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healthier and more healed. I'm so grateful that you're back here today, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest. This guest has been on the show more than anyone else. She was the first guest ever on the show and she's the cutest, most beautiful, most incredible guest we ever have had on the show. Of course, speaking about the one, the only hardest guest to book of all time, longest commute to the studio of all time,
my incredible wife, Radi de v Lukia. For those of you that don't know, Radi is a clinical dietitian, nutritionist and always learning cook. Radi brings a modern approach to the ancient principles of holistic wellbeing and earned her Aravedic Health Counselor one degree at the California College of Aravada. Right now, I couldn't be more excited or more proud of Radi because her book, her first ever book, is
out right now. It's called Joyful. It has more than one hundred and twenty five plant based recipes, and it's all about cooking effortlessly, eating freely, and living radiantly. Obviously, I don't think I've ever wanted you to get a book more than this one, even more than my books. This is the most important book that I want you to get this year. Please go and grab a copy. We've put the link in the caption in the comments.
Wherever you are right now, go and order Joyful. Welcome to the show, my amazing wife and the love of my life, Raddy de Look.
Thanks, Oh my gosh, you're so professional doing this.
I mean we've been doing it for a bit. It's better than the first time you came on, like five years.
Amazing. Thanks for that intro. Really appreciate.
I'm genuinely so proud of you. Like looking at this book, and obviously I've had the inside track of watching you work on this book for the last three years. The amount of energy, the amount of effort, the amount of lives. The amount of devotion that's gone into this book is amazing, and it's so beautiful for those of you that don't know. When you do get it, you can take off this part even though Raddy's face, take my face out, take my favorite part off, and look how beautiful this?
Yeah, I made it that way.
Stunning book.
I wanted people to be able to have a coffee table book but also know that it's my cookbook. But I like the part where you can just take my face off and leave it on your table for a little surprises.
Inside.
I have so many questions for you, because even though I've seen you work on this, I find that when you get inside someone's mind and heart, you understand so much more about what they've created. And even though I've watched you from the outside, I don't always know all the inside. So I want to dive straight in. And one of the things I love about this book is the beautiful pictures you have with your family. Ye, your bar, who's your grandma, your mom, your dad. I'm in it
as well. I've got one picture. But what I love is that your family have been such big inspirations for you in your cooking. Journey, and I just wanted to go through your grandma, mom, sister, family, dad, like you know, just the people in your life that have inspired you, and I wanted to know what have you learned from each of them or what have you gained from each of them in your cooking journey.
I would say that because one both of us grow up an Indian family, food is literally, always has been, and always will be the center of everything, whether it's celebrations, there is making sure that we eat dinner every single day together. And so I think I've learned to form connections through eating because of having grown up with it. That is my place where I feel I can connect to someone the most when we're sharing, you know, a delicious meal or a nice dessert together.
And so there's that.
But also, you know, both our moms had full time jobs growing up, but she still managed to make breakfast, like homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. And so watching her do that for us with so much love, and also eating her food and feeling her love through the food, I think my deep connection with food comes purely through that. To having experienced that from her, my grandma's the same she passed everything down to my mum
in that way. My mom was cooking with my grandma from the age of like twelve, and she gets her love for it from her as well. So I definitely think that it feels like something generational that's been passed down into.
Me and my dad.
My dad is someone who, you know what he said, quiet, He's so sweet, and whenever my mom would go away for work or anything, he would always step in and be someone who he wouldn't be like, let's just order out. He would find something he could make mac and cheese really well. So my dad's mac and cheese is.
In the cookbog.
That's like my one memory of growing up where my mom would go away he would make this mac and cheese and we'd the one time we'd get to sit in front of the TV and eat, and we'd eat mac and cheese and sit in front of the TV. And so I really I feel like I mean, which
is the same as everyone. I'm sure I could not have created this book without all of the inspiration that I've got from them, Like all the recipes are so inspired by where we're from, like from India, from our heritage of things that we've grown up eating and then my mom and all the things that I feel like
on my comfort foods when I think about her. And so actually a lot of the recipes are connected to memories and things that I can I can make and then feel the love and the energy of the person that I ate it with or that I cooked it with or that cooked it for me. It's completely weaved and and just created through family. Like that is what the book is about, and that is what I hope people feel when they read it.
Yeah. No, it comes across and it's so beautiful because you see all of those influences and all of those energies that come in. And one of the most interesting things about you is that you obviously trained as a nutritionist and then a dietitian, both of your degrees, and then you've become an irvatic health counselor and studied diavasa as a big part of your learning journey. And I know you consider yourself a continuous student and wanting to
develop those skills. But walk me through how those two things have impacted your understanding of food.
I started off doing my degree as a nutritionist and a dietitian, and so then I was working in hospitals where I was seeing everything from diabetes clinics to the elderly who are malnourished, to little children like pediatric clinics trying to get little fussy eaters to eat a little bit more. And so I actually loved working in that. I loved being someone who could be patient, facing seeing them every week, trying to see their progress, and feeling
like I had a direct impact to them. But the only part I kind of struggled with was naturally, when you're part of a system, you have to recommend what the system recommends. And so that was a bit difficult for me because I always wanted to be food forward versus supplements or you know, anything in a bottle, but sometimes that's not, you know, the easiest or most efficient way. And so I definitely loved it, but I felt there
was a slight disconnect. And then when we moved to New York, I threw myself back into study and I found Araveda. And for anybody who doesn't know what Aveda is, ira means life. Veda means knowledge and it's basically the science of life.
And it as soon as.
I learned about it, it clicked everything felt like it made complete sense, and it felt just like when you go to a place and it feels like home. When I learned about Aravada, I felt like I'd found my home in the practice and the rituals and the understanding
of my body. The differences between the two were incredible, Like, you know, Western medicine and Western healing is all about curative, like you get to the point of disease and then let's figure out how to cure it, whereas in iravader it's all about how can we start understanding our body, How can we start noticing the symptoms, the things our bodies trying to tell us, and how do we tune into that so that we catch everything a few steps before disease so we can actually have an opportunity to
prevent it. And on top of that, it's so individual, like a lot of the time with Western medicine it's one size fits all. And I really appreciate so much of Western medicine, the diagnostics, like how we're able to figure things out through so many systems that we have, but the one thing we kind of lack is this individual nature of the way you eat tomato, which we know you eat tomato, and I eat tomato whenever I
make a meal. It affects you so differently to me, and so I love the INDIVI your nature of healing our body as me like, not what this person online is telling me, not what this book is telling me, but let me observe and be an active participant in my health every single day, so that when I eat something, I'm not eating this salad because this person told me
it was the best thing for their body. I know I'm eating it because it's the best thing for my body, and I feel it through the way my body feels, through how my digestion is. Yeah, those are like a couple of differences that I found. And then I just started learning more and more about this holistic practice and started practicing it. So now I know how it feels and I can share it with other people having practiced and lived it.
