The Wellness Scoop - Navigating the World of Health and Wellness

Episode Date: August 28, 2018

In this episode, Matt and Ella, in discussion with nutritionist Amelia Freer, discuss the concept of positive nutrition, how to find balance in the way we eat, and how to navigate the bombardment of conflicting information around healthy eating. We talk sugar, superfoods, how to put a healthy meal together, and Amelia’s top tips for staying healthy when life is busy. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the second episode of the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills, and and business partner Matthew Mills. Hi everyone on today's episode we're going to be discussing the world of health and wellness. The world of health and wellness is incredibly confusing. Articles constantly contradict each other and it's challenging to navigate. On today's episode we're going to be looking at finding balance, the small changes that we can make to feel our best and debunking confusing information with nutritional therapist Amelia Freer. I've been following Amelia for a while now and just love her approach. And I was rereading her books over the weekend prepping for the podcast. And I was just feeling so inspired by what she wanted to say.

And most of all, I wanted to start by celebrating the way she introduces the concept of positive nutrition, which within this confusing space feels incredibly refreshing. And I just wanted to read a little quote before we introduce her. And it's where she says, positive nutrition begins with compassion towards ourselves. It is about eating better, not about eating less. Nutrition is not low fat. It is not low calorie. It's not being hungry and feeling deprived. It's nourishing your body with real whole foods so that you're consistently satisfied and energized to live life to the fullest. She then goes on to say, food is not something that should be feared.

Yes, it is important to eat with consciousness, both for our own health and the health of the environment. But food can also be a carefree source of pleasure and joy. Identifying where your own personal balance lies on this continuum is the key to finding contentment around food. And I just loved that. And it's something I think we've talked about a lot. Exactly. So Amelia, welcome and thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks so much for having me, guys. It's our first guest. Our first guest, indeed.

So how did you come to this space of positive nutrition? Was it something that always resonated with you or something that you came to over time or through a life experience? Well, my training as a nutritional therapist has always focused on optimal nutrition. So that is helping clients to achieve eating the widest variety of nutrients possible. So I've always approached nutrition from that angle. But I suppose what I started to notice over the last couple of years was the culture was shifting more towards focusing on what we shouldn't eat, what we should avoid.

It sort of turned into this deprivation and misery. And that was never what I studied or what I aim to talk about in any of my books or any of my work. So I really wanted to sort of shift the focus back onto what we need to be eating, what we should be eating and what we should be enjoying to make us all feel well. Because we know that suboptimal nutrition is a leading cause of poor health. So it's important. People can shame us and blame us in any way that they want. But we know that nutrition is really, really important for all of us to thrive and be happy and well. From my experience, I didn't eat very well in my teens and my 20s. I definitely was not connected with food or health or well-being at all.

And I didn't have a horrible disease like you had, but I did have multiple symptoms that weren't really great. And I put up with them for a long, long time, like I think so many of us do. So I had really bad acne. I mean, I was bullied horrifically at school for having such horrible skin. I had really bad digestive problems. I was always in crippling pain with a really, really bloated tummy and bad diarrhea. I was always just run down, exhausted. And like I say, I put up with it. My mother took me to a doctor. I did some intensive rounds of a drug called racutane for the acne. My doctor put me on the contraceptive pill when I was quite young, again for the acne and again for like hormonal periods, that sort of stuff. I don't

think that they were necessarily great for me, but they definitely did start to help with the acne. But a lot of the symptoms just seemed to get worse and worse and worse. So it was, you know, I went to lots of doctors, I was offered antidepressants, pain relief, you know, the kind of things that doctors have at their disposal to offer you when you go there with a symptom. But none of it felt right to me. And I just kept thinking, why? Why do I have these symptoms when my friends don't? Why do I feel so odd? Why am I not able to sort of get up and go and enjoy life?

So I had a flatmate at the time who was quite interested in healthy eating and she knew a lot about nutrition and she told me about nutritional therapy and it was the first time I'd ever heard of it and I was quite dubious if I'm honest. I felt the exact same way the first time I started looking into it and I just thought seriously really is this actually gonna help? Me too I just couldn't believe it. But I was kind of desperate at that stage. So I went along for the appointment. And, oh, I mean, maybe I was lucky because I know that, you know, there are good and bad practitioners out there. But the girl that I saw, she just spoke such sense. She explained it to me in such simple language.

