← Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
Beyond food, environmental inputs and building resilience - Sarah Bayliss
00:59:47
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- [00:01]
Radi Malinich
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- [00:51]
Sarah Bayliss
I wasn't deemed as educational. I couldn't be educated in those systems. So it was a bit of a fight for me from sort of day one. And I think my mindset very much was I'm really stupid and the only way I'm going to survive is by trying to show people that I'm not and to try and come out with their qualifications. And so there was never really that sort of what is it? Do I enjoy? What do I love about this world? What inspires me? What gets me excited? It was as genial survival, I guess in some ways.
- [01:28]
Radi Malinich
Welcome to Mindful Creative Podcast, a show about understanding how to deal with the highs and lows of creative lives. My name is Radi Malinj and creativity changed my life, but it also nearly killed me. In this season, inspired by my book of the same title, I am talking to some of the most celebrated figures in the creative industry. In our candid conversations, my guests share their experiences and how they overcame their challenges and struggles, how they learned to grow as creatives. A creative career in the 21st century can be overwhelming. I wanted to capture these honest and transparent conversations that might help you find that guiding light in your career. So thank you for joining me on this episode and taking the first or next step towards regaining control of your creative life. You ready? My guest today is a nutritional therapist and author of the fantastic new book do how to Eat for Resilience. She began her career in marketing, but after nearly burning out, she became fascinated by the effects of lifestyle on body, mind and soul. Now she specializes in metabolic health, energy management and stress resilience. She helps people protect their vitality and mitigate health risks. In our conversation, she explains how we should understand our environmental input. From food to sleep to relationships, they directly impact our physical and mental health. She advocates for simple, intentional changes rather than quick fixes, emphasizing awareness of how daily choices affect our long term health. This episode is packed with stories of overcoming obstacles, finding purpose, and helping others to live life fully. It's My pleasure to introduce Sarah Baylis. Hey, Sarah, how are you doing? I'm so excited to have you on the show. We've got so much to talk about. First of all, I need to say congratulations on your book, Do Nourish How To Eat for Resilience. But before we start, for those who may have never heard of you, how would you introduce yourself?
- [03:43]
Sarah Bayliss
Firstly, just say thank you for having me here today. I really, really appreciate this opportunity and to talk with you. So I am Sarah Bayliss. I'm a nutritional therapist. That's, I guess, my job. What does that mean? It means I help people live a better life. So a part of the things that I do is teach them to eat well. It's more than just food. I help people consider their environmental inputs and how those inputs are impacting their mind, their mood, their physiology, their function. And then we look at different aspects of nutrition to lifestyle interventions to help them live a better, more fulfilling life. That's what I'd say.
- [04:29]
Radi Malinich
Fantastic way of describing your purpose. Now, what do you do with your work? But your journey to becoming a nutritional therapist is, should we say, unusual. I don't think there's a usual way to be a therapist. Nutritional therapist, yeah. Let's rewind it back, because normally on this show, I ask people about first encounter with creativity or the way, how they found their sort of way and into what they do now. But you had a totally different story to this. How did you get to do what you do today?
- [04:57]
Sarah Bayliss
It wasn't one of those moments where I woke up or when I was a child and went, right, that's it, I want to work in nutrition. That was never at all at top of mind. So my journey here, I guess, almost seemed to wind back to the days I started the education system. So you'll know from the book, I dyslexic and I had a challenging journey through school, to university and then into the work system. And what that meant is that most of my life through the education system was about fighting just to get through it, just to get the qualifications, just to get accepted to schools. Quite a number of issues when I was younger, being asked to leave schools because I wasn't deemed as educational. I couldn't be educated in those systems. So it was a bit of a fight for me from sort of day one. And I think my mindset very much was, I'm really stupid and the only way I'm going to survive is by trying to show people that I'm not and to try and come out with A qualification. And so there was never really that thought of what is it, do I enjoy, what do I love about this world, what inspires me, what gets me excited? It was a journey of survival. I guess in some ways just everyone tells you is the only way you can get in this world is by getting qualification. And you get a qualification when you get a job and then you stay in that job and you try and get to the top of that, you get more money. And it's almost like I describe it as this treadmill you just get put on and you just got to keep going. There's no one point in the journey where you can jump off the treadmill and go, okay, wait a minute, who am I? What do I love, what inspires me? And what really, what makes me want to fully live with purpose in this life? So that journey led me to actually accomplish the educational system, finally get accepted, get a degree, which was amazing. And that degree happened to be in marketing. And it wasn't a conscious choice to do marketing. What happened was through the school system, I seemed to be okay within that module. I'll just get a degree in seems to be something that my brain is okay with, get the degree and then see what happens. And I happened to be in a degree system where you had a placement year. So I came out of uni with a degree and I entered into a world of high stress, high demand, where you're working all hours, very competitive. Your in that world where you are working for clients, you're working for an agency, you're working with creative teams, you're working with people, you're trying to perform. And essentially the toll of the education system of getting into the job and finally getting to the job I thought I wanted and was gonna be, the change for me ended up making things worse. And I'm close to this state of burnout. And it was really at this, there's a couple of moments within that journey then I went, this just isn't right. I'm not looking after myself. I'm not very well. How have I got here? That is really the shift point for me where I started to look at food. And nobody had taught me about nutrition to this point and didn't really understand about macros, micros, nutrients, the role of food really on function. And it was this, the point of being unwell that shifted me into this idea. I've got to change something. And I started with food and then I got really into it. I found something I was incredibly passionate about. And within a very short period of time. My food changed how I functioned and I started to realize there's way more to life than there is to the job, the equation system. And actually maybe we're doing things backwards. Maybe we should be finding our purpose before we be educated somehow rather than being educated. And then I decided to leave everything re qualify, go back to the education system, which was a moment of real fear considering the journey I'd been on to date and go back to school and study nutrition.