I love that point that you just made about being an active participant in how you feel. And I didn't start with this, but I wanted to say it now. Sadly, you had to give up all those patients in everyone you worked with to only have one patient, and that
hasn't been me for the last eight years. That you've been coaching me, and you've been my health coach and my health guru, and you have helped me with so many things, whether it was really working on my sugar addiction, working on my addiction to soft drinks, pizzy drinks, what do they call them? Me eisodas so many things I had that I thought i'd figured out. So I loved meditating and reading and working on the mind, but I didn't want to physically work out. I didn't care about
the body, and you helped me understand that. You probably switched my sleep schedule around. I think when we met, I was someone who could sleep a lot later, and now I sleep really really early, and that was a big part of what you changed. And all of those have made me feel healthier and happier every single year
because you've helped me build these habits. And I just want to add none of that was done through force, None of that was done through telling me what to do, but you were always patiently coaching and guiding me as in how I showed enthusiasm or what I wanted to learn. And so what I love about this book is that you've taken all of that and you've now made it accessible to anyone who wants to change their habits. And
that's what's so amazing about this book. It's not a cookbook in that yes, it does have one hundred and twenty five recipes, and it does have it does have recipes.
He is a cookbook.
It is a good book, but it really has all of these day to day guides on habits and how to change your rituals and your morning routine and your evening routine and practices with food and without that improve your life. And so as someone who's been a recipient of your coaching and of your guidance, I'm so excited that everyone gets to have this now through Joyful.
We've been such a good student, I feel like I haven't even had it hasn't really been you being a student. You've always wanted to make yourself better in some way, and I think that's the difference, right like you can we know this from having parents and you know, having different teachers in our life that I've learned best through observing someone or experiencing how amazing they are through the
practices that they've done. So when I was writing the book, I knew I wanted it to come from a place of love and knowledge, because I think that is the place where people learn the best and make sustainable change. It's like I can tell people that eating a certain way is terrible for you and you're going to die earlier.
Like whatever it is that you know, you could say to really scare someone into it, but that just makes them either want to hide from themselves or it makes them want to cut up into a ball and kind of be like I need to ignore this because it's just too much information and it's overwhelming. And I do think what you said about you know, me teaching you, you were an active participant in your health, and I think that is actually the key.
Like for me, I've intertwined. I said.
When I first wrote this cookbook, I was like, I do not want it to just be a cookbook. I love sharing food with people, it is my love language. But what I want more is food is just one aspect, Like we all know food is just one pillar of our health. And then to be able to intertwine throughout your day all of these micro these micro habits that create such major impact. And that's what it did for me.
Like one of the things in there is breath work and I think about this so much, and I just took a deep breath now, because breath has honestly saved me from being someone who has mass anxiety going into things that I find so difficult, and by the way, not even difficult things things that I find difficult, so going into events where there's lots of people coming onto interviews and speaking in places where I don't have full control over it, like having all those my minor things
which actually impacted me so much. Breath work has been the one thing that's allowed my mind to slow down, for me to collect my thoughts, for me to energize myself in the afternoon, for me to help relax me in the evening.
And so I've shared.
Breath works to like really take people through their day to tackle and handle everything that comes our way. And so from breath work to the way that we eat and the way that we connect to our food, all of that helps us create more joyful moments throughout the day. And the more joyful moments you have throughout the day, the more joy you end up with every single day, Like it accumulates throughout the day.
I want to dive into some things in the book now because I want to give people a sense of how this cookbook is shaped and curated in order to help people. And I wanted to start off by asking you this question about the modes, because you break down the modes is like a big part of your book, and you talk about the three Could you walk us through these three modes and how we think about food when it comes to these three Yeah.
So the three modes in AVEDA essentially the energies of the world, of everything that we eat, of everything that exists externally and internally. And so there's the mode of goodness, the mode of passion, and the mode of ignorance. And so I've spoken about it in the sense of our lifestyle and our food. That's how I focused it in the book. And so mode of goodness are basically foods which make you feel good on a basic level. It's foods that nourish you deeply, that that nourish your body,
that that are filled with prana. Now, prana is life force, and what that means is having the most amount of vitality and energy in that in that produce. And so a simple way to explain it would be you pick an apple from the tree. At that point that apple has the most amount of nutrient value, it has the most amount of life, and it's just been taken from the tree. It has, you know, the most, it's the
most abundant in that form. And then you take it home and you leave it out for a couple of days, and you leave it out, and slowly, slowly, the quality externally starts getting bad. You see these brown spots that come up, and then slowly it starts getting mushy inside. And so the thing is, you can eat something in its purest form, or it can end up degrading and becoming something which can move through the most down to
something that's no longer beneficial for you. But the point is trying to eat the most amount of foods that that form within this that fall within this mode of goodness. And so the types of foods would be fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, you know, like avocados, and like just all the foods that.
Come from a fresh, natural place.
And so if you possibly can bi organic way you can the less chemicals, the less things that are put onto your foods that are unnatural, the better. And then lifestyle wise, mode of goodness are again the things that don't just make you feel good in the moment, but actually bring goodness to your life long term. And so a lot of the time we mistake our temporary joys for things which are good for us, and I think
is learning how to differentiate the two. So you know that for me, when I'm eating a sugary downer and the moment, it brings me joy and sometimes that's great, but actually in the long term it may ruin my sleep, it may make me lisagic in the morning. And so the foods that actually bring energy and good digestion, all the things that make your bodily systems feel good, those are the foods in the mode of goodness, and also
the activities are the same. And then when you get to the mode of passion, So all those foods that you eat that give you immediate gratifications, so the sour, the salty, the chili, all the things that you'd put into your food to create that kind of burst of flavor into it, those are still okay to have. But again in moderation mode of goodness being the larger amounts
of foods than activities that you do. Mode of passion will be a really intense workout that gets you sweating and you're like, oh, at the end of it, you know, it really gets your aggression out. So that's a mode of passion activity. And the foods would be what I just said, like chilis and sour foods and spices that are really intense.
And they have their place as well, of course they do.
All of these have their place, by the way, they all have their place, but as we go down, you have to have less and less of those foods. And then the last one is mode of ignorance, and those are the foods that essentially make your body feel like
lifeless and lethargic and make your digestion feel sluggish. And those type of foods end up being foods which are deep fried because it's so dense and heavy in oil, leftovers, foods that have gone bad in the fridge that have been there for a long time, basically food that have lost their life, and according to Abada, also meat and foods which no longer have life in them, like animals that have died and then they no longer have that vitality.
And so yeah, it's just being mindful about all the things that fit into those mods and how they're affecting you. And it's not just on our body. It has the ability to affect our mind and our consciousness too, because everything carries energy, So whatever energy that food has when we're digesting it, it's also assimilating into our blood and then our bones and then our entire being, and so
it can also affect our minds. So a lot of the foods in those categories, they also will affect our mind in the same way they affect our body.
And I love this because I know you've done this for yourself before you keep and I've been You've recommended it for me to do as well is doing like a food diary or food audit for a week and actually just testing it out, because I think sometimes we don't realize how subconsciously some of these things work and how subtly they work. And if you hadn't taught me in how to spot these things where it's like, well did you sleep bad? Oh wait a minute, what did
you eat the night before? Right? Often we think it's so mental, but so often it is physical. It is biological. It is to do with what you consumed.
Yeah, we've I think we've tuned out of our body so much. You know, when they say about your own inner voice of when you're in a voice, when you've got too many voices that you have allowed to be louder and louder around, your inner voice becomes you know, quiet,
or it becomes damp. And in the same way our inner cues, our inner intuition about our own body, we kind of end up losing that because we're constantly hearing avocados are amazing for you, So you end up being in avocado every day, even if it's making your tummy feel bad.