It just, it was like, ah, you know, such a big moment. Yeah, the light bulb moment when I just started to suddenly connect with food and what I was putting into my body and what I was doing to my body and how my body was functioning. I was just so disconnected before I didn't really think about it. So what was a typical day's food? Well, I grew up in the countryside in the north of England, and I didn't really have access to a lot of junk food. So when I moved to London, I just thought it was fantastic that I could eat croissants and baguettes and crisps and chocolate and loads and loads of tea with sugar. I mean, I don't think that, you know, from the time that I moved to London until the time that I started

to embrace nutrition, which was probably about six years, I don't think I ate many vegetables. I don't think I ate anything that was home cooked. I pretty much lived on, you know, easy convenience food, which I thought was fantastic. And I thought that I was terribly sophisticated, but it definitely, and it was tasty and delicious, but it definitely wasn't really working for my health, I later discovered. So seeing this nutritional therapist, she just, you know, she didn't try and get me to be perfect. She just gave me some simple things to go away with. And I left feeling like, yeah, I can do this. I'm going to cut down my sugar in my tea.

I'm going to switch the croissant at breakfast for a couple of hard-boiled eggs. It was just very simple changes. We asked some of our readers for questions on this, and one of the things that kept coming up, and I know we've talked about this a lot, is, you know, if you're looking at making some changes, how do you make an informed decision? Because there is so much confusing, contradictory,

ever-changing, ever-evolving information, and it just feels like a bit of a minefield. You know, whose advice do you follow? When do you listen to your body and yourself? When you know whose advice do you follow when do you listen to your body and yourself when do you listen to someone else who do you listen to where do you get that information from and how do you kind of decipher all of this information into your own life well god big question yes big question i think that um the world of nutritional science is at a very exciting time there's a lot more interest and a lot more money and time going into it so it's exciting there's a lot of new stuff

coming out all of the time I don't think that that's going to stop for a while but I think I like to hope that we're getting closer and closer to better understanding the role that nutrition plays in our health so I think that we're going to still be getting conflicting advice and that's just the nature of science that happens in all other areas too. And we have to learn to be okay with that. We have to learn to be okay with it and not be so rigid with forming an opinion about how a diet should be. Our diets need to be fluid and flexible things. And I think that that's probably the most important message that I can share. I think that some tips I would give to people who are getting overwhelmed would be,

we have to be a bit skeptical. The truth is, is that healthy eating is not that sexy and it doesn't make good headlines. So if there's an amazing headline, it's probably untrue. If there's a big promise, it's probably untrue. The truth is there just aren't any quick fixes. There's nothing really new about healthy eating. You either have to, you know, jump both feet in, be committed and take the time to learn about it, to explore it, trial and error. And as you said, I do actually think that we are the very best judges out there because we're all so unique. And so just because you eat in a certain way and people follow you and admire you doesn't mean that it's right for them. Just the way that I eat in a certain way, it doesn't mean that my way is the only way.

Be informed. Read up about it. You know, we have to take responsibility if we're going to be following certain ways and, you know, making big changes. We have to take the responsibility to get informed. And that does mean following people that, you know, whose opinion we trust or who we think have the right credentials or just people that inspire us. So if you just want to start eating a bit better today and maybe try and change the way that you eat over even the course of a year, if people can build themselves that horizon, what would be the best first step that you think that people can take just to start trying to eat a little bit better? And then what's maybe the best second and third step?

I love that you say a year because that's what I always say with my clients is choose something that you can imagine yourself doing in a year's time. So I often see clients that are like, right, I'm going to give up alcohol forever. And it's like, well, we kind of know that that's not going to be realistic because next month you've got a wedding or next month you've got something. So it's probably unrealistic to say I don't, I mean, some people manage it. So, you know, it's being realistic with choosing something you can actually imagine sticking with for a year. Because I believe that it's the consistency, not the perfection. So finding something, the changes that we make consistently have the biggest impact on our health. So maybe sugar out of your tea as a starting point.

