I have battled with my body for many years.
I went from bean-pole kid to large-boobed teen, and I struggled with the reactions I got to my curves. I tried to hide my breasts and my body whilst I worked out how I felt about it all.
I was bulimic for a bit (I later discovered that, in my secondary school, way more girls had eating disorders than I realised). I tried Atkins-type diets and felt crappy feelings about my body and consumption habits solidly through my 20's. I exercised obsessively to to counter balance binge-y eating... and whilst I hit on some truths and good finds (moving and exercising felt good, eating a lot of plants gave me a particular kind of bright energy) it was messed up and I was mostly not enjoying my body. Shameful feelings overpowered the pleasurable ones.
I had a breakdown age 32 (nervous system burn out) and followed my nose and a recommendation to Indonesia, supporting sustainability projects.
I bounced around a bit and found my sweet spot in Bali (I tried to resist the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing, but that island has got a powerful thing going on) where I lived with a Japanese woman called Mayumi (a.k.a Mom Natura) and helped her and husband Komang with their natural farm & miso food business.
I - for the first time in my life - ate food straight from the plant, and it was a revelation.
It tasted incredible.
I felt vital.
I was also getting up before sunrise and gardening either end of the day, with Mayumi feeding us the most phenomenal food unlike anything I'd eaten before. Balinese-Japanese-Malay fusion food.
(Here we are in Mayumi & Komang's bamboo house eating DURIAN - the 'King of Fruits'. If you've heard that durian tastes like sweaty old onions then you are mistaken - check the cat. We all know that the cats know.)
Growing food, touching plants and soil daily - this was not my 'scene', not something I'd ever done before. I grew up in Bromley (of The Glades shopping centre fame) and this soil/food/lifestyle thing was a revolution in my life. That, and the amount of time I had outdoors.
I was loving the feeling of being in my body, for the first time in my life.
After a year I ran out of cash and decided to return to the UK to rebuild everything. I remember stretching out in an airport, with fluorescent tube lighting, and I knew that it was going to be hard returning to an environment without insect noises and palm fronds and green, and said to myself - "I promise that I will not forget this. I will not forget everything I've learned."
But after time, my moving and stretching succumbed to the tics of modern western living. I got a job as a theatre producer and found myself at a desk, 9-5, 5 days a week.
It was another year before my body started to give me clear signs - eye infections, face rashes (lots of face-stuff I couldn't ignore), emotionally sinking into depression - and I realised that it was physically impossible for me to continue that life in London.
Out of the blue a friend got in touch and said they'd bought a 9 acre smallholding in West Wales and they needed a hand with the land work and food growing.
And so, without ever having been to Wales before (aside from a family holiday where it rained relentlessly all week - classic) I thought 'I've got nothing to lose", and I followed the call, travelling west... and west... and a little further west ... until I hit Cardigan Bay.
And... shit.
Didn't all the ferns and stuff remind me of Indonesia?
I lived a 20 minute walk from this beach:
I had no idea whether I would stay for two weeks or the rest of my life - I just followed my nose. I vowed to myself that I would integrate food growing and land work into my life, because - simply - my body loved it and it made me well. It was now of vital importance. My life depended on it.
That was 5.5 years ago. I've lived in two horse trucks, a cottage, various yurts and a cabin. I write this in my new living space that has mains electric, hot water out of the tap, a double sink and radiators. It's not always been that way and my life is happier for all these comforts.
It's a conundrum I haven't yet nailed - the balance of everything. I stripped things back as far as low impact as I could. My body found the land work tough (the digging... the wheelbarrowing up all those Welsh hills...) but it made me feel fit and supple and weathered and strong.
And I love growing food.
Well... when I'm doing it, I do.
It connects me to the earth in a way words can't capture. Amazing ideas come in, when you have your hands and feet in soil. I pretty intuitively got an acre garden and 60 foot polytunnel operational in a few months and we ate off it through lockdown.
The problem is that I'm out of practice, and just thinking about it... I can't be arsed. I think back about that garden and can't believe I did it.
Growing food takes time and attention, and I need to do other things in my life, for money and creative fulfilment. I don't have the time - or now the space - to grow food. I like sitting inside, and being comfy, in the warm. On a chair.
Going outside and starting to grow food again... the knee-jerk inner voice goes:
"Urgh. Do I have to?"
"Yes you do. You'll like it."
And when I swim in the sea or get on my bike it feels fantastic - once I get over the "ugh, do I have to?" hump.
In 2021 I cycled 526 miles up the Pacific Coastal Highway (wrong direction, into the wind) mostly to save face because a bunch of people donated to the trip after I made a call out at Heathrow airport having rocked up with no ticket and my bike in a box, for reasons I won't go into now.
I flew over there with the bike, and a series of small miracles got my to Malibu, and after getting warm and comfy hanging out in Malibu for two months, I knew that I had to do the bike thing.
"Ugh".
The result was one of the most incredible, surprising, life-enhancing experiences I've had in my 39 years on Earth. I realise that the "ugh, do I have to?" voice is never going to go away and is just par-for-the-course when doing epic shit.
Back to FOOD.
When growing food I naturally went raw and vegan. However I have learnt that my body needs MEAT and the Vegan vs Meat bit of the Sustainability Conversation is not straightforward. I started experimenting with fasting. I went on a facilitated water fast (nothing but water and herbal tea) for 9 days, sandwiched with a very light vegan diet. That was beneficial, I felt like a lot of attachments to food were broken, my system had a thorough clear-out and I had proven something to myself in terms of willpower. It was an empowering experience.
However... I kept on fasting, intermittently. I pushed it. It became a little obsessive... and then my periods stopped, and I was terrified that I'd done permanent damage to my body.
All of this is the background context for why I approached Ashley Kibutha - a.k.a It's Thyme (introduced via my friend Liz Okinda, founder of Fettle).
Ashley is a science-based dietician, originating from the USA and now living with her family in Kenya. From the moment I connected with her, I was struck with her passion for what she was doing, and this amazing vision that was driving her. She helps people transform their relationship with food into something truly healthy, by giving them science-based information and challenging food myths.
I asked Ashley a load of questions and then sent her sketches where I'd mapped out the information she'd given me. How do we show this idea simply? Did I understand it right? Is the weighting of information on or off the mark?
It was a process...
... a process that has taken 3 years to bring to fruition.
Finally we have a printable pack of colouring in pages and guidance notes about what to eat for a healthy heart. Sometimes things take time... and now it's thyme for this to be out there.
This is the starting block - the universal 'wherever you live in the world, this is what you can put on your plate'. From this we can go into more specifics - 'what wholegrains are locally available to me?', 'what sustainable protein sources do I have access to?', 'what if I don't eat dairy?' etc.
I have other pages in mind for this 'Vital Body' series. What I'm really interested in is how people respond to this and what they want next.
You can download the whole Questing Into Heart Health pack here.
I also made a Colourology Quest to go with it, which you can find here. A game about colouring in, about becoming confident with colour, about colour theory and how to play all Colouring In Quests.
Did I mention that I have a salad fetish? I somehow managed to wangle a gig as a private chef for Phoebe Bridger on her birthday, along with the rest of Boy Genius. They are all absolutely ace and if you haven't heard of them then listen to their new music here - that they were writing when I cheffed for them!)
I chat about it a little bit here - (Confessions of a Salad Fetishist).