Jessie Inchauspé: How balancing her blood sugar changed her life | Wellness with Ella

well Jesse welcomes the show it's such a pleasure to see you thanks for having me Ella I mean God what a year you've had we were just talking before we started recording it was only last April that your first book the glucose Revolution came out and it's been translated into 41 languages I mean it's just been this extraordinary sensation everywhere I go I see it we have had a lot of requests to have a chat with you on the show so I think we're going to have a lot of happy listeners today but before we get into your story and why you do what you do today I would love you to introduce yourself you know lots of people might know you through your work through your Instagram account the glucose goddess but who's Jessie oh good question well I'm French I love cats I love music I love chocolate I love sleeping um I'm a scientist I'm also a people person I love connecting deeply with somebody I meet at a dinner party um I love fluffy things I love having my fluffy coats on me at all times um yeah I'm a whole person you know and it's true that people see the the glucose goddess and they think I'm this like perfect being who never eats sugar and is just like blah blah but um yeah and many things many things I'm a sister I'm a daughter I'm a friend I'm a teacher I'm a writer lots of stuff I love that I think that's and that's the point of that first question is that I think we we all are those things but I think sometimes we don't see that in each other and we think of ourselves or we think of eat of other people it's quite almost one-dimensional beings um or we see someone through their professional life and we kind of forget that they too like cats and fluffy things I love fluffy things so I appreciate that and how are you doing today I'm doing well I'm in a very grateful phase right now and you know I mean it's always up and down but right now I just feel so proud of this past year and so proud of what I've been able to overcome and what I've been able to create and um the feeling I have is sort of like the the doors are open in front of me and now it's just a matter of stepping through them in a thoughtful way and in the best way I possibly can so that's my current feeling it's a very beautiful feeling and I guess before we rewind and understand the journey and the experience that you had to to get to where you are today and to create and cultivate that feeling because that's a pretty extraordinary place to be in your life and I think a place that so many people would love to be at and the inspiration of how you got there I think it's very very meaningful because one of the things I so want to show on this show is the fact that that's not just a given it's not just doesn't just arrive it takes a huge amount of hard work and sometimes kind of the depths of darkness in order to get to those places of light and the more we see that in other people the more I believe we're able to say you know what I can do that too if I understand your personal growth and your transformation there's bits that I can relate to and feel I too could become the person I want to be or unlock the things that I want in my life and I find that deeply inspirational so I'm very excited to get into that but did you ever think you'd be doing what you do today being who you are today I mean it must feel extraordinary it's very odd I don't think I've fully processed it when I was a teenager I wanted to be a singer and I had all these Britney Spears posters in my room and I just loved singing um no I never thought I would be at this point but in a way now that I'm here it also feels quite good I do feel like a part of my soul has arrived in the place that she was supposed to be so it's a bit of that Duality on the one hand you know I can't fathom the fact that there's like all the these readers of my books and people stopping me in the street and the followers and everything and that I exist outside of just my relationship to myself that people have a relationship to me that I I don't and I don't know them that's really interesting so no I never thought that this would happen yeah at the same time a part of me feels okay and ready and comfortable with it I'm so if we rewind to understand what was the kind of beginning of the journey to get to that place am I right in saying it really started when you were 19 and up until that point you hadn't thought a huge amount about your mental health or your physical health absolutely so when I was a kid I had no passions except you know singing Britney Spears songs like actually who doesn't right but okay nothing you know when I was a teenager I had nothing like grabbed me I wasn't passionate about animals or about like geology I didn't really have any passions I was just a really good student with a very calm healthy life and so it was a bit tough for me because I felt like oh man maybe I just don't like anything I don't know what to do with my life um and then when I was 19 that's when things started to change but it wasn't like in a big moment of Joy like oh my God I figured everything out you know I want to work in health actually it was kind of the opposite something really intense happened to me I broke my back jumping off a waterfall and in a second my life completely switched from this innocence of Youth to this like immense pain fear of death a lot of physical problems and mental health problems afterwards and I talk about that 19 year old moment like the beginning of the journey but really it was more the beginning of the pain and that pain lasted you know six seven eight years until I finally saw some light and out of that light I've created what I made today but it was a lot of suffering to even get to the first little speck of light and do you mind if we kind of hone in a little bit on on what happened because obviously everyone's got their own stories and everyone listening will have their own moments of Challenge and hardship in their lives and it might be something physical like you experienced and that was my Catalyst moment as well and it probably would have been actually very similar time and it was a physical challenge but sometimes it's an emotional challenge you know maybe it's grief it's so many different factors for all of us but I think there's something in understanding again I don't think we often talk about what these things really feel like and how difficult and dark and low it can get an A that there's a way out of that but B that that is normal those can be normal feelings and certainly I know something you've talked about I felt incredibly alone when I was going through that and it sounds like it was the same for you and that's something else I really want to normalize because I think especially in terms of opening up and really opening up about mental health we've got to be kind of completely candid about that so you're in Hawaii with your friends is that right and you're just having a really fun day yeah I just you know I was in the prime of my teenage years I thought I was invincible my two male friends jumped off this waterfall and they said hey Jesse you do it and of course you know I wanted to be cool I've always had this thing where I've really wanted to be cool and so I pretended I wasn't scared and I was like yeah I'll do it no problem and so I climbed to the top of this waterfall and I looked down and I'm like oh my God that's really scary how high was that 10 meters 30 feet yeah so pretty high for your first ever jump out of anything and my two male friends had told me land really straight like your feet and then your whole body like really straight above your feet and so as I left off the edge of the cliff that feeling in my stomach of like you know when you feel like you're falling while I was falling and I completely forgot to be straight and I landed just a tiny bit sitting down just a tiny bit and total freak incident in my basically my tailbone took the pressure and it went up above my spine and one of my vertebrae's