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bluehost.com/Wondersuite. Hello,

1:41

I'm Sophie Ellis-Bexter, and welcome to Spinning Plates,

1:44

the podcast where I speak to busy working

1:46

women who also happen to be mothers, about

1:48

how they make it work. I'm

1:51

a singer, and I've released seven albums in between

1:53

having my five sons aged 16 months

1:55

to 16 years, so I spin a few

1:57

plates myself. Being a mother can be the most difficult

1:59

thing. an amazing thing, it could be

2:01

as of my time before when you're home in London.

2:05

I want to be a bit nervous and see how other people

2:07

have in their head. Hello

2:12

to you, greetings from

2:15

Ipswich. I am now

2:17

about to do my sixth

2:19

gig of the Thursday and

2:21

I love it there actually. I've been

2:24

really chilled after

2:27

I like had quite a lazy morning because I get

2:29

quite adrenalised after the gig so I'm not going to

2:31

sleep till quite late. So last

2:33

night we played in Cambridge, it

2:35

was really fun and went

2:37

to a nice pub after the gig

2:39

as well. Had drinks somewhere local, felt

2:41

really quite Christmasy which might seem like

2:44

a funny thing to say. I

2:46

saw one who's already doing

2:48

a Christmas tour but there's

2:51

Christmas then there's Christmas. And

2:54

yeah, so it's fairly late night and then a

2:56

fairly leisurely morning which is lovely and watched a

2:58

bit of Mingles and tea and toast on the

3:01

bus and then went for a wander around town,

3:03

went down to the water like

3:05

the marina in Ipswich. It was a really

3:07

beautiful blue sky, sunny day and I've

3:10

been wandering all over town and

3:12

I have in my other hand, I'm sorry,

3:14

I'm in the streets, I'm in the streets

3:16

of Ipswich. I have in

3:18

my hands a bit more Christmas

3:21

shopping actually, doing quite well. I'm doing lots

3:23

and lots of stocking fillers as I go

3:25

around town because I find sometimes they're quite

3:27

hard to do online so I find like just

3:29

finding little bits and bobs and

3:32

some great stuff today. So I'm hoping I haven't

3:34

got too much left without to do because it's

3:36

a bit fiddly isn't it? What

3:38

do you get teenagers in their stocking? That can

3:40

be a bit challenging. I mean obviously

3:43

you can still do silly things, it's

3:45

not like you can put so many toys in there. Anyway,

3:47

amusing allowed. And

3:50

yeah, I have never ever played the recent theatre here

3:52

in Ipswich before so it should be fun. I'm

3:55

looking forward to seeing what it's like tonight and everything's

3:57

been going really well. I'm having such a nice time.

4:00

been amazing, the kids really sort of bedded

4:02

in, feeling good about

4:04

life, yeah all nice and

4:08

so oh my guest this week is

4:11

Julia Bradbury so Julia's got a

4:13

son and twin girls and

4:17

wow she is somebody that's

4:21

a real force of nature and I mean that in a

4:23

really good way like she looks great

4:25

she's like brimming with good health she's

4:28

smiling she's made

4:31

lots of positive lifestyle changes

4:33

some of which I suspect already

4:35

part of her routine

4:38

anyway loving the outdoors the benefits

4:40

of walking benefits of

4:42

how nature can help your serotonin and

4:45

your endorphins and make you feel good

4:47

the dopamine all these kinds of things

4:49

you get from the sunshine however

4:52

I think she's now more aware of it than

4:54

ever as she was diagnosed with

4:56

breast cancer a couple of years back now

4:58

happily all in the

5:00

clear with that but it's resulted in

5:02

her really wanting to make sure that

5:05

she's in the best possible health for

5:08

her children because

5:10

obviously completely very

5:13

understandable place to be in

5:15

and she's somebody that's very

5:18

as I say very well informed about it all and look

5:21

we know a lot of this stuff

5:23

already don't we process stuff not good

5:25

sugar not good slugging around nothing daylight

5:27

not good some of the

5:29

working hours the stress levels how

5:31

you treat your body there's a lot

5:34

of modern life that doesn't benefit us

5:36

long term and we know it really

5:38

actually making changes to your

5:40

lifestyle and your habits well

5:43

it made me think a lot about me I

5:45

mean I'm I feel like I'm in quite a

5:47

good space and that I my energy

5:49

levels are pretty good I'm a happy person

5:52

you know I don't get ill too often but

5:54

Carly she made me rise there's a lot I

5:57

could do to get things better

6:01

Whether I will do them remains to be seen. It's

6:03

hard to break a habit. And I think sometimes you

6:05

need a really big motivator. And I

6:07

think your health having, you

6:09

know, having an under threat, that's

6:12

gotta be a pretty significant one. So

6:14

I think you're gonna enjoy this chat and it

6:17

might make you, it may

6:19

give me a little bit of how you look after

6:21

yourself. We always, sometimes

6:23

we can give really good advice to our friends about how

6:25

to be good to themselves, but you might not take the

6:28

advice yourself so much. So

6:30

let's see, let's see what you think. But

6:32

I tell you what, you're definitely gonna come away learning

6:35

a couple of things. I know I did.

6:37

Anyway, so really good to have you with

6:39

me again. Thank you. And

6:42

I'm staring at the

6:44

Regent Theatre in the cold down the end of

6:46

a road in Nick's switch. So

6:48

while you're, while we're listening back, I'm gonna go and put the

6:50

kettle on. And I'll speak to you in a

6:52

minute. Always,

6:59

always. And last time I saw you, you were on a stage, you

7:02

were performing, doing your thing. And my kids were looking

7:04

up in awe at you because

7:07

one of my little girls wants to be a pop star, she wants

7:09

to be you. And I was explaining how

7:11

hard you work and that you were probably

7:13

going on to somewhere else the next night and all of

7:15

those. She was like, oh, okay, that's how it works. Yeah,

7:19

it is also really fun. Of course it

7:21

is, it's brilliant. And you do it so well.

7:23

It's always a joy to watch you sing and perform.

7:25

And I think that's a really good thing. It's always

7:27

a joy to watch you sing and perform. Thank

7:29

you. Well, it's so lovely to be around here

7:32

today and congratulations on your book. Thank you very

7:34

much. Why don't we start with a really simple

7:36

question? How are you feeling? Very nice.

7:38

It's good actually, thank you. Life is really

7:40

good. The book

7:43

was an interesting project because the idea

7:45

for the book, Walk to the Self

7:47

Happy, started around, I think about the same time

7:49

that you started this podcast. It was in

7:51

the midst of the pandemic. And I saw a

7:53

story on the

7:55

news about a doctor in Manchester. And he

7:57

was talking about some children in the area.

8:00

who hadn't been outside for the

8:02

whole of the pandemic. Through

8:05

various, because of various reasons, they just hadn't

8:07

been outside. Now I'm an outdoors nut, and

8:10

I think that kids need to spend time

8:12

outside. We all need to spend time outdoors

8:15

and outside, but particularly children in their formative

8:17

years, it's massively important for lots of different

8:19

reasons, for mental health, through to have something

8:21

on with their peers, problem solving, you name

8:23

it, the studies show that it's hugely beneficial.

8:25

So I started thinking, how are those

8:28

children how

8:30

are they going to be impacted long-term? Not

8:32

being outside at all. Forget everything else that

8:34

potentially. It's pretty fun to have something like

8:36

that. Yeah. And

8:39

everything else that could have been going on inside that home

8:41

environment. And then I

8:43

thought back as to how lucky I am, really

8:45

fortunate I had a mum who loved gardening and a

8:47

dad who's a real outdoors nut. So I would putter

8:49

around the garden with my mum when I was little,

8:52

and then I would go out hiking and walking with

8:54

my dad around the peak district, because that's where he

8:56

came from. And we spent a bit of my childhood

8:58

living in and around Sheffield. And

9:01

I just know how fundamentally important

9:03

that was to my development and

9:06

my bonds with my mum and

9:08

my dad, and how

9:11

I've always used walking

9:13

and nature as

9:16

sort of my therapist and my

9:18

outdoor gym and my friend. And it's

9:20

just been there for me. And it's something I've taken

9:22

for granted because of that relationship that I

9:24

have with it because of

9:26

that upbringing. So the book was, the

9:30

idea was there to, right,

9:33

how do we impress upon people how

9:35

important nature is and how important walking and

9:37

nature can be? And not just walking, because

9:39

just being outside has lots of benefits as

9:42

well, and breathing outside a daylight, which we'll

9:44

maybe talk about later. Yeah. And

9:48

then it developed into, all right, well, it's

9:50

not just going to be a book for kids, there should

9:52

be a book for adults as well, because I think we're

9:54

all suffering from something

9:56

called an indoor epidemic. We're

9:59

all... spending far

10:01

too much time inside. Most

10:03

of us looking at blue screens, most

10:06

of us under artificial light as we are now,

10:09

just living a very unnatural life.

10:12

Our ancestors, and that's not going back

10:14

that very far, our ancestors were outdoor

10:17

beings. We are outdoor beings.

10:20

That's how we've evolved. We've evolved to move

10:22

outdoors. We're bipeds for a reason.

10:24

We can carry things. That sort

10:26

of stands apart from other species

10:28

is that we can stand up,

10:30

walk, and carry our belongings with

10:32

us. Then you

10:34

go into how we started creating tools and all

10:36

of those things. We've essentially always been able to

10:39

up sticks, move with our

10:41

tribe or on our own, go

10:43

to a different location and forage

10:45

and hunt and be in daylight.

10:47

Now, most of us spend maybe

10:49

90%, maybe 95% of our time inside. We don't do

10:51

any of those things. We

10:54

don't move. We don't move outside. We

10:57

don't squat anymore. We don't crawl around on all fours

11:01

anymore. We just don't do so many things

11:03

that we have evolved to do. The

11:06

long-term impacts of that

11:08

behavior on us, I think we're

11:10

living them now. We're seeing them. Massive

11:12

spikes in chronic illnesses, everything

11:15

from type 2 diabetes to cardiovascular

11:17

disease to cancers. Then

11:19

we move on to the mental health issues that

11:22

we're seeing. Massive increase in anxiety, neurodivergency

11:24

in younger children as well.

11:26

It's not just not

11:29

being outdoors. There are other elements as well,

11:31

the food that we eat, the environment that

11:33

we're polluting, all of those things. I

11:36

felt that a book like this would

11:38

be a really useful tool for children, for

11:41

adults, and for families, for everybody alike because

11:43

everything in the book is accessible

11:45

as in you can do it. If you

11:47

can appreciate what nature and being outdoors is

11:49

doing for you, then there are things in

11:52

this book that you can do to improve

11:55

your health. I don't just mean your

11:57

mental health and your physical health. Health is...