Well, like I had three spoonfuls of sugar in my tea, so I just couldn't go curl turkey on that. Tea was revolting to me and I drank that since I was a little girl. So I cut down from three to two and then two to one and then one to half. And eventually I can drink tea without sugar. Although actually, weirdly, after giving birth, the sugar went straight back in. It's crazy how life challenges can bring back old habits. And that comes back to the idea, as you said, of fluidity. Like what works for you today isn't necessarily going to be the same at a different point in your life for all kinds of external reasons, not just looking at the kind of internal elements of your health.

Absolutely. There's always going to be different challenges. And so we must be fluid is the best term that I can think of with our diets, because there are always going to be changes and different health issues, different circumstances. And I mean, pregnancy is such a perfect example of this, because it changes everything. It changes so many aspects of your health and so many aspects of how you eat. So one of the things that I know people are asking about, if you're imagining kind of building your plate, so you're like thinking, okay, what am I going to make for lunch today? How would you start at thinking, okay, what can I put on this to feel my best? Like what are the little things I can do? Even if it's not about taking

other things off, what can I add to this plate? Or what should I be thinking about adding to this plate to help me feel a bit better? I think that probably every person I've ever met could do with having some more vegetables. I think that that is... We love vegetables. We do love vegetables. And I think that, you know, that's going to every single portion counts. I think that if people can just start to even just add one more portion of vegetables to their plates a day, that would make a huge impact to their health. We need to eat a really wide variety of nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fibers, every single day in order to help every single cellular process in our body. So we're talking thyroid health, brain health, gut health, microbiome, liver function,

that all relies on nutrients. And so plants are probably the biggest source of nutrients. I mean, we need to be eating a combination. It's not about just like broccoli is good for me, so I'm going to focus on lots and lots of broccoli or focusing on independent nutrients. For me, it's about eating as diverse a variety as possible of plants to make sure that we're getting access to all of the different nutrients that we need. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

I feel like we're on an eternal quest to kind of have more energy, have clearer thought processes, have a better mood a more stable mood um sleep better you know how is it that food plays into that you know people talk a lot about you know the importance of balancing your blood sugars and things like that just i think it'd be interesting to understand a little bit more about how the way we eat impacts on these kind of basic functions that i think we all as humans feel would help us live a slightly happier life. And it's amazing how many of us don't have, you know, the good sleep, the good energy that and we sort of just get a bit used to accepting

that that's the way of life. Exactly. And each and then impacts on the next. If you don't sleep well, you're not necessarily as happy. And if you're not necessarily as happy, you're not necessarily as excited about your broccoli. You're more inclined to go for the carbs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, what I love about working one-on-one with clients is you really get to see how quickly that can change just by making a few changes. And as I say, with positive nutrition, I try to not talk about what they're avoiding, but just what we introduce. So I'll make sure that they're hydrated.

Are they drinking enough fluids each day? It's difficult to know what each individual needs to drink per day, but the rough guidelines are about eight glasses. And I think that that's pretty sensible. Someone who exercises would obviously need more. Someone who's very sedentary might not need as much. But, you know, a rough guide is, are you hydrated? And that doesn't mean lots and lots of cappuccinos. Although, you know, we can, of course, get some fluid from caffeine. So I would always start with that. The next thing, obviously, would be are you eating enough vegetables because they're going to just provide us with so many different vitamins and minerals and fiber.

And how many portions of fruits and vegetables? I know the old standard was five portions of fruits and vegetables a day. Then it was seven. Then it was seven. And then there's a recent study saying it should be ten. What do you actually think is the desired amount? Well, I mean, I just think we have to be realistic. I think, I can't remember what the stats are, but very few people in the United Kingdom achieve five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