driven poof into 13 pieces and what I immediately felt a lot of pain and then I got out of the water I was like could you could you swim out the water yourself I could yes I think of the adrenaline in that moment allows you to do anything but the problem is you couldn't see anything there was no bruising no blood like I wasn't bent in half because of my muscles are holding me so to the outside it looked like maybe I had just pulled the muscle so I walked back to the car for a mile with my broken back and like I had just wrapped a towel around around myself and then I spent 24 hours at home laying in bed thinking it was just a muscle thing and then finally the next day um I told my mom listen it's not getting better we need to go see a doctor so we see a first chiropractor who touches my back and I go ow he's like no you have to go to the hospital so I go to the hospital in Hawaii they do a scan and they finally see the bones are broken then I spend two weeks laying down in the room in Hawaii because my parents are trying to decide what to do like where I was going to get surgery I end up being flown back on a medical plane all the way back to Switzerland to have surgery there anyway long long story but I waited a long time in that state of not being allowed to move knowing my back was broken but nothing was happening and then finally the day of the surgery came and very complicated intense surgery um but then when I woke up the physical stuff started getting better and in a matter of a month my physical health was back thank God and the surgeons did an amazing job but then what nobody had told me about nor prepared me for is that my mental health and my brain really started suffering and I remember the first symptoms I just kind of felt like I was in a dream everything was a little bit fuzzy around me I felt like there was sort of a veil between me and reality and then it just kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point where when I looked in the mirror I would become super anxious I was like who is that I had a complete Detachment from myself when I looked at my hands it was as if they weren't mine and I felt super confused about being in a body and that just started Excavating escalating to the point where I could never be alone I was terrified I went to see all these different doctors who looked at me like I was you know crazy so a lot of pain yeah and that stayed that way for about a year and a half and I honestly didn't want to live I mean it was really really bad and um in that depth of pain I think the one thought that kept coming back was like wow I was so lucky before and when I had my mental health I didn't realize but I really had everything and your health really is the most important thing in your life and your greatest wealth so yeah it was a long journey and that feeling sort of stayed with me for many many years and today it still happens once in a while but through those years I've been able to manage it and through learning about how food is affecting my brain Etc it's also helped me a lot but that phase of my life was so dark and I was so alone you know nobody understood what I was going through it was really really hard and did you talk to people a lot about it at the time or did you find it hard to talk about I told everybody about it but it's difficult when you go to your friend and you're like hey so right now I'm looking at you but I don't really see you it's like I know it's you Ella but I can't really register that your face is there my brain was just completely broken and was that from the trauma I think now looking back I think what happened is that during the surgery there was so much stress in my body that was never metabolized nobody ever told me you know that I should have a little ceremony afterwards to honor the experience I went through or shake to move the stress out of my body or I had no practices I had nothing so I think what happened is that yes the huge amount of stress and fear that stayed in my body then led to those States and there were many aggravating factors to those moments and those episodes of difficult mental health and I know that this will always be with me but now for example like just the fact that I'm in London right now for a week and I have an Airbnb and I'm living there on my own and I feel fine it's amazing I'm so grateful that I have that I used to never be able to ever be alone because of the deep fear of existence I was feeling and did you start to work with anyone or any professionals or you were really kind of trying to go through it on your own I did I found a therapist I found a woman who was doing craniosacral therapy she really helped me but ultimately I felt quite alone it's not until I moved to California and that people around me started talking about you know trauma and energies that I felt a bit more understood I was living in London at the time and I just didn't have the community around me to be supported or understood people just looked at me and a little bit weird and I was like I don't know why I'm in a body you know they were like um okay okay based on their thoughts you know bless them if you have never gone through that and I don't wish this on anyone how could you relate it stuff how do you feel you got out of the kind of depths of the darkness 18 months later what do you think it was that really allowed you it sounds like it was a kind of Journey over five six seven years to really get to a place further away from that but to be able to feel you could kind of live for one for better word more normally I think writing really helped me just I bought this diary and I started writing all my fears on my anxiety all my suffering and I started having a bit more of a relationship with myself so you know like self-compassion being more in touch with what I needed how to make myself feel loved and cared for I think that's totally helped but to be honest I mean it was so gradual I think Just As I Grew into myself this slowly subsided because I was able to bring in more and more practices over time but it was not like one day it was all gone it was very very slow and therapy really helped figuring out my food situation really helped figuring out how to even like set boundaries around me and just take get better care of myself how to handle my stress all these small things of me growing into a new version of myself slowly made that feeling go away but it's not until I think maybe one or two years ago that I've been really feeling okay really fully okay I think that's such a amazing example of the fact that it's it's not a quick Journey when you start addressing various facets of your life and we we always so wanted to be but it's very inspiring to see that you've got to this place but it's taken you you know a long period of time to get there and when you're in those moments and I'm sure a lot of listeners will relate when your mental health is so broken you think this is going to be you forever like your brain plays this trick on you whether you have you know you're going through an anxiety phase and depressive phase whatever your brain is telling you this is forever this is you and I felt so much like that and now I know that's just a trick that your brain plays on you so it's important to know that because that can that really helped me um not give up I was like I think this is not gonna be forever like I think there was a little thing inside me telling me that someday it was gonna be okay and that kept me going I think if you could rewind and give that version of you one piece of advice or one piece of advice for anyone who feels like they're in that place right now what would it be the first thing that came to mind is um do some Ceremonies for yourself like small little things like sit in your bedroom light a candle write something and just like give yourself love and self-compassion and space and time and connect with your soul and tell her that it's gonna be okay I think for me that would have been so wonderful to have as a tool and also just the