write it. I couldn't think of anything worse than kind of like spends all the days just writing.

But once I got into it, I enjoyed it. So I was like actually I kind of need to write in a way of I think my approach for things may be a little bit unique just because of my background with like growing up with my mum around her having anorexia and stuff. So I think hopefully can give people like a bit of an insight into kind of what's what's really important from someone who, you know, I've gone and studied nutrition at university, but also growing up around something that is so distressing. And, you know, you see any kind of joy ripped from food and food, everything about food becomes terrifying. So, yeah, I was just hoping a bit of insight from that could help kind of calm people. I think people probably need a bit more calm and around food rather than kind of second guessing and being fearful of everything.

I know Joe will appreciate that and stuff. we've had conversations about it before. So yeah, yeah. I actually mentioned you at the very end of the book. I don't mention him by name, but I mentioned sitting with him and having a conversation. So fuck you two guys. We're having a conversation about food.

And then I actually quoted a post that he wrote. And I put it at the end of the book because I think it in mind it perfectly summarized food and what food should be. So, yeah, that's essentially what I was trying to get across. Was it, did it challenge you in terms of, like, did you have days where you had rider block? Did you write every day? Like, how challenging was it compared to what you taught it would be like with the process of doing it?

Yeah, writer's block was something I'd heard about. And I think I had it in like a different way. It wasn't a case about I couldn't write and get the words out. Yeah. I was okay with that because I'm kind of someone that just, like, I'll just write whatever's in my head. Like, and I think I was quite lucky with how I like structured doing it. So I was like, if I just write, I'll end up just chatting shit. I'll end up just waffling.

So what I was doing is I was driving out to like a cafe on the coast. And I'd just take a notebook. And I would just write down the subchapters in that chapter. And I would just write down my thoughts around that. Then I'd bring it home and then I'd write up that subchapter. So I kind of had a kind of like relaxing way of kind of planning the book. in a way and then I'd come back and write it up. But I think it's just like with anything,

you kind of fall behind your schedule. So then it was like, you panic a bit. And then you're like, then you're Russian stuff. Well, you feel like you're rushing. So yeah, I give yourself a timeline to finish it. I didn't, they did. Yeah. So the timeline was there when you wanted it.

It was a lot shorter than what I was expecting. Yeah. But I was kind of. like, I can't really say no to it because they were like, we really want to get it out for this date. And first of all, when they said the date, I was like, yeah, that's fine. Didn't realize that meant finishing the book like six months before that day. How long were you actually doing it? Because I know we didn't find out until a while back that you were doing it while we were in Leeds.

Yeah, so I can't remember when we were in Leeds. Was that the end of September? That was end of October. Oh, end of October. Yeah. So I was literally about two weeks out from finishing it. Okay. I did it in just under four months.

well but and I would say if you're just writing a book like that's fine but I have a full time job like I have a I have a business I have clients and I had to kind of shut down quite a lot of stuff I was doing work wise yeah just have have the time and energy to put into it and then you know then I'd still be writing at like 1 a.m in the morning and then I'd be writing at the weekends and stuff so I kind of put everything into it because I don't think I don't think writing naturally like comes to me naturally so Yeah, writer's block, not from that sense, but in terms of, like, I think I just exhausted myself. Yeah.

I like the, I like the process of driving out to a cafe and writing it, writing it all down. I can't write on a computer. I have to have. Like, Dan was giving me shit for a where I have so many notebooks and write things down, because if I sit in front of a screen, I'll stay there for about an hour and nothing's coming out. I have to write as well. So my problem was if I sat and did it on the computer like a WhatsApp would go off

or I'd go like oh I need to water this and then my brain goes and does that whereas I was like as long as I go out and I write it then it will take me like it was taking me then like half an hour to write up a subchapter because I had all the notes and I could just you know add bits to it and I was making notes on like research I knew of and stuff or I'd just write

like you need to go and find the paper you know sometimes you're like I remember there's a paper on this but I can't remember the exact name whatever So then I'd just quickly go back and do those kind of things, knowing that then when I'd done the chapter, I could go through it and like tweak it more. And I was quite lucky. Like I had like three editors, two proofreader, stuff like that. So I got it in for like the start of November. But then they went through it, came back to me kind of like start of December, I think.

We made some tweaks. And then they did a full like a full proofread, came back. They did a full proofread. It came back to me like a week before Chris said, we'll give this. batch you like as we break up for Christmas and then we'd like it back start of January and I was like oh I want to Christmas as well so I had to like they're completely understanding I think for them it was just like we'll give it back then and then we'll get it back when we come back and it'll work perfectly and I was just like I can't do that I was like to give me at least an extra week and

they're like oh yeah course that's fine so and it just after I'd finished it it went through so many different stages of like because I was well over word count I think I was like 15,000 over I'm still I believe like about 10,000 over from where they wanted it and I had to take a whole chapter and loads of subchapter out completely because they were like need to reduce this I was like just get rid of the subchapter what's what's that concept where like like a task will take you as long as you as you give it the time to do what is that what's that called again Rob, do you know what? I can't remember.

