Latest / The XX Lab / The Wellness Industry Isn't Making Us Healthier with Sarah Ann Macklin | #12
Transcript
- speaker-0: Are you treating yourself as you would a best friend? And most of the time we will probably say no. speaker-1: You had so much valuable information there. speaker-0: So for every negative comment, you need three to five positive comments to counteract it. Yeah, we have more negative thoughts because our brain is more negativity biased throughout the day. speaker-1: nights I cook dinner, it's like an additional 200 calories or something that I burn just by virtue of moving around the kitchen. speaker-0: Do you know what one of my tools is? Dancing before you cook. speaker-1: Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. Today on the XX Lab, we're to be talking about something that affects all of us, our health. As you likely know, we have more health information than any other generation in history. We know we're supposed to sleep more, stress less, eat better, exercise regularly, and yet despite spending $8.5 trillion on wellness a year, we're becoming sicker, more anxious, and more overwhelmed than ever. What is going on? My guest today is going to help us understand this paradox. She is Sarah Ann Macklin, a registered nutritionist, former international model, host of the Live Well Be Well podcast, and author of the new book, Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard. In this conversation, you're going to learn why more health information doesn't necessarily make us healthier, why self-compassion may be one of the most overlooked ingredients in physical health. And how our mindset about the foods we eat and the exercise we do can dramatically change our body's responses to both. You'll also learn why learning to work with your body instead of constantly trying to fix it may be one of the most powerful things you can do for your long term health. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by conflicting health advice, guilty for not doing enough, or like wellness has somehow become another source of stress for you, I think you're really going to get a lot out of this conversation today. This is the XX Lab. I'm Dr. Sarah Hill. Let's get started. Sarah and Macklin, welcome to the XX Lab. speaker-0: Thanks for having me. speaker-1: I'm so excited to have you here today because we are living in weird times. And we're living in weird times because we're living in a world where we have a wellness industry that's worth about eight and a half trillion dollars and yet we're not getting any healthier. So what's going on? speaker-0: I know. It's the big question over my kind of mind for the last 10 years of being in this industry. and it's interesting. I mean, you're in this industry, I've been in this industry for a long time now. And you know, ultimately, I went in this to really help people's health and well-being and to get them to feel better. And that's ultimately everyone's end goal, right? Whenever we want to make changes in our in our lifestyle and our health regime, we do it because we want to feel better. But statistically, We're not physically better and we're not mentally better. Yet we have more information than ever before. So for me, there's like this weird disconnect that's happening. I call it the wellness disconnect, where it's like we live in an information diet overload, but our behavior isn't actually showing the results of all this information that we're given. And so if you actually like look at the last 10 years, or what if I look at the last 10 years of the wellness industry, the fact that we have more information than ever before, but we're not getting better. feels like there's something that's not quite right. And I think now, ultimately everyone knows how to live well, be well. Like everyone knows, you know, the basis of a healthy diet, majority, not everyone, but the majority of people. We know that we should be getting more sleep. We know that we should not be having as much stress in our life. One, our environments don't really shape shift that environment to have low stress. We're living in chronic stress. We're living in the threat mode the whole entire time. But within that threat mode, we're bombarded by all the top ten things we should be doing to have the best ultimate health. And so for a lot of people, that can be quite overwhelming because you can think, okay, well, I know I've got to do all of these things, but how do I fit that in my day when I'm basically mostly surviving? And then you open up Instagram or you look at LinkedIn and there's everyone's curated perfect images that everyone else seems to be coping totally fine, just apart from you. And so what that does is it increases the stress, increases the anxiety. and actually having more information isn't necessarily leading us to healthier lives. It's actually creating a lot more stress, it creates a lot more shame, it makes us feel defeated, it reduces our, you know, so-called willpower. And so ultimately, what I think we need to do is before we have the top 10 things to make us the healthiest versions of us yet, we actually need to start back at the selves and actually look at where we are. And how we feel about ourselves. Because if we don't have that crucial first step, like the scaffolding or the foundation of a house, then all of these other things aren't actually gonna play, you know, the role that they need to be playing in our in our health and well-being. I think we've kind of forgotten ourselves in the center of this $8.5 trillion wellness industry, where a lot of the things are marketed through fear, and fear has become, you know, the new currency to age less or age slower and be thinner and be more vibrant and You know, be the person that everyone else wants to be. If we can sell you a product through fear that you're ultimately gonna buy it, but does that mean that's actually what you need? So I think we've missed out kind of the person in the center of this entire conversation. and a lot of my work now, even though it's been very much in the nutrition for so long, is actually going, Wait, all the clients that are walking through my door and clinic, it's not that they have a lack of information, they actually have a lack of self worth within themselves. And that's what we've got to start building before we start adding on, you know, all the kind of protocols that that we're looking at, like outwardly on social media or on magazines or, you know, on Chat GPT or Claude right now. speaker-1: Right. And so you talk about ⁓ having clients walking through the door because you work as a nutritionist, right? You have a degree in nutrition, but you started your career off as a model, which isn't exactly like the industry that you tend to think of as being a wellspring of, you know, health promoting ⁓ and like body positivity. And and yeah. And so I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your experiences in that industry and then ultimately How it is that you ended up making the pivot into nutrition. ⁓ and then we can dive in a little bit more deeply into your new book. speaker-0: Yeah, so I think it's, you know, it's probably the opposite end of the spectrum. So I've basically had a cat with nine lives, is kind of the the life that I've lived. ⁓ it's been very colourful and it's been very diverse. So I was spotted at sixteen. Well, I was actually fifteen as a model, so I was very young. ⁓ you know, and by the age of nineteen, you know, I was living in New York and by that point I'd lived in Paris and lived in Milan. So I grew up very, very quickly. And I I grew up into a very high-pressured, high-powered industry. Well ultimately, you know, I had like, you know, all the the vibrancy of success. You know, I had an amazing amount of money that I was earning. I was mixing with really glamorous people. You know, I was kind of in that like social status. And it was weird. I put so much pressure on myself. So I basically lived like the model diet. You know, you would look on Instagram now and you would probably see, you know, a model diet and being like this person lives to the like tenth degree of perfection and what they do. speaker-1: Like cigarettes and stress. Is that the model diet? speaker-0: There's a lot of Diet Coke in there, for sure. ⁓ But I I I actually lived, it was the boom. I don't know if you remember like the massage kale boom that came out. Yeah. It was kind of like goop had just launched, and it was the first type of like wellnessy platform where I was like, okay, well, I've got to have a green smoothie every day, and I'm just gonna massage all this kale and not even cook it, because apparently this is gonna make me like look great. And took it you know, all my money I would just go around Whole Foods and just be like, I'm just gonna buy all of it. because ultimately this is gonna make me look great. and I basically became hospitalized. So it didn't make me feel great and it didn't make me look great either. You know, my skin wasn't great, my hair wasn't great. and I speaker-1: I couldn't find any kale. Yeah, I was gonna say I I wasn't able to find any kale. It was all gone 'cause we were buying it for speaker-0: I was buying all of it. I also re I also remember at that time spending all this money on like this really expensive kale on my dad being like, That used to be a paupus food. Like that was so cheap. Why are you spending all this like extreme money on organic kale? And I was like, What do you mean it was paupus food? It's a superfood. ⁓ so it just shows you like marketing, like the power of marketing. ⁓ you know, and ultimately my financial worth depended on All of this. So obviously all of my money went into this. ⁓ but I had no nutritional training. I literally was just being led by the media on all of these top ten things to make me look and feel well. And obviously the extreme amount of pressure that I put myself under, you know, so I was competing against, you know, everyone, every single day, getting rejected like 18 times a day. And when you're that young, your brain isn't really emotionally mature enough to kind of really understand what's going on. Plus I didn't have any life experience with rejection. speaker-1: When you were going through the rejection with that, I mean, was your cause I I think that we all have like our own theories, right? And and I think with women, yeah, I think a lot of time, and especially a woman in the industry that you were in, right? That your that your theory about like why you're getting rejected is that right, you're not drinking enough kale smoothies, right? That that you just like aren't looking good enough and it's because you're not working hard enough to do all of the things. Was that kind of the the voice that you were hearing in your head during that? speaker-0: Yeah, the whole time. Cause I also lived in a model apartment, you know, and those girls were secret models. I know, so I was literally in like a mental health crisis twenty four seven. 