fact that it's not forever it is not forever like you will get through this and even if I know right now it feels like you're never gonna get through this and you're gonna feel like this forever you're not and that's really really important to know and was it this deep connection with yourself and starting to cultivate that and this desire to take that deeper is that what led you to look at genes and eventually go and work in that area yes and jeans by the way I mean from a biological perspective not not what you wear I'm going to talk about my denim brand um yeah absolutely so you know I was telling you that at that young age I felt like wow my health is my greatest wealth if I don't have my health I have nothing and I remember thinking so clearly if my mental health and my physical health are not good it doesn't matter what I'm studying what career I have like what I'm doing what I'm wearing nothing matters if you don't have your health and so from that place of being that young girl that had no interest no passions nothing and I was studying math at the time in London and the only reason I was doing that is because I had no idea of what to study and my stepdad told me if you don't know what to do do the hardest thing you can and so I went to study mathematics literally out of that like not because I particularly liked it and finally I had found something that I wanted to dive deeper into and that's when I thought okay I'm going to learn about the body I'm going to try to figure out how this machine works so that I can reconnect with this biological organism right that I felt so alienated from so I went to the US studied biochemistry in grad school and then I moved to Silicon Valley to be in the field of genetics because at the time a lot of people thought DNA is the future right if you understand our genes we understand everything so I wondered maybe if I understand my DNA better I'm going to know what I need to do so that I can finally feel good turns out that wasn't exactly the case but while I was there is when this wonderful Universe gift happened I discovered glucose and that really you know that was maybe five years six years after going to studying in grad school that's when I felt like I had reached a new level of interest and I had found a new topic that could really help me and before we go into that topic and about nutrition and glucose I would love to get your 101 on why DNA isn't the future why our genes don't dictate who we are because I think it's a very interesting Reflection Point on the fact that personal responsibility is very difficult um and I have certainly found it very difficult at times to take personal responsibility for my health like ultimately making healthy decisions takes time and it takes and it takes discipline and it's not always the easy option um but actually our daily choices and our lifestyle choices have almost a bigger impact than anything else and I think we so often say well I'm just born like this this is how I feel or and there's nothing I can do about it these are my genes that's not really the case right it's not and the reason the science has discovered that's not the case is because after the discovery of DNA in this huge you know enthusiasm about this very cool piece of the human body scientists started discovering that two people can have the exact same DNA that is identical twins who have you know letter for letter base pair for base pair the same genetic code A to Z can have very different Health situations one might be depressed and the other one might not be one may have you know heart disease and the other one might not and scientists started asking themselves okay so how is it possible that two people who have the exact same genetic code have such different Health outcomes in such different lives and that's when they started understanding that actually your DNA is a bit like the blueprint in your house so it's the nice line drawing of your house but then your daily choices they're the ones that buy the furniture paint the walls invite your friends over cook dinner you know it's like a completely different experience and while your DNA is really you know that blueprint your lifestyle choices your stress levels your job who you surround yourself with you know your microbiome all these different factors really determine your health much more there are a few exceptions some people have very rare or very intense genetic mutations that mean they will have a genetic disease and in those cases you know that sort of takes precedent over most other things but for the vast majority of people and it's the lifestyle choices and and are the way that we choose to spend Decades of our lives and make the big impact on our health and I think that's a very powerful and also almost scary Revelation and I'm curious how you felt when you sort of almost discovered you'd gone there yeah you're like jeans it's the answer I'm going to get to know myself only to realize actually there was a still kind of a really big gap in your knowledge and being able to truly understand why do I feel this way today versus yesterday versus tomorrow it was very disappointing very disappointing I thought that my genes were going to be able to tell me how to wake up in the morning feeling good and feeling healthy healthy I thought my genes were going to be able to tell me what to eat I thought my genes were going to tell me all sorts of very you know prescriptive information turns out not at all so you know your genes May influence your risk of a certain condition by two percent three percent but they don't tell you what to do they don't tell you what to do at all to wake up feeling well so I felt disappointed but I also felt like I had learned a lot in that experience of working in that genetic genetics company about how to communicate science in an easy and fun way and when I was there I had no idea what was ahead of me I had no idea I was going to go into glucose but it's funny looking back how it feels like life almost prepares you you know and the skills I learned working there about turning science into applicable tips or making something as complex as genetics into something people could understand has prepared me so well for the work I do today and so what was the kind of next step on your journey to become I guess empowered with the knowledge to start to understand what is it that impacts your day says you said that every single person I would bet very strongly wants to wake up and feel great in the morning like that's what we all long for in our lives isn't it and I think we quite want to be told how to do that we were looking for that magic answer is that what you felt you set off to do next so I hadn't actually I didn't actually know what was going to happen next I had no clue I was still working there and I liked my job and I was like okay maybe this is it but then I had the opportunity that really changed things for me um so in Silicon Valley people are always testing like new devices new technologies and stuff and so one day at work um this little pilot project sees the light of day and um the r d team says we're going to test out glucose monitors which are devices invented for people with diabetes to measure blood sugar levels but let's do it in people without diabetes and kind of see what happens and so I don't know why but I raised my hand I was like yeah I'll do that and so I put the glucose monitor on and then I started tracking my blood sugar levels and I would see them on my iPhone like spikes and diffs and spikes and dips and I think it was on day four or something of wearing this glucose monitor I feel that intense mental health episode come about so you know dissociation look at my hands they're not mine super intense brain fog like just feeling horrible anxious super scared and frightened about existing and I scan my glucose monitor out of habit because I had been doing it for four days and I see one of the biggest glucose spikes that I had ever seen in those four days from the food I had just eaten an