I think it's 27% or something at the moment, yeah. So I just say, just eat more, you know, eat as many as you can and don't let it become a stress. Ideally for me, I would say six portions of vegetables and three portions of fruit a day so i kind of say try and have some at every meal and one portion of fruit at every meal so spread it out don't have it all at once all at the same time which is just common sense i think um so the vegetables and fruit and then protein as you mentioned blood sugar um protein is really important for stabilizing our blood sugar and helping us to feel full and extending that energy for a bit longer. So making sure that you have a source of protein at every meal and you can

choose what kind of source of protein that is. So I think blood sugar balancing is like the crux of every nutritional therapist career. And we talk about it a lot. And why is it so important? Well, for all of the reasons that you say, for better sleep, for better energy, for avoiding that sort of yo-yo, getting on that roller coaster of craving foods, getting really hungry, having lots of sugar, feeling amazing, and then getting that massive dip again, and then craving. So that can affect our mood, our hormones. I mean, so much of how we feel. Because I think on that one of the things that I know lots of our readers have talked about, and I think generally people find

challenging is then because that's so much part of people's routine, right? How do you change your routine? You know, because if you're so used to doing X, Y and Z, and you're thinking, I'm exhausted, I'm not sleeping very well, I'm always craving sugar. You know, if you want to change your routine a little bit, what, how do you do that? It's a tough one. It's a tough one. I mean, for me, I think it has, it comes a lot with support. Yeah. So I know that not everyone gets to work with a nutritional professional. But if they can, I think that for someone who's really stuck and trapped in maybe negative patterns with food or binging cycles or sabotage, that sort of stuff. I really think working with a professional who can kind of hold your hand and support you and highlight. I mean, it's all stems from awareness, right? So

I'll often get my clients to fill out a food diary because then that makes them sort of suddenly be more responsible for, oh, yeah, that's what I do. And that's what I do. And then you can start to pinpoint where the habits are. And then, you know, once you've got that awareness, then you can start to make changes. But, you know, on a lighter note, I think community is so important and making sure that you've got good companions who have your back and who share that, you know, motivate you, whether it's just like going to the gym together or going for a walk or making some food that, you know know for each other taking into work and sharing it they're sort of positive supportive ways to get started

yeah but again I would always say slow and steady just choose a couple of things that you kind of know you would like to change and stick to them and commit to them until they've become a habit and then add in the next thing that you want to change yeah because on that that's I mean it's something that we've talked about a lot and I think you see a lot you see a lot sometimes in the media as well is that people really want to put the way that we eat the way that we live the way that we exercise kind of any healthy or not healthy habit into a box you know it's got to be very kind of day and night black and white and know, that's something that to me seems like it makes this a lot harder for people because it feels like it has to be all or nothing.

It has to be perfect. Exactly. And that's not feasible, is it? Not at all. Good nutrition is a lifelong experiment of trial and error. And as I said, you know, I change my diet all the time. I challenge how I eat all of the time. I mean, obviously, it's my profession. So I experiment with new fads or new diets that come out. But I don't believe that, you know, my way of eating is the only way that I can ever eat for the rest of my life. And as I said, I've just been through a major life change by being pregnant and becoming a mom. And that has challenged everything that I know about nutrition and all of the ways that I've eaten. So it has to be fluid. And I

don't think it is black and white. I think we should all give each other a break, give ourselves a break. And allow, you know, because I think there's a sense from people that, you know, if they make a smoothie for breakfast, and they make a salad for lunch, and then they go out for dinner for pizza, that they've undone everything, you know, and that's, that's not it, is it? No, not at all. Again, I say it's the choices that we make consistently that have the biggest impact on our health. There's all sorts of times that, you know, unhealthy choices are not bad for us. They're part of our social and emotional health. And it's really important that we acknowledge that. You know, I don't think that

there was a really interesting study that I came across just last week. I don't think that there was a really interesting study that I came across just last week. I don't know when it was written. It was kind of saying that eating a junk, like a pro-inflammatory junk food meal, like a fast food meal or whatever, it has a different experience depending on the life experience of the individual eating it. So if you're eating it in a stressed out state with a negative outlook and you're not exposed to trees and you don't get good relaxation in your life and you don't sleep and you're not very happy, the journey of that food is going to have a very different impact on your health than someone like me eating it and not feeling any guilt or shame around it whatsoever because I've got a positive outlook towards food. So I think it's so important to enjoy some of the treats that we enjoy, if you want to call them treats or whatever, and not have the guilt or the shame around food. But obviously, nutrition