But it's so true because genuinely, if you told me to write a chapter like in a day, I'd write it and I'd stay up until the early hours of morning until I finished it. Yeah. And I remember the, I think the first chapter, because I was doing it in blocks, because they said to me, I said, you need to give me deadlines. I said, don't just give me a date when the book's due in. I said, I need a deadline. Like each month, this is what you want from me.

Yeah. So they were really good with that. And they said, right, cool. Send us the first four. And I'd already written some because I had to write some to get it like approved because they wanted to know what the book was going to be like. So remember I did the first few chapters and I completely underestimated what I needed to do like each week. And then I was like crap. So I think I wrote like two chapters in in less than a week for the first block.

And I remember submitting that and I just went straight to the fridge, got a beer out. And I was just like, I don't know if I could do this. But after that, I was then fine. Because it's like you just need to be a bit more structured. I was enjoying it far too much to go and read stuff and go, oh, I'll put this in and put this in. I was like, Josh, you actually need to write it. You can't just go like, you can't just keep planning it.

You got everything. Yeah, you could literally be spending the next 10 years, decide. Yeah, this is what a giant thing you could beat someone to death with it, like, for the time you're done it. Even now, like I went and did the audio recording last month, maybe. Yeah, start last month, I think. and even when I'm reading it through, my brain's going, I'd love to change this bit.

I'd love to change this line. I'd love to take that line out. You could give it to me now and I'd still be making changes to it. How long did the recording for the audiobook take? It took my question for me. Four full days. Four full days.

Yeah, I think that was the worst part of it all. Just sat in a tiny little brief on a microphone talking. and I then thought I was ill by like the third day. Because it was like my throat is like red raw. And my sound guy was like, no, I think you're just not used to speaking like all day, every day. And a week afterwards, it was just like, it was just raw. That was probably the hardest. Like in terms of the concentration and intensity of just reading.

And I think like I said, you read something like I wish I could have changed that. And then your brain is just focusing on focusing on that. but yeah. Did you find that made you like stumble your words a little bit as you were reading it when you got distracted or was it kind of fluid all the way through? It's weird. It's like I could read like a few pages.

No, like just flowing. I'm not even like properly concentrating. I'm almost like reading a couple of lines ahead so I know what's coming so I can like enunciate things and stuff like that. But then you then spend like 20 minutes on one paragraph because you literally can't get the words out. And you might write a few words and you read it you go, cool, that looks good.

Try saying those words, like, one off the other. They just don't roll off the tongue. And then I'm just there, like, almost like punching the desk in this booth. And, like, I was just like a couple of times a lot, I just need to get out of this building. I think, like, when people who maybe, obviously will all have kind of a bit of an understanding around nutrition. And a lot of that can come from, like, relationship with food. I suppose when people go to pick up a nutrition book, they think of, oh, this nutrition book is going to tell me what to eat. And they think that that's what's going to be the answer to what they've been struggling with.

Obviously, you said in one of your quotes, it's not just about what you eat. It's a reminder to ourselves why we eat and how we feel about eating. Can you explain that a little bit? Well, like we all know that we need to eat to survive, right? So everyone kind of has an opinion on that because you actually need to eat. and it kind of makes the whole, you compare it to something like smoking or alcohol. People can feel like, you know, that's their kind of, you know, their worst enemy or something like that, but they don't actually need it.

Like inferior, I know like alcoholism and stuff, a bit more complex than that, but it's not something they need to actually, you know, survive. Food's different. We all have to eat. So then you add in the complexities of things like that and the fact that our food environment now is like absolutely crazy and everything we eat now is criticized or shamed in in some kind of way that it doesn't matter, you know, what you eat. There'll be someone out there saying something bad about that food.

And yeah, it's just led us down a path where people are just, yeah, terrified. And they kind of forget that food isn't just for nutrition and health, you know. I speak in the book about, I was 29 when I had the first piece of cake with my mum. I was 28 when we first had an ice cream together. Like that that's something that we should all be able to do with our family or friends or love ones. And when you don't have the memory of doing that as a child, as a teenager and things like that, that leaves like a bit of a hole in your life, I believe. So it's remembering that food is also there to be enjoyed. It's not just, you know, to keep us alive and fuel us to exercise

and things, it's to be enjoyed. And I think also remembering that, you know, if you touch on like emotional eating, people assume any kind of emotional eating is a negative thing. It's a bad thing. whereas actually we all have emotions and food can absolutely be part of soothing those emotions and you can see it from a positive way. You know, if you get a job promotion or you get engaged and you get married, you know, food and drink

for a lot of people is a big part of that. It's a part of celebration. And the same way, if, you know, if you take something like a funeral again, it's the same. You take something like having a really stressful day. The thing you might want to do is go, do you know what?