hour ago and in that moment I was like oh my God I connection I think I finally found a sort of Trigger or something maybe these glucose spikes are triggering some of these episodes of mental health you know intense awfulness that I had been feeling for so long because I never knew when they would come about after that initial phase of like 18 months of just constant being in that state then the episodes were just like once a week once a month twice a week I didn't know and so in that moment I felt like oh my God and you have to understand for me it was seven years of total confusion and in that moment I finally saw a little bit of light I was like oh maybe it's what I'm doing that's making it worse maybe I actually have some power here maybe there's information I can understand maybe things can change and so then I became fascinated with glucose I read all the scientific papers I could find I had like a thousand tabs open on my computer and I dove really deep into the subject and I found this very interesting I found that I wasn't alone that most people who don't have diabetes have these rapid increases in blood sugar several times a day and that depending on your body they can lead to many different symptoms so I set out to try to avoid these spikes and you have to understand at that point I never thought I would write a book about this I never thought I would have an Instagram account about this it was just me in my living room with my cat just like you know being interested in this topic and trying to make myself feel better um so that was the beginning and for anybody listening I think there is an obviously very much spearheaded by you there's a lot of conversations at the moment in the media and various different Publications about blood sugar and and the fact that it can be incredibly important particularly for energy levels which again is something that feels like a universal challenge we all want more energy if you were going to give a 101 on blood sugar and why managing your blood sugar levels is so important could you do that absolutely my pleasure so blood sugar also called glucose is your body's favorite source of energy and so every single cell in your body whether it's your brain cells your gut cells or your finger toe cells use glucose for energy so it's really important for the human body and the main way that we give glucose to our body is through eating starchy Foods so pasta rice bread potatoes and sweet Foods so anything that tastes sweet from a chocolate cake to a banana and you might think and this is what I used to think okay if my body needs glucose for energy and as you said everybody wants more energy then I should try to eat as much glucose as possible to give my body as much energy as possible well that's actually where things break down so it's a bit like this lovely plant you have in this room this plant needs some water to survive and you probably give it some water every week but if you give the plant too much water the plant will probably die the human body is the same some glucose is really good too much glucose and problems start happening for me those moments of too much glucose we're leading to mental health issues but the most common symptoms are as you mentioned like fatigue and just uneven energy feeling like lethargic needing needing coughing just feeling exhausted all the time chronic fatigue seconds are Cravings so cravings for sweet foods which I used to have all the time by the way uh cravings for sweet Foods throughout the day whatever's sweet and sugary next to you like you probably want to eat it at some point during the day and then things like brain fog lack of focus that's also very linked to your glucose levels and then we also see of course you know long term when your glucose levels are deregulated type 2 diabetes is the main consequence but you also see many things like hormonal issues like infertility PCOS difficult menopause and the list kind of goes on and on and on and you realize that depending on your body and who you are these glucose spikes and this disregulated glucose is going to affect you in so many ways do you see it in your skin Health as well skin so you know the more glucose spikes you have the more there's going to be inflammation in your body and a lot of skin conditions like acne psoriasis eczema they're actually inflammation-based diseases or problems and so when you increase your glucose spikes those will get stronger as well more acne more psoriasis more eczema glucose is also very connected to sleep the more glucose bikes you have the less restful your sleep will be and also to aging so the more glucose spikes you have especially from sweet Foods the faster you age and that shows on your skin as wrinkles but also internally your organs start to slowly deteriorate so every system in your body virtually will do much better when your glucose levels are steady and that's what I was starting to learn for myself this moment I mean I remember first started changing my diet and I started cooking and I was making such simple foods like it was literally sweet potatoes with brown rice and tofu and avocado I mean it was nothing groundbreaking by any means but I started making these very simple recipes and within a few months I just noticed things were shifting my health which had been stuck in a dire place for a long time was slowly starting to improve I felt infinitely better but also it tasted great and it was actually very easy to do and I'd always and you had a great time doing it yeah and I'd assume vegetables grow so you know healthy eating wasted time and I had this sense of like it was almost Evangelical I was like why doesn't anybody else do this and it sounds so strange to say this now because it's 12 years later and plant-based interest in health is obviously everywhere but 12 years ago nobody was talking about this no one was interested you know eye rolls left right and Center when I started talking about it and started saying how you eat it's linked to different diseases and what now is I think well mostly accepted but I think there's still a kind of Challenge on it in some places but it was a it was a very interesting moment I felt this kind of like fire in me to say this is changing my life and other people need to know about this too and suddenly this kind of completely unexpected career happened because as I said I felt quite Evangelical about the fact that everybody should be doing this let's be honest I quickly learned a few years later that not everybody wanted to hear about it something quite humbling that experience yeah yeah some people were like can you be quiet I don't really like you um and you live and you learn but it was yeah it was this kind of extraordinary light bulb moment of I've got I've just got to share this with the world and I'm an introvert as well like I'm not someone that would have ever imagined having a job sharing this sort of thing with other people I completely relate that same thing happened for me it felt like my soul was lit up it felt like every time I was looking at papers about glucose I just felt this energy in me and that was really uh like I loved going to those places I loved learning more I love trying to tell everybody I could about glucose and kind of like you I started thinking like oh my God everybody needs to know this I was telling my colleagues and stuff and people were also you know the responses varied some people like my family was super into it and they were like oh my God tell us everything on everything and some people were like what like just leave me alone so I I learned a lot also in those moments about how do you communicate new stuff to people in a way that feels exciting and that's where the idea of the glucose graphs came about that's where I thought okay all these cool papers that I'm discovering I want to tell people about them but there's a marketing issue nobody cares if I print out the scientific paper and put it on their desk nobody cares it's a little dense yeah it's a little dense very dry like