is important. It does impact our health. It does impact how we feel. So I think it's, oh God, it's that horrible word. It's the balance. It's moderation. So looking at a few of the topics that I think can cause most confusion for people, we'd love just to get your take on a few really good on it. But I think it's very simple. We're all individual. Some people metabolize coffee better than others. And I think people know if they don't metabolize it well, they know that they get jittery and kind of spiky and edgy. So I think it's really an individual choice, again, being in tune with your body. But I think there's nothing wrong with it in moderation. Yeah, exactly. Back to those buzzwords again. And how about the big one, which is sugar? Both refined through fruit. Yeah. Well, I think what's worrying is that, I mean, sugar overall has the same impact on our

body, but obviously there are different types of sugar. So natural sugars, like eating an apple, there's nothing wrong with eating an apple or a delicious, you know, peach that you've just picked from the tree or a banana. I don't think that we should fear whole natural foods at all. Well, obviously, I don't want to use the word fear around food. Yeah, I think the government, the government traffic light system now we have red, green and yellow. And I think the the thing that comes up most green is sugar free green jelly, which has I don't think greenest thing in comes up most green is sugar-free green jelly which has i don't think that's the greenest thing in the supermarket i don't think has any nutritional value but it comes up as green because there's there's no sugar in it and no fat and no so how

do you how do you negotiate sugar when exactly does it become a banana's bad for you on an apple's bad for you but but sugar-free green jelly is is good for you you know where do we where do we get to on that to be able to navigate sugar yeah so i definitely think we have to move away from the good bad concept um i think we need to apply some common sense to this uh having three portions of fresh fruit per day is not going to be damaging for our health um i think you know i say common sense and that sometimes i see people who just binge on fruit all day long and that's not sensible in the same way that eating cabbage all day is not sensible. It's all about the variety. It's all about the diversity. Have some fruit,

don't have it all at once because it is going to produce an insulin spike. Now, that's not going to be a dangerous insulin spike from an apple or a banana. But if you're eating 10, then yeah, you're going to get onto that blood sugar roller coaster. I like to just apply an element of common sense around it. And you know, I watch for added sugars, I tend to not really have them in my diet. I don't sweat about it on the odd occasion that they appear because I know that on the whole, I'm not eating them at every single meal per day. And I just think it's like we need to be sensible and avoid the unnecessary added sugars where we can. And if you eat an apple, just to kind of take our apple again, do you get the same blood sugar spike that you would get from white sugar?

Because I think that's one of the things that's really confusing to people. Because as you said, when you have the sugar in the end, it is ended up metabolized in the same way. But is the whole process from moment of eating to how it's metabolized exactly the same no because obviously an apple has fiber which slows down the release of the sugars it's got so many different nutrients it's got a lot more going on for it that and also that that's beneficial for us so you don't get the same insulin spike then if you ate the white like kind of just spoons and spoons of white sugar if you're looking at like the glycemic index or the glycemic load uh it's going to have

a much slower response it's still going to have a much slower response. It's still going to have a response, but it's not going to be a response that is going to put you on that blood sugar roller coaster. And that's how you kind of differentiate what's kind of, you know, fruit is a brilliant thing for our body. How about, I'm reeling off the questions here. How about superfoods, myth or waste of money or are they valuable? Marketing trend. Yeah. I think that all food is super.

All natural food is super. And again, as I've already said, it's the combination within which we eat them that gives us the widest diversity and hence makes them super and powerful. We should never look at nutrients in isolation or foods in isolation. So, you know, there's some amazing qualities for broccoli, for example, but I still don't want to like give food a label of superfood. I don't really buy into all of the powders and foods that claim to be superfoods. I don't think that we need them. I think that fine, if you want to spend your money on them and add them into your life here and there and everywhere, that's no problem. But I don't like that a lot of people think that that's what makes up a healthy diet

because it's it's not it's not necessary and i think in there that's where also some of the confusion around healthy eating has come from because it's made it feel very expensive and very inaccessible that if you need if eating well requires you to buy by expensive unusual hard to find exactly that you don't know how to pronounce necessarily. And as you said, it's not to say you can't have it, but if you feel like that is what defines healthy, then that immediately excludes a lot of people because they're not affordable and they're not accessible.