I don't want to cook salmon, potatoes and broccoli for dinner. Just want a pizza. I just want to sit and watch a film and have a pizza. And that's actually okay. Like if it, as long as our only coping mechanism isn't food, food can still be a part of like soothing emotion as well. And I think people just completely forget about that and disregard it because they see that as like not healthy.

Yeah. Right. It actually is part of a healthy relationship with food. Can you explain to the listeners a little bit how much of this book is represented true? You grown up and watching your mum's, relationship with food and explain and that little bit to the listeners. I think everything I write is comes from that position.

Yeah. And I think that that's why I have such a strong outlook on those kind of things. And I think even in the book I write about food poverty and how that comes under the whole UPF ultra-process food debate. And there was a stage of my childhood where we lived in poverty, where, you know, my parents separated. My dad didn't have anything to do with us. My mom was working part-time.

She couldn't work full time because of her anorexia. So we were having to survive on one part-time wage. She had three sons, a mortgage to pay. And, you know, we were on like free school meals and stuff. I didn't have any choice what I had for lunch. It was whatever the one cooked meal my six form had that day. I had no choice. It was that or don't eat it.

Like that was all it was because I didn't have enough money to go and buy my own food. My mom didn't have enough money to, you know, we didn't, I didn't see a chicken breast. I didn't see a fillet of salmon in my house. like they they didn't exist um so even that kind of shapes things but i think just like i mentioned about the the absence of like enjoying food of my mom and seeing kind of the fear that she she endured it shapes everything because i in our work with people day to day and even um this morning i was having a call with a client and one thing we worked on was trying to get her to go out for a slice

of cake with her with her child yeah because it was something she was fearful of and i was like i don't want your son to go through what I went through and I don't want you to go through what my mom went through that should be something that you do together and and we spoke about a couple of weeks ago and and you know she put a picture up of our food diary of a piece of cake and then it was literally the moment as her son's reaching over to grab it and I was just like to me that's like everything about you know what I want to help people do and it's like it's one piece of cake that week it makes no difference to like her nutrition so I think yeah everything kind of stems from my mum and even my interest in nutrition because my mum's not someone that's like don't eat this don't eat that

my mom's never been that type of person she's always been and i would say she's done an amazing job but kind of encouraging us to you know we would still have cake she just wouldn't eat it we would still have ice cream she just wouldn't eat it we'd still have a takeaway or go out for dinner she just wouldn't eat it so we still she still encourage us to do those things even though it caused her like immense like distress and pain it's going to say that shows a huge amount of um strength from her behalf the fact that she had that fear around the food but she was like i know it's i know it's not healthy for my children to experience what i'm experiencing so i'm going to put everything aside of my struggle and make sure make sure they're not going through that us yeah she did she did great

yeah and i think she gave me the interest in nutrition because she was interested in it herself and she still tried to do things she still like my mom still ran marathons and stuff so she was still interested in fueling herself. Just couldn't do it properly. So when I played football, when I played rugby, when I went through doing athletics and stuff, she was still like, right, you need to eat your big bowl of pasta the night before. She still encouraged, like, she had a real interest in it. And she was the one that pushed me to go and do like food tech at school because she

was like, I can see that you like this kind of stuff. And she, I didn't want to go to uni. I refused. I was like, I'm not going to uni. I hate school, hate six form. this was even four sixth form and she spoke to my tutor and she said my son literally just says he's going to work at ASDA in the bakery and just play

semi-pro football and that that's his career ambitions and so next we're going to know I'm in the car on a Saturday morning and I'm like where we go and she's like I've just taken you somewhere and she took me to Bournemouth uni to speak to the nutrition team at the open day I was 15 this is like two years before you normally go to an open day she was like my son's really interested in nutrition but he doesn't want to go to do six form. Can you show him like what he could do in nutrition and what he needs to do first?

And as soon as I did that, I was like, yeah, cool, I'll go to six forms. So she encouraged so much even though, yeah, she was struggling. So I guess everything from passion to understand into willingness to learn both academically but also from other people, all stems from her. What I like most about the book was when you touched it on the poverty part of thing. And I think a lot of your content comes from that as well, because obviously, you have all these kind of wellness influencers standing in supermarkets now and they're fair mongering food like perfectly like reasonable meals that people could have that is cheap that is convenient you know that

causes less stress in their life and then they're they're demonising these foods and then people are second guessing themselves um what to eat and what not to eat and if you're someone that comes from a a low income household and now you're being told that you need to you know eat everything organic like that that's hard on a family. Of course it is. And like I remember, um, I was like on a Monday night,

I used to play football for when I was like, I was like four years old until it was always on a Monday until I was about eight. And I remember it would start really early. It would start like five o'clock. And so by the time I'm getting from school, it's like four o'clock. Mom's like, you need to eat because by the time you get back,

it's like 7 p.m. You're young. You can't be, like I don't want you eating that late. You need to eat something. So I just have beans on toast for my dinner every single Monday night. And like, I look at it.