- [09:21]
Radi Malinich
I was going to say, what a fantastic story, although it's paved with ups and downs and cobbles and it's not smooth journey to where you got today. But I want to rewind it back and take a few things to take you back a bit because I want to talk about your educational journey, if that's okay for a bit because you were diagnosed with severe dyslexia. What age was that?
- [09:41]
Sarah Bayliss
My parents picked something up when I was very young. It was even potentially before the schooling years in terms of my development and my learning. And my mum always said to me she knew something wasn't quite right. And it was really when they started to put me into schools, in primary schools, that these primary schools weren't accepting me. I think I was chucked out a number of different primary schools and it was for, in some ways, behavioral issues, but I didn't have major behavioral issues. It was more the fact that they just couldn't educate me. And it was that point in which my parents thought, we've got to do something else here. And my dad at the time was working in the air force, the British Air Force. He was a pilot. And luckily enough they helped my parents to try and invest in some testing what's going on with my daughter. And this went on for a while because I didn't really end up going to primary school until I was about 9. And I went to a dyslexic school because for a couple of years I pulled out an education system, had loads of testing, realized there was something wrong with my ability to learn, identified it was dyslexia. And then I went to this dyslexic school for two years, and I did for two years was learn how to read and write. And I came out of there at 12, having just about learned to read and write at that point. And then I was put back into the normal system. So it was almost like the journey up until 12. I wasn't really. Didn't really have that normal level of schooling and there was quite a lot of stigma with it and it was at that point, when I went back to the school system, it was just about the difficulties that I had in learning and just to work as hard as I possibly could just to get through. Luckily I had some very supportive parents. But I even remember my dad just then, you can do this, just get on and do it. You can progress, you will succeed. But there was a stigma. I had to hide it. I couldn't share it.
- [11:56]
Radi Malinich
How did you feel about the resilience that you have to have as a child? We don't know the word resilience when we're little. And you mentioned your dad obviously was the one who was the support. Your parents were the supporting element in your life. I must have felt quite hard to be the old one out at first. Obviously. When you go to your dyslexic school, did you feel a bit more accepted? Was it a relief to do that?
- [12:17]
Sarah Bayliss
It was a bit of a relief, but it was a school where there were a hundred boys and five girls. So there were no girls in this school. It hadn't been associated with girls. And dyslexia hadn't been really picked up. And I think one of the reasons for this is I think there's a masking thing with girls. I think they masking really well. So already, even in a dyslexic environment, I was already in some ways tingled up because I was a female and I gave that question of resilience. Just remember my dad always used to say to me, mind over matter. That's how he brought me up. He was a pilot, he was pretty strict. It was like, you can do anything you want to do. It's mind over matter, mind over matter. There's some good things about that, there's some bad things about that. But it was. I went into that whole period of life was resilience didn't even play into my mind because this was what it was. There wasn't like this ability to compare yourself with your neighbor or. Yes, I was different. I felt stupid, I felt isolated, I felt on my own. I didn't really associate the word resilience. It was more about survival, to be normal rather than to be resilient. It was like, just be normal. Why aren't I normal? How can I be more normal? So I don't think I saw it as resilient. Now I look back and really that's.
- [13:38]
Radi Malinich
Mainly was because the word that you keep actually mentioning, which is actually one of the leading sort of themes in this conversation, is survival, survival, survival. And I think when you finished A degree and got your marketing job. It was again, just a survival, wasn't it?
- [13:54]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah, there's enough depth on a treadmill. It was like, when is this game gonna end? I thought the end of the education system would be the moment that I'd survived and I thought that'd be the end of the game show. But you're right, it's just into another system, into another environment where you're just surviving.
- [14:14]
Radi Malinich
Because what you describe of your marketing role in a world of survival, you never know how many people are in a similar way, hiding something, trying to use, in a way creativity or their professional life as a sort of step out from confronting their sufferings or their traumas or something that they should really deal with. So the best next option is work as much as you can, then time, mask out the tiredness with booze or whatever and vices and McDonald's or whatever. And then you're like, oh yeah, like why am I functioning? Because you're breaking yourself. And in your story, you quite beautifully say what was happening to you. You thought this was going to be the next chapter, which was going to be potentially sunshine and ice cream, which it wasn't. And things got worse. So tell us about that.