Exactly. And that to me has been a really interesting thing to understand is how that has, I think, turned a lot of people away rather than a celebration of like a lentil. Yeah. A humble little chickpea. Yes. Yes. They're not very sexy, are they? You know, chickpeas aren't very sexy. They're not as exciting as some sort of new powder that's got a label on it. But you know, after you know, I trained in nutrition in 2004. So I've kind of been around in this world for a long time. And when I first studied, there was nothing about

healthy eating. It was not trendy. There was hardly any unusual health foods. There was nowhere near the kind of substitutions that there are now. There was very little that was available. So I will admit that when some of the sort of new superfoods came out, when some of the new powders came out, I got a bit excited. I was like, woohoo. And I kind of fell for them a bit and thought, oh, this is exciting. Oh, this is where we can add in the nutrients. This is, you know, I definitely experimented with them all. I definitely got on that train for a while and then very quickly realized that actually, A, it wasn't very positive for my clients. And B, I just didn't really need them. It didn't make me feel any different.

Yeah, I think we had a very similar experience with them in the beginning, exactly, when I was kind of looking at what would help me and I was like oh my god it might be magic yeah and actually you realize like there's so many delicious things you can do with your humble little chickpea and your lentil and your carrots and tahini and sesame oil yeah and actually they're so much more versatile so much easier to get hold of when you're working a lot and you're busy you know busy mom or whatever it is in your life it's it're so much more versatile, so much easier to get hold of when you're working a lot and you're busy, you know, busy mom or whatever it is in your life. It's so much more doable. But there's a lot of pressure still on this concept of, but I think it comes back to, again, it's quite similar to the fad diet, the crash diet. It's the magic, isn't it? Everyone's looking for the magic, looking for the quick,

quick special fix, as opposed to the slow and steady road of the humble chickpea. And what are your thoughts on gluten? Gluten. Well, I kind of like to describe the experience for people with gluten in four different levels. So the first level is we have celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease, and people who have that need to exclusively avoid gluten for the rest of their life. It's really important. The second level is something called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which is quite a new term. But it's people that observe that they feel bloated and have stomach pain or diarrhea or cramps or actually even brain fog or muscle aches that kind of they feel unwell when they've been eating gluten and they feel a lot

better when they remove it. The third is people who notice that when they eat too much gluten so if they're just having like bread for breakfast, bread for lunch, bread for supper they get a little bit bloated and when they just reduce it, they feel a bit better. And the fourth is people who can eat gluten happily and have absolutely no issue whatsoever. So I don't like to say that gluten is good or bad. Again, it all comes down to individuals. Some people are absolutely fine with it, some people not. I think it's important to understand that it can be for periods of time. So when I had really bad digestive issues, I had, I suppose the only way to easily describe it is I had a lot of inflammation going on. And so it was quite important for me to avoid gluten

for a long period of time. But I challenged that all the time. And now sometimes I'm okay, if I eat some really good quality gluten, it doesn't really make me unwell. And so I'll always test myself and keep trying and seeing. So I don't think we need to be rigid with these things. And one of my colleagues, a nutritional therapist in America, she gave an interview recently and she just nailed it the way she described it. If you're having a reaction to any kind of food, it's not the food's fault. It means that there's something going on within you that you need to check out. So usually it stems from gut health, but certainly with something like gluten, you know, that would be the first place that a

nutritional therapist would look at. So it's not like that food is evil. It's bad for me. I need to avoid it forever. It's actually maybe my health needs a bit of work. Maybe I need to address some issues. And then I can look at reintroducing those foods and enjoy them in a normal way. And I just love the way that Dana said it's just not the food's fault yeah yeah it's such a nice way of looking at it and again it just shows the importance of everyone being a little bit different with it I had the exact same thing where when my health was very bad and I was feeling ill for so many different reasons I had to be very strict with my diet and anything that deviated from that made me very unwell and as