at it now and I'm just like it was good enough for me. It is good. I still eat it multiple times a week now because I'm busy and I'm not going to go and spend half an hour making lunch. I need something that I can make and eat in like five, 10 minutes. It costs literally less than a quid. It gives you protein fiber, you know, carbohydrates. It fills me up. And yet, you know, both of those are classified as ultra-processed food. Yeah, there will be staples in every single household that is fighting food poverty. I've had it a couple of times this week. And both times I was like, oh, Josh's talk. It just, and I always use beans on toast as the example because it's something

most people can relate to as to like, that's what I used to eat sometimes when my mom was in a rush or, you know, maybe mom didn't have much money, but she still gave us beans on toast. And it's like, yeah, because it literally provides everything. And now we've got parents scared to give their kids beans on toast and feeling like they've got to spend their very limited disposable income on making something fancy. as well. I never read that. I worked it out there with one of the shops. It was, it's about 75 cents.

You can make a beans on toast for your lunch. Yeah, my dad used to always, my dad loves beans on toast. So that when Josh started to talk about it, and when you made that video that went viral on beans on toast, I thought it was so funny because my dad used to always say, I'm having my poverty meal and it's poverty. And he's not saying it in a negative stance.

He loves beans on toast. It's what he eats it all the time. And he obviously came from like a low socioeconomic background himself. Like, and he's like, yeah, has everything you need. And I just thought it was so funny because you kind of, you kind of put beans on toast back on the map in a way, you know. And it's our pair and staple like beans on toast. Dad had it when he was in college over in England doing master's.

And he was like, if you wanted to get fancy with it, I might put some cheese on it. And I'd be like, all right, okay. Right, live in large. Sorry, Josh, you go. No, no, no, I was just going to say, yeah, sometimes I get a bit fancy, and I'm like, oh, whilst it's in the pan, I want to put a bit of pepper in there. Or like, gourmet. Yeah, it's funny how it is seen as a poverty meal in terms of finances,

but actually we've all reflected on it now and had laughs and smiles, and we're up to our parents with it as well. It's a nostalgia-rich meal. And it actually does make you feel good because nutritionally, it's pretty good as well. So, yeah, changing the view of it. Exactly. And it's like if I ever, say I'm away at a weekend and I get back late on a Sunday night, my choices are because I typically do my food shop on a Monday.

There's nothing in the fridge. So it's literally, well, I even get a takeaway or I've got beans in the cupboard and I've got, I've got bread at home. So my go-toe thing is just beans on toast whenever I need a meal. And like you said, I think a lot of people can kind of connect with it. I know it sounds so silly, but they're like, they have childhood memories of eating it or they did in their student days or they do now. And you know, so many people have literally said to me like I stopped eating it.

But since you've been saying it, like I've added it back in and now I have like a decent lunch like those days when I need it rather than not eating anything or ending up just eating whatever's in the cupboard or spending 10 quid on lunch when I'm out. So yeah, just something so simple. But yeah, I still get criticised for recommending it. It's just bizarre. Why do you think like fair based nutrition has become so? So popular, like it feels like it's more popular, maybe because it's social media and everything that's pushed out to everyone.

Like, what do you think is the psychology behind that where, you know, you can have these kind of influencers who go from no and knowing them to having a million followers and putting out these messages in a matter of months? I think, well, I did a talk on exactly this at your day last year, Carl, because at the end of day, fair sales. and being opinionated cells and standing out from the crowd sales. And I think social media has changed. It's made it a lot worse. But I think even just that ego of like people really like in your strong opinion and like attaching to it like it's a cult, that gives people a lot of satisfaction.

But now if you look at social media, like you get paid for Facebook and TikTok and things. And you got over like, I don't know exactly what it is, but you got over 10,000 followers on TikTok, especially in like UK. I know it's not like it in Ireland, but you know, you make money off that. And you can easily rack up like a few grand a month by getting engagement and people watching your posts.

And the more kind of opinionated and strong and loud something is, the more it's going to get engaged with because people either push back on it, which drives more engagement, or people attach to it and then push it even further. Then that brings in more views. That brings in more engagement. And then that makes that person more money. So it's literally like a full-time job for people, just rage-bating. Like your best friend, Sophie, Sophie, Boris. We're not friends anymore. She blocked me.

But do you have my question. I want to, sorry, Jared's interrupt you, but I want to ask you this because I think it's an important. Like people like that, like Sophie Maris or any of them, like I'm sure we could, we could name Hen in a second. Do you think that they actually believe what they are promoting? Do you think they're actually, they, they think that they're helping society in terms of pushing health? Or do they know the, do they know what they're doing? And it's more sinister towards the incentives of monetizing it. Because I'm, sometimes I'm a little bit, I don't know which way I sway on that.