- [15:01]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah, I think there's two parts to it. It's not really knowing yourself. Right. And the journey up into that point, I was always trying to hide my deficiencies or my stupidity. Always used to call it my broken brain. And so they are not being honest about who you are and your month being actually working hard, as you said. I think lots of people are masking those elements or something potential. And when I got into into that job and I did really well in the marketing industry, I worked for a really good agency. I ended up going up through the ranks really quite quickly and still in my head I wasn't good enough. I was still trying to perform and be my best within an industry that is already very competitive. And you have to be good in that game to survive anyway. And so all it did was just add another layer of stress to the already stress already there. So it was almost like getting through the school system was tough enough, but then you put yourself in this environment where you have to perform and then you add into it the late nights, the client entertainment, the lack of sleep, the working late, the high travel. I wasn't really eating well. I used to skip breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'd probably have a chocolate bar in between meals. There was no real consistency around food. And it actually just got worse. Everything just got worse. And that's when my health started really declining. So my sleep became really affected. I started struggling with gut health issues. My hormones started changing for the worst. I wasn't thinking clearly. And you almost get just lost in what is you're trying to do. At the same time, in that environment, you're also trying to reward yourself because you're working so hard. And the rewards are with the alcohol, they're with friends at the weekends, they're with the late nights. And you end up in this perpetual cycle of declining resilience, declining health, and in a world that's meant to be competitive and quite creative, what they're doing is putting yourself to the bottom of the pile. And it's funny because no one in those days talked to you about your health in the context of survival and performing well. And for me, there was a couple of lucky moments that really helped the reset. One is I changed jobs in the marketing world from an agency to client side. I went client side for about a year and I realized how much easier this was. It was a 9 to 5 job. It was three meals a day, it was sleeping at night, and it was that when I started recognizing the direct correlation between eating rare meals and better sleep on my health. And in three months of that one singular change, my function completely changed. I ended up going back into the marketing, the agency world and then left it all together in the end, moved to Bristol. And that was the real reset. But it almost took a moment of being broken and environmental shift to recognize behaviors that I was operating in were actually declining. My health and my resilience and my creativity and my happiness.
- [18:26]
Radi Malinich
I think it takes almost, when you think about it, it takes almost a bravery to realize, you know what? I'm not okay, this should potentially could be someone's dream job. But is it basically a hell masked as a dream job? Because having been working for my own tail for agencies for many, many years, it's in kind of unregulated world. It used to be unregulated world because it's like, oh, there's something coming through. Like, I think the strategy and culture didn't particularly exist for the creative agencies. It was like there was no strategy, we do anything. And culture was like, as long as you show up tomorrow, you got a job, like this is how things done, how things used to be done. Whereas I think we've turned a corner, at least are turning a corner. And as you said when you went to work for client side, I remember when I really set up my own agency and all Of a sudden everything became easier. Easier. Not saying easy, but easier. All of a sudden nothing was needed yesterday. All of a sudden we were paid on time. Everything changed. Because like with the big machine, with so many sort of people in the food chain, you're like, oh, that's how things get muddled up, but that's how things go wrong. And sometimes for the wrong reasons. Because I see it in a way that if you don't have your starting 11 in an agency under tip top condition, let's say late nights, vices, troubles, I mean, are we talking even just the sort of stuff related to work, let alone personal lives, it's not going to go well and therefore we get knock on effect and the creative process or any other process, it's not going to work. Like the domino effect is going to go, but not very well. So what you describe, and I think I liked in your story, that you moved away and you embraced slower life. You embraced just a standard food. I mean like going from chocolate bar two or three meals is a difference. We used to have a client years and years ago who run a beautiful Mexican restaurant and he would come to pick up some proofs and whatever and he would make a joke like, have you had your mask by yet? It was lunchtime and he said, literally, and it's actually a chapter in my book, have you had your mask by yet? It was like, no. Okay, I'm gonna get you a takeout. So he got us these beautiful tacos and things like, so that was great, but only happened like once in the blue moon. But it was a true testament how we were perceived as creators. You here all the time and you eat like crap, you look like crap. And you're gonna go after the work, you're all gonna go to the pub and crawl back in at 8:00, 9:00 tomorrow morning. So let's talk about the more positive things now because you use the. Your life has changed and generally I feel it's genuine for better. Because we share more about food, we share more about understanding of how we do stuff. So you move the way you've left, basically you've closed the door of marketing and you started feeling better.
- [21:06]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah, it was so profound how quickly I felt better from just eating real meals. Right. That was the first step in this journey, like getting, having breakfast, having lunch, having dinner. And I honestly will say that going from what I thought was pretty much starving myself or irregular erratic eating to eating much more food and in a much more consistent pattern literally shifted my physiology and it was that shift that I was like, what's happened? How come I didn't know about this? What's actually happened to my body? So why am I eating these three meals and suddenly my energy's back, my brain's back, my hormones are back, my gut's working again, my anxiety is reduced, I'm sleeping better. Why is this happening then? Read as many nutrition books as I possibly could. I got really into food. I started, and I'm not massively into cooking. I was more into the physiology behind the nutrients, what they were doing to my body, how my body was changing as a result of those behaviors. And that then opened up the whole world around, okay, so when I'm getting these inputs from food, what other inputs affect my output? And I began looking at sleep, movement, nature. That essentially decided at that point. After noticing these changes, I needed to understand the science behind nutrition, what actually is happening to the body. And so I enrolled to go back to study nutrition for three years. And it was at the point in my life when I was moved to Bristol and I was pregnant with my daughter. And it was a really significant moment because I wanted her to grow up in a world where she saw her mom just really happy with the work that she was doing. And it was a really big question to say to myself, can I go back and study a scientific subject with my. I was like, this is crazy. But the thought in my head was, there was only one option. It was stay as I am or give it a go. And I remember Chris saying to me, my husband, like, doesn't matter if you fail. No, I'll know. Give it a go and we'll see what happens. So I had my daughter, went back and started studying as soon as I had her, and then did three years and one year in biochemistry, and it was absolute hell.