12:00

I call it we're like a tree and

12:02

we have a health tree. And you

12:04

could say to me, Charles, I

12:06

work out five times a week, I go to the gym five

12:08

times a week, and I go, that's really good. So if it's

12:11

great for resistance training or rest of it, what else do you

12:13

do? You go, no, no, that's all I do, but I'm really

12:15

healthy. And I would argue with you

12:17

because we know each other a little bit and stuff. And I'd say,

12:19

I don't think that does mean you're

12:21

healthy. I think that means you go to the gym five

12:23

times a week. What else do you do for your health?

12:25

What do you do for your mental health? What do you

12:27

do for your emotional health? What do you do with something,

12:30

with something that we call in the book, social

12:32

fitness, which is like a therapist called Gallip How

12:55

do you interact with people? What about your food? And you

12:58

feel brilliant about the fact I do not go to the

13:00

gym five times a week. So we don't have to have

13:02

the awkward conversation. There you go, that's good. My

13:04

laziness has had a purpose today. I

13:07

just would have been awkward. That would have been, yeah, would

13:09

have gone over it, but yeah. I

13:12

mean, firstly, I 100% agree with you that

13:14

one of the things I've always loved about

13:16

your approach, and I think you've went Instagram,

13:19

everything is how democratic your approach to health

13:21

is. It's not about accessing

13:24

clinics, and I've just come away from two

13:26

weeks in Portugal, and I'm so

13:28

happy that you're not introducing whatever these amazing things that

13:30

will definitely have benefit- which are benefit and can be

13:32

really useful. Yeah, not knocking it, just saying it's about

13:34

things that are peaceful, accessible

13:36

around us. And

13:39

like you said yourself, you know, it's

13:41

the first step to feeling better in yourself in

13:44

every way is literally one set in front of the other in

13:46

the most literal sense. How brilliant

13:48

is that? And how achievable for most people.

13:51

And if it's not that exposing yourself to early morning, like all

13:53

these things. And I really like it. To

13:57

navigate between the final and

13:59

the end of the day. and the things that

14:01

are a bit more, for want of better

14:03

expressions, of woo woo. Yeah, yeah. How do

14:05

you, how have you found that? So

14:07

first of all, I'll just take a step backwards.

14:10

Excuse, excuse all the puns and metaphors. You

14:12

talk about like one step in front of the other. As

14:15

I've mentioned, the book doesn't just address walking.

14:17

It talks about other things. But there

14:19

are fantastic case studies in the book

14:21

where real people have improved their lives

14:24

or saved their lives, I would argue,

14:26

through walking and through exposure to nature,

14:28

where they've done things off their own

14:30

bat. From the guy who was

14:32

waiting for a heart transplant, who got off the hospital

14:34

bed and then just walked and is still alive today

14:36

when he was expected to be dead, to

14:40

the lady with sickle cell who also was told by her doctor, you

14:42

need to get out with bed, you need to walk and go and

14:44

see your baby. And she was like, what do you mean? I can't

14:46

walk. I'm feeling, and he was like, no, no,

14:48

no, you really need to move. You need to

14:50

walk. And that changed her life. And she walks

14:52

everywhere now to another guy called

14:55

James, who started building

14:57

a healing pond in his garden, a pond that

14:59

he could swim in. And he

15:01

was overweight. He had a snap

15:03

tendon and he

15:05

was really struggling with breathing and overeating

15:09

as well, and he discovered breathwork

15:12

and five exercises, Tibetan exercises that he

15:14

could do every day and started building

15:16

this pond, which he now swims in every

15:18

day and feels that

15:20

this closeness with nature and also completing

15:23

the project, doing it.

15:25

That helped him regain his health as

15:27

well. So I think

15:29

that's important just to mention these are

15:31

then ordinary people who really

15:33

sort of found their way. And after

15:36

I saw the news program

15:38

about the children who weren't spending any time outdoors, and

15:40

I thought about this idea for a Walk to Self

15:43

Happy book, how to access health through walking in nature,

15:45

then I was diagnosed with breast cancer. So

15:48

obviously writing a book, the pitch had

15:50

already been, was already there and

15:52

the idea was already there, but obviously everything went on the

15:54

back burner. And then it became about

15:57

me looking after myself,

15:59

researching. myself working out right.

16:02

Why, first of all, is there a reason

16:05

why? And is there anything I can do

16:07

to help my recovery to make sure that

16:09

I can reduce the chance of reoccurrence? And

16:12

I also gave myself a health audit. And

16:15

I've spoken to one doctor and she said it's

16:17

amazing the number of people who tell me that

16:19

they say these words, oh, I was so healthy

16:21

before my cancer diagnosis. And

16:24

actually, yes, there are

16:27

incidents of cancer that are very bad

16:29

luck. There are and I'm

16:32

absolutely not shaming people here who've been diagnosed

16:34

with cancer and saying it's your fault. And

16:36

you're not doing it to yourself either. I'm not

16:38

doing it to myself. But I

16:40

am incredibly curious about

16:42

other factors that do play a role.

16:45

So one in four cancers is preventable, which

16:47

is quite a big statistic. So

16:49

I started doing the research whilst

16:51

I was undergoing my diagnosis. And whilst I

16:53

was going through my treatment, eventually I had

16:57

a mastectomy to my left breast. So I lost my left

16:59

breast, but I had an immediate reconstruction. I didn't

17:02

have to undergo radiation and chemotherapy.

17:05

And then I had to make a decision about ongoing

17:08

drugs, what I might or

17:10

might not take. And all

17:12

of this time, I started doing research

17:14

into what factors could have played a

17:16

role. And also the book, I

17:19

was thinking, actually, I probably will write this

17:21

book at the end of this, but it's

17:23

going to take on a new dimension. Because

17:25

this is now about this holistic health.

17:27

It's not just about walking in nature,

17:29

it's about what other things. So the

17:32

massively surprising facts for

17:34

me, which are in the book, are

17:36

how important sleep is. Now,

17:39

I think it's something that we sort of all know, we

17:41

think we know. But there is a

17:43

badge of honor to pulling an all nighter. People

17:46

say, oh, I can get by on five hours

17:48

a night's sleep. I know

17:50

you have a very sometimes disrupted sleep pattern.

17:52

And we just push ourselves through it. I

17:54

did. So at one stage in my career,

17:56

I was presenting a live television show on

17:59

BBC One. I would

18:01

finish that live show, get on an airplane, and

18:03

go and film another show on the other side

18:05

of the world. It's a travel show. Film

18:07

maybe in two different countries that week, and then

18:09

come back and then start the live show again

18:12

on the Tuesday. Wow. And

18:14

I did that for a couple of years.

18:17

So my time, you know, I was pushing the biology

18:19

of my body. I was flying through

18:21

different time zones, you know, all sorts of

18:23

stuff. And I never gave it a second

18:26

thought because I could do it. I felt

18:28

able. I was younger. I had the

18:30

energy. I just sort of pushed on

18:32

through. And now I

18:34

realize, actually, I was doing some damage to myself.

18:37

And what Professor Russell Foster would say is I asked

18:41

him, do you think any of

18:43

this sort of lack

18:45

of attention to my sleep, do you think it played a role

18:48

in my cancer? He said, I can't categorically say that to you,

18:50

Julie, but I can say it's like juggling

18:52

with knives because sleep

18:54

is so fundamentally important to our

18:56

biology. You know, I know

18:59

when you've had a bad night's sleep, you

19:01

just don't feel great the next morning. Your

19:03

decision making is off. You're

19:05

a bit more negative as well. You

19:07

know, everything that might be okay is not

19:09

okay. The kids will

19:11

say something that just sets you off in

19:14

a different direction that they wouldn't have done. Yeah,

19:16

big nodding. Yeah, big nodding. Well, the other

19:18

thing that's happening is your biology has changed.

19:21

So I've been doing lots

19:23

of the tests that you're talking about now sort

19:25

of as an experimental. I want to do the test so

19:28

I can write about and talk about and share my

19:30

findings with people, not that they have to do all

19:32

of these tests, but just as a

19:34

demonstration of things that might be interesting.

19:36

So your blood sugar control is severely

19:39

impacted when you don't have a good night's sleep. So

19:42

I could have the

19:45

same breakfast after a really good

19:47

night's sleep and a really poor

19:49

night's sleep, and my blood sugar

19:51

spike will be higher if

19:54

I haven't had a good night's sleep because my body

19:56

just can't control my

19:58

blood sugar in the same way. because it's

20:00

tired. It might be a way also more

20:02

tendency to keep reaching for sugar. Yes. And

20:05

then the that's when the cravings start. Professor

20:07

Mackie Walker, who's who's another world expert

20:10

on sleep. He I saw him on

20:12

social media this in the last month

20:14

and I really rate him. I think we can all

20:16

say that he's an expert we can rely on. And

20:18

of course, that's very hard as well. Who do we

20:20

trust? Who don't we trust these days? He

20:23

was talking to somebody in interview and

20:26

the question was asked if I have two or three good nights

20:28

of sleep, like eight hours, eight hours, eight hours. And then I

20:30

have a couple of nights, five hours, five hours.

20:33

What's happening to me? And one of

20:35

the things that happens is your natural killer

20:37

cells are depleted. Now

20:39

natural killer cells are part of our immune system.

20:41

This way, more likely to get all sorts of

20:43

bugs and illnesses and colds and coughs. One of

20:45

the things that killer cells help you with

20:47

is a site in cancer as

20:49

well. So if this is something

20:51

that's happening regularly to you, yes,

20:54

you might be more prone to

20:56

colds and flus and infections, but

20:58

long term, you will be more

21:00

prone to chronic illnesses as well. And

21:02

I'm sorry for shift workers and for

21:04

performers and for people who are out there who are listening.