These salads are amazing for you. So then you end up being those salads, and slowly your body is screaming at you.
Well, first of all, it starts to whisper, and it's like, oh it's a bit, I feel a bit uncomfortable, and then you ignore it. And then you're like, oh, my skin is breaking out and or I'm losing my hair or you know, your external symptoms start to come. And still you're like, it's nothing to do with my food.
You know, I'm going to keep eating this, And so you slowly, slowly start quietening your own bodily cues that you completely start to deteriorate your body just because you've stopped listening to it, and then your body stops communicating to you, and if it does, it will scream at you until your body gets to the point of breaking down. You get ibs, or you end up getting gut issues, you end up getting skin issues, and so we don't seem to be able to catch ourselves in the point of, Oh,
I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable today. I wonder what it was that made me feel uncomfortable. And so the diary is really important because if you do struggle with any physical you know, problems at the moment, digestive issues, whatever, start doing the diary of this is what I ate
and this is how it made me feel. Two to three hours after that's usually how long it will start taking to digest your food, and then start pairing that up with Okay, this didn't make me feel good, so I'm going to cut that out and then me see how I feel. It's a process of elimination and it does take a little bit of work, but it makes such a difference because then you're not Then your body will start talking to you a little bit more the more you listen to it.
Yeah, it's like what I told you last night, where I've been exercising, I've been meditating, I've been feeling really great. I've been sleeping really well. And then for the past four nights, I've just had such a busy schedule that my morning routine, evening routine, everything went out of wag. And then last night I was like, I just need to eat sugar, and I know exactly why. I know. I was like, I literally haven't turned to where was last night?
I literally for three weeks.
Yeah, for three weeks I was I had no refined sugars, and I was absolutely fine. But then the last four nights, my schedule was crazy. And so last night I ordered a chocolate fudge cake at Tirama Soup and had a scoop of ice cream and it was amazing, and I'm really happy I did it. But at the same time, I noticed why I was craving it, because for three and a half weeks, have not craved it at all. And again, I'm not making I'm not trying to food
chain people or make people feel bad. I really enjoyed that food that I had last night, but it was a recognition of how much my body didn't need that when I was doing all these other things and how much I resorted to it as well.
Yeah, well it's a wreck.
You have noticed what your triggers are for wanting foods that are just there to give you a hit that you need. And so you already know that when I have lack of sleep, when I don't have time to rest, when I don't get my weekends, when I'm going from one thing to another to another slowly, it's deteriorating me.
And then I get to that point. And so I think what you've done is you've recognized it, so you know where you're leading, you know where you're going, and then you'll have to you know, you have your sugar dose, which is fine, like everybody loves having a little bit of something, but the fact that you're able to recognize that the I know this is going to happen, like this is what's going to it's going to lead to if I continue down this road.
Yeah donuts tonight, Yeah, definitely. I wanted to dive in. There's something beautiful that you did in your book, and I thought these were really well written and explained and super unique as well, and things that I don't hear people talk about all the time. So I wanted to dive into it. You have nine tips for living joyfully, and the reason I wanted to ask you about some of these my favorite ones is because I think they're underestimated and they have a huge impact on the food
we eat. And so I'm just going to pick some of the ones that I like. So number two is called eat until satisfied, not stuffed. And I was thinking that until I met you, I definitely believed that I would eat till my limit. Yeah, and now I'm like wanting to know what's made and how much there is and everything else. But walk us through why it's important to eat until satisfied, not stuffed.
Yeah, and AVEDA, it says that you should eat until your three quarters satisfied, not for And so what that means is not yourself to the point. So there's such a fine line between eating enough to fuel our body and then eating so much that it then makes us feel drowsy lethargic afterwards, and so learning what those cues are for your body is really important. And so it's easier for our body to digest when we haven't over stuffed.
Like think of your stomach as like a furnace where you constantly keep putting things on top, and so naturally there's only a certain amount of digestive juices that are flowing in your digestive system, so it's like it produces enough for the amount that you should be eating, and then you end up overdoing it and overwhelming it where your digestive juices aren't actually allowed or aren't able to digest everything that's in there. So then what happens is
your food remains undigested. Your undigested food ends up fermenting in your stomach. You then get gut discomfort. You then feel a bit slothy after your meals, feel bloated, feel bloated, so then those those foods end up fermenting, producing toxins in the body. Then you start getting headaches and just feeling really groggy, or they're like, I wonder why I feel this way.
I just ate a full meal.
I felt energized, but I thought I would get energy from it, but instead it's made me feel worse. And so the three quarters full thing is you will know when you've eaten too much when you instead of feeling energized by the meal you're eating, you feel the opposite. You feel lethargic, you feel under the weather, you feel groggy, and so that's a good indication to you that maybe you've either eaten the wrong foods or most likely you've
eaten a little bit too much. And so the way to actually make sure you do that is conscious eating and like mindfully eating, because the fact is, when you're distracted, you've got a burrica in one hand, you're typing on the other, you're talking to people like you're all over the place. So what happens is when you end up eating your food, you haven't yet prepped your body to say, hey, by the way, food's coming. And so when your body knows that, by the way, you may not have even
looked at what you're eating, food start. Your digestion starts as soon as you look at food. That's the beginning of when our digestive juices start flowing. Our tongue knows to produce the enzymes it needs to start, you know, digesting the food from the mouth. And so when you don't give it enough notice, you start eating and your body's like, oh, I wasn't ready to digest all this food.
And so the taking looking at the food, you know, having a prayer of gratitude just before you eat a second with the food to tell your body food is coming to nourish you now, then taking a bite slowly eating it, you'll notice that when you eat slowly, and by the way, I don't mean you have to long out your meal for like an hour, it's just taking bite at a time instead of eating a bite before
the last bite's finished. When you do that, you'll notice, oh, I actually only made it through like three quarters of this burrito, and actually I feel actually great like this, This feels good for me, This feels like enough, whereas if you eat that fast, your body doesn't even get to tell you, oh, okay, I'm stuff now until it's too late.
Absolutely. And then the next one that you were kind of leading onto is this idea of chewing your food, like the importance of that. But before I do that, I want to talk about the one you just said, Like, I think it's so so so interesting thing to hear about how the digestive process starts. I know, like until I met you, had never heard that in my entire life of wait a minute, my body actually has to be ready to eat, But that actually makes so much sense.
It's like when you're at a restaurant, you order what you want and then they have to prepare it. Yeah, and then you're being prepared to eat it. But we almost want our body to respond like technology where it's like on off, like do this now, do that now, and it's almost like, well, no, your body needs to through the scent, through the site, through everything else, like needs to actually feel ready. And that's such a powerful point. It's such an important point.
When you put a kettle onto bore water, like everything takes a little bit of time, and our body is a system, like it takes a second to gear up, just like when it's rested for eight hours at night and then suddenly you're waking up and you're throwing in your coffee and you're throwing in all this heavy food and your body's like, oh my gosh, I just got up. Give me a second. It's like someone screaming at you when you're waking up. And so that's how body feels too.
Chewing your food, Chewing your food.
Oh okay.
So I have this memory of my that my granddad, every time we will sit down for a meal, he would remind all of us you have to chew I think it was like thirty two or like some thirty two times like chew your food, and so everyone would have to sit there chewing their food like thirty two times.