'Cause you would just be like extreme comparison the whole time. You know, and someone would be like, I've just got this crazy job and you'd be like, Why didn't I get that job? What was wrong with me? And you would you know, I knew every angle that my body looked like. And I knew what every angle of every girl that lived with me their body looked like. So you would just be in this Constant stage of comparison. Plus, you'd also go to all these castings and they kind of would tell you what was wrong with you in front of your face. So it's pretty savage. So you'd also be like confirmed rejection, like, ⁓ yeah, I have. Like, you know, my car's a fat rejection confirmed. and so it was like, you know, constant. And I think it's interesting when you're in that type of rejection where also your financial success relies on it. So, you know, you think about it with footballers or you think about it with dancers. You know, you have such a short span of a career. So you put everything into being the best. Like that 1% is so critical to be in. And so, you know, that's the pressure I put on myself. ⁓ you I never had, you know, I'm English. I was like, why would I get a therapist? ⁓ you know, that's that's weak. ⁓ and so I would just like push all the emotions out. Like I didn't want to connect to emotions, I didn't really understand what they were. until one day when I was on set with American Vintage and yeah, I collapsed. And American Vintage was like a big Parisian fashion brand at the time. They're still around. I I love them. But I remember getting this job being really excited, and then literally not being able to stand up, like just feeling horrific, and ended up being hospitalized. And it was interesting because for so long they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. You know, like a renal doctor was coming and looking at my kidney and being like, Her kidney's not functioning correctly, and then were like she's internally bleeding let's send her down for a CT scan and then there would be like you know her inflammation is ridiculously high and then we kind of she would have like rye gourds where you kind of like are shaking and they were like you know something's going on and basically there was just a whole list of different things like I had euroscepsis you know I had E. coli I had tempusis in my womb ⁓ there was just a lot of things and there was all different consultants at the end of my bed And ultimately, you know, what I would call that now was habitual burnout, like extreme case of like dissociation within my body. ⁓ switching off any signal that my body ever sent where it was like, I'm not feeling great. Can you listen to me? I would just completely plow through it because I had a very strong mind until my body said enough's enough. And then I became hospitalized in ICU for for a very long time. ⁓ and you know, that was kind of a shock. Because it's interesting, I never want it to not work. I always wanted to be on time, onset, not let anyone down. But ultimately I ended up letting so many people down because I was hospitalized for so long. And so it gets to a point where you can push your body so far and you can override all those signals. But when it gets really, really extreme, your body will just shut down. And that's basically was the start of my journey at twenty-three. And so you know when people have, you know, these crazy midlife crisis where they get really sick and they have built a big company, like Brian Johnson built this big company and then he said, like I felt awful. I basically had that, but 20 years earlier. At 23. And so I kind of think about, you know, I was so young, but by that point I've been working full time since I was 16. You know, I I own my own house, I bought my own house when I was young, you know, I had a place in New York. Like I was living this life that was way beyond my age. Cause I and I couldn't mentally kind of understand kind of how to support that. And how to like take the pressure off myself ⁓ and lived in this crazy world of comparison. And so ultimately that led me to kind of question quite a lot within my life. ⁓ And I left New York six months later and had a really big legally blonde moment basically where I went back to school to study nutritional science and felt like the real oddball that was in that, in that lecture hall, thinking, like, do I even deserve to be here because I feel so different to everyone else in this room? And within six weeks of going back, ⁓ and bearing in mind before I went back, you know, every agent was flying in, being like, You're making the worst decision of your life. My mum was calling me, being like, I think you're making the worst decision of your life. And I was like, No, I feel like this is the route to go. And this was, you know, 13 years ago. And nutrition back then wasn't really spoken about. Everyone was like, What are you gonna do with that? And I was like, I don't know, but I think it's the only way I'm gonna survive is like going back and actually understanding. Why I seem to be drinking all these kale smoothies and I'm getting really sick, like I don't quite get it. So when I did go back, then I had a diagnosis that I was neurodivergent. And that changed the course correction of my kind of entire understanding of nutrition, because that's when I became really interested in not just the body, but also the mind. ⁓ because you know, neurodiversity plays such a big role in nutrition and in food, but also in our mental health. And so once I understood more about myself, more about my brain. I started to develop a lot more compassion for myself. ⁓ and really wanted to dive further. And so that was kind of the the kind of big pivot of of my career to what I do now. speaker-1: And so you have a new book called Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard, which I I think that the title will resonate with a lot of listeners because I think that we all think the same thing. I think that we're all thinking, you know, we're we're bombarded with, you know, these like 10 page protocols about, you know, supplements and, you know, eating on these days and not during these times and not on a leap year, because you know, then that might change things. And, you know, and then this is good for you, and then the next day is bad for you. And ⁓ and and yeah, like the kale smoothie. It's like, is it good? Is it bad? Is it somewhere in between? Cold plunging, is it good? Is it bad? There's so much noise out there right now with fitness. And so, you know, I that you wrote this book to sort of illustrate, I think, for us, right, that it shouldn't be that hard. And then also be able to give us to be able to give us something else, right? And one of the things that you discussed in the book is You know, your overall hypothesis is kind of grounded in the idea that self-compassion is kind of at the heart of everything, right? So one of the things that you said early in our conversation was that one of the things that you notice that is missing from the wellness world is the person, right? Like it's like the the person has been totally removed. And then it's all about all of these, you know, protocols and lists of things that, you know, do's and do not. But that ultimately we need to take it back to the self. And one of the ways that we can promote our health ⁓ is by ⁓ exhibiting self-compassion. So can you explain that to us? Because I think that for a lot of people it's going to be counterintuitive, particularly given that when we think about health and the health-promoting behaviors, a lot of them tend to be steeped in ideas of pain and torture, self-sacrifice. Right. And like, ⁓ and and all of these Yeah, restriction, right? All of these words that that feel so ⁓ antithetical to self compassion. So so yeah, so so walk us through that. speaker-0: Restriction. Yeah, so it's interesting because it took me a long time to connect to the word self-compassion. Now I have to say, us Brits over here have a a worse connect worse kind of connection to the word. ⁓ we struggle with understanding what this means. And I struggled with understanding what it meant. ⁓ you know, you kind of have the cringe, and I actually have realized that when you get the cringe, you have to lean into the cringe because that's where the actual work is. ⁓ you know, and you were saying to me earlier, you know, starting this podcast is like a whole new thing for me. And there's parts where you feel like really uncomfortable and you get this cringe, and you're probably like analysing yourself and like worrying, is this good enough? And did I ask the right question? And was this too long? Was it too short? What was the vibe like? But actually, that's you like going into growth mode and actually having some compassion for yourself during that is really, really essential. And it's the same with health. Like if we If we feel uncomfortable about being kind to ourselves, then actually that's something really interesting to note because we have that with our friends. We can be really kind to our friends. So if our friends come to us and they're, you know, on this like yo-yo diet or this crazy optimization protocol or whatever it is, or whatever it is they're struggling with, would you say the same thing to them that you would say to yourself? Probably not. And there's a majority of the time that we're so unaware of just how negative and self-critical we are with ourselves. And a lot the time trying to improve our kind of health behaviors, we don't keep to 100%. We beat ourselves up very negatively. And I had no idea of like this crazy internal inner critic that was just boycotting my brain the whole time. I also thought it was quite normal. I also thought it was quite helpful, maybe. I was like, maybe I I need to be hard on myself. Because if I'm not hard on myself, then I'm not going to get the results that I want. But ultimately, I didn't even realize that when I was really hard on myself, I became hospitalized to the extreme. So it actually hadn't worked out for me to that point, but I still Thought it was a good idea to be really tough. And so actually, if you think about having a best friend that's very critical to you. And I'm sure we've all had relationships in our lives where we feel somebody's very critical or very negative, we we naturally want to distance ourselves from them. Because we're like, we're not actually quite you're not helpful to me. And that's what happens when it lives in our brain 247. It's like that really unhelpful friend. Whereas most of us will have someone, whether it's a partner or a friend or a mum. That we're cool when we're struggling, and normally are they quite kind and it makes us feel better and we're like, ⁓ actually, no, I can tackle this, I can do this thing. But weirdly, like, we don't look at ourselves the same way when we talk to ourselves, and that is such an important thing. So if you are taking on a hefty amount of overwhelm of self-development or nutrition or whatever it is, sleep, ⁓ and you're feeling overwhelmed, and you're then you're telling yourself you're still not doing enough. It's not going to create the positive outcome that you want. You know, it's when you're very stressed in bed and you can't sleep. And it's like, I wish I could just sleep. Why what's I'm so useless. Why can't I sleep? I knew this was going to happen. And you're just like telling yourself off. It never works out that you get a good night's sleep. Whereas actually, if you like just say, do you know what? I understand. Like, do you know what? It's been a really stressful day. My brain is obviously going a hundred miles per hour. Maybe what would be really helpful right now is to turn on a light and just write down everything that's in my mind. And give myself a bit of a break. And maybe tomorrow I can have an extra half an hour line. Maybe I can't. But you know what? One bad night. And just kind of calm yourself a little bit. You'll probably get to sleep a lot quicker. And so this like internal inner voice that we have the entire time can either be really, really helpful or really detrimental. And if it's constantly critiquing you and telling you you're not good enough and telling you that you're a failure. Actually, what we're realizing now is that these negative thoughts actually influence our physiology way more than we ever realized. And so I saw this when I was, you know, with myself, but also seeing clients, where I was like, okay, I can take their biomarkers and I can look at their food, but if they hate themselves or telling themselves they're not good enough the entire time, it doesn't matter if they're on the best diet in the world. Their mind