- [23:42]
Radi Malinich
I was just about to ask, wait a minute. We're stretching dyslexia to the limit by biochemistry. Sarah. Bravo. Even though it was helped, but you made that step, you decided to do it. You were on the precipice of, shall I. Shall I not do it? Because I think you said a beautiful thing. I want my daughter to see her mom be happy with what she's doing. That is a life goal. That is, like, when you decipher all of these things, like, that is the true purpose, why you're doing it. And putting yourself for a biochemistry degree. Brilliant. Bravo.
- [24:09]
Sarah Bayliss
But you're so right. That was true purpose. And I think when you get that, it makes all the difference. It was like there was Two roads. It was like a yes or a no road. So just take the yes road and see what happens. And funnily enough, it taught me more about my dyslexia. I spent a lot of time learning how to learn when I was at school, and that got me through. And actually, nutrition has become even more a teacher of me. And I, when we talk about neuroplasticity, we talk about how we can adapt and change the mind. And I'm telling you, my studies in nutrition has changed me as a person even more than when I was at school in terms of how I read books, how I read scientific papers, how I'm much more open to education than I'd ever be. And so what was a step of complete fear ended up just changing my relationship with learning as well. So, yeah, take the step. Go back to college. And as I said, the first year was tough. I was coming home crying and going, oh, I can't do this. But I got through it. And now I'm at this point in my life where I cannot learn enough. So what was it weird of learning? Now I'm like, more courses, more knowledge.
- [25:22]
Radi Malinich
I think that's the beautiful part of getting older. I think that's the part because we don't accept struggle as a part of our growth. When we're younger, we should think this should be easier, right? I don't want to do this because it hurts a little bit. Whereas what you describe and coming home and like, I don't want to do this does growth, there needs to be friction. Whereas we don't always accept it and we are not always ready for that struggle. Because as you say, our inputs that we know, that we put into ourselves, our inputs don't always add up to the equation of, okay, I'm ready for this, because I'm very much a big believer of creating optimal conditions for creativity. In fact, creating optimal conditions for life. We are very oblivious and from my perspective, very oblivious to the fact that we want to perform every day. We want every day to be a great day. But we do these things that we just mentioned earlier, like we don't always put 100% of the right stuff into us. We don't sleep well, we don't exercise well, yet we accept every day to be beautiful and fantastic and be balanced emotionally and be resilient to all of it comes to us. In your way, like what you're describing, I think there's a way of talking about inputs that make all the change, because you said initially that what you do is more Than food. You talk to people more than about food. Because when it comes to nutritional therapy, I don't know how difficult must be for you to get clients, because they need to realize that they need to come to you. Because selling them something like nutritional therapy must be like pushing a boulder up a hill.
- [26:48]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah, I guess there's two parts to what you're saying there. I think there's this movement on this idea of what resilience used to be known as is work hard, perform hard. Burnout used to be a label, right? If you get to burnout, you're clearly resilient. This is about to hold up. But in the old days, I think this is changing now. And now what we're recognizing, as you just said, about being the most creative you can and living the best possible life can requires you to fill up that resilience bucket for you enabled to do that. And when we're thinking about how to live the best possible life and achieve the outputs we want to do, we need to look at the inputs before we look at the outputs. And actually we need to do more building up ourselves before we can put stuff out. And I think that is real shift that I saw in myself and I try and teach my clients. And those inputs are everything from the environment as well as food and sleep, and they're different for everybody. And I think one of the biggest things I try and teach my clients is that sometimes you have to do less to achieve more. But coming back to your second question, Stelling, nutritional therapy, I think people have always come to me because they've already got a problem, so they're already ready to be sold to. So they're coming to me with a symptom, a dysfunction or a nervousness, a family history, worry, sleep issue, anxiety, or they're coming to me and going, I'm 40 and I just don't know where my health is. And they want to assess it. For me, it's like they're already entering that space. They're aware that they need to look after themselves. They're or they're aware that they haven't been looking after themselves and they're struggling with some sort of symptom. And I always say to my clients is that a symptom is the way the body is communicating to you, that you're functionally not optimal. So it's not something to be ignored. It's something to lean into. It's something to listen to. It's something to go, okay, so the body communicates to us all the time. The Symptom is its way of saying something's just not quite balanced, so what could it be? And that's what they come to me to do. And my job is to assess the environmental inputs. So sleep, food, light, movement, relationships, what you're doing every day in, day out, and then to think about maybe running some testings, looking at function imbalances and going, okay, so this is where we need to work and let's try and change some of those inputs. And I think what I try and help clients think about is that we have an opportunity to live our best life when we're aware of how our inputs impact our function. And it's actually a really empowering message. And I think we just forget that we're just not aware of it or we get stuck in autopilot and we just live on this cycle repetitively every day and we don't recognize those inputs. So my job is to help people see those inputs better and then go, oh, I didn't realize that every day. Well, if I just do one more thing every day and it could be really simple, that's 360 inputs that year. What does that add up in five years? You know, that's huge. And so it's the small things every day that have a profound impact on our health, not the big things or it's the small things every day that have a profound impact, which are disease and core health. And I helped clients try and see that because I think it's a really empowering message. We'll be back after a quick break.