Is it like, you know, Dave just cognitively made themselves believe that they are promoting the right messages, even when they're shown, you know, know contradictory evidence-based nutrition or do they know that it's that they're incorrect but yet they'll still push it because of the incentives some people believe the earth's flat don't they yeah so like people people believe all sorts of stuff and I think you have kind of two camps you have people who know their stuff is incorrect but we'll push it and you can look at people like paul saladino and people of that who will then eventually change you know now he's eating i've seen eating asparagus the other day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like not only is he eating fruits, but he's now eating potatoes and asparagus, which he's on videos on many times saying vegetables are literally poisoned fruits, okay, but vegetable. So people like that, I think they, they, they, they, um, maybe do, it was multiple kinds of things. There are people that just straight up lie and then they get the engagement from it and they like that kind of like that argumentative side of everything. Um, I think you've got the people who attach themselves to something and then they are

fed, you know, more support to their own biases and, you know, confirmation bias and things. And like, all these people like support me and they believe me and I'm helping them. So I'm going to push this message out even more. And then like I said, when you take into account that people can get paid for it and they get book deals off it and they're on TV off of it. Why would they not? Like it's just you're just encouraging them to do it. And I think misinformation is a really, really complex thing because there are so many different drivers of it. And I think I use an example in the book about.

about, you know, being a, I think it's something like, you know, you're at a barbecue and you crack open a Diet Coke just as he's drinking a Coke zero there. So you crack open a Diet Coke and like your aunt or uncle says, oh, you know, Sparta and gives you cancer. And it's like they don't, they're not trying to do that from a like, uh, yeah, spread misinformation. They have heard that gone, that makes like logical sense or then some rationale behind that. I want to help my family. So they push that message. And then someone else hears that who's at the barbecue and they go, oh, I need to tell somebody else about that. And then they tell someone in the work office.

And it just spreads like Chinese whispers. Like so there's so many different reasons for it. I can kind of understand the, okay, you're spreading this information because cognitively you now believe that information to be true because you've made this whole thing, your identity and your brain is, you know, trying to protect you. So like even though it's wrong and obviously you have to you know combat that with better information and better articulating that information and in a way that helps people and it's it's essentially a battleground for for good information against people who who also believe that they are giving out good information even though they are wrong. But then the other would do the other side of it is knowing that you're you're misleading people and still don't I find that even though they might. even though the one who believes themselves to be true, even though they're not and they might have a bigger audience and they might even be causing more damage,

at least they believe what they're saying, even if what they're saying is incorrect, if that makes sense. There's no maliciousness behind it. Yeah. But you see it across the world, don't you see it in politics? You see it everywhere. You know, people will purposely manipulate stuff and scare people because, yeah, it just sells

and it brings followers and, you know, you know, it's just like, that. You talk about like the followers and stuff. So like I got before I think I told you how my mom sent me one of your posts. And I was like, that's a huge change in the content that she used in. Because I used to get videos about Sophie Morris, other different ones that be slating stuff inside the supermarkets. And it is the idea that like we also, we grew up with like a real lack of knowledge around nutrition and food. You can't imagine what it was going. on back in our parents generation. So when they see the person who's on national TV and getting book deals and that's the content they see being blasted all around, they've got hundreds of thousands of followers, they automatically go, well, they're obviously trying to help us. So like that's the news that spreads. Well, do you know, I used to, before I started to study nutrition, I used to follow Dave Asprey and Paul Saladino and I took what they said as gospel.

Well, not as gospel, but I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense, right? Yeah, it made sense in my brain at the time. And it was only true, it wasn't true anyone shouting at me or telling them that they're wrong or anything like that, that. It was like me just not having too much of like a team or an identity towards, you know, certain nutrition patterns. And then just listening to people on podcasts or, you know,

someone breaking down what they're saying in a different way, without me having a bias towards that that then swayed my decisions or my my outlook on nutrition then that's literally i could go back and and tell you you know multiple times that i've kind of believe stuff growing up one one example and i again i think i put this in the book is i used to believe that fasted cardio was like the ultimate cheat code fat loss because logically it made sense in my brain it was like so if i don't eat anything and i go and exercise i'm just just using my fat stores as energy. So obviously that's going to like cause more body like more loss of body fat.

Logically in my brain it made so much sense. I used to tell people that. But obviously it doesn't work like that. It's more complex than that. But just yeah, in my brain it was like, wow, how simple is that? And I would tell anyone and everyone that this is what's doing. I used to be out and I was like when I start, even when I started university, 18, 19, I'll be out doing like sprints in the early.

morning fasted like thinking yeah but it's so much body fat here yeah I used to I used to wear a way to vest running or I would do the sauna suits and like and it seems so obvious to me now and I think that's also a mistake that we make is we we forget what's obvious and what's not obvious to be that but that's what makes a good scientist is you're willing to be proven wrong like that is that is the main thing and and if something came out next week and prove to me what I wrote in the book was wrong I'd be straight on to my publishers like, we need to change this in the book and make an extra edition because I was wrong.

I thought I was right, maybe off the evidence I had, but it needs changing. And I'm willing to stick up a post and say, I was wrong about that. And that's cool. That's fine. You're allowed to be wrong, you know?