is going to start in starting to influence. Their hunger hormones, their metabolism, their cortisol, because it's their stress hormone. So actually, you can still have the perfect diet in the world and have all the kale you want. But if you hate yourself whilst doing it, you're not going to get the kind of optimization that you want. And so when it comes to self-compassion, what's really interesting is it basically activates the self-soothing mechanism. It activates more of the rational, mindful brain as well. And when that happens, we come out of stress response, we come out of threat mode, our stress hormones lower, and we actually make much more rational, logical decisions, but we're actually more supportive of ourselves to actually make a better decision next time. We also step into the pain, have a look around and say, okay, this is a situation. What can I do that's better? Rather than just saying, well, I'm a complete failure. And so normally when I try to explain this is a lot of the time we're looking at downstream effects. inflammation, anti-aging, ⁓ metabolism, we're trying to look at all of these things downstream, which is what normally clinicians will teach or what we're all trying to treat as people and patients. When you look upstream, it's actually the words, it's the mind, it's all of these things that are actually kind of affecting these downstream effects. But we're not we're not talking about that. And that's so important before you start any new health regime, before you look at any tracker, before you look at your sleep score, And have data inform you of how you feel, maybe it's important to check in and see how you feel. And compassion is such an important component in that. Because if you can actually speak to yourself with kindness, everything else becomes a little bit easier. And I think we're never really taught about self-compassion. We're taught a lot about compassion to others. And most of us are pretty good at being compassionate to others. We have friends, we get on with our work colleagues, but very rarely we're taught about how to be nice to ourselves. And it's not about self pity, it's not about letting yourself off the hook. It's actually one of the most courageous things you can do is like you actually have to step into how you're feeling, which can feel really uncomfortable, and then make an action deciding on how you're feeling, but do it in a kinder way. And that I think is so, so important because one, it activates actually quite beneficial thoughts, it activates way better positive health behaviors, but it actually allows you to like tune into like, your interceptor signals, which are the things that you're feeling within yourself to determine the things that you need. Rather than listening to all of the noise around you and trying to figure out what it is, you're you're never turning it inward. And that is such an important step on the journey. So basically I say, you know, there's lots of different definitions of self-compassion. Dr. Kirsten Nerf is one of the leading researchers in self-compassion in the in the US. Professor Paul Gilbert is one of the leading self-compassionate researchers in the UK. And there are so many others and everyone has their own kind of interpretation of what that means. But basically like the very, very like bottom line that I try to get people to connect to is are you treating yourself as you would a best friend? And most of the time we will probably say no. speaker-1: I I I you had so much valuable information there. And one of the things that ⁓ I kind of clued into that I wanna follow up on is about the impact of negative thinking and negative self-talk and the way that influences us physiologically. And and the reason I wanna talk about this is because I think that a lot of people, and I'm one of these people. that ⁓ that I have an I have a belief. And even though I know that this is a false belief, it is still a belief nonetheless that I sort of ⁓ default into if I'm not careful to sort of get myself off the track, where I tend to believe that the reason that I've been successful at the things that I'm successful at is because my inner critic is so good at kicking my own ass into gear that that's, you know, sort of been the secret to my success. And I know a lot of successful people who feel that way. Right, who feel like they have this love-hate relationship with their inner critic because they hate that they're, you know, constantly being sub, you know, subject to that sort of scrutiny. but at the same time, they they secretly believe that it may be influential in a positive way in terms of outcomes. And ⁓ and what you are telling us ⁓ is that there's research that suggests that actually this could be misfiring. particularly when it comes to your health. And so I'd love you to talk to our listeners about what does the research show on this? Like in in terms of the ways that our negative thoughts or or or or the way that we think about the things that we're doing or eating or moving and the way that that can actually have a counterproductive effect on on on our fitness goals. Because I think that it's useful for people like me to hear So that way we can remind ourselves when we hear the inner critic that no, you're actually not doing me any favors. speaker-0: Yeah. So just so you know, Sarah, I'm exactly the same as you, it's why I wrote a book on it. I'm always like, honestly, I am the worst person at thinking heart plus heart equals success. So, you know, I feel like I've been pretty successful in past my career, and I've always put it down to like, you know, berating myself and like whipping myself harder. ⁓ but I've had two burnouts, and so you know, there's parts of it where I'm like, well, is that is that truly success? Like, have I truly been successful here? speaker-1: In the hospital bed? Is this like actually what I want? speaker-0: I'm like, is this the cost of like real success? ⁓ and so like there's I think there's a really good argument that you know, part of these like strong beliefs that can come in to kind of kick us up the arse are still helpful. Like it isn't saying that any hard thought that comes in by saying, by the way, your podcast comes out next week and you still haven't recorded an episode, hello. Like, that's kind of helpful because you're like, Well, actually, yeah, if I don't record it soon, like I need to kind of get my ass into gear. So there's parts where like, you know, acute stress can be really, really helpful. But if it's like keeping you up at 3 AM and you physically can't relax and your nervous system is totally hijacked, or you have an amygdala amygdala hijack 247, then this becomes really, really unsuccessful. And actually I think a lot of good founders will say, you know, okay, I've burnt myself out in the process and now I've totally gone on to figure out like who I who I am and like how I get myself better because you know I feel like shit. And you know, a lot of other founders will be like, no, I'm really strict with myself. You know, in the morning I will give myself an hour before I have to get into work. You know, there so I think there's like really interesting ways that you can still have that, you know, hello, like let's go in your mind and a little bit of a a stricter critic, but it's kind of gotta be, you know, it's gotta it's gotta be on a lead. You kind of can't let it just like run wild. ⁓ so I don't want anyone to leave and think, okay, I've got to be nice to myself the whole time, which means I can never give myself a kick up the ass, because we need that. But a lot of us aren't aware of just how often that happens. And so, for instance, you know, so for every negative comment, you need three to five positive comments to counteract it. Yeah, we have more negative thoughts because our brain is more negativity biased throughout the day. So we don't just go around thinking positive thoughts the whole time. And if something negative happens to you throughout the day and 10 positive things happen, you're gonna remember the one negative thing. So if you're just thinking about that in the context of your day, you're more likely to be angled towards stress and critique than like positive happy joy. So that's really, really important to figure out. First, when it comes to changing our physiology, this is where it gets really fascinating. And this is where it was getting really fascinating to me because I was like, okay, I can give somebody the perfect protocol, the perfect diet, and yet. I'm not checking their mindset at all. Is that going to be having an outcome? And like funnily enough, it's actually one of the most important things. And so if you're thinking about, you know, how we're distributing health information, if somebody doesn't feel good enough, if someone's beating themselves up the whole time, or even if they're interpreting the way that they are looking at health and nutrition, that is going to be having as much effect, if not more, than the food itself. And so this is where I think it, you know, the conversation becomes quite nuanced, and we actually need to be more aware of the language that we say to ourselves. So if for instance, there's lots of different studies that kind of can show this physiology change. So one is Ellen Langer, very, very famous, the chambermaid study. Harvard psychologist, she looked at chambermaids and she wanted to see how much exercise they do throughout the day. And so she said to these chambermaids, how much exercise do you do through the day? And they all responded and said, I do none, I'm exhausted, I have no time. So she took half the chamber maze and she said, Okay, this is actually how much energy you expend through the day. And she said to the other group, which is a control group, nothing at all, like just carry on. After a month, the ones that have been told how much energy they expend, so think about it, Sarah, like changing the beds, hoovering, going up and down the stairs, laundry, like it is actually physical labor. It's actually exercise. speaker-1: I'm exhausted just hearing about it. speaker-0: I know, so am I. So am I. I have so much respect for anyone that does this. And you do not need a gym membership. And what she found is that literally just after a month, ten percent of their blood pressure decreased. They lost weight around their waist circumference, which we know is the biggest indicator for metabolic disease. ⁓ and they had lots of health markers improve just from what they were told that they were doing and expending energy. But they didn't they didn't change their routine, they didn't do any extra work, they didn't do any extra hours. It was literally their mindset that had a massive change. That's interesting. Think about all the busy mums. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I was just so there so there's two groups. They're doing the exact same thing, right? Half are told that what you are doing is exercise. The other told the other group is not told that what they're doing is exercise. And between the two, so they're doing the exact same thing. And the group that was told this is exercise, this is like the way that it ⁓ exercises your muscles, this is the energy output that you have, these are the number of calories that you're burning, that group actually ended up in a better health. had a better health outcome at the end of the the testing period than the other group. Yeah. And ⁓ yeah, and I I I think you're right. I think that ⁓ there's so many busy moms and even like one of the things that I ⁓ and I and I talked about this in my in my new book a little bit, but one of the things that I do is I I cook a lot. So like that's and and but I frame my cooking as being part of my physical activity because I'm I'm also an I'm also an active person. But I it's like I noticed and and I didn't make that mindset switch until ⁓ after I had ⁓ smart tech. So I I we I wear an aura ring. ⁓ but you know, whatever your smart tracker is will tell you this. If you're cooking like on nights I cook dinner, it's like an additional 200 calories or something that I burn just by virtue of moving around the kitchen. Well, and I'm I forget, you know, pans and stuff. And so I I might move more when I'm cooking than than more organized. speaker-0: Do you know what one of my tools is? Dancing before you're cook you cook. Because there's actually science behind this. Not only does it make you feel great, right? You're getting joy, but it actually activates your glut for transporters, which basically helps you, you know, absorb carbohydrates better. So it basically primes your muscles, ready for when you're ingesting carbohydrates. A lot of people think about you know going for the walk after to help regulate your carbohydrates, but actually dancing before you cook, which is exactly what you're doing, like moving around the kitchen, being active. But your muscles are like primed and you're like getting them ready and you are actually expending energy as you're cooking. So when you actually go to eat your meal, you're also metabolizing it better too. You're responding better to the carbohydrates. speaker-1: You know, it's funny that you say that because I actually feel better when I cook my own meals. And and people think that's crazy, where it's like if somebody else is cooking dinner, it doesn't feel I mean in part of it, I think, is mindset just because it's not as satisfying, because I haven't had that investment. But I do think that there's something physiological going on. ⁓ and I think that you've just I identified what that is. But it's like the way that we think about what we do, I think can make a really big difference and recognizing ⁓ especially for people, you know, w women we know are the ones who are oftentimes saddled with most of the household chores, right? They're the ones who tend to do more child care, they're the ones who tend to do more of the meal preparation, they're the ones who tend to do more of the house tending. and a lot of times women are also the ones who struggle to find time to exercise. And I do think that taking the approach of really thinking about and being mindful of the the ways that the work that we do around the house or preparing meals or caring for others, how that exercises our body and the way that it creates ⁓ movement to promote health could potentially be a really big unlock for a lot of listeners. speaker-0: Yeah, like think about all the mums that have kids and then they're like, I don't have time to go to the gym anymore, or I don't have time to do anything that I want to do because I have I'm physically either exhausted or I just I'm not on my own 'cause I'm looking after kids. And I just think about all the times when they're like carrying their child on the side and I'm like, that's like a massive way. That's like a huge kettlebell that you're just like holding on the side where you're also like balancing and like trying to cook. Like Think about that. If you're in the gym and someone gives you a huge kettlebell and just chucks it on the side and says balance on one leg and then pull this arm doing this thing, you would really be thinking about how much energy you're expending and like your core stability and like you know, all of those things. Thinking about how much times you have bend down to get stuff. That's a squat. You know, all of these things are actually your body moving. Like that's why the blue zones is so fascinating when you look at what they do. They don't go to the gym, but they are constantly moving and expending energy the whole day. And I think about that with people that go, gosh, I just have like no time anymore. But they're actually very active. And so if you can actually change your mindset and the way that you speak to yourself and those like limiting beliefs, you might actually have a better physiological outcome than telling yourself you're not doing enough or that you kind of lost your independence of going to the gym. It's like, no, actually, maybe I've lost that part, but I've gained it by doing it in all these other areas of my life. so giving yourself a bit of kindness in that speaker-1: know from that research because I'm I'm familiar with ⁓ I'm familiar with that work, but I'm I don't recall what the proposed mechanism is. Do you like, do you remember offhand what the proposed mechanism is that is essentially increasing the sort of exercise gains that we get from being mindful? Like what what is that doing physiologically that's having that downstream positive impact on health? speaker-0: I don't think they mentioned it, or maybe they did mention it in the study. I can't I don't know if they actually in the conclusion mentioned why. A lot of it is the perception, so how we perceive events, and that's what the study was really looking at. Like the perception of our mindset can influence our physiology. And that's a really big thing. So how we perceive things. So for instance, she did another study which looked at sugar drinks labeled high sugar or low sugar, and she gave it to ⁓ type one, di type two diabetics. And basically the ones that were labeled In high sugar, the blood glucose response reacted to its spiking, and the ones in low sugar actually lowered. But they were both the same drinks. And this is the same and in Langer again. So she's always looked at the studies of is the perception of what we think we're consuming or doing or moving, is it actually having an effect on our physiology? And so that was just looking at, you know, our blood glucose. And it's funny, they were both exactly the same sugar, but the body's response was on the perception of it. And the same with the chambermaid study. The perception that they were doing more exercise once they were told they were doing actually had a different response in weight loss. And I just thought and even like blood, you know, blood pressure. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that I think that what's probably going on because I I I've seen this research and and I do think that there's ⁓ where there's like the the the ⁓ manipulation, right? And then there's the outcome, but then there's a little a little bit of a black box in between the two, which is c I mean, it's pretty common in ⁓ in different fields of psychology to to have the black box and that we're all pretty comfortable with the black box. ⁓ if I had speaker-0: You've got a black box behind you. speaker-1: necessarily had a black box behind me. Like, yeah, in in psychology, especially when you're looking at behavior, unless you're ⁓ looking specifically ⁓ within like the neuromechanisms, there's a lot of black boxes that we're we all just like, all right, we know the we know the predictor, we know the outcome, we know that there is a mechanism. We have not identified it yet. What is it? I do think that that it could be that it ⁓ that there's some classically conditioned physiological responses that are going on. So for example, when we taste something sweet or we believe that we're gonna be having something sweet, ⁓ we get our brain will start like we get this classically conditioned response where insulin starts getting released and all of these other things before the the glucose even hits our tongue. ⁓ because our Yeah. speaker-0: Well the saliva starts coming off as soon as we think about it. speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. And so I th I think that I wonder whether there's just ⁓ also I mean, in addition to, you know, the effects that you get with the drinks, whether the effects that you get with the exercise, whether or not there's also some classically conditioned physiological responses going on in the body that are can work in your favor when you shift your mindset, which I think is so speaker-0: Well I think it's so fast. I think we completely forget that the mind and body is one unit. Like it's not kind of separate. We don't kind of go, okay, we'll go a bit to the right, and then you've got your head and it's like an extension. It's like, no, no, the mind and body is is one thing. We're like all it's all connected and it and it speaks and you think, you know, you kind of think about it in this way of okay, well the thoughts are creating a a reaction, you know, if I jump and scare you, you're gonna get wet saliva. you saliva, ⁓ sweat, your sweat responses will start going. Like already your body is priming to kind of get ready to go because you're scared. And so it's like, you know, it's there's obviously a a direct link with your thoughts are affecting what's happening within your body. We obviously every every single response is going to be different. But if I bang a table really hard when I'm giving a talk and everyone like jumps, you know, they've not had a chance to think Sarah's about to attack me and I haven't moved. But their bodies responded so quickly from the shock. And it's the same with the lemon experiment. If you tell somebody to close their eyes and think of a lemon and visualize that lemon, within seconds their saliva glands start going. And they're, you know, your your digestion actually starts in your mouth. It doesn't start within your GI system, it starts within your mouth because that's where your pH, you know, starts, you know, breaking down the nutrients in the food before it goes down your esophagus. And so If you think about it, it's such a complex integrated system. And then people open up their eyes and I'm like, You didn't have a lemon, but you're already primed to get ready to consume a lemon. And so that's what's really fascinating. Even when we know we don't have a lemon in front of us, our body is already responding to what we're telling, what we're telling ourselves. So that's, you know, something I think we forget. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, I I always tell people, ⁓ and and certainly ⁓ when my first book came out, the this your brain on birth control or how the pill changes everything, like ⁓ that yeah, the brain is a body part, right? And I think that people forget that because it's like the the idea of the brain being this biolog part of this biological system is so far removed from our experiences of having a brain. speaker-0: You spoke about that on my podcast. speaker-1: And you know, and having a personality and restaurant preferences and knowing the lyrics to different songs, like that doesn't feel biological, right? That that feels very much like just the experience of being you. And so sometimes I think that our brain doesn't like to think about itself as being as being part of this other system. And and it does make it difficult for people to sometimes ⁓ connect the dots between those things. But as you noted and as as you write about in ⁓ in your book, like if we ignore this. If we ignore the inner connection between our brain and our body, that this oftentimes can come at our own peril, right? Because we're trying to treat we're trying to treat and our our body as being this independent organism. And as a result, not only are we missing out on opportunities, like we talked about with, you know, understanding or being mindful of the fact that your physical activity around the house or caring for others is actually exercise and can help improve the health of your body. ⁓ but also. I think that it can prevent us from having some of the counterproductive conversations that we have with ourselves that, you know, around food, for example. ⁓ one of the things that you talk about ⁓ in your book is about like how you feel about eating something indulgent, right? And whether or not you're going to have a negative conversation with yourself about this, or whether you're going to be