You don't have to do it thirty two times.
That's like the recommended amount because the fact is the more you digest in your mouth, which is what our teeth are for, the more that you break it down, the less word OUs stomach has to do. So if you're eating food, even if it's small, even if it's big, it's like our teeth were made to break down the food. Our tongue was made to release the enzymes to break it down. You skip that part, your stomach's doing double
the work. Then it needs to chewing your food. So if you're having digestive issues, one of the simplest things you could do is chew your food a little bit better, because if your digestive juices or your gut is a little bit weaker, it's going to find it even harder to break things down. So whether it's raw food, so it's you know, sometimes cook foods you can get away with.
Soups you can get away with, of course, but the things you have to really pay attention to chewing more are the things with the roughage around it, so like more fiber around it, the beans, salads, when you're eating salads, especially if chew it well so that it gets broken down.
I mean, that's such a simple yet huge point. I know, as someone who eats very fast, and you've slowed me down so much. But I always found that I had to eat quick because when I worked in the corporate world, you didn't really get a lunch, and so you'd quickly eat, and you didn't want to be seen eating because you're always being judged for not working hard enough.
Wow.
And so I got into this habit of like eating really really quick. And what I realized was, yes, I could eat quick, but it's exactly what you said. I wasn't chewing my food properly. Obviously. I'm then getting cramps or feeling bloated or whatever else it may be, and you don't feel good and now you're not working or you're not alert at work because you're not feeling great anymore. And so it sounds so simple, but that ability to chew your food effectively, And I love what you said
about how the stomach's doing double the work. Again, we don't look at our body as a system. No, and so we don't recognize that, Oh, that's what's putting pressure on my stomach, and that's why I'm feeling pain because I could have eaten food that's good for me, but I'm not chewing you. I'm not breaking it down.
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, I love that one. Okay, I'm pigging some more because these nine methods of eating joyfully are living joyfully are brilliant. So that's a couple of them. I wanted to pick a few more. This one was intriguing to me because you put eat and cook with your hands.
Yes, you know, I mean in our culture and Indian culture and in many of Eastern traditions you eat with your hands. And again that's another way. It's another sign to your body because we've gotten used to holding metal things, so our body doesn't actually know. It could think that we're about to saw something. It could think that we're
about to write something. You know, there's no connection. It's dead material that you're holding onto do and so you start cutting your food up and your your body's looking at it, but it doesn't quite understand. Like so I can see the food, but I can't touch the food and then suddenly you put it into your mouth and it's like, oh, we're eating now. So our hands have nerves and as soon as they start feeding the food.
You know, even with children, if you think about it, touch and texture is such an important part of your body recognizing what you're doing. And so that's just another indication to your body that you are about to eat. And also a connection to food. Again, we have such a disconnect to the food that we're eating. It doesn't kind of allow you to do anything else. Your hands
are a little bit dirty. You're connecting with the food that you're eating, and so one it removes distraction and you doing other things, and two it just allows you to reconnect back to the food that you're eating.
It helps when your hands are a cooking pan, like you can hold really you can hold really hot food like literally throws something into the air and you will just be like sit dowding there going why is Yeah.
My mom calls them asbestos hands. I don't know what that means, but she's always called it that. I think it's like a thing when they were younger, like asbestos. But my mum has it too. I think it's just a cook thing. You just get like numb at the tips of your fingers.
You just pick anything up.
One more that I wanted to focus of all of these, Like I said, there's nine, I'm just being some of my favorites was and this one I think is a big one for people. And this one is a big one for me. Avoid cold drinks and iced beverages.
This is one that whenever I've shared it with people who have had gut issues, without fail, they've said, oh my god, my gut has changed so much since I stopped drinking cold drinks.
Game changer.
And the reason is your body when it is starting to eat, is creating heat. Like if you think about a furnace, you think about a fire for it to burn something. Our digestion is like a fire.
It needs heat.
So there's your body trying to build up this heat and take all its energy towards your stomach, and then you're going and then dampening the fire. Dampening the fire over and over again. Is your body's just heating up. The acids are just building up, and then you're like, oh, let me dialute the acids and let me dampen the fire. The digestivefier that's happening. One part of it is the cold drink, like the cold part of it that's dampening the fire. And the other part is too much liquid
when you're eating is dialuting your digestive juices. What's recommended is like a half a cup of warm water or some warm tea that you can maybe with some spices for your digestion, drinking that slowly sip at a time as you're eating your food, and then like half an hour after or half an hour before you can if you really want to tea, can drink or drink.
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's such a and it's so common, right, Like I grew up in a house where I would have a can of sprite, yeah, chilled right next to my.
Ma the pizza.
Yeah, there is whatever else it may be, and you get so used to it or like you know, we have a friend w or will just put loads of ice into water, yeah, about to have their meal. And it's so normal. It's a normal part of culture. But it's not necessarily good for you.
Yeah, which is the same as everything that we see. It's like there's so much just because it's the most common thing to do it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do for us.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And so those are some of my favorites. I said, there's so many more, but I thought those were so unique, and I'd never heard them anywhere before. I've obviously learned them through you, but they're so simple, and what I love about them is you don't need to you don't need to learn a new skill, you don't need to develop a new habit. These are things that you can start practicing right now.
What else you learn from a book I wanted.
To ask you about. I mean, I learned a lot from your book, but I learned it from you, and now the book is going to help lots of people. So I think one of the biggest things for people these days is a lot of people are missing meals, yeah, and skipping meals, And often what ends up happening is then your first real meal is dinner, like your first real meal, like substantial meal, and naturally we end up over eating or we end up you know, we're trying
to get all the new tune, so let meal. What's your take on skipping meals and how does that affect us? And what can we do if we find that to be a pattern in our life.
Yeah, I would say that you know it's it's a very specific thing to your body type, and you will know just by doing it whether you are the body type that can take it or not. I have a body type where I can not eat in the morning till I've worked out. I work out on an empty stomach. I then will have my meal maybe at like ten eleven o'clock. I will fast for a long period of
time and my body thrives off it. You with your body type, your digestion is so strong and fiery, and your body type is search that you have to have your meals on time. When you wake up, you're ready to eat. You're hungry by the afternoon, like clockwork. You are hungry like every meal has to be at the right time, otherwise you feel that negative effect. You feel
your stomach getting a city like. You feel all those effects, right, And so I would say you really need to I mean, I know, I wish I could give a direct answer, but that would be wrong. You have to see if when I am waking up and if I'm hungry straight away, your digestive system is ready to eat. If you're waking up and you're like, I could go another three hours
without eating. Test out, Test that out for yourself. And so there are certain body types where, especially if you're quite a slim build, you lose weight quite often, quite easily. You generally are quite ravenous and hungry all the time. You probably need to be having your meals regularly, and if your digestion is suffering when you don't, that's an
indication that you need more regular meals. For me, if I end up skipping a meal, my body actually is good with fasting, and it actually feels better sometimes and less lethargic when I do do that. So sometimes I will last off like two meals and I'll be okay with it, but I think, yeah, there's so much where it's like intimittent fasting is amazing, And then someone doesn't. They're like, I feel awful, but like they said, it works for me, but I feel so bad doing it.
Then don't do it. It's not for your body type.