21:07

We know that when you have an irregular sleep

21:09

pattern, we know that chronic illnesses

21:11

are higher. The rates of chronic illnesses are

21:13

higher in these people. And what

21:16

Professor Russell Foster says in Walk Yourself Happy

21:18

is if you can do it

21:21

for five years and then give yourself a break. That

21:23

is one of the things that you can do just

21:25

to try and get off that

21:27

treadmill and reset your body. The other

21:29

thing is don't feed yourself the sugary

21:31

things, the carby things that you feel that

21:33

you want. Go for proteins, go

21:35

for vegetables, go for those things that won't

21:38

spike your sugar. Because the

21:40

other thing I didn't realize is

21:42

how dangerous lots and

21:44

lots and lots of sugar is. I

21:47

just, again, I thought, I thought

21:49

we all know, don't we? But

21:51

yeah, but modern life, it's very hard

21:53

because you're having to navigate yourself and

21:56

everywhere around you is normalized, that

21:58

way of living and convenience living. and all that

22:00

stuff, completely normal. Yeah. And

22:02

you can surf through the day that way and no one's gonna

22:04

pull you up on it because it was all there, it was

22:06

all an option. And it's funny because

22:09

as you were talking, I was like, sitting

22:11

in your home, the doors have been sealed and they

22:13

were basically saying to me, it

22:16

feels a little bit like an intervention. I know.

22:19

Sophie, this isn't actually your podcast. Gary and

22:21

I, your producer, have got together. Yeah, well

22:23

there's two doors, two ex-sailors, and I'm like,

22:25

it's Matthew behind that one and Ruffle behind

22:27

that one. But

22:29

I'm also thinking sleep, that's

22:32

an enormous topic. Because

22:34

what we haven't mentioned much of yet is

22:36

the fact that you've also been raising three

22:38

children within this time, the last, so your

22:41

twin girls are now, I think, eight. Yeah,

22:43

yeah. And your little boy is now 12,

22:45

11, 11, 11, all right. And

22:49

so in the past, the

22:51

bit before you went on this journey

22:54

of exploration into sleep and all the things,

22:57

was this even an option to you to live in

23:00

a different way? Because that's very hard when you've got

23:02

some more children. Look, it's so hard and

23:04

my whole family have had to make

23:06

this transition with me. And there

23:08

have definitely been times where it's been

23:10

very, very challenging for them. And

23:13

I am that annoying mum who doesn't

23:15

let them eat pizza all the time. I don't let

23:17

them have the pasta, cheesy pasta all the time. I roll

23:19

my eyes when we go out and

23:22

yet again on the menu, it's chicken

23:24

nuggets, a burger and pasta

23:26

with butter. I mean, that's just like

23:28

the universal children's menu, which is shocking. Very

23:31

unimaginative. It's really unimaginative. And just not good for

23:33

them as well. It's been pre-practising to modern kids

23:36

who I think have far more diverse palate than

23:38

I have when I was little. They're exposed to a lot

23:40

more food, spices, seasonings, all sorts. Yeah.

23:43

So it has been very, very difficult. And

23:46

I thought, again, I thought I was

23:48

healthy before I came. And

23:51

then I started looking and realising that I

23:53

wasn't that healthy, that I didn't have good habits,

23:56

that I was looking after my sleep, that I was eating way too

23:58

much sugar, that I was letting my children eat way too much. sugar.

24:00

So now I want my kids to be normal.

24:03

I want them to have friends. I don't want

24:05

them to be ostracized. But I

24:07

am, we don't have, we used to have a

24:09

sweetie drawer. We don't have a sweetie drawer anymore.

24:11

We do, but it's full of very different things.

24:13

And now if my kids want a snack, it's

24:15

generally country vegetables, and some

24:17

nuts and, you know, some fruit, that

24:19

kind of stuff. It's

24:22

not the chocolate drawer anymore. Or if it

24:24

is the chocolate drawer, it's dark chocolate. And

24:27

it's you can have three dark chocolate buttons. They like

24:29

it. They love it. They

24:31

know onto it. I'm really,

24:33

really proud actually, that they've

24:35

made such big adjustments. So

24:38

cereal is another sort of guilty,

24:40

guilty sort of partner and

24:42

a party. And I hate to hate

24:44

to say this because people hate it when you tell them what

24:46

to eat. And I'm not telling people what to eat. This is

24:48

research. And this is stuff that's out there. And there are people

24:50

like Professor Tim Spector. Chris Fonsaligan

24:54

has written, ultra-processed people. These

24:56

are the people who've really done

24:59

research who will tell you stuff

25:01

like ice cream, cereal, supermarket sliced

25:03

bread, pizza from the packet. All

25:05

of this stuff is so ultra-processed.

25:07

It's fundamentally bad for us. It's

25:10

messing with your brain. It's messing

25:12

with your gut microbiome. It's not

25:14

something, again, it gets back to

25:16

not something your body understands. We

25:18

haven't grown up. We haven't evolved

25:21

with these emulsifiers and flavorings

25:24

and texturizers that are used,

25:26

even in stuff like toothpaste. They use

25:28

things to make the toothpaste more palatable,

25:30

to make it more slippy, to make

25:32

it taste better. You can get strawberry

25:34

flavored toothpaste for your kids. Does

25:37

that sound right? I know it's

25:39

crazy when you say it like that.

25:41

It's bonkers, isn't it? Yeah. I mean,

25:43

it's, I suppose it just

25:45

sometimes feels quite challenging

25:47

because the legwork in making the

25:50

choices comes down to us being

25:52

conscientious consumers, which takes

25:54

time. It might take

25:57

extra cost. It might take doing

26:00

things that are slightly out of the way

26:02

of the most convenient route. Yeah. So it's

26:05

hard. It is hard. It's really, really hard.

26:08

And I feel you have

26:10

to be very dedicated if you're going to make

26:12

these changes. And it's also, this

26:14

is an information that is widely

26:16

known, as in it's not,

26:18

the food isn't, all of the ingredients,

26:21

you pick up a packaged food,

26:23

whatever it might be, whether it's, you know, a meat

26:26

product or a pizza product or bread, whatever.

26:28

And you look at 20 or

26:30

30 different ingredients on the back. There's

26:33

no labelling that tells

26:36

you, oh, Zent and gum, that's

26:38

connected to a bacteria family and

26:41

that's not really very good for us. Or,

26:43

you know, whatever the colourings and the flavourings might be, oh,

26:45

this could have an impact on your mood. I

26:47

think if people, maybe if they

26:50

knew more, it might help, but also maybe not.

26:52

You know, people go, I haven't got time. That's

26:54

the biggest thing. I haven't got time. We've

26:56

been led to believe as well. And it's

26:59

true for many of us that we don't

27:01

have time to make for

27:03

ourselves, to choose the right food. We're

27:05

on this hamster wheel

27:08

of we've got to empty the inbox

27:10

of the emails. We've got to

27:12

do every request that comes into us. We

27:15

have to answer every WhatsApp message. This

27:19

modern 21st century life is pressure all

27:21

the time, which is why we've got

27:23

all these stress stresses and

27:25

I think an increase in anxieties

27:27

and mental health issues. Because where's

27:29

the time out? Where's the time

27:31

where we don't have to

27:33

do all this? We're never going to

27:35

finish the to-do list. Yeah. And there's

27:37

no filtering. That's what I find sometimes

27:39

when I'm under stress, I've realised that

27:42

every message, every WhatsApp, every email comes in at the

27:44

same level and I can't navigate. The big and the

27:46

small just become everything's almost in block capitals. Yeah. Like

27:48

which one are you meant to respond to today and

27:50

which one can you leave for a while? And then

27:52

when you leave it, you forget and then you remember

27:54

and then it's stressed and you have to say, I'm

27:56

sorry, I didn't get back to you. Yeah. It's coming

27:58

at us from every direction. from

28:00

our phones, from our emails, from our work

28:02

colleagues, from our family, from our friends. I

28:05

mean, bless my mum, I love my mum.

28:07

She's 85 and she's discovered Instagram. I'm like,

28:09

no, please stay away. It's

28:11

one more way for you to communicate the wrong

28:13

way with us all. You know, she's going to

28:15

put something up on Instagram that's highly inappropriate

28:17

or some random message like, oh, are you

28:19

coming? Or what about the bins? Or,

28:21

you know, something that is just like, no,

28:24

I'm not on Instagram. Hey,

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30:37

how do you feel? Because it

30:40

feels like, actually, like a lot

30:42

of women I speak to, that your

30:45

home life, your personal life,

30:47

and your work life, there's

30:49

so much cross-pollination. So how

30:51

are you at kind of

30:53

compartmentalizing these things? I've become much

30:55

better. Because I have realized

30:58

how important it is to be present.

31:00

Bit of a cliche, bit of one of

31:02

those woo-woo terms, are you present, are you here? But

31:05

I want to be

31:07

with my children, and that's the one thing. Well, there

31:09

are many things that the cancer diagnosis taught me. But

31:12

for me, my massive motivator is I want to

31:14

live as long as possible to be here on

31:16

planet Earth with my children for as long as

31:18

possible. And therefore,

31:20

every weekend I have with them, every day

31:22

that I can come home a little bit

31:24

early and be here to spend

31:27

more time with them for homework, or just to sit

31:29

and play with the hamsters with them, or watch a

31:31

movie with them, or do some writing

31:33

or drawing, whatever it might be. Those are very,

31:35

very precious moments to me. And I

31:37

think they are precious moments for everybody. And I think

31:39

those are some of the smaller things that

31:42

it's easy to lose sight of. And I coin this

31:44

phrase in the book called, the small things are the

31:46

big things. And those are the kind of

31:48

things. Like this morning, I did my breath work. I

31:51

do breath work in the morning light every single day.

31:53

That's one of my new habits. And

31:55

I do it because scientifically, it's good for you.

31:58

It gets your hormone cascade going. and

32:00

sets you up for the whole day, really elevates

32:02

the mood and gets lots of other boggling functions

32:05

going properly. So I wake up early

32:07

to do that so that I can then be

32:09

in time for the school run and breakfast and

32:11

everything else. And this morning when I sat out

32:13

on my windowsill, which is very safe, everyone's always

32:15

very worried about me sitting on the windowsill, I

32:17

can't fall down and injure myself, I

32:20

opened the window and it was sunny. And

32:22

it hadn't been a sunny morning for

32:24

a while, for like three days. So it was

32:26

beautiful. So I was like, oh, yes, just, I

32:28

mean, I would do it come rain or shine

32:30

anyway. But that was like, yeah, that would be

32:32

on my gratitude list today. It's like it was

32:34

it was just that morning light, but it was

32:37

sunny light in my eyes. And it just made me feel

32:39

just that, you know, 10 20%

32:42

better about what I was doing.

32:44

And those kind of things are

32:46

very, very important. And

32:49

although the juggle is real, with

32:52

the kids and school and schedules,

32:54

my schedule like yours is very

32:56

haphazard. You know, I don't really

32:58

know where I'm going to be

33:00

from one day to the next.