like saying like treating yourself, right? And and and treating this as as something that's not ⁓ doesn't need to be shrouded in in ⁓ negativity. And so in that that can actually have an impact on how our body responds to food. Can can you explain, like can you tell listeners who just need to hear it one more time why it's counterproductive to berate ourselves when we're having, for example, something indulgent or allowing ourselves to ⁓ speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: take a extra time off to rest rather than just pushing it at the gym every moment of the day. speaker-0: Yeah, I think this is really important because I I remember coming across this research and I automatically connect to and I don't know if you've connected and you've ever experienced this, but I always remember never ordering a hot chocolate because I would just be like, I can't get a full fat hot chocolate. Like that is just so indulgent and so fatty that, like, absolutely not. So I'd order like this the fat-free, skinny. Ex-wife said, whatever it is, hot chocolate. Because obviously it's gonna taste not great, but it's gonna be better for me. And it's really interesting where it's like, okay, none of this is saying that you should be going to drink indulgent milkshakes all day, every day, or indulgent hot chocolates all day, every day. But actually, on a weekend, when you wake up or in an evening, in a cold night, and you really fancy something warming and nourishing. Like we are allowed to have I'm a big 80-20% rule, you know, 80% of the time you're like very balanced, and there's 20% of the time when you like have fun, you might have a glass of wine with a friend on a Friday and you will have birthday cake and things like that. You know, you have that 20%, which is so important also for our health. And so when we're looking at actually the linguistics of how we look at food and how we describe food, it has a massive impact on us too. So for instance, looking at, you know, sugar-free, fat-free. Hot chocolate is actually not just very delicious, but it also affects how we metabolize our food. And I think when I came across this research by Dr. Elia Clumb at Stanford, who's fantastic, she's done so much amazing research on the perception of placebo and like how we see things and how we interpret stress and how that ⁓ affects our physiology, she did something called the milkshake study. Now it's a small study, it was only four to six specific. Participants, but I think it's a really good kind of starting block on why this language is so important. So she gave two groups milkshakes. She said to one group, this is indulgent, and she said to the other group, this is diet. The diet milks milkshake, so it's got 160 calories in, the indulgent, it was like over 600 calories. They both drank the milkshakes. And what she found is after they drank the milkshakes, the ones that were in the indulgent milkshake, their hunger hormone decreased, which actually meant that they weren't. very hungry. ⁓ and the ones in the diet milkshake didn't really change. And so what she found was that actually just by telling somebody that this is an indulgent milkshake, their hunger hormone responded in what they thought, okay, this is going to really fill me up. So their hunger hormone changed in relationship to that. The irony was it's like a placebo effect basically. Both shakes had around 300 calories in. So neither was dol indulgent and neither was diet, but your body responds to it. And so actually, it's a really interesting concept that we're constantly now telling ourselves, you know, especially in in the States when I'm there, there's no many calories on the menu the whole time, especially now GRP ones have come out, you know, we're really aware of like how much we're consuming. And that's great to an extent, but if you're also living in deprivation of it, like everything's restrictive, everything's low calorie, and we're telling ourselves that, are we telling our bodies that we're deprived and our hunger signals are responding in response to that? Are we telling ourselves every time we have that diet Coke or Diet Milkshake or Diet Hot Chocolate, our body's like, well, I'm not going to be satisfied. So my hunger hormone's not going to move. Does that actually have a counter effect? Are you still going to then eat more because your hunger hormone is kind of saying, well, I still feel quite deprived. But yeah, that was, you know, not actually fully fat and there was no sweetness in that. So actually I'm going to need more food. Where actually if you chose maybe the more, I want to say indulgent, but the one that had a bit of fat in it. Is your body actually going to respond and you maybe eat less? And so the linguistics, like the words that we use that we're telling ourselves, okay, I'm gonna have the garden salad, already I feel hungry by telling myself that. If I say to myself, I'm gonna have a crunchy, delicious, creamy, crouton-rich, like protein-heavy, you know. Whatever salad, I like really use like descriptive language. Is my brain automatically gonna go, ⁓ yeah, that sounds great? I'm actually gonna be quite full by the end of that. But it's interesting, we're described the indulgent foods with beautiful verbs and linguistics. So we actually like the juicy hamburger, we're like, well, I want that immediately. But we don't use that with other with other foods that are maybe nourishing and whole foods. And so it's like the language that we're using and the interpretation of like whether this is dull indulgent or diet is actually. gonna have an effect on our physiology and even our hunger hormones. And a lot of the time that I find when when people come into my clinic is they're actually quite disconnected from the hunger hormones. You know, a lot of the times we don't use the hunger scale to think like, where am I? We're either like really uncomfortably full where we have to like undo our buttons on our genes and be like, ⁓ I've got a food baby and I feel sick. And then we're like, ⁓ I don't want to eat anything else and then well then we always seem to have room for dessert. Or we're like quite light and faint headed and could walking around completely undernourished, but we've like got such strong brain signals or we're so stressed that we don't realise. And then we're like very fatigued and we're not sleeping well and our, you know, our moods are all over the place. So we don't actually connect to where our our hunger hormone is. And you know, there's a hunger scale in the book and it's very universal. You can you can look it up online. And we should really be between you know like a five and a seven on that hunger scale. We shouldn't be up near a nine and we shouldn't be down near a three. And actually that's a very like introspective signal that we need to be working with of actually connecting back to ourselves and being like, how hungry or full actually am I during what I've just eaten? ⁓ and so that's really, really important. So the language you use, if you're telling yourself you're always on a diet, which by the way, fun fact, take the tea off diet, you get dye, doesn't feel that appealing. ⁓ if you're always on a diet, always on restriction, you're always telling yourself like I can't have that, I can't have that. Your brain is constantly living in this like, I'm hungry the whole time, I'm deprived. Whereas actually if you're saying, no, I'm gonna nourish my body and I'm gonna nourish myself and I'm gonna allow myself the odd thing that makes me happy that I can indulge in every now and again, not the whole time, but every now and again, your body's gonna feel so much more in tune and in balance. And so that's what's really important, like especially when we're looking at the linguistics of food or the interpretation of ⁓ the stuff that we're consuming as well, that has a massive effect. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that food labeling has just really done a number on us. You know, and it's like I I like So in my background is evolutionary biology. ⁓ and so I have like a deep, like I my whole research career has been steeped in this idea that we have inherited this brain that is really good at surviving and reproducing under sort of, you know, natural human context. And throughout you know, through most of human history, we did not have nutrition labels, right? We didn't have Things telling us exactly how much energy was in the things that we were eating. ⁓ we just had, you know, the wisdom of other people telling us like that's poisonous or not poisonous, right? And then we had our hunger and satiety signals. And that was it, you know, and and and that was how we figured out what to eat and how much we needed to eat. And, you know, flash forward in the current environment that we're in. And it's like people d don't trust that, right? Like we've been provided that we're incredibly visual. You know, we're a primate species. We are very visual species. Like things that like that are on the outside that we can look at are like incredibly salient to us. Yeah. And so you see these nutrition labels, right? And you see yeah, things like indulgent or diet or healthy, you know. High protein. Yeah, high protein. ⁓ my god, the protein thing. And you know, and high protein. And you see these labels and it's like our brain is like all is already like again, you get these classically conditioned responses going on in the body. ⁓ and it very much influences the way that our body processes foods. And ⁓ and as you noted, I think that ⁓ I think in a lot of ways it's been so counterproductive. Now, on the one hand, you know, in our current ⁓ in you know, food environment, we have all this ultra processed foods, and I do think that You know, there's a lot of wisdom in increasing our interreceptive acuity as you refer to it, which for those of you who are listening and this is the first time you've heard that, it's just essentially your brain's ability to monitor what's happening in the body and then be able to act accordingly. So people who have a high interreceptive acuity are good at being able to identify when they're hungry or full, when they're thirsty or not thirsty. There are also people who tend to be good at being able to identify when they're getting sick or when they haven't gotten enough sleep. And ⁓ and the more sort of body awareness that you have, the more you can respond to your body's cues and then sort of govern your behavior accordingly. And with like actual food. So if you're eating like real food, ⁓ you can use this and actually trust your body to tell you what it needs. Like if you're eating avocados and you're eating you know, steak or you're eating vegetables, you're eating fruit, ⁓ you're eating whole grains, like you can trust when your body is giving you, you know, good information about you need more or like you need less. ⁓ ultra processed foods do sort of add into the picture something where it's like if you eat ultra processed foods and you're just listening to whether your body's telling you that it's hungry, you could literally eat 12 days worth of calories in one because the foods are designed to make you hungrier. And they, you know, chemically impact our ⁓ our hunger and satiety signals and hijack them. ⁓ so that way we'll want to eat more, right? 