The active participant thing keeps coming up in my mind, but it is work to figure out yourself, just like when you're figuring out your partner and you're figuring out you know your relationship with them.
Your body is the same.
It's waiting for you to listen and learn from it, and it will tell you what it needs.
Yeah, And I think what's been my personal experience is that when you don't listen to these smaller initial warnings, the body just gets louder and harder and harsher, and we think there's something wrong with our body, when actually your body's been doing the right thing all along. This is telling you to be an activity participant and listen to me. It's like your partner that just gets louder and louder and louder if you're not listening, or your
alarm clock gets louder and louder and louder. When you're not.
Listening, you're waking up.
Yeah, exactly, And so your body's trying to get you to do this time. Yeah, yeah, all right. One question I want to ask you is, on a busy day, what's one practice you can implement to make sure you slow down. What's one thing you do and one thing people could do? Because I feel like eating fast it sounds like drinking fast. We do a lot of things fast, and that seems to cause a lot of issues.
For me because as you know, my mind, the way I talk, everything is quite this and then this and then this, and I'm all over the place. And so I can relate to being someone who's very fast minded and constantly feeling like I'm all over the place. I have to just say, breath, work again. Breath before you eat. Take three breaths before you go into something that you're worried about. Take three breaths, like really feel deep breaths going into your body, because we take such shallow breaths.
Your breath is the anchor between your mind and your body. It brings you back into your body. It allows you to reconnect with yourself. And so it sounds really simple, but I guarantee you, like, take a breath right now, Like take a breath and feel what happens to your body. It automatically slows down. Every time I've gone from in this podcast from where I'm speaking fast, I've taken a breath and then I slow down. I've taken a breath
and I've slowed down. And so my cure to having a fast mind and having the habit of being like.
That has been just taking a breath.
And it's like as simple as it gets right, like, breath is there for you. It's ready to be used and navigate your emotions your day and help you in some way if you allow it to.
Yeah, definitely, it's a great natural tool that's built into the body. Yeah, in order to help you set a pace for life. And if you think about it, every single one of your emotions is monitored by breath. Like when we're nervous and we're anxious, our breath gets shallower and quicker. And when we're calm and focused, our breath becomes deeper and slower. And when we're stressed, or we're under pressure, or we're late for something and we're worried,
our breath gets shallower and gets quicker. Exactly when you're feeling like you're in the right place and you made it on time and all of those things, your breath gets deeper and slower again. And we also have always said to people, we also say things like that takes my breath away, like when something's really beautiful, it's breathtaking. And we also say things like let me just catch my breath or let me take the breath because it's
linked to our emotions. And so we've learned to realize that our breath changes, but we haven't learned to realize we can change our breath. And what you've just described is you can choose to change your breath in order to feel the way you want to feel. I completely agree.
Yeah, you can really navigate your emotions through it. Like I think about when I'm crying, Like, depending on how I'm crying, my breath changes completely. You know, if you think about when you see someone really intensely crying, they're breathing so shallow, they're feeling so overwhelmed, and suddenly their breath is getting faster. They can't even speak because they can't, you know, they can't catch their breath to actually say
something thing. And so, yeah, breath can navigate your emotions, your day, your mind everything.
What's something you've changed your mind about this past year when it comes to your mindset around health or the way you eat food?
Protein.
I grew u vegetarian, and my sources of protein being from an Indian family as well, was lintails and beans, and you know those are actually the main sources for us. And then when I started learning more about while I was working out and the amount of protein my body needs, you know, my book, I talk about how the average American I think it was something like has over seventy
five percent more protein than they need. So there's one side where because of the foods that people are consuming, they're actually over eating on protein to a point where it can harm your body. But then I find with vegetarians and if your plant based, you actually can get the right amount that you need.
And I've been managing to.
Do that, but it does take a little bit more work to get it, to navigate and get it into your food. But I've noticed what a difference it's made, Like everything from hair full, hair shedding. When I started increasing my protein, my hair was shedding less, my skin
was getting better. I was feeling more satiated and more full in my meals because sometimes I realized my meals were focused so much on carbohydrates that they were being digested so fast, and I was hungry even though I had such a large meal, I was still hungry so often. And then I started introducing protein and I could last three four hours, five hours between my meals and I
felt satiated. Right, It's made such a difference, And so you know, some of the for anybody who's plant based or thinking about having more plant based days and they want protein. I would say, obviously beans and lentils are great sources of that. But then also, you know, I kind of want to dispel the myth around tofu being bad for you, because there have been so many studies that have been done yes to say that when you have you know, they talk about soyer and how it
affects your hormones and your eastern levels. Those studies were done on people who are having such an excessive amount of soyer. It was like, imagine having five or six blocks of soyer every single day, and so I mean like blocks of tofu. Let's say, so naturally, anything in excess.
Not chunks, large blocks, large blocks.
Yeah, anything in excess, of course, that's going to cause negative effects on your body. Everything has that. There's anything in excess, even water and excess.
You can have too much water.
And so I would say that if you are health having a healthy natural amount of tofu or soyer in your diet, it's not going to affect your hormone levels. And I mean, I'm happy to share the studies at some point you know about that, but I've really researched it because I was scared of it too, so soyer is a great source of it. Another great sauce is from your nuts and your seeds hemp seeds, flax seeds, like you know, in two tablespoons, I think there's nearly
like six grams protein. Now you may think that's a small amount, but you add that into a few dishes every single day, like throughout the day, and you can gain so much from it. And then obviously you've got your your meat alternatives, which do you have that. I try to avoid that as much as possible and get it from natural means.
But there are so many.
Great ways to get protein into your diet, and that for me this year has been I've really been focusing on that and it's been a game changer.
Yeah, it's amazing. I've felt the difference as well. For sure, it's been huge. What's the biggest change you've made in your health journey that has changed your relationship with food?
Eating to make my body feel good, not look a certain way, because I realized that, you know, a lot of my book is to do with the journey I've had to go through with food, where I remember when we met, I was so conscious about the way that I was being perceived and the way my body looked that I would want to eat a way that I thought made me look better, and especially this last year, Yeah, the last couple of years, I've been trying to improve
my relationship with food because I didn't realize how much it was impacted by the way I wanted to look versus the way I wanted to feel. You know, a lot of the recipes in this book and a lot of the things that I've shared are helping people to connect back to their body but create a better relationship to understand that food, Like you don't have to choose between food that between food that makes you feel good
and food that brings you joy. Food can be both, and you can learn how to do that and the way to cook to make you feel that way. Like we normally associate if I want to look a certain way, I have to eat salads and things just leaves, and I can't have any fun when I'm eating, because anything that brings me joy is going to be bad for me, Like it's going to be something that doesn't make me
look a certain way. But actually, how you feel when you're eating and how you feel in your life is so feel it's so much more satisfying when you nurture that versus constantly living to figure out how you're going to change the way you live.
Extending both can be true.
You can want to change your external body, but at the same time thinking about how is my inside feeling too, and doing both at the same time is possible and will make you feel so much better. I was listening to something today and it was talking about self objectification, and it was really interesting because it was talking about how we view ourselves constantly as other people view us.
We live our life as other people view us, So, for example, on this podcast and maybe thinking how am I gonna sit in a way where I'm going to look the most flattering, and how am I going to like move my body in a way where maybe they don't get the bad side of me? And so you're constantly living through other people's perception of you, essentially objectifying yourself.