33:03

I could be away filming on location. So

33:05

luckily, I have a partner who is very

33:07

hands on as a daddy. He absolutely

33:09

loves being a dad as well. And I

33:12

think because we were both late to the parenting

33:14

game, I was 40 when I gave birth to

33:16

Zeth. And he was he was 51, I think.

33:19

So we're we're older parents. And

33:22

in one way, that's made us already,

33:24

we were much more grateful for the

33:26

joy of becoming parents at that

33:28

later stage in life. And I don't

33:30

think there's I don't think there's anything wrong or right. But one

33:33

of the things that being an older parent can

33:35

can do for you, if you've got more experience

33:37

under your belt, you're able to cope with things

33:40

in a different way. And you can priorities

33:42

prioritize things differently, because that's what you spent your

33:44

whole life doing with other things with your work and

33:46

stuff. And then suddenly, children become

33:49

the number one priority. It's not your job. It's not where you're

33:51

going. It's not the business. It's not. It's not

33:53

your to do list. It's right. How do we make the

33:55

children count? How do we put them at the top

33:57

of this pyramid and then work around? And

34:00

that's what we do between us. There's always one

34:02

of us here. So if I'm

34:04

away for work, he'll make sure that he's not, not

34:06

that he goes away as much as I do, but

34:09

if there is something that one of us has to

34:11

be at, that a parent has to be at, and

34:13

for some reason I'm away, he makes sure that he's

34:15

there. If I go away

34:17

for three days of filming, he will be here and

34:19

make sure that he's here. And likewise,

34:22

he might have early morning site visits or

34:24

something like that, and that would be the

34:26

morning that I'm with the kids. So we

34:28

manage it and we juggle, but we're very

34:31

much equal partners. And I feel very grateful

34:33

to have somebody who pulls his weight like

34:36

that in the same way and really

34:38

regards it as what he wants

34:40

to do and what he feels that

34:42

we both should do, really. No, that

34:44

is, that's really important to share. That's wonderful.

34:47

And I guess for both of you, as you

34:49

said, the path to parenthood maybe

34:51

didn't always run as smoothly as you would hope. And

34:54

from the sounds of it, you really always knew

34:56

you wanted to have children. So

34:58

if you take me back, what was happening when you

35:00

had Zef, what was going on in your world at

35:03

that time? So Zef, so 12

35:05

years ago. So

35:08

I had been diagnosed with endometriosis,

35:12

which I've now explored more and have

35:14

done lots of, I've had

35:16

lots of discussions about endometriosis. Endometriosis is

35:18

a big clue that you

35:20

could be Eastern dominant. And

35:23

just putting that out there too, there are lots of

35:25

ladies out there who suffer from

35:27

endometriosis. And Eastern

35:30

dominance can, not necessarily,

35:33

but it can play a role in other

35:35

things downstream in your life, including breast cancer.

35:37

That's not to say I don't want

35:39

women who have got endometriosis and

35:41

think they're Eastern dominant to think they're going to get

35:43

cancer. But for example, what

35:46

I've learned through genetic testing is

35:48

I'm Eastern dominant, but I also,

35:50

the easiest

35:53

way to say it without getting down into

35:55

the whole sort of geneticist language

35:58

is I don't process my Eastern. very

36:00

well. So, estrogen can be toxic

36:03

and I don't process the

36:06

toxic estrogen that well. So, there

36:08

could arguably be, again, this is very

36:10

layman's and there'll be doctors screaming at

36:12

the, at this going, no, that's not

36:15

factually correct. But essentially, I don't process

36:17

the, that,

36:20

that toxic estrogen that well. So, there

36:22

are buckets that do look after the

36:24

estrogen. And so, I would have

36:26

had a toxic load of estrogen. And when

36:29

I stopped menstruating, where

36:31

does that estrogen dominance go?

36:34

And one of the things that can happen

36:36

is breast cancer. So,

36:39

I was struggling, endometriosis is also

36:41

one of the side effects of

36:44

endometriosis is infertility. And I was

36:46

struggling to fall pregnant. And

36:48

it was, I knew that it was down

36:50

to the end of endometriosis because I'd been diagnosed and

36:53

I'd had, I'd had keyhole surgery

36:55

to remove some of the

36:57

endometrial lining that happens with

37:00

endometriosis to build up. So,

37:03

I went down, we went down the road of IVF. And

37:08

that has all sorts of problems

37:10

as well associated with it, because

37:13

it's an emotional roller coaster. It

37:18

has an impact on your health, you're messing with your

37:20

hormones, you're doing all the things that I didn't really want

37:22

to do. But I

37:24

really, really wanted to be a parent. Yeah. And actually,

37:26

you've been to IVF a few

37:28

times. Yeah. So, actually, Zef was

37:31

like the miracle, the miracle

37:33

boy, despite the endometriosis and everything

37:35

else, we hadn't started the IVF

37:38

with, we tried something else. And then I

37:40

fell pregnant. So, that was brilliant. We were

37:42

like, yeah, that's fantastic. And

37:45

then after Zef was born,

37:47

we were both really, really desperate for him

37:49

to have siblings. We didn't want him to

37:52

be an only child, especially with older parents

37:54

and all the rest. So, that urge was

37:57

almost stronger than the urge to have, you know, have

37:59

a child in the first place. And

38:01

that was when we started down the IVF

38:03

route with fourth. And

38:06

it was four rounds, three, four rounds

38:08

of IVF, which is punishing. Working with

38:10

your cycle, injecting

38:13

yourself. And I was

38:15

trying to juggle work. As well, I was spinning those

38:17

plates. And I was presenting Countryphile at the

38:19

time. And I remember at one point,

38:24

you do lots of tests when you're having IVF

38:27

and they're monitoring your bloods to see

38:29

where your hormones are. And then it's basically

38:31

they give you a cocktail. It's like you're a

38:33

bit like a racehorse. They're trying to get you

38:35

ready to get you pregnant at exactly the right

38:38

time. And

38:40

the blood results had come in, but

38:42

I was filming in Scotland. So I

38:44

had to find a GP practice in

38:46

Scotland, where the lab could

38:48

send the results to and that they

38:50

could then read. Are they like,

38:52

interpret them? Interpret the result. And then

38:54

we could feed that back to my

38:56

guy. I mean, it was horribly stressful.

38:59

And it didn't work because of course, they didn't

39:01

quite know what they were looking for. They

39:03

weren't my specialists. They read the bloods in the

39:05

way that they were reading the bloods as a

39:07

GP practice would, not the way that he was

39:10

reading them as a... And

39:12

I just suddenly thought, this isn't going to work. I

39:15

can't carry on juggling like

39:17

this and trying this very

39:19

complicated clinical procedure

39:22

and be stressed the way the time. I'm

39:24

just not going to fall pregnant. There's no way I'm going

39:27

to fall pregnant like this. Your chances are

39:29

slim anyway with IZF. So

39:32

I made the decision that I

39:34

would really scale back all of the work

39:37

and that I would

39:40

just focus on looking after me. And I

39:42

suppose that was the first time I realized

39:44

my body just couldn't keep going. And

39:47

that was when I realized I was

39:49

not infallible and that I'm not

39:51

superwoman and that you can't

39:53

just crack on with everything all the

39:55

time. And it's not just your energy

39:57

and your sort of... capacity

40:00

that drives you through that

40:02

we are little machines and we need a

40:04

bit of nurturing and a bit of love and a bit of

40:06

care as well. So I did

40:09

scale back and then when

40:11

I did find out finally after the third

40:13

or fourth round of IVF that I was pregnant

40:15

we had made the decision to go away to

40:17

Greece. My family are from Greece so we went

40:19

to Greece, we went to a lovely little island

40:22

called Spezis and we didn't

40:24

move for five weeks. Very fortunate

40:26

that we were able to do that. I

40:28

know that it's a

40:30

very privileged position to be able

40:32

to take that time out but I'd worked leading up to

40:34

it. I had another project after it so we felt confident

40:36

that we could do this. And

40:39

I didn't move for five weeks apart from gentle walking

40:41

and doing all the right exercise. I didn't have massages

40:43

because that can have an impact. I didn't have reflexology

40:45

because that can have an impact. I

40:48

really, really took care of myself. I

40:50

read lots, I swam in

40:52

the sea, I walked and

40:54

that was where I found out I was pregnant with

40:57

the girls. That sounds pretty magical

40:59

as a little chapter. It had such

41:01

a happy ending. Yeah and it really,

41:03

really, it was and we

41:06

didn't know for sure that they were twins but

41:08

the way that they measure the bloods you can

41:10

see if you have a high count they know

41:12

that it's multiples is what they say. There's

41:15

a high chance that there'll be multiples.

41:17

So we had these bloods done in

41:19

Greece at, I got a

41:21

boat to the clinic. Of course you did.

41:24

All very chilled. Not like a speed boat but like a

41:26

gentle nose. I didn't fly. I was like and that's where

41:28

we had the bloods done and then they came back and they

41:30

were like oh yes. And I remember

41:32

the day so

41:34

vividly and obviously I cried and it was very, very early

41:36

days but I knew that this was my last chance to

41:38

loom. If this pregnancy

41:41

didn't result in children then this

41:43

was my last chance. So everything

41:46

was, I was really holding on

41:48

to this as

41:50

something that had to be. Well

41:54

that'll be very reassuring for so many people. I

41:56

have conversations quite frequently actually with women who haven't

41:58

had any children yet and then. maybe in their

42:00

40s and I always think stories of

42:02

people having their families at that time is

42:05

an amazing bit of hope for everybody, you

42:07

know, of how it can be. But also

42:09

when I was thinking about you, I was

42:12

thinking that, as you said, actually, yourself, that

42:14

that relationship with your body and your health

42:16

at that time, I mean,

42:18

that's a huge amount of intervention, as you

42:20

say, IVF is really invasive. And

42:24

were you able to be open

42:26

about it? Because obviously with your relationship

42:28

with your cancer diagnosis, a

42:31

lot of it's been very open, very

42:34

conversational, you know, you're presenting

42:36

live TV at the, you know, through the

42:38

early parts of your diagnosis and speaking about

42:40

life on earth and you were doing interviews

42:42

and the documentary, which is brilliant. And I

42:45

would have felt like for me, that'd be quite a helpful

42:47

thing. If I was going through it, I would find that

42:50

useful place to put things. But with IVF, I

42:52

don't know if people necessarily feel they've got the same

42:55

ability to be open. So I don't know if it

42:57

was quite a private thing at the time. I couldn't

43:00

be public about the IVF when I was going through it because

43:02

of my work. It would have influenced

43:05

the people and the broadcasters and

43:07

the production companies that I work

43:09

with. Right. So it

43:12

had to be, it had to be private

43:14

for that reason. But

43:19

when I could, I did, I

43:21

was open about the fact that

43:23

the girls were IVF babies because

43:25

same way that I went public with the breast

43:27

cancer diagnosis, not because it was particularly helpful to

43:29

me that the breast, going public with the breast

43:31

cancer diagnosis, I think was and making the documentary,

43:33

as you've sort of quite rightly pointed out, was

43:35

helpful for me to do that. It was a

43:38

way of processing everything that I was going through.