- [30:28]
Radi Malinich
If you're enjoying this podcast and would like more support and information on your creative journey, you can pick up one of my books to help you do just that. My titles cover branding, graphic design, illustration, all the way to career business advice with ideas how to navigate the highs and lows of the creative process. You can pick up signed paperbacks at no extra cost from my store@nobmberuniverse.co.uk and we are shipping worldwide use code podcast for extra 10% off your order and you can find the links in the show notes. Any day should be a new book day. But you mentioned is the autopilot not being aware that there's something else? Because I'm originally from Czech Republic and I grew up around simple food. Like the food was simple because it was mainly whole ingredients. There was no such thing as processed food per mass. And when I moved to England, I discovered things like chicken nuggets and I discovered people who were scared of eating sweet corn. I was like, what is wrong with these people? Because the things that I was thinking about. Write your answers. I grew up in a place which was very food based. The food was the structure. Okay, we are going, it's mainly whole foods. But the emotional intelligence wasn't there. Whereas I felt I moved through the place which was a little bit more emotionally intelligently tuned in. But I found generally the cuisine in the uk. Oh, is this what you guys do? But to me that was like another revelation. Like what is this? Anyway, a few years later I've discovered Julian McKeith who was asking 15 year old boys on TV like how's your sex drive? And have you been eating aduki beans? That was the first point of actually being aware of variety. Okay, you are what you eat. Like this is something that you need to consider. Because I started working in the creative industry, I'm pretty much lived on cigarettes, coffee and alcohol. That was pretty much the diet. And I did feel like I have discovered a whole new layer of awareness of balancing out the bad stuff. Of course you can't outdo bad lifestyle with good food only as you quite well say. So to me it was like, okay, what is the awareness? Because with the rise of UPF and more of the ingredients has been more expensive, UPF will always be more preferable by the supermarket because it's easier to keep and sell. So it's almost like how do you change the rising tide into what potentially should be? And this is what was reason, like how do you get people to understand nutritional therapy? Because as you said, people come to you when they have a symptom, when, when it's already too late. And having written a book about mindful creativity, most people who read that book say, I wish I read it much, much sooner.
- [33:17]
Sarah Bayliss
You raised a number of really interesting points. I think the first point I come to mind is this idea of lost. We've lost the art of understanding intuitively what we need to be eating to function. And when you talk about where you come from and your home life, you were doing that unintentionally. You were eating from the land, you were eating what your family had given you and grown up with you generally had been real, real food. And we've gone through this industrial revolution, massive output of increase in processed food to be able to feed people after the war. And then most processed foods have gone into ultra processed foods which are now incredibly damaging. But what we've done within that, this art that maybe we had with our grandparents generation that would be cooking from scratch and we'd been Told at the same time, don't need to cook, now we're going to do it for you and it's cheaper and you can buy it. And so when we talk about this sort of unknowingly stressed out, we're in an environment that is constantly telling us, go and buy this food, it's much cheaper. Go into the SID market and I run the number of workshops with young people and the first thing I say is when you go into a supermarket, do not trust anything. Everything in there is trying to sell you more of their thing. How are they going to sell you more of their thing? More sugar, more fat, more preservatives. And people go, oh really? Yeah, because they want to make more money. They don't care about you, they care about the money. So. And start working with people to think about that, to be critical of their environment, to be critical of the things they're picking up. And looking at the back of the labels, you can't put your trust into other people when it comes to your health. It's almost like you take your plates, you know, every time you feed yourself and you control what's on that plate, you control your health and your outcome, your creativity, your longevity. Every time you put that plate in the hands of somebody else, we're taking away that control. Math is to some degree the reality. I try and teach it from that perspective that it is tough. We're up against so many things. We've got hunter gatherer days. I would consider anti inflammatory days. Low cool food, loads of fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, high in fiber, low processing, lots of natural light, no artificial light, only acute stress moments. And now we're in this inflammatory world. We have ultra processed foods, we have lower meter threes, we have artificial light. No one's outdoors, nobody's moving. And so all of those are playing into us. So I try and get people to be aware of how they're living their life in the context of this world and what they're up against. And it's tough. And it's almost as if you have to almost take yourself out of your life and pay attention to the habits that you do day in, day out, moment to moment for about 24 hours, then you can start to see those inputs. It's almost one of the challenges or one of the actions I get clients to do is right, write down everything you do from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what you're doing across all of that and what you're eating. Now write down the Same thing, what you would like to be doing. Right. What does the ideal world look like in the context of your everyday life? And you start to compare them and then they go, start to go, oh, that doesn't look right. Or I'm just not doing this. And you almost have to inspect yourself to expect change. And that is the only way we can move away from this unknowingly stressed out piece. Because we're unknowingly stressed out. That's how I like to look at it.
- [37:15]
Radi Malinich
I think again, it's working on a smashing the autopilot because in your book Do Nourish, you say that you don't give people any food plans until three weeks in, which is really good because the change is gradual. To undo the damage or undo whatever needs to be done takes time. And I think the exercise you just mentioned, I think is fantastic because it's easy to be stuck in the rut going, this is not helping, this is not changing. And I had a peppermint tea yesterday and nothing's changed. Yeah, I'm going to take a little bit more than doing that because it's a system building and creating habits that would change that. So I like how you described, compare the two things. Because we think that we live the life that we want to live, only to look in a mirror to realize, is it really the life I'm living? Because it might not be.