And so I feel like having a better relationship with food has allowed me to care less about those things and live from inside out rather than outside in.
So powerful, Yeah, so powerful, And that requires so much courage and going against the grain because society has conditioned us to think a certain way. Like I remember years and years and years ago, I remember walking through a department store and the line above the kind of billboard above the makeup section said get the natural look. Yeah, And I just found that hilarious because I was like, you obviously already have the natural look. I'm not saying
there's anything against makeup. I have no issues with it. I'm good with it. It's great. It's just it's interesting how it's being sold to us, and so we're being convinced that the natural isn't good enough, or there's a way to be more natural. And each to their own.
Everyone's allowed to do whatever's right for them. But I think the more we live our life through the lens of will people think I look good like this, will always be disappointed because there are some people who think you look good and some people who think you don't. Like we talk about this a lot with fashion, Like I really enjoy fashion. Yeah, but when you see my fashion, truths is you're like, I'm not sure what you're doing, mate, And then and then everyone else will think it looks great.
But the point is I'm doing it for myself.
Yeah, totally.
That's the only person that you can ever do it for because it's so hard to win. Like you could have everyone think you're amazing and one person think you're not, or the other option where everyone thinks you're crazy and one person thinks you're amazing and the day the one person you need to feel that way as you. Yeah, right, That's what I'm hearing.
From you totally, and you kind of rob yourself of experiences like I was talking to Liz Moody. I was talking to this guy and she was saying, how you know when you go to the beach and you look into the sea and you see the sand underneath you, and you're like you're thinking, oh, I want to go into the ocean. But I'm a bit worried about what people are going to think about me in this swimsuit.
I've had that. I've robbed myself of so many experiences.
We've gone to poor parties and I've been I'm not getting in the pool, like just so you know, I'm not going to get in the pool right now because I don't feel comfortable, and I've robbed myself of so
many experiences. Where she was like, think about when you're eighty years old and you look back at those experiences and you're are you going to say to yourself, so glad I didn't get in the pool that day because they would have seen my cellulight, or are you going to think I'm so glad I jumped into that ocean and I felt that ocean around me, and I created these memories and I felt the sand beneath my feet,
and I had the experience. And so I've really been thinking about that a lot more of like having the experience, because whenever I've gone into situations where I'm constantly consumed by other people's view of.
Me, I've not been present.
I barely remember the event, I barely remember where I've what I've been doing, or where I've been. Like, there's so much such lack of presence which doesn't allow me to even experience what I wanted to. And I feel like that's kind of changed throughout the time. I'm still working on it, but it's definitely. Yeah, all of that fuels into everything, Like it really changed the way I was eating and connecting to my body too.
Yeah, I think you've also found this, and this why I'm excited for people to get the book is that you've found a way to make healthy food really tasty. And I always say that to you, like I find
it so easy. I'm so lucky to have you. And I always say that to everyone when everyone's like, oh, wow, you live a really healthy lifestyle, Like you don't know who I'm married to, right, And it's and now it's almost like everyone gets to have you in their kitchen through the book where they can also feel that way and feeling confident that when you're cooking for your family that you don't have to sacrifice taste in order for it to be good.
For you exactly.
And a big part for you with that is is the spices and the hams that you talk about. So walk us through what you're fascinated with spices, Like our nickname for you is spice Scale. Yeah, because of that, like in the actual sense, like what walk us through the value of spices and why they make food flavorful and good for you?
To ask me because it's literally my favorite topic about this book. Spices have you know been a part.
Of our life, our whole life, because I remember even when we were younger, I would be I'd be coughing and sneezing at my mum we'd do spices in water to like boil boiler tea with spices to help me with that. Or you know, when you get a cut or a bruise, our parents are getting out this tumeric patty and like putting it onto our scabs.
And you know, we grew up with that.
But I didn't realize the power of them until I started studying the medicinal potency and benefit of them. And so yes, they make your food taste and look vibrant, like it's amazing. You can take like a humble potato, and you can mix different spices together and taste different parts of the world through just the spices you're using. So spices not only take you to different parts of the world and help you to experience different cultures and cuisines, they.
Also allow you to buy really basic.
Ingredients and elevate them and make them feel so different every single day. And the benefits of spices, oh my goodness, well you know this. For the past I don't even know how long ten years I've used spices in my medicine box. Spices have been my go to if I have a headache, essential oils and spices. If I have a headache, what do I go to, Yeah, yes, oil, my peppermint oil. Like if I have a cough, what do I tell you that I'm gonna make you edgewage
seeds in water? And I have found when I've allowed my body to rely on natural means to heal itself. And what I mean by that is like the spices, the oils, whatever I'm using, the food that I'm eating, my body's immunity has gotten better and better. The way that my body reacts to being in stressful environments has changed because I've allowed my body to heal itself through what I'm actually putting into my body, and so I actually have feel my best when over the past few years,
progressively as I've done that. And it's so easy because all you have to do is there's spices you can buy ground or whole or in mixes of blends that you can just add in. You don't even have to think about it. You can put it into your hot water in the morning. One of my favorite things is CCFT, coriander, cumin, and fenelty.
Easy way.
If you're not used to using spices at all, even if you don't cook at home, add these three spices in equal parts a teaspoon of each into hot water. Beautiful way to add in spices without you even having to do much and then experiment with your food. Become like a play in your kitchen. I really think you know, the book is not prescriptive. I actually want you to use the book and the recipes to play in the
kitchen and sub things out. And I've got so many things where I'm like, if you don't have this, use this, if you don't have this, use this, because nothing about food has to be prescriptive, and so spices are a really fun way to do that. So, yeah, one of the huge intentions and goals with my book is for you to have a spice cover that is full and
overfall by the time you get to the end. And I've got a chart in there to tell you what the benefits of them are, how you can use them to your medicinal benefit, but also to make a food taste way better.
Yeah, I think that's really important that You've got so many charts and graphs, Yeah, things to make it really easy in the book for anyone to understand, because a lot of people may be thinking, God, I have never really used totally how many spices I'm not really aware of them, but you've actually made that really simple.
And then I'm like, pick a spice a week and play with it. Pick a spice a week, add it into different things like nutmeg, add it into milk, your milk at night, not meg. It is a mouth sedative. It helps with sleep in the morning for your digestion. You know, for centuries, Indians have eaten fennel seeds.
After their meal. It's a tradition.
You go to Indian restaurant, you go to an Indian house, they will be passing around fennel seeds after their meal. That's because it is amazing for gas, for bloating, for digestive relief after you've eaten, and so like, try our fennel seeds and your you know, water.
In the morning. This so, pick one thing.
You don't have to be overwhelmed with so many different practices and spices and things in the book. Pick one or two a week that you want to incorporate and see how you like it, see how your body reacts to it.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, you just mentioned two things that I wanted to speak to you about. People have always been fascinated with your morning and evening routines. I wanted to ask you, what does your morning routine look like now? And why have you chosen the specific things that exist in it?
Good question? Are you not part of my morning routine?
You don't know what my morning what is my morning routine?
So I don't know what happens before I wake up? That's right.
So I wake up in the morning and brush my teeth and also use my tongue scraper, which by the way, is an irateic ritual that if you don't do that is a must. You don't know how clean your mouth can actually be if you haven't used a tongue scrape. But it's also really important to remove tuxins that have built up over the night, because that's the time your body starts to clean up and take away the toxins in one place that they come out is on the top of your tongue, and so tongue scraping is a must.