43:40

With the IVF, I knew that it would

43:42

be helpful for people. And it was, as

43:44

you said, it was a, it ended well.

43:46

So I'm touching wood and being very fortunate

43:49

about that. But I wanted, I

43:51

wanted people to see

43:54

that yes, you could be the wrong

43:56

side of 40 and it could work. Now that's

43:59

a great question. doesn't mean, of course,

44:01

it's still the statistics are not really in our

44:03

favour. But it was a hope story. And

44:05

I was very

44:07

happy to put it out there so that people knew that's

44:10

why I felt pregnant as well. I didn't want to

44:12

fool people in a way to thinking always just

44:14

happened or a natural lovely lucky

44:17

coincidence that there was that

44:19

intervention had taken place that I had gone

44:21

through all of that. With

44:24

the breast cancer,

44:26

I let people

44:29

know as soon as I possibly could, because

44:31

I knew that I would have to handle

44:33

it publicly. Because I didn't think

44:35

I could keep it a secret for my children.

44:37

I didn't think I could keep it a secret

44:39

from the people that I was working with, because

44:42

you'd either had to turn down projects and change

44:44

projects. And even now I work very, very differently.

44:46

And I'm very honest about why I work very

44:48

differently. And that's because of my breast cancer. I'm

44:50

still in remission, I consider myself

44:52

still to be recovering from

44:54

breast cancer. And I'm taking the best possible care

44:57

of myself. So that means I can't do the

44:59

schedules that I used to be able to do. So

45:01

now I always have a day off in between blocks

45:03

of working. When I'm filming,

45:05

I don't do super early mornings anymore. I can't do

45:07

them. I feel exhausted. I still feel tired. I need

45:10

that morning light. I need my breath work to

45:12

sort of boot me, get me get

45:14

me going. And so far production

45:16

companies have been very, very understanding. But eventually people

45:18

forget and they kind of, you know, the requests

45:20

come in, Oh, can't you do this? And can't

45:22

you do that? Can you? You know,

45:24

you go, Well, no, I was working till 11 o'clock last

45:26

night. No, I can't do a

45:28

6am because I just haven't had enough rest and sleep.

45:32

You'll have to keep an eye on your own boundaries, won't you?

45:35

Yeah, that's and,

45:37

and you also have to remind people, but I don't

45:39

want to always remind me, Oh, I've had breast cancer.

45:41

But I do want to remind people

45:43

that I'm taking the best possible care of my health. And these

45:45

are the things I need to do. Yeah,

45:48

no, I think it's, I think

45:50

it's really important and hopefully part of, you

45:52

know, you've had so much experience, you've been working

45:54

for such that you've earned the right as well

45:56

to completely articulate the boundaries of what works for

45:58

you. And I think I think it's helpful

46:01

for other people as well. There

46:03

are rules when it comes to employment and

46:05

people who've had cancer. Your

46:08

workplace should be understanding and they

46:10

should give you and make allowances

46:12

for you and give you the

46:15

freedom that you need to recover.

46:18

They shouldn't discriminate against you. And

46:22

those rules and regulations are in

46:24

place in the workplace. And I think it's important

46:26

that people know that as well, that they are

46:28

able to stand their ground and say, right, how

46:31

are we going to work moving forward? Because it's

46:33

changed for me. No, that is really important. I

46:35

did want to ask you, so I've got a

46:38

brother and two sisters on my dad and my

46:40

stepmom side. So there's the twins

46:42

that were born when my older sister was

46:44

one. So for a time there were all

46:46

these babies under three. And

46:50

my stepmom and my dad had wanted children for

46:52

a really long time. They'd

46:54

been through IVF as it happened. That wasn't

46:56

successful. The twins ended up being born to

46:59

this third pregnant naturally. Didn't think she could. Very strange.

47:01

It happens quite a lot. It does happen a fair bit,

47:03

but it still was quite a shock because she didn't realize

47:05

till she was four months and then they think they

47:07

were born at seven. So as a family, we didn't

47:09

have very long to kind of get our heads around.

47:11

This is when I was in my late teens. But

47:14

I did notice that it

47:17

was incredibly full on having those

47:19

babies and obviously much, much, much longed

47:21

for. But sometimes I think when

47:23

you've got these very long for babies, but it's full

47:25

on, it's quite hard to know where to put that

47:28

emotion of finding aspects of

47:30

it struggling, a struggle or a challenge,

47:32

when you've also put yourself through so much to

47:35

have them. Was that something that happened with

47:37

you? Yeah. None

47:41

of us are perfect parents, are we? And

47:43

we've already spoken about, if you don't get

47:45

enough sleep, you're ratty

47:48

and you might react to

47:51

the children in a different way. And certainly

47:54

mistakes were made and

47:56

anger's, you know, tempers were frayed.

48:00

but now kind of foster could go on.

48:02

Honestly, I think it is. And honestly, I

48:04

mean, I was sitting in bed with one

48:07

of my little girls over the weekend, and

48:09

we were trying to find this piece of video

48:11

footage of her when she was about three, and

48:14

she would stomp up the stairs and she was a chunky

48:16

little thing. She was so cute. She would stomp up the

48:18

stairs and then she'd put her hands out and she'd go, password,

48:22

and she still got a little, she went, what's

48:24

a password? And then you'd say, the password would change

48:26

every day. It would be like sausages or chocolate

48:28

or piggy or something like that. And we

48:31

were looking for this, and

48:33

we found it, and we watched it again

48:35

and again and again. We were laughing about

48:37

it. And honestly, those are the memories

48:40

that are most vivid for me. All those magical little

48:42

moments. So cute. So cute.

48:45

And they're not identical. One of them was

48:47

huge, looked like a big Buddha baby. And

48:49

the other one looked like a little turtle. So

48:52

we called them the Buddha baby and the turtle. So

48:55

we just have all of these lovely

48:57

little memories and all the bad stuff,

48:59

like the midnight feeds and waking

49:02

up after, you know, not enough. All of

49:04

that's a bit of a distant memory now.

49:07

And I think it goes back to Russell Foster, doesn't it?

49:09

If you can have the, if you can shift out of

49:11

the shift work, they, we all

49:13

go through those tough times, those first two

49:15

or three years when they're not sleeping properly

49:17

in the feeding and all of that, where

49:19

it's just very, very hard. I'm

49:21

very lucky that I have a close family that my parents, even

49:24

though they're sort of in their eighties, they're very hands

49:26

on. My sister Gina is very hands on.

49:29

They were, my partner is Irish, so he has

49:32

eight brothers and sisters. Oh, blimey. So there

49:34

are a lot of aunties and uncles out there and

49:36

great aunties. And then he's one of nine. Yeah. Well,

49:39

his mother gave birth 13 times. Oh

49:42

my God. Good Irish Catholic. Wow. Lost a

49:44

few along the way, I'm sad to say.

49:47

Oh, I'm sorry. But yes,

49:49

he's, he's, he's now one

49:51

of eight. Wow. Big family.

49:53

Big family, but great. I

49:56

mean, fantastic aunties. So one

49:58

of the aunties, aunties. Well,

50:00

Auntie Rosie and Auntie Bernie, we've got to give them all

50:02

a name check. Auntie Breeze, Auntie Mary, they're all amazing. But

50:05

Auntie Rosie hasn't had children of her own.

50:08

And she honestly just jumped head first

50:10

into all of the babies when they were

50:13

here, from Zeth to the girls. She

50:15

loved it. And she's had a really

50:17

special bond. They've all got special bonds,

50:19

but because she didn't have children, I

50:21

think the fact that we said, here,

50:23

yeah, change the nappies, have them, do

50:26

the routine. She

50:28

loved it. And to have

50:30

that as a backup, your family, I mean,

50:32

I know you guys are really, really close as

50:35

well. And that's the great thing about having a

50:37

big family is you can rely on them. And

50:39

you don't feel guilty. You're like, no, no,

50:41

it's fine. I will go and sleep while

50:43

you take care, while you do the feed and, you

50:45

know, change the nappy. And

50:48

I think seeing your kids have relationships of

50:50

their own with other family members that's got

50:52

nothing to do with you is actually one

50:54

of the unexpected pleasures of parenthood. I love

50:56

it very much. And

50:58

I feel a little bit like I know

51:00

your family, not because I follow your mom

51:02

on her Instagram account, but through watching the

51:04

documentary and we saw your lovely mom and

51:06

dad and your sister, Dina. And I really

51:08

got the warmth emanating from that. Absolutely

51:11

gorgeous. There's

51:13

some really special moments in it actually.

51:15

I don't know if it's something you would

51:18

watch right now. I mean, what's your relationship

51:21

now, like with that time when

51:23

you're still, as you say, you're

51:25

still in recovery from your cancer.

51:28

And obviously happily,

51:30

it looks like everything went very smoothly with the

51:33

treatment, but still such

51:35

a huge thing to go through. It

51:38

is a really big thing. And I would say I'm

51:40

still working on

51:42

it. I'm just about to

51:44

explore different types of therapy

51:46

now to sort of trauma therapy

51:48

and healing therapy to really, I

51:50

think I'm quite robust mentally. But

51:53

again, I think that's part of my coping mechanism of

51:55

I'll be fine. I'll be okay, you know, and a bit.

51:57

And what I don't want to do is what I do.

52:00

did 10, 15 years ago just push through.

52:02

I want to make sure

52:04

that I am healing in every way

52:06

in the best possible way. So I'm

52:08

looking forward to exploring that side of

52:11

therapy. Surprisingly,

52:14

I still get emotional sometimes

52:17

when somebody

52:20

might die, somebody who's well known in

52:22

the public space could

52:24

pass away because of a cancer and that

52:26

can hit me emotionally. And

52:29

there have been a couple of incidents actually.