'Cause they're made to be addictive. And so speaker-0: And they change our gut microbiome at the same time, which then also influences ⁓ speaker-1: Right. Yeah. So our gut then tells us, like, ⁓ we need more of that. Like we really like those spicy Cheetos. Like, please eat more of those. So your gut and ⁓ and it's because it's yeah, it totally gets totally gets ⁓ messed up. And so ⁓ it's like I think that when you couple right increased interoceptive acuity, which ⁓ I loved in your book that you actually offered hints and tips on how people can stuff. Yes, and exercises to allow people to be able to better tap into that because that's one of those things where ⁓ and we actually have research from my lab on this. So this is a topic I've was really interested in for ⁓ for about five years worth of time I really got into ⁓ the role of body awareness and interoceptive acuity on the ability to correctly and yeah, to correctly interpret hunger signals and ⁓ and satiety signals. And and so what we found is that if you grew up poor. Or you grew up in a food insecure household, ⁓ that those individuals tend to have poor interoceptive acuity, particularly when it comes to being able to accurately encode or interpret ⁓ hunger and satiety signals. And we hypothesize that this would be the case because if you're growing up food insecure, it doesn't make sense evolution, like it it's not necessarily adaptive to only listen to your hunger and satiety to guide your energy intake. Instead, if you're food insecure, you just eat when food is available. Right. And so because that you can store those extra calories as body fat. And then later when food is not available, then you obviously then you've got that to fall back on and you won't starve. And so we've I've published several papers now is showing that this operates in kids as young as ⁓ I think that the paper, we had a paper published in the journal called Appetite, where we looked at, I think it was ages three to twelve. As young as three to twelve year olds already, you get this difference between kids who are growing up in food secure versus food insecure environments. And those from the food insecure environments have this disconnect with their ⁓ with their w hunger and satiety signals. ⁓ and intentionally, right? Again, like I we think that this is something that's been programmed into the system purpose to promote survival in in food insecure environments. What I love about in your book, these exercises. Is these are things that for people who've had food insecurity in childhood, ⁓ which is obviously something that none of us have any control over what happens in our childhood environments and we're children, ⁓ you know, these people aren't totally stuck, right? And so one of the things that we found in our work is that doing things and taking steps to increase interceptive acuity can actually increase body awareness. And then when you have high body awareness, This then can have the effect of when you're eating real food. Again, you can never trust what your body is telling you when you're eating Oreos because it's just like it's gonna tell you. It's just gonna tell you. Yes, I can say it's gonna tell you all kinds of nonsense. And most of it's not true. And most of it's bullshit. Like, yeah, that the food manufacturers made those Oreos ⁓ tell your brain. Totally hijacked your brain. And so, but when you're read eating real food. speaker-0: Hijack your brain. speaker-1: ⁓ you when you have interoceptive acuity, you really can trust those signals. And ⁓ and so I love that you have those exercises in here because I do think that especially for ⁓ people who have a difficult time tapping into that, because in a lot of for you know, a lot of the the cases, it it's because they they weren't raised in an environment where that would have been adaptive, but to be able to train that. ⁓ and then you couple that with eating whole foods. And whole foods don't need to be synonymous with deprivation, right? Like there's a lot of really delicious whole foods, and you actually have some really nice recipes in the back, ⁓ which I I thought was like a really nice touch. Do you do you make these recipes? Like, are these recipes that you eat? Are these your like you make all of them? speaker-0: of them. So it's interesting. Like, you know, I think when I started nutrition, I never thought that I was going to enjoy the science part, but I've always loved cooking. ⁓ and it's interesting, you know, my my dad was the kind of cook in the family. And then I kind of like my grandmother was a cook and I kind of like to put on. But it's where I felt the most calm. And I think because I've got, you know, ADHD and dyslexia or whatever, for me I like you just love being in the kitchen. I've never followed a recipe in my life. ⁓ apart from now mine, because I've created them. But I would just, you know, na I'm the worst baker, but I love cooking. Because if you if you don't follow a recipe and baking, you don't get a cake. No, yeah, yeah. ⁓ but yeah, but with food and I feel really connected to it. And I, you know, I grow, you know, I've got a tiny little garden in London, but I grow all my herbs and I grow some vegetables. And there's just something very like nourishing and grounding about actually getting your hands on the real food and like chopping them. And it's very it's a very like mindful act. And I think for my my busy brain, it actually calms me a lot. when I cook, because I feel very connected and very present. ⁓ you know, otherwise I'm on a computer all day or on a phone call or recording a podcast. But actually, like I'm connected, I'm mindful, I'm in that, in that moment. And my brain feels quite settled because I'm doing stuff, but my brain is only focusing on actually what my hands are doing. Otherwise I'm gonna chop a finger off. And so like for me, it's a very like relaxing thing. So I've always loved to cook before I even knew about nutrition. which is interesting because You know, I've never obviously done a cookbook, but for me it's I've always been fascinated by the knowledge. But the fact that I could put, you know, the recipes in the back, it was really important for me because I think a lot of the time there's always recipes for like a whole family. And so these are all kind of segregated into different things, like cooking for friends, but also cooking for one, because a lot of people, you know, might stay at home on their own or live on their own. And they're always like, ⁓ I only have recipes for like two people. So I was like, I'm actually gonna do something where there's like recipes for one and then there's like evening recipes and there's like high protein breakfast recipes. And so you can kind of mix mix and match. And I always say one of the most compassionate things you can do for yourself is actually cook for yourself. Cause normally we're cooking for our children or our parents or our friends or our partner, but like how often do you make the effort just to do it for you? And that's a really compassionate act to do just for yourself. And so, you know, I encourage people to pick, you know, between three and five recipes, ⁓ learn them in the book, and then you've got them in the back pocket. Because the one of the biggest downfalls I see in nutrition with health is, you know, when people say I just can't keep to it, I have no time. I'm like, because you're trying to think of a recipe on the spot when you're in the shops. Like that's just already your, you know, your willpower is totally gone because you're just drawn towards the quickest thing. And now we've got apps on our phone where food can come in like 20 minutes. So like Of course, the convenience of being able to pay for something to be cooked for you is way more desirable when you're tired than cooking something that you already know. So I always say if you've got like three to five recipes that you haven't even got to think about, and you can literally just p like ping them out when you're really tired and you're like, you know what, I that's gonna literally take me 15 minutes, I don't even need to think about it. You are so much more likely to cook that than rather than getting to a Wednesday and being like, What do I want for dinner tonight? I have no idea. I've got to Google. I've got to go and look at a recipe. Now I've got go and follow the recipe. And your brain automatically is like, this is just exhausting. So I'm just gonna default to ordering something or I'm gonna get toast for dinner because that's just easy. So you know, having recipes in your back pocket that you can just bring out when your brain is exhausted is one of the kind of biggest hacks, I'd say, when it comes to to nutrition. speaker-1: Yeah, one of the so the thing that I do and I've had to do since ⁓ I've got I've got children and they're older now, but when especially when they were little, since the time I had them, I would on Saturday mornings, I still do this, folks. This is still my routine. Saturday mornings I look through the cookbooks and I decide what I'm gonna cook that week and I write a menu and then I write a grocery list and then there's the grocery shopping, and then on Sundays I chop things up. And so and I look at it as an investment in future Sarah's mental health and sanity. And so on Sundays it's me chopping things up and measuring things and putting them in little ramekins and ⁓ and then when it's like a Wednesday, I roll in, I'm like, all right, I'm making this, everything's already prepped in the fridge. I pull things out, I throw them together, and voila, we've got dinner. And ⁓ and I've had to do it this way because ⁓ nutrition was always very important to me. It was really important that my kids ⁓ get fed, you know, real food. And it was also important to me that we sit together at the dinner table because there's a lot of good research on sort of the benefits that you get from that. ⁓ and also even just with digestion when you're eating with other people versus eating alone. And so ⁓ that's always been really important to me and obviously I have a full time job and I've got like 12 full time jobs sometimes. And ⁓ and but it's so really important to me to cook. And I find time to do it because I I make it a priority. And so for me, the way that I do it is is just I have to like organize to the help. But I also, you know, appreciate like we all do things a little bit differently. And for yeah ⁓ you know people who ⁓ who don't want to do that, who think like that is the absolute last thing I want to do on a Saturday morning. ⁓ just having some of these these back pocket recipes I think is Really wonderful. What is your like what like if you were to ⁓ for somebody who's like doesn't cook a lot, who has like bought your book, like what what which one do you think they should try first? Like which of the recipes do you think is like a good like juice to squeeze ratio? You know, like where they're gonna put not in too much effort, but what they get back is gonna like really be worth speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ do you know what this I really did think about these before I did them 'cause I've cooked all of these on repeat. And plus I would love you to add one of these into your Saturday chopping mixes and tell me which one you went for. ⁓ so I would say speaker-1: Yeah, I'm gonna try the oatmeal because I saw your oatmeal recipe because I like I'm I'm not you know everybody's talking about these high protein breakfasts and you know what I mean? Like like I and I just can't do that in the morning. Like I t I have to eat something that's a little like planty. And so yeah. So anyway, so I was I'm gonna try I'm gonna try that one. I've actually got it earmarked and there was also a salmon dish in here that looked really good to me. speaker-0: That's really good. I would say definitely start with a breakfast. I always have the smoothie because I'm time poor and I make it the night before. It literally, and also I can just throw it in and be done with it. So I would say that's really, really good, especially now it's summer. If you're listening to this in a hot climate, it's hydration. ⁓ but there's something called Sarah's Compassion Curry in there, which is honestly. Anyone who's ever been to my house ever has had this cooked for them. ⁓ because it's just one of those ones. That's why I called