nobody cared and so you know when I want to do something and this is one of the parts of myself that has led to many wonderful things in my life I I'll get it done like I'll do it and so I felt that feeling of like I'm gonna find a way to make this interesting and that's when I thought I'm gonna use my own glucose data to make these cool little graphs to illustrate the scientific papers that I'm finding so that people have a visual of the discovery and it was just me on my computer taking a screenshot of my glucose monitor app importing it into my computer cutting it out in a little design software you know Googling photo of orange juice and like downloading the photo putting it on the thing and then you know sending the screenshot to my phones I mean it was really just me basically in my garage trying to figure out can I make a cool little visual but that was all I thought I was gonna do I just thought I was gonna help people understand this cool thing that I had discovered but it was kind of like one step after another I never had a greater Vision the the sort of narrative that the glucose goddess and I you know I translate Cutting Edge science into easy tips to help your physical and mental health like that came years afterwards at the beginning it was just me following this cool little energy source that I was in relationship with now I was like wow I just love this topic it's so cool I want people to know but it was that's all I thought it would ever be it's interesting that though isn't it because I think so often we all have ideas and things we'd love to do in our life and we find it hard to believe it's possible that we could you know go from our day job to our interests or our passion becoming something that is a kind of fully fledged career and it's you know you start in very very similar way to how I started it was you know a side project you know you're blog exactly and in my parents kitchen and as you say very very similar like literally you know as basic as it comes but then just taking next step and next step and Next Step but being so excited about it that you believe that it could become something and it's interesting this idea that you can you can take this little idea and it can become so mainstream and so popular and kind of want to better work completely blow up and I think it's again that's very inspiring to believe that any of us could potentially do that too yeah and again like this concept of when you look at my work now it seems like oh it's so clear I had an idea from the beginning you know the message is so easy the visuals are so cohesive you feel like oh wow she had it all figured out but really I had no idea what this was going to turn into I had no clue the first step I took was to reach out to a few scientists in San Francisco who were working on this topic and I I met with them I was like hey I'm interested in glucose can I meet with you and I didn't get a very good vibe from them I reached out to a few companies they were working on glucose stuff again and didn't get a very good vibe from them and so all these little moments happened where I took one more step so I wrote that one blog post and then I asked my one friend to also put on the Depot's Monitor and I looked at her data and I gave her some insights back and then I was like okay maybe I'll make it like a little Instagram account so that I could share these graphs and my Instagram account was called my name so juicy interest pay which it wasn't the duka's goddess in the beginning you know I had no clue and so slowly I started posting and I started seeing what people liked the most and I started really begging for attention so I would find these big Instagram accounts of big Wellness people and I would send them a DM and be like hi I'm Jesse I have a small Instagram account where I'm posting about glucose because I think it's a really cool topic like would you please repost me nobody answered I mean I must have sent hundreds of DMs like that I remember emailing a lot of people on LinkedIn as well people who worked in the wellness space like hi I have this Instagram account can you please check it out hundreds and maybe one person answered I was like oh yeah that's cool thanks and they would re-share a post of mine in my story in their story and then slowly the thing grew but really really really really slowly and I kept listening to the few comments that like my aunt and my mom were posting on my on my Instagram post and I'm taking feedback about what they liked and they didn't like and I I was still working at the genetics company at the time and I'm very risk-averse I have sort of Duality to my personality where I'm very risk-averse but also I'm very bullish that I can do stuff so it's this weird little relationship between two parts of me so I thought I'm gonna spend six months working on this project one hour a day in addition to my day job and then after those six months I'll decide if I want to continue but I told myself regardless of what happens even if I only have 35 followers at the end of the six months I'm gonna keep doing one hour a day for six months and that to me was the most crucial decision I ever made in this whole journey to invest one hour a day for six months because so many times in those six months I wanted to quit because I had 85 followers and I was just like I've had 85 followers for two weeks now I still can't get 86 and if I had not made that deal with myself I would have never seen it through so just that one hour a day really allowed me to kick off the project and at the end of six months I think I had like five thousand followers I was like okay and that's an hour a day of like begging sending DMS as I just mentioned but that helped me start and at the end of the six months I decided to quit my job and try to do this full-time but again I didn't know what I was going to do exactly I thought I should start a tech company because I wasn't Silicon Valley and that's what people did and people kept giving me advice they were like raise a million dollars or do this send that do it this way do it that way and I started realizing I should only use other people's advice to see how I feel about doing that thing so I should never take advice I should only listen to the reaction I'm having to that advice as a way to narrow down a little bit what I want to do does that make sense it does and I think this is one of the things that fascinates me with people because as I we were saying before we started like normally when you get to know someone I'm not sorry personally but you start seeing them and you follow their work and you're interested in their profession you see them in this more polished form when they for want of a better word arrived they don't have 85 followers um and it's it's all just a little bit shinier and I think that we believe therefore that we can't do it you know I always really relate to this idea that you can't be what you can't say and I think that that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in stripping back that actual experience of building something up whether that's the professional side or the kind of mental health and physical health side because it's to understand that you went through the depths of Darkness with your mental health where you felt life almost wasn't worth living to this breakthrough where you feel so alive and so so alive Ella I felt like when I was working on this like my mental health was actually great yeah I was so I felt so connected I was like this is making my soul light up I feel it feels so good and it was so wonderful and you know people now see the polished version I can assure you when I had 85 followers most people were telling me I was dumb that's what that was what I was going to come on to because that's what I always find interesting is that again I think one thinks it puts us off this was scared of failing we're scared of looking silly for once for better word I know I relate to that completely you know I think in the beginning everyone sort of was just saying