52:31

I had to read the audiobook for Walk

52:33

So Happy. That's quite a big thing,

52:35

isn't it, when you read it out loud? Yeah. And

52:37

a lot of it is very, very lovely and

52:40

it's all about what we can do and the

52:42

science and health and nature. But I do talk

52:44

in the book about, for example,

52:46

the moment I had my biopsy and I thought for the first

52:48

time, oh my God, I might not be here for my children. I

52:51

talk about the days when I came home from my mastectomy

52:53

and how much it meant for me

52:55

to be home with the children and what it

52:58

was like telling the children. And I

53:00

really struggled. I had an amazing

53:02

producer. She was very, very patient and I

53:04

cried and I had to go and take

53:06

time out and really sometimes come

53:08

back to that bit of the

53:10

chapter. I've also

53:13

just done a podcast for

53:15

the NHS all about

53:18

now what? It's basically now you've got a cancer diagnosis,

53:20

now what? What are the next steps? And it's a

53:23

10-part series and I've

53:25

breathed through the first seven episodes because it

53:27

was quite practical and functional and this is

53:29

what you can do and here are the

53:31

groups and these people can help you and

53:33

don't be afraid to ask your doctor this.

53:35

And then we came to the chapter that

53:37

was palliative care and what to do when

53:39

you move on. And I couldn't do it.

53:41

I actually had to stop and I

53:44

couldn't do it that day at all. I said, I'm really sorry.

53:47

I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to do

53:49

this one, but I definitely can't do it today. And

53:51

we had to reset and I

53:55

came back to that and actually I did it here at home and

53:57

I still found it a bit difficult, but I did push

53:59

on through and I... did do it. But

54:01

even then I had a bit of a moment where I

54:03

went, I'll be okay, just give me five minutes. Let me

54:05

just get myself back together. Because the thing about a

54:07

cancer diagnosis is, first

54:10

of all, you do face

54:12

your own mortality, you do look

54:14

death in the eyes,

54:17

even if your diagnosis isn't one

54:19

of terminal disease. Everybody

54:22

knows that cancer can kill you. Yeah,

54:24

the association there is very, very powerful. And

54:28

then once you're through a cancer

54:30

diagnosis, there's this risk of reoccurrence. You

54:32

know, is it going to come back? And I'm very

54:34

fortunate. You're talking

54:36

about people hearing good IVF stories and how

54:39

that can that can buoy people along. I'm

54:41

very, very fortunate that lots

54:43

of people have written to me and talked to me on Instagram.

54:46

And I've just been on a book tour and ladies have come

54:48

up to me and said, 20 years

54:50

clear, 15 years, had

54:52

the same as you, got on, all

54:54

be fine. And I find that really moving.

54:57

Yeah, it's really,

54:59

and it is emotional. Yeah.

55:01

And it's, you're

55:03

just like, Oh, thank you, because you want

55:05

to hear those stories. You want, you want

55:07

those, and I'm a positive person. And

55:10

I have my gratitude journal now and I meditate every day.

55:12

And I really work hard on

55:14

my, my mental health. But

55:17

of course, you've got to deal with all

55:20

of those potential chances

55:23

that it might come back and what would you do? And

55:25

actually, one of the hardest things, one of my little girls

55:27

asked me a few months ago,

55:29

she said, Mommy, what if your cancer comes back?

55:31

And I couldn't answer her. I

55:34

just said, it's not very good, darling. And then

55:36

like, let's go do something else. Let's go clean

55:38

the hamster cage or, you know, move on from

55:41

that because they're, they're not conversations that you

55:43

want to have. And I

55:45

don't want to let

55:49

the dark into my heart. Yeah, I want

55:51

to try and keep the light and the

55:53

positivity there. Not in a false way, not

55:56

in a way where I'm not being realistic,

55:58

but in a way that I am not

56:01

thinking about the bad stuff that I

56:03

am focused on the good stuff, which

56:06

is why I suppose I've thrown myself

56:08

so headlong into all this health. What

56:10

can I eat that's going to really

56:12

nurture my body in the best way?

56:14

The morning light, what exercise can I

56:16

do? How can I reduce the risk

56:18

of recurrence practically? What can I do?

56:21

And I feel very strongly for me

56:23

that all of these things are helping me. They're

56:26

helping me mentally, but I think they're helping me

56:28

physically as well. And I think I'm doing

56:30

my best possible job of holding

56:32

it off and being the healthiest version

56:34

of me and learning from that experience.

56:36

And if you can't learn from a

56:38

bad experience, then... Yeah,

56:41

there's got to be a way

56:43

to find the

56:45

best, most positive relationship with it in your head.

56:47

Otherwise, I think you can actually lose your tether

56:50

on. It's like a thread that you pull out

56:52

and then the whole thing kind of unravels a

56:54

little bit. So I can

56:56

totally understand that. And I think children...

56:59

I mean, you didn't need a cancer

57:02

diagnosis to know that you want to be around a

57:04

few kids as long as possible. That's definitely not something...

57:06

That's an instinct, isn't it? But my

57:09

seven-year-old, for example, asks me quite often,

57:12

I'm worried you're going to die. It's a

57:14

constant thing with him. He's done it for

57:16

quite a while now and sometimes... Fucking you

57:18

when you're here to die. Yeah. And sometimes

57:20

I'll go off to work and I'll think,

57:22

I better bloody not die this weekend because

57:24

he's going to remember us that I'd come

57:26

back after. Yeah. Yeah. And it

57:29

puts the pressure on you even when

57:31

you haven't got anything in your peripheral vision.

57:33

And I know you've already spoken about the

57:35

time when you had to do the thing

57:37

that no parent ever wants to have to

57:39

do, which is tell them that you've got

57:41

an illness that might turn into something big

57:44

and scary and might leave them without

57:47

one of their parents. But would

57:49

you mind just for anyone who hasn't heard you because it

57:51

might be helpful? Yeah. It's something

57:53

that I did address in the documentary,

57:55

Breast Cancer and Me. And we...

57:59

Did we film... I think we did. Well, you didn't film

58:01

the actual bit with Sutton then, but I think it was in

58:03

the garden. Yeah, it was in the garden. So

58:06

first of all, we made the decision that we were going

58:08

to tell them. Some families might choose not to, but I

58:10

didn't think that was... I would definitely have to tell them.

58:12

Yeah. You're right. Not

58:15

everybody does. I don't think that

58:17

we as a family could have

58:19

hidden all of the emotions and everything

58:21

I was going through in a way that the children

58:23

wouldn't have known something was wrong. They would have known.

58:25

Then I think for their mind not to

58:27

know, it would

58:30

be worse, certainly for my children. They're very curious. We're

58:32

very open. We do talk as a family. That's a

58:34

really important part of our family life and structure. So

58:36

we both agreed that we would have to tell them.

58:38

And then we thought, well, how do we do it

58:40

and where do we do it? And the garden was

58:43

the natural place because we all love nature and we

58:45

like being under trees and that's a safe place for

58:47

them as well. And we could

58:49

hold their hands and pause and

58:52

walking is brilliant for, I

58:54

think, difficult conversations and lovely conversations. I

58:56

think it's a great... Yeah, let's go

58:58

right eye contact. Yeah, side by side,

59:00

pacing things out. So

59:04

we said, we've got something to tell you

59:06

and we said, look,

59:09

Mummy's got something called cancer and cancer

59:11

is an illness and it can be very, very serious,

59:13

but it doesn't have to be. And

59:15

we think Mummy's going to be okay. So

59:18

that's all that we can tell you. I am going to

59:20

have to go to hospital and I will have to have

59:22

an operation. And it will

59:24

be really sore and I won't be

59:27

very, very well for a while. You know, physically

59:29

I might not look the same and I

59:31

might not feel the same and I won't be able to run around in the garden

59:34

with you for a while because I won't be feeling

59:36

very strong. And one of my little girls

59:38

and this always makes me cry, so I'll see if it doesn't make

59:40

me cry. And I say this,

59:42

one of my little girls said to

59:44

me, can I still hug you? It

59:48

does still make you

59:50

cry. And I said, of course you can still

59:53

hug me, my lovely. In

1:00:00

fact, I want you to hug me more. Yeah. Because

1:00:02

I'll need lots of hugs. I'm going to

1:00:04

need you to be

1:00:06

there and do everything that

1:00:08

you can for me. And

1:00:11

then I was very surprised,

1:00:13

actually, when I went into hospitals to have

1:00:15

the mastectomy, I stayed for longer than I

1:00:18

thought. I took the time.

1:00:20

I could. Again, very fortunate. I could take the time.

1:00:22

I was in hospital for five days. I

1:00:25

had a drain in after my

1:00:27

mastectomy. So that's the drain that sucks

1:00:29

out all the blood that might gather

1:00:32

around your wound. And

1:00:35

I didn't want to see the kids. Well, I

1:00:37

wanted to see the kids. I didn't want them to see me.

1:00:39

I need a bit of time to be. I didn't want them

1:00:41

to see me in bed, propped up,

1:00:43

bandaged up, with a tube coming out

1:00:46

of me, looking the way I was,

1:00:49

high on the pain medication. I just

1:00:51

didn't want them to be exposed to

1:00:53

me like that. So for the first

1:00:55

time ever. I've made series in

1:00:58

Australia. I've traveled and I always, every

1:01:00

day, speak to the children video call.

1:01:02

So the first time ever since they

1:01:04

were born, I didn't see them for

1:01:06

five days, even on a video call.

1:01:09

I bet you they won't remember those five days. No.

1:01:11

You do, but they won't. I do. No. And I

1:01:13

think it was the right thing to do for them,

1:01:15

definitely. Yeah. And it was the right

1:01:17

thing to do for me because I just would have

1:01:19

found it so stressful upsetting for them to see me

1:01:22

and then for them to ask me questions about it.

1:01:24

So I remember the moment, and this is in the

1:01:26

documentary, when I did come home and I had a

1:01:28

little bit of time in the garden on my own,

1:01:30

which I loved. I just sat out there. It was

1:01:32

October. There was sun

1:01:34

in the sky. It was a blue

1:01:37

sky, just one of those freaky, lovely

1:01:39

days in October or tunnel colors.

1:01:41

And I just sat there and I felt that sunshine

1:01:43

on my face. I said to myself, I'm

1:01:45

going to be outside every single day of my life

1:01:47

from this day forward, even if it's just chockling

1:01:49

around the garden. And my kids going to

1:01:51

be home in half an hour. And I went upstairs

1:01:53

and I sat on my bed and I waited for

1:01:55

the kids to come home from school. And they came home

1:01:57

and they jumped on the bed and it was just, it

1:01:59

was. beautiful moments of my life, to be

1:02:01

back with them. Yeah, that's very special.