it Undermine. Because I was like, if any of my friends read this book, they'll be like, This is the one that you rotate constantly. And I'm like, it is, but it's one, it's just so good and it's so cheap, but it's so delicious. So I'm a massive fan of like Middle Eastern cooking because they just use so many herbs and spices. And I think in the Western culture, we've never embraced herbs and spices as much as we should. And they're already already one or five a day. Plus you just keep them in your pantry, you know, like dried herbs and spices are the best. And if you kind of give me meat and two veg, I'm a little bit like, ⁓ I've not there's like no flavour in this. ⁓ apart from like a hef hefty load of salt. So for me, I love loads of herbs and spices and I think it's a really good investment. ⁓ and then it's full of like legumes, which I think are like the powerhouse when it comes to, you know, good protein and good fibre. But basically you can just chuck, you haven't even got to think about it, you just chuck everything into a dish. ⁓ and there's lots of different things, but it's basically like the most delicious tomato creamy lentil legume vegetable dish ever. and every time somebody eats it, and it's got things like balsamic vinegar in there as well to like use different like textures and flavors, there's even like dark chocolate that I chuck there, but it's got so much rich flavour and it's so cheap, it's so accessible, and you can just make as much as you want and freeze the rest. And so when people don't finish it, I just chuck it into a Tupperware and put it into the fridge or the freezer. And then I just defrost them. But it's just like it's warming and it's a hug, but it's also so easy that it's literally just it's a one pan dish. But it's just amplifies in flavour. So I'd say that's the one that you should do. ⁓ speaker-1: I'm excited. I'm I'm totally gonna do that because ⁓ that sounds like it sounds right up my my eye. I have it I have a dish ⁓ that I always make for people. So for me, I it's actually a Middle Eastern, ⁓ like Middle Eastern type flavors. It's this cauliflower salad with faro and chickpeas, and it's with arugula and like roasted cauliflower, and and then it's got ⁓ yeah, cinnamon and cumin. It's just like it's so good. speaker-0: So good. So good. And honestly, I think when you anything that's like Middle Eastern and Spike, people are like, Wow, this is amazing. And actually, that's really simple half the time. It's just because they're like the herbs and spices give it this like amazing punch. And I think a lot of us are like, Wow, this is so exotic. And you're like, Well, this is why herbs and spices and things like tahini and sesame oil are like so important for cooking. ⁓ so yeah, I you have to send me that. I want to try that recipe. Yeah. speaker-1: I totally send your way. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna I wanna cl sort of begin to wind down by asking you to just to over tell me whether or not I'm gonna give you some traditional fitness related wisdom. And I want you to tell me whether you think that it's good advice, bad advice, or maybe it just needs a little fine-tuning. All right, you ready? Calories are all that matters. speaker-0: Uh-huh, I'm ready. No, forget that. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, bad news. speaker-0: Bad news, bad news. Calorie you can't you can't compare a calorie of a broccoli to a calorie of a piece of chocolate or a a calorie of an ultra processed food. It's you know, you've got to look at all of the different kind of macronutrients and look at the sugar content before you look at the calories. speaker-1: Yes, the way that our body responds to things, very different depending on very ⁓ speaker-0: Very different very different very different thermogenetic values of how they kind of break down in our bodies. So that's it's really, really important. Yeah, forget the calories in, calories out. speaker-1: I what about everyone sh like there isn't there is an optimum diet out there and ⁓ everybody should eat the same diet. speaker-0: No, health is the most individual thing going. And what will work for me will not work for you. So no. There's the basics of like having whole foods. I think is probably what most people would agree on. Like if you can base your diet on whole foods, that's probably what universally we'd all agree on. And we'd probably all universally agree on like not having sugar sweetened beverages, so like all the cokes and the Pepsi's in the world. so actually that's probably the universal exception is always going to be the odd outlier. But apart from that, no. speaker-1: Yeah, well yeah, I can I completely agree. I think about so for me, I'm I eat mostly plants. I eat animal protein. I just don't I do it kind of sparingly and and that's what makes my blood work look the best. It makes me feel the best. I have a friend and ⁓ and she her if she eats like I do, her blood work her blood work is terrible. She gets iron deficient. I mean there's all of these, you know, and and and it's just that we're just made different, you know. speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah. speaker-1: I'm built different than she is and she's built different than I am. And ⁓ and we are two people with really healthy diets that are very different from one another because our bodies like different things. speaker-0: And it's so interesting 'cause everyone always says, like, what's your diet? And I never say what I what I do. But the very simple thing of like, you know, those day in the life videos, I think I mean they're so interesting because people want to watch them, but they also can be really detrimental because you're like, ⁓ okay, there's a nutritionist talking about what she eats. I should eat like that and I'm like, No, we shouldn't. This is nuance. Like what I eat in my day is so different to what you should eat. So yeah, individual. It's very speaker-1: Yeah, that that's really interesting. I could yeah, I could have totally imagined that people could, especially given that you're a nutritionist, make that too important. Right. Where it's like, ⁓ well I need to do that. ⁓ yeah, thankfully I don't think people think that about me. So I can talk about what I do all day long. speaker-0: You know what's also quite funny is when I go out for dinner, if I have like fries on my on the like on the side, I go, Can I get some fries? People go, Do you eat that? And I'm like, Well, why do you don't think I do? And they're like, Okay, then I'll have some. It's like they've got like the green flag and it's hilarious. And people won't order before I order. And I'm like, get what you want. And they're like, No, we want to see what you're ordering. And I'm like, This is way too much. Fresher. Like, no. speaker-1: So I'm a I'm I'm a notorious and my my husband will attest to this. I'm a notorio like I love a good dessert. Right. And so when I'm out for dinner and I don't I don't necessarily Yeah. And so so we'll go out for dinner and we'll be with friends and everybody like, no, no, thank you. I'm like, well I'll I'll see the dessert menu. Like you can send that over here. And then all of a sudden everybody's like, well, you know, I want to look at the dessert menu too. speaker-0: Do you wanna share with me? And then then I eat most of it and you're like, Wait, I thought we were sharing. speaker-1: Yeah, it's like it's like let's talk about sharing. Like we're gonna split Yeah, 'cause like I'd give I get upset if people yeah, they don't order it and then they eat all of mine. It's like come on. speaker-0: Yeah. Like Joey from Friends moment. speaker-1: So all right, here's another one. Biohacking is the future of health and longevity. speaker-0: No, nervous system regulation is this is the future of ⁓ of health and longevity. I think I even saw a post today from a guy. it's he's called Prince EA. He's like a massive creator. And he actually started off by saying, I spent so long biohacking and actually what I needed was nervous system regulation. And actually it doesn't cost anything. It's like literally going for a walk, it's like understanding when I'm stressed, it's breathing deep into my belly, it's getting a really good night's rest. It's getting light into my eyes. And I'm like, that that is the biohack, you know, like we don't need to spend all of this money on these extreme protocols. Like, yes, okay, maybe they will work to some extent to give you an extra year in your life. But like, is it is the stress also counteracting that? Is is how expensive is that? A lot of us kind of get these extreme biohacking protocols, but we kind of forget the basics. And I'm like, how settled is your nervous system? Because actually that's what's really important. When your nervous system is regulated, your stress is lower, you make better decisions, your metabolism works better, your hunger hormones are working correctly, you know, your hormones are are are much more kind of balanced rather than kind of all over the place. ⁓ and I don't think we talk about nervous system regulation enough. And so for me, that's like the biggest biohack. We're all quite, I think, dysregulated by the intensity of like stress on our phones and our computer and our work and having to do everything, you know, be the mum, be the person that earns some money, you know, be the good partner, be the be the good friend who responds to all the WhatsApps, you know, flat times I get into bed at midnight knowing I shouldn't be on my phone, but being like, no, I've got to respond to all these people, otherwise they're gonna think I'm a bad friend. You know, the amount of stress that we put on ourselves, actually the biggest work that we need to do is is regulate our nervous system. And I think, you know, it's not me saying that biohacking can't work, that there's not things in there that might shift the needle. But I actually think that, you know, the research still is quite in its infancy in a lot of it. everyone again is so individual and how they respond. And it's just so like specific on each person's lifestyle. ⁓ and so I think, you know, nervous system regulation is where I'd point people first. speaker-1: Yeah, I think that especially with the in the biohacking world, there's a tendency to look at these like little like na nano items. You know what I mean? Like Yeah, yeah. And then also like looking at, you know, a cold plunge and then, you know, a sauna and red light and hyperbaric oxygen chamber and all and it's like friendship and and sunshine and speaker-0: Send gains, yeah. speaker-1: Whole foods and going to bed at a school hour. Yeah, exactly. Crowding. ⁓ like all of all of these, like as you said, getting back to basics. I think that if all of us got back to basics, I think that ⁓ we would be in so much better shape than what we are currently. speaker-0: We would be in such a better shape. I mean, we're in like a loneliness epidemic and yet we're worried about a cold plunge. speaker-1: Like. speaker-0: Do you know what I mean? I'm kind of like, where are we? Where's our brains going to? And like we're in a, you know, a doom scroll epidemic and like, you know, Chat GPT is becoming our therapist. Yeah, we really need we really need that red light therapy. And I'm like Mikael Smoothie. And I'm like, do you know what? If you actually went outside in the sunlight, met your friends, drunk a load of water and laughed, you'd probably get as beneficial results as going to sit in an ice bath on your own for 10 minutes. ⁓ you know, I think it's like readjusting like what speaker-1: Chaos movie, yeah. speaker-0: Like what our like primal needs are because ⁓ you know, our primal needs weren't like we need to invest in red light therapy. ⁓ we kind of need to get back to the basics. It's it's yeah, it's important. speaker-1: Excellent. All right. Now I'm I'm gonna just do a quick lightning round. I was gonna ask you a couple of quick quick questions. What what do you think the most overrated health trend is right now? And we may have already answered it. speaker-0: N.A. D. speaker-1: N A D okay, so t so tell me about that. Like briefly. speaker-0: So I think, you know, the supplement market is is absolutely wild. I think people are I mean, I would say NAD or IV drips or things like that, you know, I think things that there isn't actually there is partly some evidence on NAD, but actually when you ac I have actually looked at the research, I wrote an article about this the other day. And actually it doesn't really shift the needle. there is only certain forms that really kind of make a difference. ⁓ you should be looking more at a precursor, but actually it's not we don't actually have any long-term studies that actually shows that this is really, really beneficial to take. And so I think we're spending all of this money on these drips, injections, tablets, to be like, I want to get more kind of energy from my mitochondria and it's gonna deplete as I get older. And so we spend all of this money on supplements that we don't actually have much scientific evidence to prove that it works. Now somebody might say, ⁓ well, there's this one study that proves it. thing with with anything is you can cherry pick evidence to get the kind of outcome of the hypothesis that you want. But if you actually do really like scrutinize the evidence, the evidence is still very limited here and a lot of it is still in rodents as well. And so I think what's really important to understand here is we're all pushing these extremes. And I also think a lot of us aren't even aware of where our blood work is, but we'll buy an NAD and think, well that's gonna change that's gonna give me all the energy that I need. And so many, you know, nutrients work together in synergy. And so just chucking a massive amount of NAD in your body. I mean, is that gonna make it unbalanced in other areas? Like we're kind of not quite sure yet. And so I think, you know, the same with with IVs. Like I see people taking an NAD IV and their their heart is beating so fast, they're getting a big flush because they're getting a huge amount of NAD in their body. For me, that's like doesn't feel like the best sign of health. And they might say they feel great afterwards, but the stress that they're putting their body under. For me, I just think there's so much more nuance out there. And I think it's very easy to chuck money at our our health and these ways of supplements and think this is going to make me feel better. This is going to give me more energy. But like we just don't actually have the research there at the moment. ⁓ and so for me I think it's just skip that and get back to the main basics. Make sure you're actually having like enough micronutrients of like vitamin D before you start putting NAD in your body. speaker-1: I was about to ask, do you have go to do you have like one or two go to like ride or die supplements that you do take? I'm guessing vitamin D is one of them. speaker-0: Vitamin D three with K2. Yeah, I live. Well, do you know what? Right now it is 30 degrees. I don't know whether that's in Fahrenheit, but it's very hot ⁓ in London and we don't have air conditioning, so we're all melting. and like can't quite cope. ⁓ but NAD ⁓ not NAD, vitamin D three with K2, because K2 is a signaling molecule that tells the D3 where to go, is really, really important. ⁓ I would say if you're a vegetarian or you're very plant based, an omega 3 EPA and DHA supplement, if you eat you know, two to three portions of oily fish a week, you won't need it. ⁓ but it is really, really important to make sure you're getting enough omega-3. ⁓ I'd say, you know, that the the most research supplement, especially for women, is creating monohydrate. So I do say, you know, from a certain age, especially perimenopause, like creating monohydrate can be very, very beneficial. and especially with jet like, you know, going up to kind of 15, 20 grams is actually really helpful if you're traveling a lot and you're very stressed and you're very busy. But you obviously kind of need to start between three and five and build up. Otherwise you get quite poor GI problems. ⁓ but that's probably the most researched supplement that we have out there. ⁓ so that's really important. ⁓ and then I would say if you are a very stressful person, you do a lot of exercise, and looking and testing your magnesium levels is really important because exercise depletes a magnesium by 10 to 20 percent. and if you're not having enough leafy greens or enough magnesium rich foods within your diet, then that also is very important for nervous system regulation. ⁓ so they're kind of like my key supplements. But I always say to people, get your blood work done just once a year, just to figure out where your levels are. Cause the worst thing is you if you're like shooting in the dark and you're like, ⁓ I'm just gonna buy this magnesium supplement, and there's like seven different forms, ⁓ you know, and you have no idea where you are, like that might not be the most beneficial. ⁓ you know, some can have laxative effects, some can have the opposite, you know, some can make you sleep better. So there's so many different types of magnesium. There's also making sure that one, you kind of have the one that suits your needs, but to you also just know where your your levels are because there's also the opposite effect that can happen. If you have too much of anything, that's also quite detrimental. ⁓ but in the cluster of the ones that I talk about, they're the kind of four main ones. speaker-1: Okay, what is the best piece of advice that you've gotten ⁓ from a guest on your podcast? Live well, be well. ⁓ Or maybe even if you can't think of what's a good question. Yeah, like what is something that surprised you or changed the way that you thought? speaker-0: Yeah. I think actually every guest that comes onto that podcast changes my mind a lot. I mean, I I I had God, I had Arthur Brooks on the other day and he really made me think a lot about the meaning of life, which is quite a deep philosophical question. ⁓ and he was kind of saying, you know, there is no end goal in life. You know, I think I am naturally quite a goal-oriented person, you know, like it was weird. You have the arrival fallacy where I wrote my book, it became a standardized bestseller, and then I was like, why do I feel low? Like this should be This sh I should be feeling great. And actually it's about like not giving yourself an end goal because everything is about progress. And so once you get to that and you think I'm here, then you're like, what's next? You kind of lose the purpose. And so it actually made me think a lot about any kind of like new project that I take or on, whether it's professionally or personally, like how I am mapping that out in my mind is is actually so essential to kind of my overall meaning of life. Because kind of saying, Well, when I do this. And that's why, you know, the wealth kind of umbrella where like when I earn this much, I'll be happy. But then when I earn that much, I'll be happy. But then I get to this much and sell my company, I'll be this happy. And like it never actually determines happiness. And that's why success sometimes can feel quite empty. And so it really made me think about like the way that we talk about this and how we kind of use goalposts and actually think about it more as like a pilgrimage, as opposed to kind of just end fixed point. You know, for instance, once I get married, I'm gonna feel settled. Or once I have children, everything will be, you know, I'll get the family dynamic that I want. It's kind of like, you know, there's always needs to be like a progress of that goal as opposed to an endpoint. And I think that's such an important philosophy to keep in mind. ⁓ that you're like never really kind of at the end, you're always learning, you're always improving, you're always growing. And that's I think gives us a lot well, gave me a lot more substance to how I think about things. speaker-1: That'll be a great episode for everyone to tune into. I love I Arthur, he's I I so I've I've read him in The Atlantic for a really long time. He's a great writer and ⁓ so smart and so much wisdom. Yeah, I love that advice. All right. If somebody listening, right, feels overwhelmed by all the health advice that's out there, like what's the first thing that you would recommend that they do? Like what's the first step? speaker-0: I'd actually say switch it all off. Like honestly, I would say switch, switch it all off, unfollow everything that's making you feel like crap, take yourself out, tell yourself to stop. I think there is also a thing where we have so much self-development now that we intake so much information and we can't action half of it. And so you can read all the books under the sun, you can listen to every podcast going. And I even said this the other day on a podcast. I was like, the amount of information that I get from doing this show. It's unbelievable. 500 episodes. I have so much information in my brain. But like I don't use half of it. Like I can't say I physically cannot action everything that I'm told. And so actually, one of the biggest things is to actually like stop listening to everything that's going out there. Write down exactly how you're feeling. Write down exactly what you want your kind of progress to look like. And write down the one thing that you can do today to start. Just one thing. That might be learning one new recipe. That might be giving myself a bit of a break. That might be doing three gratitudes in the morning. But like literally give yourself one thing because you can't activate all the information that you learn. And actually, if anything makes you feel stressed or overwhelmed, it's not helping you. So my biggest thing is remove it, take it away and strip it right back to the basics. Because once you have that building block and you can start with that and you can get good at this, then you can add on to the next thing. But use your interceptive, like go back to the part when we were speaking about it, when you described it so beautifully. And go back to like how do you feel? Like don't allow anyone else or any information to determine how you feel. Like actually ask yourself like how are you feeling? And that is like the number one step. And just basically block out all the noise and be like, No one knows else no one else knows how I'm feeling apart from myself. So I need to ask myself that question and then I need to think of the one thing I can do to make myself feel better tomorrow. And that's where people need to start. speaker-1: it. I think that's perfect advice and the best way to close. So where can people find your podcast, Live Well, Be Well, and where can they find your book? shouldn't be this hard. speaker-0: So it is coming out in the States now. I think next week. So it will be out. So you can now actually get it on Amazon ⁓ without the crazy delivery fees. And you can get it on Audible and you can get it on Spotify. You can kind of listen to it on audiobooks as well. ⁓ and you can also get it on Kindle. So I would go to Amazon to get the book and then live be well. We're on YouTube, we're on Spotify, we're on Apple Podcasts. Yeah, go and check us out. Go and check mine Sarah's episode out, actually, if you've enjoyed this one. You'll go and enjoy mine Sarah's. speaker-1: Yes, you will. You will. Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing all of your wisdom from ⁓ and and your story. ⁓ I think that's gonna really resonate with a lot of listeners. So thank you. And thank you all for listening. And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.