- [38:02]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah. And I think that is for me, in all the work that I've done for clients that I worked with is telling them what to do is not the answer to the question. It's making them be aware of their behaviors that are driving health or disease. The only way to do that is for them to inspect their own lives with me helping them and then by going, okay, so let's have a look at what you're eating for breakfast. Okay, so let's think about why this doesn't work and why what does work. And then rather than shifting them going, here's a breakfast recipe, we're going to get lunch and make their own change based on what they're capable of doing of where they're at now. And that self awareness is that I now know why I'm making that decision change or why I'm sifting that food or that item and I'm doing in the context of my capabilities. So you're educating them. They're more thinking about their context and the choices they're making in the context of their world. And it's easy to do. Whereas if I just said to A client. Here's a stick, seven day recipe. Go ahead and cook that. They're not going to know why they're doing it, what's the impact of it? Or is it possible to even do it in the context of their life? So it's together self assessing and inspecting and then adapting. It's like both of those things. So we switch coffee to peppermint tea, you might notice, have less caffeine, increase that peppermint tea, do that over a number of years and you're starting to change structures and frameworks and that starts to change other things and those things build health. It's like a snowball effect and you can't do this in one week. This is about changing habits for life so that you really can live the life that you want to live. And I think that's what I try and get to the heart of it. Going back to my story, my purpose as my daughter. What's your purpose in your life? And then when you connect your behavior to your purpose in the context of how you're living, you can create that change.
- [40:11]
Radi Malinich
Yeah, beautiful answer. I mean, I think the word survival and autopilot are still woven into this conversation because I feel like this is a sort of reverse therapy I've tried in the past. Outcycle, bad lifestyle. I was like drinking five espressos in the morning, then drinking electrolytes to offset it. Drink some magnesium, then go cycling, then have like ciders in the evening. I was like, it's somehow function. But my emotional state was crazy because at that time I was running an agency with multiple staff and on paper I was living my best life. However, my resilience was shut to pieces. Like I didn't sleep well, I didn't get enough deep sleep and now I'm, I'm picking it because I'm thinking I wasn't happy. No, on paper I was, I just wasn't metabolizing everything that was happening. Thinking, oh, I've taken on more, but I haven't done more in advance, sort of more in balance to actually, to take on heavier strain, to actually be ready for the heaviest train. So for me for the last few years it's almost unpicking that sort of self made, not trauma but a self made issues that like, okay, I could have done better. But with your book, what I've done, I've literally taken like anything with more than a couple more ingredients, a couple ingredients out and I've gone back to where I used to be many times in my life. Simplified diet and be excited about actual variety and discovering places in London, like Farmer J, which is farm. I think they call it farm plates. When you get excited about an akale salad with just beautiful, simple ingredients because they look amazing, you're like, we're back. We're back home and we're gonna stick here because you don't have to. Then think about the things that you just said a while ago. Don't trust anything in the supermarket that's such a fantastic takeaway because you're not gonna be lied to by an avocado. Apart from the sticker that says ripe and ready. It's never ripe and ready, is it?
- [42:00]
Sarah Bayliss
Yeah. It's like real food doesn't have a barcode. But I think there's two things I'd love to add to what you're saying. There is. The idea of convenience is a lie in itself because convenience does not trade time. It might save time, but it saves time in that moment, not for the long run or in the energy. So really, if you're eating a convenient food, you're not investing in making it so you're eating it now, but you can steal your energy moments after. And also, it's not gonna drive up longevity. So it's a false statement in itself. And the other part that I like to work with, when I'm thinking back way from this idea of what do I want to eat to how do I want to feel. And if we start thinking like that, we start thinking about the end game. It can help us make better, intentional choices. So we wake up in the morning, I want to feel bright, I want to have energy, I want to function well. I'm not going to have a measly breakfast cereal with loads of sugar because that's going to steal the energy. All right, so what am I going to have? Maybe I have some eggs and San Ricardo. That's going to give me energy. It's going to be sustaining, it's going to be enjoy, it's going to be joyful. And I think the other point about convenience is not only does it steal the energy and the longevity, it steals our ability to enjoy and feel full pleasure from real food because we're given fake food. And the fake food drive agitation to the brain. The brain is going, this is not what I really wanted. So it dries up cravings, but it's seeking amino acids, it's seeking fiber, it's seeking micronutrients. You are saying it as a sugar feeling, but it's angry. And so convenience feels our taste buds as well. And it steals that ability to find, match, enjoyment. So when you break away from the sugar, the convenience of things, you start enjoying food more, you start having more energy. You start recognizing the direct connections between the food and longevity and as you say, the farm place. You then see the beauty of that food, where it's come from, and then you start cramming those food. You can unwind that vicious cycle. You can get to that point. I crave kale. People like, why did you crave kale? So I think we always need to remember that convenience is a false statement and challenge the word convenience because it's stealing something from somewhere else.
- [44:30]
Radi Malinich
There's so many amazing points that you just said. A convenience. Yeah, steals our taste buds because I don't know if you have ever come across it in your work, but I find that if you invest in a nice crockery, nice plates and cutlery, it recreates that feeling of having a nice meal out. Okay, you've been. That means someone presents you really nice food. It tastes really great. If you travel, like, obviously everything tastes better when you travel, but then you bring it back and I want to recreate it. And I found that having a better hardware at home makes you more empowered, like you feel more inspired to do different things. And one of the things that I drove on as an experience is that even when I grew up, like, people made simple food look beautiful. Like we just made most out of it. I think it gives you this sort of value for life. It doesn't matter how big the reward is or how big, you know, is decline or big the project. You get on with the bid that you've got and you enjoy it because as I said earlier, like, you try to go high, high, high, only to realize you haven't got enough power and strength and resilience to actually take on it. So, yeah, I just find as a sort of, as an inspiration for food and kind of cooking and go to places and explore places and actually discover things. Because not doing the same thing over and over again, it's not going to make you look sideways and discover new things. This is one of my observations because I bought some crockery recently and we moved house a while ago, bought new crockery. I was like, hey, feel like there's a new lease of life.