And then I make my CCFT in the morning, sit down for my meditation, and I have mondro meditation practice, as you know, and that's usually for about an hour and a half mixed in with breath work to help me refocus and keep bringing my mind back to my practice. And then I usually get ready for my workout, go for my workout, and that ranges from Monday, Wednesday, Friday a weight workout and love weight training. It really helps to build strength and I feel confidence in my body.
The other days, I'll either do running or like a heated yoga class, other things that help also stretch out my body, because I find weight training kind of shortens your muscles, whereas pilates and yoga really helps to lengthen them. It's kind of a mix of both. And then I'll come back, get ready and then what else do I do?
Oh?
Then I eat my breakfast.
Yeah, oh, I don't normally have a breakfast, so at the moment, I'm trying to do savory breakfast after listening to Glucos Goddess and really trying to incorporate more savory foods, and I prefer savory breakfast anyway. So I do everything from a sour doough toast with some sort of protein on it. So either like having a good amount of
hummus with lots of veggies. I'll put like tomatoes and cucumbers, maybe doing and I'll sprinkle some sort of spices on top, So whether it's you know, toasted corianderses or cuman powder and then a bit of.
Hot sauce because I just love hot sauce, and.
Then I'll have that, or I've been having these like protein bagels, you know, topped with the same kind of thing, and then I'll have a protein shake afterwards.
So what about your lunches when you don't want to feel lethargic after your lunches, because so often we struggle to know what to eat because we still have a few hours of work left. Like what do you do for your lunches? What do you enjoy?
Yeah, I try to keep it balanced in the sense of I will still have a carbohydrate at lunchtime. And by the way, our body is so in sync with nature, and our digestion is the strongest when the sun is at its highest, and so the sun is at its highest naturally in the middle of the day, and so our lunch should actually be our largest meal of the day ideally, because that's when our digestion is the strongest.
It's able to digest like the heavier things that we want to eat, and so I will have like a larger portion of my carbohydrates if possible in the afternoon, and then I will mix in lots of different veggies. Like eating the rainbow is no joke. You have to eat variety of colors, and so I will make sure that when I'm doing my sharp I have a variety of vegetables with different colors because each of those colors
represent different nutrients and different vitamins and minerals. And so to make sure you're also getting enough of what you need in terms of vitamins minerals, make sure that you have a variety of different colors on your plate. So I'll buy like pink radishes, I'll buy cucumbers, I'll buy different colored carrots, and either I'll have them on the side or I'll just quickly saute them, have it with
either some noodles or throw some tofu in there scrambles. Honestly, I just make sure I know the basics of Like a really good way of doing is write down where your protein is going to come from, what vegies you love eating, and what carbohydrates you like, and then just mix it all in. I love doing a one part thing, So I'll throw a noodles, I'll throw my veggies I'll throw in some tofu, mix it all up, or I'll
do a scrambled like scramble tofu on toast. I just know that the areas I need to make sure I have in my meals, and then I kind of just pick and choose between go between them and decide what I feel like and what flavors I want dinner.
Dinner, know, oh my gosh, dinner. I mean, you know, it can be so varied.
I love for me a doll or a soup or like a beanie curry I'll probably have. I wouldn't have like as much like flatbread or rice with it, just because I try not to have too many carbs at night or something too heavy at night. But I love Indian spices are just my comfort food and at night, especially when it's cold outside. I love having a mixed lentil like.
Doll and all of these recipes in the book.
Yeah, yeah, oh there's a really good like red lentil doll in there. There's also my mom's three bean curry with coconut milk, and oh it's so good, so much flavor in it. Yeah'll usually do that or a one pot thing because at night, you you just want to throw everything in one thing and not spend too much
time in the kitchen. And so there are so many recipes in there that are like thirty minutes and then other ones where maybe you feel like spending a little bit more time in the kitchen, and so you can spend an hour creating a beautiful meal if you have time on the weekend.
Yeah, I'm so lucky that I get to be the recipient.
You are the guinea pig.
Yeah, in the guinea peah, all of this intested. Yeah, what about your evening routine? How has that been constructed for you?
My evening routine is usually I try to as soon as I stop working and usually go walk for a little bit.
I find it really helps me to wind down.
I won't do an intense workup, but I'll definitely walk, go on the treadmill for about like twenty minutes half an hour, listen to something. And then one thing that's really helped me is I don't like bright lights at night. I really try to avoid bright lights. It's made such a difference to my like sarcadian rhythm, the rhythm of
your body that helps with sleep. Artificial life really messes with that and so whether it's using candles or really keeping the lights dim, that for me has helped me notice that, oh wow, I'm actually really tired by eight thirty or nine, and it's time for me to get into bed rather than And by the way, TV has the same light, and so do our phones, and so for me, the bright lights are too intense for me, and it and it really, you know, messes with my
rhythm of sleep. So I've started using candles and stuff a lot more. And then we've been trying to read a lot more. And so I'll if I'm by myself, I'll read. Sometimes we'll show a little cheeky show of something which might be called love Island, Not Gonna.
Lie, And then.
And then oh, eat dinner, and that before that, and then one of my favorite practices, which is like a self love ritual for me is a younger. It's a really beautiful practice of a younger is it's Yeah, I talk about it in the book, and it's it's massaging your own body with oils. That's as simple as it is.
But if you think about it, how many times a day do we probably have a lot of negative self talk, and how many times a day do you give yourself a hug, and like just it's literally like giving yourself a hug, just as when someone's had a long day, a hard day, they come home and you give them a hug, like you give them a cuddle. And in the same way, our nervous system wants us, wants to hear from us and feel from us that I love
you and I care about you. And one of the most amazing ways of doing that is by just giving yourself a little massage. And so whether it's just the bottom of your feet, putting the warm oils on your hands, massaging the bottom of your feet, that's where all of our nerves end and so bottom of your feet, or even giving yourself a little scout massage, or if you have time, have a warm shower and larth your body in those oils. Oils actually help to lubricate your nervous system.
They seep into your skin. They basically act as a hug for your nervous system. They help to soothe your nerves at night, and so that's been one of my favorite rituals that I do before I sleep. Yeah, and I'll do that whether it's a two minute one quickly or if I have a bit longer on weekends. Then I just kind of love myself up till I'm really deep fried.
Yeah, I love it.
I love it. No, And I'm glad that we went through a whole day because I think so often we don't. There was so much that just came out of that. Oh good in terms of like, you know, like what to eat in the morning, why you eat certain things in the afternoon, why you don't eat them a nighttime. Like we just learned so much and so many practices, and again for anyone who wants to understand them more deeply, they are well explained. Inside joy for the book.
Oh my gosh, what can I say? Well more thing?
Of course you get.
I realized actually, you know, I was going through a period where I was finishing eating by five pm, like I wouldn't eat anything after that. And what was amazing is I was using Yeah, I was using a tracker and for my sleep I was using the Whoop at the time, and I noticed I was getting one hundred percent. I've never had this one hundred percent sleep score on my work, and it was telling me and I'd gone from being seventy percent to having one hundred percent. Every
single day. Wow, And it was because my body was not working while it was sleeping. And so yeah, because when you're when you end up eating late at night, when you're trying to sleep and your body's trying to rest and you know, actually spend time having downtime, it's actually still working digesting its food. And so you can wake up after eight hours sleep feeling so tired still because your body's actually been working half of the time
to digest what you've been eating. So that was like a big, like aha moment for me where I was like, wow, that really does make sense. Having lighter meals at night affects so much, including your sleep.