1:02:04

Yeah. Um, there's a

1:02:06

bit where your kids are going off, I think they're

1:02:08

going to a play date and you say to them,

1:02:10

be strong, be good, be

1:02:12

strong, be kind. Yes. Is that something you say all the

1:02:14

time? I say that all the time, be good, be strong, be

1:02:16

kind. So be good, be a

1:02:18

good person, be strong because stuff will happen that you

1:02:20

have to deal with and be kind because we should

1:02:23

all be as kind to everybody as we can all

1:02:25

be. Yeah. I thought that was really cool.

1:02:27

Oh, thank you. Because that's a nice send off. I

1:02:29

like that. All the good stuff in life. Yeah. Oh,

1:02:31

just to finish before we start. Oh, I will just

1:02:33

say something else for people. There's a

1:02:36

brilliant, brilliant charity called the Fruit Fly

1:02:38

Collective. Oh yes. The people who have children.

1:02:40

And they help you talk to children

1:02:42

about cancer, all sorts of things.

1:02:44

They have workshops. Um, they

1:02:47

help children understand parents who are going through chemotherapy

1:02:49

because you're obviously very tired of chemotherapy and everything

1:02:51

can be hard. Like you can't tell your shoelaces,

1:02:54

um, brushing your teeth is hard. So they have

1:02:56

like toothpaste, but filled with lead so that the

1:02:58

kids can pick it up and see how heavy

1:03:00

it is. And they ask the children to tie

1:03:02

up shoelaces with boxing gloves so they can see

1:03:04

how, so that they know why mommy or daddy

1:03:07

can't do all the stuff that they used to

1:03:09

be able to do or, you know, why they can

1:03:11

break it down like that. Brilliant. And they explain,

1:03:13

as I said, what cancer is and the self

1:03:15

proliferating. So it's a brilliant, brilliant resource and big

1:03:17

shout out to all the breast cancer charities and

1:03:20

a big shout out to, uh, shout out to

1:03:22

Maggie's as well, which is a walk-in center. You

1:03:24

could walk in and say, my friend Julia has

1:03:26

got cancer and I don't know how to, how

1:03:28

to talk to her. What do I do? Yeah.

1:03:30

And I might use it. Brilliant. And they'll help you as

1:03:32

the friend of the friend, or it

1:03:34

could be me. And I go, can I see your

1:03:36

clinical psychologist please? Cause I just don't know what to

1:03:38

do with this information. Yeah. No, that is

1:03:41

just a wonderful resource. My mom's actually, um,

1:03:43

on a Patreon. There we go. See, of

1:03:45

course you're lovely mommy. Exactly.

1:03:47

And, um, I think what fruit flies does is

1:03:49

brilliant, not just for the stuff of breaking it

1:03:51

down to kids so that they have a way

1:03:53

of taking the abstract and something they can understand.

1:03:55

But also when you're in that community, seeing other

1:03:58

kids, their parents going through, cause I think. for

1:04:00

a little while you feel like you've slipped out of the,

1:04:03

you know, the lane of your normal life

1:04:05

into a sort of other section of things. And

1:04:07

then you will see other families that's all happening

1:04:09

to them too. Yeah and other parents like your

1:04:12

normal like school gate mums

1:04:14

and dads, they don't know how to treat you

1:04:16

either. They don't know what to do. They don't quite know

1:04:18

what to say other than, are you okay? How are you?

1:04:20

Hug? And then that's it. But yeah, so

1:04:22

you do need people who have

1:04:24

got experience and that

1:04:26

the children will talk to other children and go, how

1:04:28

is it? How is it for you? Yeah, that's really,

1:04:31

that's really important. So before

1:04:33

we start recording, I said to you that I

1:04:35

feel like I'm afraid to book at the right

1:04:37

time in my life, because I was reading it

1:04:39

feeling like, there's a lot of things in here.

1:04:41

I'm probably, there are aspects of

1:04:44

how you speak about how you thought

1:04:46

you were healthy and the things you were

1:04:48

doing, but then you realize you were depleted

1:04:50

in a few areas and maybe not prioritizing

1:04:52

aspects of your wellbeing.

1:04:55

So apart from telling me

1:04:57

to stop my career, which involves

1:05:00

bits of night dark, dodgy circadian

1:05:02

rhythm, is there anything else that you would

1:05:04

say I could start with? It's a good

1:05:06

thing to help me. Yeah, I think there

1:05:08

are lots of practical tips in the book,

1:05:10

but there are a few things that I

1:05:12

think are fundamental to our health that we

1:05:14

could all implement tomorrow. Some of

1:05:16

them are easier than others because

1:05:19

people have different relationships with food. But first

1:05:21

of all, be out in nature or green

1:05:23

spaces and daylight, natural daylight, as much as

1:05:25

you possibly can be, for

1:05:27

all the reasons that I said earlier

1:05:29

on. It's not woo woo,

1:05:32

it genuinely will help your health. People

1:05:35

who spend time in nature, their blood pressure drops, their

1:05:37

natural killer cells increase,

1:05:40

so their immune function goes up, their stress

1:05:42

levels go down. I mean,

1:05:44

it's, you know, there are biomarkers, it's been measured.

1:05:47

So it really, really works. So make

1:05:49

sure you build that I call them nature snacks

1:05:51

in the book, build nature snacks into

1:05:54

your day. And yeah, do

1:05:57

that. I urge everybody

1:05:59

to prioritize. that. Something

1:06:01

I found easy

1:06:04

when it came to food, I was definitely

1:06:06

addicted to sugar and I think we all

1:06:08

are because it is, as you said, it's

1:06:10

ubiquitous certainly for life on the road or

1:06:12

when you're on TV or if you work

1:06:14

in a hospital or it's just everywhere. It's

1:06:16

like, you know, vending machines. Supermarkets

1:06:19

are now 65, 70%

1:06:22

full of processed foods, not, you

1:06:24

know, the whole foods. So one thing that

1:06:26

I found easy

1:06:29

and hard at the same time, there are two things

1:06:31

that I did to improve my eating habits.

1:06:33

First of all, I stopped snacking. Full

1:06:36

stop. So just

1:06:38

don't snack. So

1:06:41

that meant I didn't have my 11s where

1:06:43

I dumped my custard creams or I had the

1:06:45

donuts. I didn't

1:06:47

have that handful of Maltesers at

1:06:49

four o'clock in the afternoon. I didn't

1:06:51

sit on the sofa anymore after I've

1:06:54

eaten dinner and have a bucket of

1:06:56

popcorn with Maltesers poured into it. I

1:06:58

stopped snacking. Yeah. You really did

1:07:01

love your sugar. I really did love my sugar. So if

1:07:03

you stop snacking, that

1:07:05

first of all, you stop these

1:07:07

blood sugar, you know, the roller coaster, you stop

1:07:09

that, you stop spiking your blood sugar, which will

1:07:11

help you with insulin control and help you with

1:07:14

blood sugar levels. And it just

1:07:16

means that you're, you

1:07:19

will be more, you'll

1:07:21

get rid of so much crap in your life.

1:07:23

Yeah. Because you could just go, the rule is

1:07:25

I can't eat if it's not mealtime. And

1:07:28

what you can do if you've still got a

1:07:30

sweet tooth, I've switched to dark chocolate. If

1:07:33

you still got a sweet tooth, eat the sweet things. For

1:07:35

me, it's the doctor at the end of your meal. And

1:07:38

that reduces the sugar spike. Okay. And

1:07:40

is better for you. And you're sort

1:07:42

of, you're still doing it in, in that

1:07:44

your meal window, you're not snacking, you're having

1:07:46

your little treat. But so that's a really

1:07:48

good thing. Bolt on that, that little bit,

1:07:50

that treat bit, always not on an empty

1:07:52

stomach, because on an empty stomach is the

1:07:54

worst because you're literally and sugary drinks, just

1:07:56

like the sugar just goes, strange,

1:07:59

your blood. stream and not

1:08:02

good. So snacking and

1:08:04

stick to meal times, prioritize

1:08:06

sleep. Now younger people are going

1:08:09

to go, forget that, but

1:08:11

read the chapter on sleep, look how

1:08:13

important it is. And

1:08:15

the other really good tip about sleep is you

1:08:18

would not be driving on a

1:08:20

motorway at 70 miles an hour, top

1:08:22

speed overtaking every car in the inside

1:08:25

lane. You wouldn't be driving and then

1:08:27

suddenly pull up the handbrake and career

1:08:29

into the hard shoulder and then take

1:08:31

a nap. If you were driving, that's not how

1:08:33

you would stop the car. Why should

1:08:36

we and would we think it works

1:08:38

for us to be going at breakneck

1:08:41

speed all day, doing our to-do list,

1:08:43

emails, phones, smartphones, children, juggling, singing a

1:08:45

song, writing a paper, seeing

1:08:48

somebody in the hospital bed,

1:08:50

doing all that. Why do we think we can go

1:08:52

straight from that and then eat

1:08:55

and then go to bed and have a really great

1:08:57

night's sleep? Where's

1:08:59

the wind down? We put it like this, it all makes a lot

1:09:01

more sense. The wind, you

1:09:03

need a, we all need a wind down

1:09:05

period and that means turn down the lights,

1:09:08

don't walk Happy Valley back to back

1:09:10

where people are getting stabbed and dying.

1:09:12

I mean, I love it. Can you

1:09:14

watch it at any other time? You

1:09:16

know, reduce the, stop the screen time.

1:09:19

Don't eat late. Yeah, that's a good one.