- [45:53]
Sarah Bayliss
I think surrounding what you're cooking and eating are really important in itself. The moment of eating with family is the connection, is the communication. It's an input beyond the food that's creating health. I had a client quite recently, one of the first things that I did with her was get her to lay her table with her favorite crockery because she wasn't sitting down eating, she was eating on the moon. And so we just worked with put the knife and fork down on your favorite crockery, lay the table. Because she was very aesthetic, she loved her crockery, she loved her kitchen. I was like, let's use the environment as it's meant to be used. And that was a big game changer for her. So I think you're right. It's going back to that autopilot piece. We just got to step ourselves off autopilot. And the way to step ourselves off to autopilot is to heighten our senses and our experiences as much as we can in a natural way. So smelling vices or even sucking a piece of dark chocolate or standing outside looking at the sun, it's like all of those moments enable us to just slow down a bit and step out of autopilot.
- [47:00]
Radi Malinich
I made so many notes about fiber and blood sugar and polyphenols and coffee and longevity and stuff that I feel like this has taken a beautiful turn about actually things being relatable. Because what I want to know as one of the last few points is what was your feeling when you have completed your book? Because we started this conversation with you being severely dyslexic, having struggle with education system. So tell me more about your book. How did it come about? How did it feel?
- [47:29]
Sarah Bayliss
So I mean the opportunity to write a book was just absolutely incredible. When Danuk Publishing said to me, would I write a book on nutrition? One of those moments, I don't know if I can do this, but I'm not going to say no. And funnily enough before they asked me, running a workshop mainly in Bristol called it have Resilience and it was an all day workshop and I would bring people in and I'd spend the morning talking about the science around food and nutrition and we would then basically build a plate together. I'd get a chef in and we'd make loads of food and I'd then get them to build their plate based on how to nourish your body. Well so what the book is about. So when I was asked to do the book, it was a no brainer. I'd already. I've been running this workshop, I've been doing it physically with people and I'd been running it for a whole day on purpose because I wanted to take somebody out of their world, immerse them with me, take them through to science, then teach them together and then eat together. And then the afternoon I'd go into areas of sleep and stress and touch another thing so that they come away feeling like totally inspired. And also knew how to bring flavor to food, what protein was, how to choose it, how to match it. Anyway, so when they asked me to write the book, it was a no brainer on what I should be writing because that workshop was almost how to teach somebody a job that I do without actually having to work with me. Here we go. So I wrote the book proposal. They absolutely loved it and they said, go ahead and write it. And what I have always been empowered by in my own world on nutrition, is understanding the why behind the what. So I really wanted to bring that out in the book. But in a way that was really that sciency bit that was really accessible without going over your head and also to give you some context. So the context for me is so important to the decisions you're making. And so I really wanted to build that out and then and make it in a simple way as possible. That's what I hope to do. And I got some incredible help from an amazing editor who worked through the book with me as well just to make sure my spelling and grammar was okay. So I got the support I need from that front. But once I'd written it, it was a bit of relief and anxiety, to be honest, because it's a bit like I've made an opinion, I put it out in the world. I'm constantly learning. I already know how I'd like to change things if I was to write it again. Because that's just the world I'm in. And yeah, I am self critical. So I was nervous about the book. Would people enjoy it? Was it what people were looking for? Was it not science enough? Was it too sciencey? The point of the drill really was to teach people how to eat well in a way that was easy for them to do no matter where they are in their world of cooking or buying or eating, and to start people on that journey. And that's what I really hope I've done with it.
- [50:29]
Radi Malinich
I think you succeeded fantastically. I think it's Seth Godin who said, if you want to write a book, go for a walk with a friend, solve that problem, have that conversation recorded, have it transcribed, and that's your first book. And obviously having you, as you said it was a no brainer for you. Like obviously you've had this experience of knowing how people react to this stuff because how people react to food, how they react, building their plate. I think that's an important experience to have because then you can transfer that easily. Yeah, I think you nailed the book because I was reading it with, as I said, ultra processed people. I was like, he's, like, not volunteering. And then found out later why he was not volunteering what to eat. And in your book, quite rightly, you don't have recipes. You've got a couple of things in there, but it gives you that sort of toolkit because it helps you to simplify it. One of the things I want to quickly ask is when we talk about the food that we can be eating and like, the sort of immediate changes we can be doing. Because one of the things I wanted to ask you was about fermented food. And I'm thinking the fermented category is quite narrow and it's not exactly the most versatile. If you tell people like, sauerkraut people like, really, when you think about what is really good for us, especially good fermented food, how can we go around it?