what is Ella doing you know my dad was always saying when does Ella get a real job you know there was just this sort of slightly Awkward Moment where everyone was just a little bit confused and kind of almost felt like felt quite sorry for you because you've been poorly and now you had a Blog and like good for you for drying and there's just this interesting moment I guess of it grows beyond that and then people say oh that's really cool but there's this interesting ability I think that you have to have to cultivate self-belief and and belief in what you're doing and that you can do it and it's worth doing yeah um and be able to drown out that noise because it's very and for anyone who wants to make changes in their life I think sometimes those changes start to feel so challenging because often when you're trying to do something quite different yeah that makes other people feel nervous or it creates some kind of reaction in them and then you're getting all this criticism and noise and it's very difficult to keep following through with something absolutely and I had a few important moments so when I decided to do the six months thing I actually was full of fear I thought like am I Really Gonna Do This am I Really Gonna like invest in this Instagram account where I'm talking about glucose and monogamous looks stupid or like so many people are already talking about this like why that's what I thought I was like this space is so saturated like I thought because I was so in it I thought glucose is everywhere like that's all these companies doing it but I I had this little cool analysis moment I said okay is the fear of trying this and failing greater or smaller than the fear of being 80 years old and looking back and having never tried to go after this thing that my soul was calling for and so I decided you know what even though I'm terrified I'm gonna do it because it's more terrifying to never try and to imagine myself you know as a grandmother being like oh man I wish you know I had that idea and I wish I did it because this other girl you know the glucose girl well she just like crushed it and it could have been me I mean that's the thing I was trying to tease out like yes there's fear but is there another fear that's greater that can push you and then another thing is also just setting yourself very simple easy goals so you know the 85 86 followers is a real thing I saw okay this week I'm gonna send 150 DMS and I'm gonna try to get five new followers those were my goals you know and keeping it really simple not telling yourself okay I have to build a brand that's way too overwhelming you have to just set yourself really easy attainable goals and one last thing that really helped me and before we started recording the podcast I told you that I had been just reading my progress diary that I started in 2019 to remind myself of everything I had gone through at the beginning of the project I started the documents on my computer and every month I would write two to three sentences about how the glucose project was going so month one is like January 2019 I'm thinking about this glucose project wouldn't it be cool if I could show visually the data from the scientific studies and then just one month after another the small little entries of this progress and now when I'm feeling low I look back and I'm like wow I've come a long way and that helps so much to cultivate that belief in yourself that you can do hard things that you can improve that you don't know what's ahead and then you have to trust yourself and that you know you're doing amazing that helped me so much absolutely love that I think we so often need that obviously as humans we're kind of program to to seek out the negative that negativity bias and I think it's so important to remind yourself of that and any kind of mental or physical note to show that yes you might not have potentially made the progress you wanted but that you've still moved forward yeah and it was a piece you know exactly and and I you know often you have to take two steps back to to go forward again I think that's a very humbling lesson that you have to keep coming back to in any part of your life but anything that helps you remember that you're still on an upward trajectory even if you've taken a little visit down do you have sort of that sort of ritual like that where you check in with yourself and all the amazing things that you've built as well it's something we've actually not been very good at to be frank and I think that's part of the reason why I've become so passionate about it because I think sometimes we've hit these huge milestones and we've almost let them go unnoticed without celebrating totally because we're drawn into the busyness of life and the busyness of the company and exciting things will happen you know we've just surpassed 10 000 stockists for example like that's a huge number there are 10 000 shops where you can buy what we sell yeah and I actually only realized that because I was just on a dock in like an internal document the other day and it's so things like that will happen and I don't think we necessarily have taken enough notice of it and that's been a big personal learning for me because running business is very challenging and you have new challenges every single day like things generally do not go right it's a problem-solving exercise and so I think that when all the ups and downs lead you to one step up it's so important to remember that so I've become quite passionate about that because I think otherwise particularly after the last three years obviously covered and the various lockdowns and brexit and inflation have been I think more challenging in retrospect than we almost realize like I think that there were certainly points last year where actually I think both of us really started to hate what we did it felt like the soul had been removed from it the joy had been removed it was only bad news every day was bad news every plan was canceled everything we'd work so hard from it kind of felt on a knife edge and it felt like you were just consistently scrambling to just stay where you were and you could do that for so long but after three years it had become and that will obviously be a very familiar feeling for anyone who's also navigated as we all have all those challenges but I think it's just really heightened my sense of reminding myself when things are good and when good things have happened and I think you know I just finished my amazing book called I may be wrong and if you haven't read it you've got to read it and anyone that's saying you've got to read us by this Swedish monk who unfortunately passed away last year more wisdom in that book than I've ever come across in my life is so beautiful but it's this ultimate such a strong reminder of the fact that the only thing you have got is the present and it's just almost laughable that we as humans think that we can control anything external you can only do your best and keep putting one step forward but when things are good you've got to remind yourself of that because you never know what's around the corner yeah and I feel similarly now you know I get to work on all these amazing projects and I can use all my creativity to this greatest extent but I know how precious this moment is like I know that I'm really lucky right now that I got people interested in blood sugar and that it's helping people and you know that it's people are talking about this and people are healing and I get to do all these amazing things that I never thought I'd be able to do but I know how fleeting that is and even though I hope it doesn't stop I live my life as if it's going to stop so that I'm in this gratefulness and gratitude of the amazingness like the fact that they get so good on your podcast you know like when I first started you were one of my Inspirations I was like Wow Ella deliciously Ella like she's cracked it you know and now I'm here with you and like that's just so cool when I first started I thought if I get 10 000 followers on Instagram