1:09:21

Which is that comes as number four. So

1:09:23

we'll save that one. We'll keep that one for

1:09:25

a moment. But slow yourself down. I have

1:09:27

things called blue light blocking glasses. I put

1:09:29

these glasses on, they've got yellow lenses so

1:09:31

that night, I mean, I'm like the lady

1:09:34

going round the house turning all the lights

1:09:36

down. I say to the kids, no, no,

1:09:38

night, night, you know, dimmers, dimmers, dimmidore. You

1:09:40

don't want your body, your eyes, that morning

1:09:43

light in the morning, you don't want your

1:09:45

body to think, oh, it's still night. Let's

1:09:47

keep going, guys. Let's keep hormones going. So

1:09:49

slow yourself down and that will really

1:09:51

help yourself sleep. Don't get into bed

1:09:53

at 70 miles an hour. Don't

1:09:57

eat before or try not to eat three hours

1:09:59

before go to bed. Yeah. Because you

1:10:01

rest and repair while you're sleeping as

1:10:04

we've already spoken about. But if

1:10:06

you're still digesting those Maltesers and that

1:10:08

popcorn, or your

1:10:10

late night meal, you are not resting

1:10:13

and repairing your digesting. So your

1:10:15

body's not doing what it's meant to do during

1:10:17

sleep. It's doing something else, which

1:10:19

means you won't wake up feeling bushy tailed and

1:10:21

brilliant. Or if you think

1:10:23

you do, your body hasn't done everything

1:10:25

that it's meant to do. Cleansing your

1:10:27

toxins, clearing the brain, repairing your gut

1:10:29

lining, don't do anything like that. And

1:10:32

I think those, and obviously the final, the

1:10:34

fifth one for me is Walk

1:10:37

More. Yeah, walking's good.

1:10:39

Walking's good. Walking's good. Walking's

1:10:41

good for relationships,

1:10:43

bonds, friendships, you, mental health challenges,

1:10:45

just making you feel gratitude and awe when

1:10:47

you're out there and you look up at

1:10:49

a big mother tree and you go, wow,

1:10:52

look at her. She's pretty special. She can

1:10:54

give her a hug as well. Talking of

1:10:56

mother trees, yeah. Thank you

1:11:00

so much. I think you're good and strong

1:11:02

and kind. I

1:11:04

think the next step's got to be a book

1:11:06

to help all the

1:11:09

parents out there with that bit of their life and

1:11:11

how to help your kids get on the straightener. Because

1:11:13

it sounds like you've got lots of very sensible

1:11:16

things that I think, God,

1:11:18

my kids are not going to know

1:11:20

what's hit them when I get home.

1:11:22

What happened? I'm sorry, it's gone wrong. Get

1:11:24

those old teasers out of that popcorn now. I'll

1:11:28

show you some dark chocolate buttons

1:11:30

that they really like. You can swap them, you

1:11:32

can try. Swap it out. If

1:11:34

you say that this is all that's available in the house,

1:11:37

then trust me, they'll take them. I know,

1:11:39

that's very true. I used to have two and a

1:11:42

half sugars in my tea and now I don't have any sugar in

1:11:44

my tea. You do get used to it. I

1:11:46

have seen vegetables for breakfast now and no cereal.

1:11:48

Do you? What kind of vegetables? I have

1:11:51

a mixed plate of vegetables so I mix

1:11:53

it up. I'll have broccoli, cauliflower, some spinach.

1:11:56

One day a week I don't need too much spinach because

1:11:58

of the oxalate. really

1:12:00

mix up my veg. And... That

1:12:02

actually sounds quite tasty. Do you have anything on it? Yes, I

1:12:04

have a squeeze of lemon juice. I have a big

1:12:06

glug of olive oil. I put fennel seeds.

1:12:09

I put some cayenne pepper. And

1:12:11

I might have a bit of avocado or a little

1:12:13

bit of mackerel. I have changed. That is such a

1:12:15

new thing for me. What was your old breakfast? Oh,

1:12:18

the old breakfast would have been cereal. Or, yes. And

1:12:20

cereal, I'm afraid. It's an ultra-precious food. It's

1:12:23

not a great way to talk your day. It's very, very sugary.

1:12:25

And it's not. And people go, what am I meant to

1:12:27

eat? I've got seeds, yoghurt,

1:12:29

fruits, berries, steamed veg. And

1:12:32

if you start, I have

1:12:34

genuinely retrained my palate. And

1:12:38

now, I do not have the cravings that I used to have. 11

1:12:40

o'clock when I used to do the dunking, they

1:12:42

said, I don't even think about that now. Honestly,

1:12:44

I'm set for the day. My savory start to

1:12:46

the day sets me up. You

1:12:48

can change your palate. You can change

1:12:51

the way that you eat. You can reduce

1:12:53

the cravings. You don't need huge amounts of

1:12:55

supplements. You just need to

1:12:57

give yourself two weeks. OK. It took

1:12:59

me about two or three weeks. And

1:13:02

in two or three weeks, for me, sweet

1:13:04

used to be maple syrup, honey,

1:13:06

chocolate, whatever it might be.

1:13:09

Now, a blueberry. And I'm rocking. Seriously.

1:13:11

Seriously happy with that. Sounds up for

1:13:13

blueberries. Yay! It's a low sugar

1:13:16

fruit. Very good for you. That's so good. Thank

1:13:18

you so much. Oh, thank you for having me on Spinning

1:13:20

Plates. And thank you for coming. I'm going to have a good day. Bye.

1:13:23

Bye. Bye. Bye.

1:13:26

Thank you for spending all of your plates and entertaining

1:13:28

us and doing all the lovely stuff that you do

1:13:31

for us as well. My kids adore you. And they're

1:13:33

hoping that this has gone on long enough that you'll

1:13:35

still be here when they come home from school. Oh,

1:13:37

cool. Well, they are circadian rhythm chat. There

1:13:40

you are. Hello.

1:13:43

You're going to be a little bit of a Hello.

1:13:54

Me again. So, does it make you think? really

1:14:00

made me think. I mean, firstly,

1:14:04

I really relate to Julia

1:14:06

and her relationship with the with

1:14:09

the outside and the same. Today I

1:14:11

went for like a two-hour walk around

1:14:14

Ipswich and it just

1:14:16

makes me feel better. I like walking

1:14:18

around, seeing the sights, clearing my mind. Obviously,

1:14:20

I don't always get the indulgence of having

1:14:22

all that time but I walk

1:14:24

the kids to school whenever

1:14:26

I can, whenever I'm home. I

1:14:30

love my walk and I'm very protective of it as

1:14:32

well. I will organize my whole day just

1:14:34

to preserve walking into school and walking home again.

1:14:37

It usually takes me about 45 minutes as a

1:14:39

round trip and it's like really precious to

1:14:41

me. I

1:14:44

also totally appreciate what she says about sunshine

1:14:47

and how important it is. She

1:14:51

said some slightly, well, probably

1:14:53

all true but worrying things

1:14:56

about nocturnal jogs. I

1:14:59

mean, I say this is someone who finishes work, I come off stage at

1:15:01

10 and then by the time the adrenaline's

1:15:04

worn off, I normally go to bed around midnight one

1:15:06

if I'm kind of doing quite well some

1:15:08

of this later. Well, let's see what happens. Let's see

1:15:12

how my lifestyle works out. That's

1:15:17

something I can't tweak but

1:15:20

I could definitely do a little bit of tweaking with my diet, I

1:15:22

think. I think I do play a bit

1:15:24

faster and loose because probably like a lot of

1:15:26

people, I think

1:15:28

I'm quite good but I'm probably not that good.

1:15:32

Anyway, let's see. It's still, it's

1:15:36

good to think about these things sometimes, isn't it? So much

1:15:38

of it's about habits and I do think

1:15:40

Julia is such a lovely warm person and it's

1:15:42

lovely to speak to someone who's such a

1:15:45

she's got such

1:15:47

a natural maternal energy, all the

1:15:50

good stuff and just loads of energy full

1:15:52

stop actually. Yeah, like I said before, she's

1:15:54

also good, she makes you feel energised which

1:15:57

is a nice thing. And

1:16:01

yeah, thank you so much for listening. I'm

1:16:03

about to start getting ready. My, oh God,

1:16:05

which is gonna hate that. This is air

1:16:08

conditioning unit in my dressing room and it's

1:16:10

really noisy. You're just

1:16:12

gonna have to have that sound in the background. Oh,

1:16:14

sorry, Richard. It goes on for

1:16:16

about two or three minutes. And

1:16:19

I cannot work out how to turn it off.

1:16:22

It's really annoying. Loud, isn't

1:16:24

it? Sorry. Oh,

1:16:27

I wonder if it's that rich. No, you don't have

1:16:29

to sound me turning off switches. The

1:16:31

main thing is, thank you for

1:16:33

listening. I'm about to

1:16:35

get myself ready for Ipswich Regent's

1:16:38

Theatre tomorrow, the day off, Saturday,

1:16:41

Liverpool, Sunday, Sheffield, home for a

1:16:43

day off on Monday,

1:16:45

back with my babies. And then London on

1:16:47

Tuesday, which is my homecoming gig because

1:16:50

I'm a Londoner. So yeah, all

1:16:52

good. And if you're one

1:16:54

of the people that's come to see me on the tour,

1:16:56

thank you very much. I hope

1:16:58

you've been entertained. You've been feeling a

1:17:00

little bit more festive. You

1:17:03

spent some time with us. I've certainly been

1:17:05

enjoying myself a great deal. And

1:17:07

yeah, spirits are good, I

1:17:09

would say. Oh, and tomorrow being

1:17:11

Friday, I get to open my first day of my

1:17:13

advent calendar. Do you guys have an advent calendar? I

1:17:16

have a chocolate one that Richard gave me. So

1:17:18

that was exciting. Oh, I just realized that totally

1:17:20

goes again. I was talking about with

1:17:23

Julia. I should have

1:17:25

got a buddy 70% cocoa one, shouldn't I? Maybe

1:17:28

next year. Anyway, lots of love

1:17:31

to you. And I will speak

1:17:33

to you again next week. So have a good

1:17:35

one in the meantime. Lots of love. Oh,

1:17:38

I'm back on again, because I just

1:17:40

remembered something. I want to give a

1:17:43

little congratulations to Ella Mae and

1:17:46

her boyfriend, Billy, because he proposed

1:17:48

to her yesterday and they got engaged.

1:17:50

And that is a happy thing. So

1:17:52

congratulations to you, Ella Mae. Ella Mae

1:17:54

is the amazing artist who does all

1:17:56

the podcast artwork. She's brilliant

1:17:58

and she's a very... very

1:18:00

lovely presence in my life

1:18:02

because she's always very upbeat and positive and her

1:18:05

artwork is amazing. So yeah, congratulations

1:18:07

to you guys and yeah,

1:18:09

just wanted to give a shout out. So thanks

1:18:11

to Ella May for the artwork, thanks to producer

1:18:13

Claire Jones, thanks to Richard for everything, thank you

1:18:15

to Julia for being such an excellent guest, and

1:18:17

thank you for lending me your ears once again.

1:18:19

I will see you soon. Bye, talk to you next Monday,

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