I worked really closely with an amazing nutritional therapist we did a lot of work on my gut and all kinds of other areas as my health stabilized I got to a point where I could be much more flexible and have a bit of this and have a bit of that again that concept of very boring moderation but it changed completely but there were a few years where my body was in a completely different way it was very unwell and then as you said that just shows the importance of fluidity and not saying this is this this is the way to eat forever this is this today yeah and it might be different tomorrow I think it's so important that we both share that because I think a lot of people might follow what we might have said five years ago or something and think that oh that's it that is the

only way to eat whereas in fact you've your diet's evolved a lot, your health has improved a lot. And so do you feel like too much pressure is put on the plate? And actually the plate exists, as you said, within an entire ecosystem to make you healthy and happy? I mean, for me, I think nutrition is a very good vehicle in. For me, nutrition was the start. I kind of needed to connect with that and make those changes in order to start to feel better. But then yoga followed, meditation followed. I did a lot of emotional therapy for lots of stuff in my childhood that actually had all been a part of my health picture. So I started to look after myself in

all of the ways that we've just discussed. But, you know, sometimes you need that in. So I think nutrition sometimes is quite a good vehicle in for some people. But, yeah, I do think that too much pressure is put on the plate. We've got to look at our overall lifestyles. We know how vital exercise is for our mental health. Exercise improves how we sleep. That improves how we eat. That improves how we react with people, interact with people. It's just such a challenge though, isn't it? Because I think particularly now in the day

of social media, 24 hour news, everything being accessible to you in an instant, people want quick fixes. So hearing something of, you know, to get better health, it's probably just going to take a year of small changes to get there. It's just not appealing to people. And it's so it's so difficult to get to deliver that message that actually, if you want to live better, it's just about doing lots of little things well for a long period of time. And then and then you'll feel better. It's a it's a difficult thing to sell for people. It is. But we've got to be more honest about it. I mean, when I work with clients, I never charge them per hour, because I feel like that would be misleading to them to suggest that they're going to get any kind of change by paying me to see me for an hour. So I say, let's work together for three months, maybe six months,

maybe nine months, depending on what they need. And if they're not willing to do that, then it kind of suggests that they're not ready to make the changes because it is a relationship. I don't have a magic wand. It's a relationship between the practitioner and the client. And you have to sort of work together quite intensively in order to get someone well, as you know, Ella. Like to us, healthy eating is joyful. It's a pleasure. It's not a challenge. It's not hard work. It's not an effort. I think it has to start with being delicious, doesn't it? I think that what doesn't make it sustainable if people think it's just a couple of chopped up carrots yeah or cucumbers and i think that's i know that that's the big focus of

delicious yellow is that we are not nutritionists but what we try and do is just provide delicious recipes or items that people can eat uh just to make it slightly easier absolutely but i think that we've kind of moved on from like people used to see when i used to go to parties and people say what do you do? And I tell them, nutritional therapist. Oh, no, bird food. And I think that that's changed now. You'd be surprised my friends still give me lots of stuff about what you do, just sit around eating nuts all day.

Yes, I absolutely agree. I think, you know, that's why I do loads of recipes and have gone down that road, too, because ultimately I saw with clients that most of them just wanted to know what to eat. They didn't really want to know the science and the complexities of it all. They just wanted to know what to have for supper and breakfast. And so it was always about making it easy, accessible and delicious as you're doing a brilliant job of. So if you're just starting out and you just want a quick cheat sheet of three things that you can do each day just to improve your health and try and eat just a little bit better. What would you say those three things are that people can take away? I think I would say more vegetables first, just try and add in more portions of vegetables each day, wherever you can. Secondly, I would say be prepared. I think

it's important to make sure that you've got a well stocked kitchen, well stocked cupboards with the right kind of things that you want to be eating and not have all of the things that you're trying to remove, you know, have them out of the way. And the last thing I would say is cook from scratch as much as possible. Fantastic. Okay, so I have to now ask, thinking about cooking from scratch and adding those little sneaky veggies in what are your favorite recipes um oh so I'm I'm not you know I'm kind of a home cook I just figured it out by myself I haven't had any sort of professional training so I really sort of um just learned a long time ago how to add flavors to a few different foods so I'm quite I just I'll always just find a source of protein some vegetables and