that'll be the greatest success ever I wrote that in my progress diary and now I have like a hundred times that so it's just I'm so aware of how rare it is to be able to get to this point and do the work I'm doing so I'm just like super grateful and it's a nice nice feeling and what is it do you think in particular like any tips or ideas about thriving in your nutrition that have particularly resonated with people well I think if you look at it globally like the tips that I share they're additive they don't ask you to restrict Foods take Foods away never eat sugar again they're very easy and cheap right anybody can do them today and you feel the impact of them immediately and so I was lucky enough to come across this scientific research that all I'm doing is sharing like I don't do the research myself right I'm just here as the communicator between the scientists and the general public and so I was lucky that this research is very recent and that I sort of stumbled upon it when I did because nobody had shared it before and the most important things I think in terms of the actual science that I share are like the Savory breakfast starting your meals with some vegetables you know doing 10 minutes of movement after a meal vinegar clothes on carbs like I don't know these hacks have become a little family of super easy gentle Giants that everybody loves incorporating into their lives and almost just to go into the tips kind of one step further well actually in a way one step more simple because I think sometimes we make meals we don't really think about the impact they'll have and actually interestingly I've certainly been a very lazy um mindset the last six months life just felt so busy and I've been much lazier with my meals yeah and my goodness I felt the effect of it actually in the last few weeks I've been back on kind of original delicious Ciela all the greens all the sweet potatoes all the tofu all the brown rice and those sorts of ingredients and I feel amazing like literally two or three days in and I feel incomparable to the week before and I think sometimes I just almost need those personal reminders they revive my passion for why it's so important to think about what you're eating but it's almost just the the basics of thinking that when you're putting a meal together you need protein and you need fat and you need complex carbohydrates and you can't just eat white pesto for your meal and think you're going to feel great yeah but you know that realization that you have that food is infecting your health like for many people they don't even know that at all right they don't know that if they change the way they eat they're eating they're going to have a completely different experience of their day and maybe they have this concept of like oh you know I should be eating healthier but that often feels really daunting and just kind of vague and so I think what you do so beautifully and what I try to do as well is like breaking it down into making it really simple and easy and approachable and I think once people feel that it's hard to go back I mean sure we have moments where we just don't do it anymore but we know that we should go back to it because it really helps yeah it does exactly then it's very normal and I think that's important to know to kind of not to oscillate a little bit we all have that life gets in the way but as you say once you build those habits they're very very very easy to go back to and what is it that you do every day to feel your absolute best Savory breakfast that's a total non-negotiable for me I grew up eating a Nutella crepe every morning for breakfast and I thought it was completely normal to be famished at 11AM and exhausted I had no concept that my breakfast was impacting me and so now a Savory breakfast which means a breakfast that doesn't contain too many sweet things that's focused around Protein that's a really important beautiful way to keep your glucose levels steady for the whole day and unlock this sort of Eagle Energy that you get when your glucose levels are steadier so that's something I do absolutely every single day veggie starter so when I have a meal I'll have a little veggie portion at the beginning that helps to create this mesh in your intestine that protects you from too many glucose bikes that's really powerful is that because of the fiber absolutely yeah the fiber creates that mesh in your upper intestine that like viscous protective mesh that prevents too many glucose molecules from actually making their way from your digestive tract into your bloodstream super important so what is does that look like you just have a little bit of salad before me it can be anything so you you should strive to make your veggie starter about 30 of your meal so it can be any of your favorite veggies you know maybe it's roasted cauliflower with some tahini on it maybe it's a nice little fresh spinach salad with some pomegranate seeds like any vegetable works and in the glucose goddess method I have all these amazing super easy recipes to help you do just that so that I do every day clothes on carbs I do everything so that means if I'm gonna eat starches or sugars I never eat them on their own I add some protein fat or Fiber to them and then one I try to do every day as well is doing a bit of movement after a meal so maybe after lunch I'll go for a walk you know if I'm at home after dinner like I'll do some calf push-ups on the couch like these these simple little moments that help my body deal with the food in an easier way and so lead to fewer glucose Spike symptoms and yeah and what I love about that and that's what I've become so passionate about is is that redefining of Wellness so it doesn't need to be that you've got to do all these like very complicated things as you said you could go for a 10 minute walk on your lunch break after you eat some lunch get outside obviously the sunlight is going to give you an extra boost as well for your mental well-being and that is something that most of us can do but to your point I think sometimes when we want to eat healthier live Health more healthily it feels overwhelming it feels incredibly overwhelming I don't know where to start I don't have a spare hour or two hours or three hours in my day and you don't know what information to use I mean I felt that way I was totally lost I was like I want to feel better I have no idea what to do exactly I remember that transition because I felt like I'd really you know for example figured out what made me feel really healthy and then when my daughter was born I thought oh wow okay I actually don't have any time for any of that you know I used to go to yoga class pretty much every single day before work at 6 30 in the morning obviously that's not going to happen anymore and it was realizing oh wait a second I can do 10 minutes at home and it still has a huge impact or I can go for a 10 or 15 minute walk and it still has a huge impact on my health and the way that I feel and it's figuring out that balance for you but it's realizing that it doesn't have to be wildly complicated and what you're talking about are simple things like adding a fat in protein to a Meal which is very achievable and by doing that you can feel like a very very different person absolutely and I think also why the glucose science I'm sharing is um so interesting to people and they want to do the haxie because I show them you know how it works on my body and you can see these visual explanations of how the veggie starter reduces the spike of the meal and human beings are very visual people and so I love being able to give these you know beautiful images that show you what's happening in your body and I think that's super motivating to be able to see proof because otherwise you're like I'm not you know I'm not so sure like this is a piece of advice like another but just to see the spike and then to in your body feel how different your body is feeling that your energy is better your Cravings are reduced that's also a huge motivator even if you start with