- [51:43]
Sarah Bayliss
Gosh, I can have a whole conversation with you just on the gut health. So I think when we take a step back, when we're thinking about the microbiome, we're thinking about the organ that stops any from the outside world coming into the inside world. It's so important for our immunity, and also it's so important for us to be able to process and digest and absorb our food. It's a fundamental organ. When you're thinking about inflammation, when you're thinking about health, immune function, you really need to start looking after that gut. And the gut is made up of millions and millions of bacteria. And those bacteria, generally 80% should be beneficial and about 20% should be less beneficial. That microbiome makeup is really important because the bacteria in the gut build our resilience, essentially, they build the strength of that gut lining, which drives our immune function, and they help modulate our immunity. So we need to look after the gut. And I look at it, you can look at it like a garden. So you want to grow those flowers, make sure the soil is really good, and you want to minimize the weed. And so when you're thinking about fermented feed, you're putting a live bacteria into the gut, and it's transient. That means you eat it, it goes in. If you go eat that food, that bacteria won't be there. So when you're thinking about microbial health and bacteria in the gut, you've gotta be thinking about how do you grow your garden so it can grow its own bacteria, so you can grow it inside rather than having to only rely on fermented foods. So it's a relationship with prebiotics and postbiotics. And prebiotics is the fiber we find in our vegetables when we eat the right amount of fiber, they almost help to feed the bacteria they can then grow. So you want both of them. You want prebiotics and probiotics. And probiotic foods are fermented foods. And so they do have a role. And the best thing to do is to make sure you're eating probiotic foods, but with lots of prebiotics as well. So that's the fibers, lots of fruits and vegetables. Mainly the vegetables, vegetables, nuts, the seeds, polyphenols. I took a lot about polyphenols. That's what the gut bacteria really, really love. So when it comes to fermented food, the best thing that you can be doing is buying fermented food that is low in sugar, that's uncasteurized, sauerkraut, kimchi, and you can even use things like miso. Pickles are all fermented as well, but got to be mindful of the sugar that's in them. And so there is a small range, but there is enough of those ranges to be having some element of benefit. But I think we should just not forget prebiotic foods because they work just as much if not more importantly than probiotics, because when we can change our garden and our terrain and our flowers, we can control that. Then it's better than us having to rely purely just on fermented foods. But they do have a role and they can be beneficial.
- [54:53]
Radi Malinich
Absolutely. I was just curious again, it's one of these things you pick up as you go. And we didn't talk about gut health 10 years ago properly. And when you think about it, like when you're in your beautiful metaphor like analogy, you say it's like growing a garden. You're not going to grow a bit of dry cheerio. The food is certainly devoid of any moisture or any sort of nutrient. If the topics of what we talked about today, the survival and like the way I've been trying to find a quote by Steve Jobs which is in your book, like when you make stuff simple, it can move mountains. And I want to read it right, but I had to paraphrase it. We over complicate so much, don't we? We make our lives so complicated. We download all the apps, we get all the gadgets, we get all the things. But is it because we too scared to actually live simply? Is that what it is?
- [55:33]
Sarah Bayliss
I think it's because we're distracted. We're distracted by the world around us to not make the decision at that moment to make the step to change. It's like, what's the best thing to do when it's. Meditation is the perfect example. You can read as many books on meditation, but actually just starting is where the power is. And it's the same with nutrition. And this is why this book isn't a recipe book, because I don't want you to have to read a recipe to make a change. I want you to pick up the book and add a handful of spinach to your plate. And that is an actual action that's going to have add up and make an impact. And I think in a world of so much information and so much technology and so many apps, and I think they are just distracting us from the point in which to make the decisions. So we become procrastinators. And I think that's the challenge that we're up against, really. And it's literally just before this, I had a call with a client and she was saying to me, I'm going to go buy that app. We can download it and you can walk around the supermarket and just look at the back of everything. I said to her, no, you're not. You know what you got to eat, you're just going to eat that. And we've got your plan. And we went through her last. What she ate in the last seven days, and we just adapted everything slightly. That's what you're going to do. You're not going to buy any more apps, you're not going to download anything. That's what you're going to do. I think we get distracted because of all of the things that are coming at us. And actually we just need to strip everything back and make one decision and do it. I think that's the power that we need to find.
- [57:05]
Radi Malinich
I get a lot of questions from various audiences around the world. What is the best time management app? What is it that really can. So in my life, like, it's just you. It's discipline, like, it's just you. Things you don't do, it will stop you from doing things that you shouldn't do. It's that simplicity because the world was moving around beautifully, and I say beautifully, but the world was existing 20 years ago, before smartphones, before all the apps. We were pretty much fine for most part. But, yeah, it's the same. I want to talk about blood sugars and that kind of stuff and polyphenols. But I think what we got is so valuable to anyone, I think, who wants to think about the inputs because I think it's wider than that when people say, so how do I be creative? How to be more creative? Go to the library if you want to run faster, go to the gym. If you want to recycle further, go to the gym. And if you want to eat better, go to the green grass. It's not a supermarket. Educate yourself because as you said now in later age, the information that's available to us, especially now, it's moreish like you really want to know more because all of a sudden you open one door, oh, I've learned about this, there's another door, there's another door. And all of a sudden like we can actually influence how we live, how others can live and eat and how can function and actually create a better society as a result of it. So, Sarah, thank you very much for writing the book and thank you very much for your time today. It was fantastic.
- [58:20]
Sarah Bayliss
Oh thank you. Thank you so much for reading my book and having me on today. I really enjoyed chatting with you.
- [58:36]
Radi Malinich
Hey, thank you for listening to this episode of Mindful Creative Podcast. I'm love to know your thoughts, questions or even suggestions. So please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinich. Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil McKay from 7 Million Bikes podcast and the theme music was written and produced by Jack James. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. Hey, just a quick note to say thank you for joining me on this episode. If this is your first time or your regular listener, please take a minute and rate the show on your chosen platform. A short review helps every show to be more visible to new listeners and provide them with value. So thank you for helping out. Thank you.