When does it actually, when does the book actually hit the shows? Thursday, 23rd of April in UK and Ireland. And then I think like America, Canada's like September maybe, something like that. Yeah, so the week after your event, we can stack on around to bookstores and hiding other books and putting yours at the front. Do you know what, mate? I'm terrible. I actually don't know where. I know it's stuck in like, is it Eason's here? Yeah. And then Waterstones in the UK. Apart from that, I genuinely don't know where it's going to stop. So you might find it, you might

not. I got to get your book and I'm going to stick it right beside the glue goes goddess. Or put, or put it in fiction section and I'm just going to I think I'm going to go into my hometown back in and just draw a few penises in there. Here's a question of I think it was I can't remember which chapter it was but I think you said at what point does someone struggle with food stopping about food and start being about something deeper. I suppose a lot of people think it's food is the issue and food is the problem and food is the thing that needs to be solved so when does it stop becoming about food and start becoming about something else? Well, often we use food as a response to an emotion or a feeling or a situation.

And I know you talk a lot about loneliness car and I think loneliness is a great example to use because it's something I struggled with for a very long time going to uni on my own. Even parts of my childhood going through my parents splitting up when I'm working evenings and stuff, not having anyone around. I used to eat in response to that loneliness and even still into like my 20s, it would still happen. The issue was never food. The issue was loneliness.

So you can say to somebody, right, you just need to stop binge eating and we need to sort out, you know, what we can do. And have you tried to swap in the big bag of Doritos for like some, some low calorie ice cream or something like that? It's like, no, that's, that is not the thing to focus on. We need to focus on like, how do we address the. loneliness. Now that is outside of my scope of practice. I'm not here to help people with, with loneliness or with, you know, depression and things of that. But if it helps people

understand, okay, maybe I need to buy the bullet and go and get therapy. Maybe I need to buy the bullet and start texting my friends or phoning my friends or somebody when I feel like that rather than just ordering a takeaway because the takeaway might make me feel good for 10 minutes. But when I've finished it, I'm going to feel stuffed. I'm going to feel shame. You should never feel that way, but I'm going to feel shame and guilt, which then turns it into even more kind of emotional eating, because I now feel even worse. And then I'll put that pressure on myself of that I'll start again tomorrow, I'll start getting Monday, and then that happens again, and the guilt and the shame becomes worse. And then, you know, you have all these people that

none of their friends or family know they binge or secret eat or that they're lonely, and that's what they do, whereas that's the thing that we need to be focusing more on. And I think a lot of your I listened to you speak quite a few times, car on loneliness. And I told you before, it's like one of the most impactful things I kind of ever listened to. It made a lot of sense to me with some stuff that had gone on in my past. I always thought it was depression. A lot of it was actually loneliness. Yeah, it's such a taboo topic, and that's why I got so interested in it.

Yeah. And even, yeah, like, even well into like my time being a nutritionist, I was like, wow, so much of it was about loneliness. It was never just about being depressed or. you know, just being, I'm just a bit stressed. No, it was actually like loneliness. So I'd imagine that's it. Steps to address parts of my loneliness and I don't feel. I live in a different country.

I don't have any friends in my whole county in like in here. I don't feel lonely because I've done other things to help prevent that. Literally something I've done that's changed massively like how I feel because food was never an issue. I suppose a really good point that I even touched on there is like, right, you can't help someone who has depression or has this, but like to be able to identify that problem or identify that the problem isn't food. So then that person has the self-awareness to be like, well, maybe I don't need more discipline or willpower. Yeah. I am. It's really fantastic nutritionist called Anna. She's coming to the live day. But she, Anna Preece, her name on Instagram

is Anna Marie. But she did a talk from our members a couple of years ago, I think. And, And she said one line and it stuck with me ever since. It was like, you need to be curious and be your own scientist. And I was like, yeah, like that is what we need to encourage people to do. It's not, I'm my goodness, I've just overeaten, like, you awful human, like, what have you done? It's, why did that happen? Like, what led to that? Like, what is that emotion I'm experiencing?

And if you don't know, that's fine. But you need to practice trying to actually sit with that emotion and be comfortable sitting with that emotion rather than suppressing it and trying to identify what it is. If it is depression, you need to go see a GP. If it is loneliness, you need to like reach out somebody. If it is stress, you might need to, you know, look at your lifestyle and look at work and things. And I've worked with many people who end up just like changing careers because they're like, Josh, you just help me realize my issue isn't food of stress. And the cause of my stress is my job.

And actually, earning 10 grand a year is a lot better because I'm less stressed and will survive and I can spend more time with my kids because I want to. And that was just the conversation of being like, let's just be a bit curious about why this is happening. Yeah, that makes sense. Why do you think guilt is such a huge part of food for so many people? Because we are taught from an early age to, that things have to be earned, you know? If a child's well-behaved, there you go, you can get some sweets.