add some flavor so I think probably a curry is something I make several times a week. And as you know, I grow my own vegetables at home. So I pretty much use whatever's in season and chuck it in the pan. It takes 10 minutes to make a really good, tasty curry. So I'll make a version of a curry with different vegetables and some different proteins. And what kind of, are there any sort of herbs, spices, like key key ingredients like that that you are kind of quite attached to because you feel like they always add the flavor i'm obsessed with coriander i know some people love it or hate it but i am obsessed with coriander can't have too much fresh coriander coriander freaks me out we have every

month that the delicious yellow office we have this cocktails and canapes event where two of the team members have to make something for the rest of the team yeah and ella and i did the first one and we ella made this amazing these amazing canapes and i was in charge of cocktails and i thought i had this really great recipe but i then realized that what i was supposed to be putting mint into the cocktail and i was actually putting coriander in so everyone was giving me these slightly strange looks wanting to be really polite because their boss had made them drink and uh yeah i am not a cook nor a cocktail maker it turns out but oh that's so funny i do like quite a spicy curry i'm definitely not shy on the on the spices so i do go quite hard for that and uh yeah garam masala and always a little bit of cinnamon yeah I love cinnamon yeah okay so what are your five kind of kitchen cupboard essentials

things you can't live without uh always chickpeas lentils an array of dried and fresh herbs and spices can I have all of those together um I'd say some tinned tomatoes and just as many fresh vegetables as possible. Nice. I do have a lot. I do always keep, I don't know if some people hate this, but I always have in my freezer loads of pre-chopped onions, which is so quick. That is amazing. If you get home from work and you just want to cook up something quickly because you can just add them frozen to the pan instead of all of that faffing of chopping which I know is what puts loads of people off cooking from scratch absolutely um so I have frozen chopped onions frozen chopped garlic frozen chopped ginger oh these are great ideas yeah and then obviously you can have your frozen spinach

yeah you can have frozen fish I mean you can definitely make life a lot easier for yourself by just choosing kind of one moment in which to do all that chopping and then it's done. Well, yeah, if you've got a Magimix, you can just use that and just do it all at once and then freeze it. You can actually buy them in bags frozen from the supermarkets now. So one final question that we're going to ask each guest on our new podcast series is what's a mantra or a practice or a saying that you live by every day? I learned to meditate about two years ago. I'd been through quite a difficult time in my life. I was definitely suffering from burnout and overwhelm and wasn't in a very happy place. And I knew that I needed to turn things around and get some positivity back in my life. And

someone gave me the number of a in my life. And someone gave me the number of a brilliant meditation teacher. And I actually invested the time and learned how to meditate properly, because I think that I just always thought I couldn't do it. And that there was some amazing skill to meditating. And she was incredible. She really taught me how to do the practice. And I've pretty much done it religiously every single day since then. And I fell pregnant with my daughter when doctors told me that I would never have a child. And not that I'm saying it was that, but I just, I find it so incredibly powerful. It's possibly the most positive thing I've ever done for my health. And what is a typical day's meditation practice for you? How long is it and at what point of the day? 20 minutes. And I try to do it in the morning.

I put my daughter down for a nap around nine o'clock and that's the time that I'll fit in my 20 minutes. Amazing. And then if I can, I'll do 20 minutes in the afternoon. I don't always manage that one. But, you know, it's amazing. You can do it on public transport, you can do it in the back of a taxi or on a bus or on a plane or obviously just not when driving a car. I think once you get confident with having the practice, you can sort of slot it into your life quite easily. It's absolutely amazing. Amazing.

Well, Amelia, we just want to say the most enormous thank you for having you in today. You're our first guest on the Delicious Yellow podcast. And we are so thrilled that you came in and we hope everyone listening would have got some great tips and learned lots today so thank you so so much thanks so much it's lovely chatting to you and we'll be back next week talking about building success in your career and the little tips and tricks for that with the

amazing holly tucker who founded not on the high street and if you have any feedback on this episode we would love to hear it so please do review it please do rate it and share any of that feedback with us and otherwise i hope you can tune in for our next episode and definitely subscribe um there'll be a new episode coming out for you every tuesday thanks so much everyone you're a podcast listener and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads.

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