a tiny thing even if you have one tiny little baby carrot before your dinner tonight instead of not having and tiny baby carrots or not having any vegetables in your meal just doing that little thing is going to help you so much and it's going to be so much better than doing nothing and that approach that I have which is a similar approach I took when I was starting the project which is like 85 to 86 followers that's what I'm going for that's my goal that's what I'm going to celebrate we need to celebrate the small tiny things maybe it's two calf raises at your desk after you know after your meal maybe it's like 30 seconds of yoga instead of a full amazing class like all these things I want people to feel positive and to celebrate them there's so much joy that you can bring to your life and then you build your self-confidence and then there's a virtuous cycle it is you start to feel like a superwoman I used to hate working out now I'm like I can't wait to go to the gym I can't wait I love it because I just built that in myself yeah and then there are other things you do outside of nutrition on a day-to-day basis to really look after yourself because I imagine it's pretty intense work you've been doing over the last year yeah has stress been a challenge I have phases of intense stress and phases where I'm feeling pretty good but there are some things I do every day so every night when I'm in bed before I go to bed I open this app where I keep a little diary and I rate my mental health for that day on a scale of one to five and regardless of my stress levels regardless of if somebody yelled at me on the street whatever like what I'm rating is just my mental health so how in my body do I feel how scared of being alone do I feel you know looking back to how I thought when I was 19 and often you know I rate it five out of five and just to remind myself that no matter what's happening around me I feel better in my brain that brings me so much peace and gratitude and I've been doing that for four years now so I have a little app with like four years of these one out of five ratings that helps me so so much and then in the morning another thing I do also phone related I don't look at my phone for the first half an hour after I wake up that helps me hugely oh me too I think that's a kind of prerequisite for life it's so tough because I used to just take my phone open Instagram it's 7 45 and I'm in my bed and just that that sucks all your energy you know and you're just are just totally dissociated for the rest of the day so that's an important one too and then I just you know I just chill when I can if I have half an hour between meetings I'll just like watch a Netflix show I love and eat some dark chocolate like I have no problem going into Gremlin mode as soon as I have the opportunity to really just sink in and like do something I like to do I don't feel guilty about you know feeling every moment of my day I try to just do the stuff I like doing was that always the case because I think a lot of people myself included struggle sometimes to sit still and sit quietly and it's almost like we can't not reach for our phone and scroll because it's you're so used to those dopamine hits that's a constant go go go go it's um it's definitely hard and I did not used to be like that but now I realize that that's also part of my work like keeping myself healthy is my number one priority because if I'm not feeling good if I am stressed out if I'm addicted to my phone if my brain is all over the place I'm not going to be able to do the work that I do so it's become my number one priority but it wasn't you didn't used to be the case because you know I was working in a company so you can just show up and be exhausted and however it doesn't matter right but now all the Creative Juice and all the ideas and all the stuff comes from me so I I have to be more diligent about making sure that I'm taking care of myself good for you because I think it's it's so important and it's it's not easy by any means so what's next well I have my new book out the glucose goddess method I'm really really excited about it after my first book came out which was sort of like a Bible of all the science and everything I started getting this DM over and over again from people they said Jesse I love your first book but now can you please move in with me and help me actually do the hacks and I thought that was such a good idea so this second book is kind of like me moving in with you for four weeks and helping you take that first step that I was talking about those easy little things so week one we look at breakfast and I have all these beautiful recipes for breakfast week two vinegar which is another wonderful glucose hack week three the veggie starter and week four movement and this book I'm hoping is going to help people really just start and it's a bit like okay don't do anything just follow me you don't have to like think about where to start I'm gonna make it super super simple and because I'm a scientist and I love data in October of 2022 I had 2 700 people go through the four week method so almost 3 000 people went through it and they gave me all their results and so you have to remember these hacks in this method they're all additive it's not about cutting out anything it's about adding stuff to your uh to your everyday and the results were insane so ninety percent of people reduce their cravings seventy percent of people have more energy forty percent of people with hormonal problems like PCOS improve them 40 of people with diabetes also improve their diabetes numbers and my favorite stat 99 of people feel like they have picked up habits for life and are going to continue doing this so truly this book is like the on-ramp to study glucose it's like you want to start you don't know how to start it feels overwhelming start with this and it's going to get you on that virtuous path that we were talking about where everything is going to start you know falling into place and then you're you're on I love that I know people often say I'm over one and I don't know what to do and my number one advice is just start yeah choose one thing exactly drink a glass of water make a cup of chamomile tea you know make a five minute stir fry go outside for 10 minutes put an inspiring podcast run a bath without your phone it doesn't matter what it is just do one thing and do it right now it's so easy to get out of the cycle of positive habits but actually to get back in it you just need to do one two three things and within 24 48 hours you're gonna feel back in it and you're so good at inspiring people to do that it's really cool oh very much likewise and I think it yeah if anyone this thing is like I'm out of the Habit just do one thing today promise yourself that you will do one thing today it doesn't need to be anything hard 10 minute walk 10 minutes for your dinner baby carrot which is one baby carrot you can do it it's better than nothing right and celebrate that baby carrot be like yes I had a baby carrot today before my dinner I helped my glucose stay steadier thanks to the fiber in that baby carrot and I'm proud of myself totally I think we we forget to count the things that we do that help us each day or the things that we've done for ourselves or the great things that we've done we're so quick to look at where we feel we've fallen short and to judge ourselves and we think if we can shift that mindset to feeling and empowered and inspired and self-congratulatory about anything that we did to support ourselves to feel the way we want to feel be the person we want to be that's a brilliant brilliant thing and something that I think we could all myself included do a little bit more of yeah Jesse thank you so much for your time today thank you it's such a pleasure and good luck with the new book thank you so much

Channel: Deliciously Ella

Views: 50,447

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Id: rdTYFUnZDsU

Length: 62min 54sec (3774 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023