You can have some sweets if you're good. We feel like everything around food has to be earned. If it wasn't earned, guilty. And you go back to getting a kid, like, no, you've had enough of that. Or you can't have that, you know, had it yesterday. Or, you know, you've got to finish what's on your plate to then have dessert. Like, a lot of things can, can then lead into that behaviour as an adult. And if we feel like we haven't earned it or we haven't deserved it, we can feel guilty. Guilty for wasting food. The amount of people I work with

that are like, oh, just eating this because it's going out of date. I'm like, we don't need to eat or, you know, we don't need to. There is going to be some food waste at the end of the day. That is okay because it's either going in the food bin or you're forced feeding it to yourself essentially. Yeah, do you know, it took me years to actually like comprehend that in my brain. Like if I got a full pizza and I was like I had to eat every single slice, even if like the first few slices are delicious. But I like, even though I feel sick, I have to have that last slice and I was and then like I was questioning myself, well, actually no, I don't have to have it. And it just sounds so obvious and it's actually not. Yeah. And it's like if me and Mel go out

for dinner and we order the same dish, we're getting the same portion. We didn't buy that portion. So it's not her fault if she doesn't finish it or it's not my fault, I don't finish it all. And I just think we are like I was going back to the beans on toast. Does that come back to poverty? Yeah, like it comes back to so many things because like, you know, you see now people going around a supermarket again, can I tell you like how you can improve your food shop? Oh, yeah, okay. All right, here's, I'm taking out these five items.

Here's five different ones. Cool. You've just added 10 euros, 10 pounds to their food shop. Yeah. Now they think, oh, I have to spend more to be able to be healthy. And then they feel guilty, you know, if they're not giving their child that ultra nutritious food. And I think we're just taught to feel guilty if we're not, and if we're not trying enough and you hear that all the time. You know, you need to try harder. You know, why aren't you exercising every day? You need to find time. Well, I don't know, it's a single mom that has two jobs and has three kids. Like, she magically, you know, grabbing an hour out every day, is she from nowhere? Do you think a lot of nutrition advice online now is essentially just privilege disguised as discipline? It is. And the whole UPF debate is just clean eating redesigned. Yeah. And it's just, you know, you look at it like that. The whole, you know, you look at seed oils. That is just the whole anti-sugar craze redesigned because they finally realize that actually the data, you can't argue with it. We eat less sugar than we did 20 years ago. Our obesity rates are higher. So how can it possibly be sugar? Yeah.

So it's like, right, we've done the whole saturated fat, we've done the whole sugar, now it's seed oils. It's just everything just gets repackaged, redesigned. That's just what it's like. It's just trends, isn't it? And great example that you see supermarkets are driven by consumer trends, right? Because at the end of day, they're businesses. So if you don't buy it, they ain't stocking it. So the whole craze for, you know, anti-UPF, we want less ingredients,

Marks and Spencers then bring out a whole new range. am I against the range? No. Like I think like if people want to buy that fine, but you've now got people living in poverty who are like, I have to buy the M&S beans that have one less ingredient than Heinz, but are twice the price. Now I don't know if they're actually twice the price,

but they're going to be more expensive. I have to buy that bread that's twice the price of this hovis seeded bread because the hovis seeded bread has 25 ingredients. That one has five. And it's like that that is, that whole trend has been driven by social media and now you've got them, you know, selling oat milk.

It's not fortified. So if someone then goes, I'm going to swap my other oat milk I buy on my cowsman for this oat milk. It's now got less calcium in it. We have a huge issue with osteoporosis. So like the supermarkets are built on trends. They sell stuff based off trends. And these trends are essentially going to drive us to, you know, less health overall,

in my opinion. So can I ask a question for the listeners who might be listening? into this but aren't really that clued up on nutrition but are hearing you giving conflicting advice to what they're hearing on social media like what does good nutrition look like in real life for someone then i genuinely believe most people have a pretty good understanding of what good nutrition is and i don't think people need to go and do all this self-directed learning because it doesn't matter how hard you look you won't get to what the answer is well the answer is there in front of it is public health guidelines because they are built on decades and decades of research

but they're not sexy all right whereas now you see people go oh try this anti-inflammatory diet and they list it it's like that's the public health guidelines but you've you the only way you're going to get people to believe it is by calling it something sexy so most people understand what is pretty good for them and what they need to be mindful of and moderate their intake of people know they shouldn't be in a whole big bag of harabot every day people know they should be eating more fruits and vegetables you know people know they should be having some protein with their meals and People know that they shouldn't be, you know, their plate shouldn't be exploding over the size in terms of portion size. Most people know breakfast is probably pretty good if I'm going to go to work or I'm going to be going on a run or whatever.

Like, I do need energy for my day. Most people know that. And because the basics isn't complicated. It's really basic and it works. It just gets a bit more complex if people have like individual needs. But then they will typically get that advice from a consultant, a dietitian, things of that. But I don't, I don't think people need to overly worry. I think overly worry and does far more harm than what people, you know, realize.

Yeah. And I think I, I think I probably frame that question wrong as well, because instead of like, what does good nutrition look like, it's probably better to say what does good enough nutrition look like. Yeah. Yeah. And my, my opinion on that, and I'm glad you said good enough, Carl, is if you do good enough most days, you kind of do pretty well.