Yeah, I love that. That's great. No, that's huge, and that's amazing. I mean to have a thirty percent increase in your sleep score because your food is not being digested while you're sleeping, because so many of us are eating so close to sleep.
Yeah, A little snack, a little dessert, sugar.
Yeah, huge. What they want to do? I want to do something fun with your work. So I'm going to ask you questions that I want you to link back to recipes that apply to those questions. Oh, okay, when you can look at your book if you need to to show us. But example of the question, there's no example.
We're just going straight. So the first question I'm going to ask is if someone has a long day at work, they're really tired, but they do want to make a home cooked meal, that's the easiest one that they can go.
My rainbow noodle stir fry. Okay, it's like super easy. What I would say is have your veggies cut up earlier. Then it's literally like a ten minute meal.
Amazing.
Yeah, it's got this really great sauce with it. You get your veggies, you get everything all in one thing, and it still tastes good and it feels like takeout.
Yeah yeah, okay good. How do you how do you recommend people meal prep? Because that's an important part of all of this.
Chopping takes up so much time my day. My meals are cut down significantly when I've chopped my peppers beforehand, when I've grated my cabbage, when I've you know, everything that you possibly can. I wouldn't say to do it too in advance, because as soon as you cut up a vegetable, it starts to spoil. And so I'd say you can cut up peppers two three days in advance. Same with like carrots, cabbage and stuff. Tomatoes go bad straight away you cut them up by like an hour later,
they're bad. Avocados as well, and so there are certain things you can chop up, and I recommend doing that, especially if you're someone who has been wanting to eat more at home but just don't have the time to cut up your stuff in the weekend, because at least I'll give you a good three four days worth of chopped up stuff that allows you to eat at home. And that's been a good change for me. I've been so busy lately, and I've still since I've got back here.
I'm actually so proud that I have not ordered out or eaten out once, and that's been That's crazy for me because I've also been thand but having things chopped up and also having planned what I'm gonna eat.
Usually we end up.
Ordering out when you're like, oh, I've got nothing planned and I just don't even want to look at my fridge and figure it out.
Figuring it out is half the battle.
So if you already know and you already have the ingredients, it makes it so much easier.
And then you've chopped up. You've basically done half the work.
I love it.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's say another scenario. I've got all these scenarios. Okay, So someone's got some they're dating, coming over for the first time, second time. Maybe they can make in them something this time. What do you cook for someone to impress them from your book? My god, I want to show off, you.
Know, good question.
I would say my Jaalipino cheesy doughballs. You know why, because the other day it's so good. You can have like there's a masala topping to go on top too. But the reason I say that is because it shows that you don't take things too seriously, that it's a fun dish that's.
Like a pull apart, try too hard.
Yeah, you didn't try too hard, You're ship. It's a sharing dish where you kind of pull apart the bread and it's fun. It's also just the poper flavor of vibrants. And also who doesn't love a good bread dish?
Bread is life?
Love it?
Yeah.
If you've got another scenario, if you've got the girls coming out of it's girls night.
Okay, So for girls night, I would probably say the roasted red pepper tagula telly, and then mixed with that we're not yeah, roasted pepper tagula telly, and then doing like the butter bean and tomato salad because you always want something a bit lighter on the side, and then having some sort of veggie side because you always need I have a whole veggi hero section, so I'd probably do like the zucchini bubbuganese or the sweet and salty broccolini.
And then for dessert, because for a girls night you need dessert. I have this decadant cake which is amazing. It's like one of the best desserts in here, I'd say, and maybe the other day the.
Triple chocolate Brownie Black Forest Celebration cake.
But what I do is I deconstruct it so it ends up being a brownie Sunday.
So that would be my ultimate girl's night that I do, Ultimate guy's night, Ultimate guy's night. Easy. I would do my bean burgers.
Okay, I like that. I like that.
I would do my bean burgers. I then would do bean burgers with the side of my dad's mac and cheese, and then for a bit of balance, I'd probably throw in some veggies, which would be in the form of my golden caramelized fennel. I think that'd be a nice, like little refreshing side dish. And then for dessert, I'd probably have to go for cookies three ways.
That sounds good, crumble yeah like that?
Yeah yeah yeah. And last scenario date night. I mean, I've been really lucky because IF has been testing recipes from the books every day, so I've been spoiled every day.
But no, what date night I'd probably go with? It depends, is it like a.
Like like a married couples live together for a while, they want to make a special day they do you like.
My Mexican lasagna because that was so fus It's just so tasty. And then I'd throw in maybe like my warm, nutty super food salad on the side. Oh and maybe my cavalin the sweet potatoes with cavalinera pasta.
So when are we doing data?
Yeah, I mean I can make it all tonight straight up.
And the cake ooh, but clover cheesecake.
Or my chocolate mud pie for you because you love chocolate.
Chocolate mud both of those are yeah, Rady, I'm so proud of you and I am so excited, honestly for everyone to have you in their kitchen, because I'm so grateful to have you in ours. And like you all just heard, there are obviously over one hundred and twenty five plant based recipes in the air, and every single one of them sounds amazing, and I can truly say, as someone who's eaten every single one of them, yeah,
multiple times, I'm not bored of them. They're incredible. And I think anyone who gets this book and cooks from it is going to invite so much joy, so much energy, so much vibrancy into their life. And that's what I wanted to ask you as a final question around you know, you call the book Joyful. You talked about cooking effortlessly, eating freely, and living radiantly, Like, what is your hope for people? Because this isn't just about It isn't just
about the recipes. It's about inviting abundance into their life.
It is three intentions. One intention is reminding people that you do not have to choose between the food that makes you feel good and food that brings you joy.
It can and should be both.
To that life is about all those little joyful moments to accumulate to bring you more and more joy throughout the day, whether it's through your practices, your wellness rituals, or through the food that you're eating. And three that you feel you spice up your life like you fill your coboards with your spices that spice up your body, but also spice up your food too that really create vibrance because spices are vibrant and create more vibrance in your body in your life too.
And actually, I don't know last one.
I feel like I am a seriously grateful student of many great teachers, and it really was a way for me to be able to share so much of what I've learned from the people that have taught me so much, from my mum to my aravadic teachers, to my spiritual teachers. Everything, I was able to accumulate that and pour it into this book. And I'm so excited for people to feel the changes that I have felt in my life through everything that I've shared in there.
So yeah, that's my intention for it.
The book is called Joyful Everyone. More than one hundred and twenty five plant based recipes by Radi de Vlukia co Care FORU Lessly eat freely and live radiantly. You know what I'm going to say, Go get it right now. I would mean the world to me. I love supporting you, not just because you're my wife, but because you are so incredibly talented and so smart, and I think this book is going to change so many homes, families, and relationships,
so it's definitely changed ours. Thank you so much, loving.
Thanks for having me on, so exciting.
And so excited for you.
Thanks everyone.
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable.
So a tree doesn't go where it's hard and thick, does it.
It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.