Yeah. And that comes down to exercise, sleep. You know, you don't have to optimize everything. If you do, you know, get pretty much enough sleep most nights. You get enough movement across the week. You get enough fruits and veg across the week. And you do pretty well and you're relatively consistent most days. Like, who cares if you have a pizza at the weekend and have a slice of cake with your wife or your kids at the weekend?

You shouldn't. And if you're 30, 40, 50 years old, you're still alive. You've clearly not done anything super bad with your diet. Obviously, more complicated than that, but you've kept yourself alive. You know what you're doing. And I genuinely do believe most people know, like, out of the hundreds of conversations I have with someone before they come to work with me, I always ask them, you know, once they give me like the current thing where it's, you know, I've been diagnosed type

to diabetes, my cholesterol was high or, you know, I'm overweight. I'm like, what do you think has led to that in your lifestyle and eating habits? they can give me a list. They know what it is. They just need help applying it or applying, like, change and the behaviour change, but they know exactly what they need to do. So it's not a lack of knowledge. And it's like you look at the science and the research on nutrition.

People think, well, we need more research on that. We have bloody loads. Honestly, we have more than enough on 99.9% of things. There's a few character you're saying there, especially towards, like, women's health. But I think in general, we have enough that we don't need more. And people relatively, they understand the basics and they know that stuff. They just might need a bit of help, like apply and change. Do you know what I was thinking another day?

And I was, I was going, I was preparing for a race. And I was going into Liddle and I was picking up like Coca-pops and loads of like things for like car blowing the day before. And I was picking out all these kind of sugary. Yeah. And you know, it was it was the first time it ever came to my head. And I was like, wow, I'm so great. that I have such a healthy relationship with food that I'm actually excited to eat these things rather than being worried about them or overthinking them.

Yeah, my brother is a is a cyclist, a long-distance cyclist, cycles competitively. He cannot eat enough from pasta and potatoes and rice. He has to eat cereal and jam on toast and he will eat, he will eat the most gigantic bowl of, he doesn't eat a bowl of pasta, he eats a jug of pasta, okay? He will eat a jug of pasta and then after that it will be, slices of toast with like jam and peanut bar and then it'll be a whole bowl of yoga and like a bowl of cereal that's dinner like he cannot get enough from like whole foods yeah it'll be you played rugby like and soccer as well name it name a time when you were in dressing room

it wasn't jaffa cakes harry bow and everything on a table pre game it was the best part of getting ready for a rugby game was the fact to give you free fucking treats before you go out i've never played soccer but yeah i did play football and and it was it was it was it was wine gums or something before the game yeah it's yeah still shit anyway whatever it is soccer all right well will i suppose the best question to leave with uh joshua is probably what how do you want people to feel after reading this book what what do you what's what's the goal of this book for you just karma yeah like just calmer and more comfortable like more comfortable to be like i know there's crisps in the cupboard It's cool.

I can have them tomorrow. I can have a bag later if I want. But also they're not going anywhere. I don't need to finish them all and start again tomorrow. And it's like you maybe text, you know, a friend, daughter, son, husband, whatever, and say, do you want to go out for coffee and cake at the weekend? Do something that you don't normally do that's normally fearful.

I love people to actually go and like create, it goes back to that post, create memories of food. Yeah. Yeah? Like food shouldn't just be something to be fearful of and just keep us alive. You know, make memories with it. And I think you only got to look at certain cultures across the world. You know, if you look at like Caribbean, foods are massive part of it, Indian, foods a massive part of it, same of Pakistan.

You know, all these cultures. It's such a huge part of like friendship and family and connection. Like if you're missing a bit of that from your life, like go get some. Like, yeah, it's some important. Yeah, well said. And he has wanted to finish off. Any questions do you want to leave with or? Well, do you want five minutes to shit on mail for a little bit?

of seeing as she's a boy no we're not going to we're going to leave me alone i had i had specific instructions um she she's going to she wants she wants to ask well she was going to ask car some questions in a couple of weeks but it'll just be you getting it now and i would question josh is she's still a better drinker than you yes you know what she's getting better she when we first met i'd go i'd go out she'd always come out of my english mates and we'd be out on a pub crawl bank holiday like down the harbour in waymouth just drinking all day and if she'd go to her toilets my mates would just be like what the fuck like she can drink and like yeah she'll go like a pint for pint for you like all day um and then i think recently kind of she thinks like

she lost that ability but things things things coming well i can say from the from when you me me male and andrew went out in that low oh yeah yeah yeah i was like this girl this girl can drink i need to go the bed. All right, folks, we'll leave it there. Joshua, our first guest of the new series. Thank you very much. It's an honor. And just for the listeners, again, when will the book be out and give us the name of the book?

So it's good. You can eat that and it'll be out Thursday, 23rd of April. You can pre-order it, Amazon, Waterstones, Easons. It's also an orderable, Kindle, those kind of places as well. All right. We'll leave it there. Thank you very much, folks.