Why You Should Quit Sugar, Appreciate Anxiety, and Experiment With Everything | Sarah Wilson

I was numb. I'd gone into freeze mode. I was manic, I was depressed, I was stuck all at the same time. And it was just this kind of frozenness. And I was I was lying on my back bedroom floor facing one of those mirrored cupboard doors, and I could hear the kids upstairs, um, you know, going to school, and I could hear all the normal sounds of of daily life. And I I was ready to check out. I was I was ready to die. And it's really calm about it. And, um, and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I couldn't see myself. Like, it was like this emptiness. And then this thought just dropped into my head, and it just said, "What if you just kind of started again with just the clothes on your back, and did it your way? No one to bother you. No one cares. No judgment, cuz, hey, you're willing to let go of everything, so why not just start with what you've what you've got just here, and let's see what happens." And that notion of an experiment, let's see what happens, um, became my motto for the next kind of, let's say, well, 10 years. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Sarah Wilson. She's a multiple-time New York Times best-selling author who was named one of the 200 most influential authors in the world two years running. She also hosted the first season of MasterChef Australia, helping it to smash records and become one of the most watched seasons of any show in Australian history. As a passionate philanthropist, she donated all of the profits from her thriving I Quit Sugar initiative, and now she has dedicated herself to the tireless mission of helping to improve the health and mental health of people the world over. A commitment that has earned her a passionate audience that measures in the millions. And Sarah, the thing that I found most interesting about your journey is the this sort of hard right from or what may seem like a hard right from talking about sugar all the sort of bodily health stuff and then getting into anxiety with first we make must make the beast beautiful. A it's an amazing concept super fascinating. Walk me through what is the beast and how do we make it beautiful? And how did it come out of sugar? Yes, exactly. Um so the beast uh is essentially anxiety and we have grown up you know our generation various generations around us have grown up with this notion that anxiety is a disorder. It's a problem. We've grown up with this idea that anxiety is something we should shut down. We should tame. We should uh really eliminate. Um and I've got bipolar. When I say I've got bipolar I've been diagnosed with bipolar um through the general DSM kind of you know format and uh obsessive compulsive disorder and have had general anxiety since the age of 11. Um so I've had to grapple with this idea that you know I've got some kind of disease or disorder. So I decided I it was going to go off and try to investigate if there was another lens that I could see it through and I've been grappling with on off medication different approaches and I went off on a 7-year journey to see if I could find a more beautiful way. this? Oh gosh, it was from my from 35 onwards. Okay. Yeah. And by then I mean your career you're smashing it. You're killing it. I mean there's so many things that I left out of your intro including being the editor of Cosmo in Australia. I mean this is like a string of successes. Even though they're clearly from reading your book there are times where this was absolutely debilitating but you're still able to to build a pretty thriving life which is what I want people to understand like there there's a an interesting notion that you bring to the table about base you don't I don't think you ever use these words but being a high functioning um anxious person. Yeah, no, I definitely use those words and I think, um, what I wanted to do is was create a conversation around not just living with anxiety and these, you know, various so-called disorders, but thriving and thriving because of them. And throughout history, that was something that was accepted to a certain extent. So, poets, scientists, artists, philosophers, um, the greatest thinkers, including wartime kind of heroes, politicians, Winston Churchill, and so on. These people had bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorder. bipolar? I think that's the one thing that maybe the average person doesn't have a complete grasp on. Yeah, um, it's a it's a mood disorder that sees you swing from mania through to depression, um, sometimes in cycles as as tight as within a day, sometimes over several months. And also the way that I approach, uh, my disorder and my interpretation of our cultures' understanding of mental disorders is a little bit like a knotted ball of wool. We have this expectation that with some kind of drug or some kind of right therapy, we can find that original thread and unfurl it and we'll live a nice, smooth, linear life, right? No aspect of life is like that and when you've got a, um, mental condition, that means you're particularly intense, that ball of wool is really knotted. And my aim in life is to loosen it up a bit, right? And create more space and you modulate certain aspects of your life so that you can then head off and hopefully find ways to use it as what I call in the book an a superpower. I want to ask, so it's a pretty powerful perspective, maybe the right word, to be in the midst of this, to have struggled, diagnosed officially with childhood anxiety disorder, to be diagnosed with bipolar at 21, to like sort of diagnosis after diagnosis, it's it's very powerful to be able to step back and say, "I'm going to intentionally change my perspective." Yeah. What gave you that insight? Was it You talk about pain being very powerful in the book. Was it like just sort of hitting a a pseudo rock bottom and saying, "Fuck this. Like, something has to change." or Well, I think it was two things. I was Well, the main answer, the meta answer is I was rendered choiceless and that's quite often how most humans make dramatic change. It's actually something that has actually guided you to what I call the cul-de-sac of your existence. And you get to that cul-de-sac and you've got to make a decision. Um so, at 34, I had quit my post as editor of Cosmo because I'd got Hashimoto's and I was so sick I couldn't walk for 9 months. Whoa. Yeah. I was my hair had fallen out. I'd put on I think it's at the equivalent of 40 lb um in 4 or 5 weeks. My nails had sort In 4 or 5 weeks? Mhm. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, remember I came from a world of, you know, the red carpet life and photos and all of that kind of thing and defined in many way by that egoic stuff. And then to become invisible, fat, hairless, nail-less, um no motivation, no source of income, um and it got to a point where I wasn't able to leave the house. Um I'd lost all my motivation. I was desperate. I was just in a state of desperation. Because you don't know what the hell's happening. You're like, "I'm downward spiraling." or Well, let's go back to that [ __ ] of wool, right? I was I had that thought and then I had the thought of I should be doing better and I'm a fighter, you know? Leading up to this point, I was doing sand running races, 24-hour mountain bike races. I was running to work and back every day. I was having 3 to 4 hours sleep, a bottle of red wine each night, two coffees in the morning, and I had Hashimoto's disease at that stage. And and interestingly, talking about sort of being rendered choiceless, I did a story, commissioned a story on infertility and what's called the egg timer test, which was a big thing back then. Egg timer test? Egg timer test. It is a was a test that young women could do to see how many eggs they had left and how much time they had before they were not able to have children. Um it's since been deemed highly inaccurate. However, I was the only person in the office was who was at the right time in their cycle to do the goddamn test. And so um as life would have it, I do this test and they say, "Hey, listen, we hate to tell you, but you are going through perimenopause." And I was 34. Um you're never going to be able to have children. Um something seriously is going wrong with your hormones. You need to get this checked out. Um so I ignored that test. Because you didn't like the answer. Not like the answer. And so I ignored it for 6 months until my health ran down to a point. And basically I had no thyroid hormones. And by the time I presented myself to a specialist, they said I was weeks away from heart failure. Wow. So that's how hard I went until I finally stopped and I crashed. So to answer your question, the first thing is my body stopped me for me. Mhm. That's how I see it now. Tell me more. So what do you mean? What what is the the um hole that you're trying to fit into that wasn't you? The rat race, the climbing the corporate ladder, being successful? exactly. It was that. It was also that A-type concept that A-type construct that women, I think um in particular of my age, my era, uh we very much were of that mindset where we had to beat the boys and we had to almost take on a masculine physicality, a masculine mindset. And it I guess it really abrades my values because I grew up on a subsistence living property. Um I've got very anti-materialist values, always have. You know, I was editor of Cosmo and never owned a handbag. I rode a bike to work every day. I never owned a hair dryer. Um so, yeah, I was regarded as as odd within the building. And that was okay for a while, and then it was, you know, revenue was starting to fail as when magazines were starting to suffer. So, it all became less about creating amazing content as about satisfying advertisers. And that cycle has obviously tightened and tightened and tightened around the world now. And I didn't think it was right. And there were things that I was having to do and decisions I was having to make that did not sit with my values. Um and fortunately, I've got a mechanism, an internal mechanism, that if I don't listen to my values, it explodes out of me. But, yeah, at 34, after all of this happened, the sickness, totally living in this space of being redundant, you know, and invisible. Um Oh, I want to stop you this time. What do you mean invisible? Well, I was in the public eye, and all of a sudden I was, you know, fat, hairless, um infertile. And I was physically and and actually invisible in the sense that I was pretty much housebound. Okay. And amidst all of this, as life has it, my car was stolen, my surfboard was stolen, my bike was stolen. Um Good run. Yeah, it went on and on and to the point where it became comical. And your friends drop off and I think with chronic illness, it's, you know, very often said that um at first you get a bit of love and attention, and then, you know, over time, it it becomes monotonous for people, you know? There's no improvement. Um um monotonous for yourself. And I just wasn't engaged with the world, you know? So, I was invisible in that sense. Um I wasn't down the street meeting strangers and saying hello to the barista who made my coffee cuz I wasn't leaving the house. So, there was a moment where I'd been awake for 3 days. Oh, god. And I was lying on my bedroom floor. I'd not left is racing or what's going on? Well, let's go back to that ball of wool analogy or even just let's say Well, yeah, let's just imagine just all these thoughts are coming in and all thoughts are coming out. And when that happens, then that kind of movement is zero. I was numb. I'd gone into freeze mode. I was manic, I was depressed, I was stuck all at the same time. And it was just this kind of frozenness. And I was I was lying on my back bedroom floor facing one of those mirrored cupboard doors. And I could hear the kids upstairs, um you know, going to school and I could hear all of the normal sounds of of daily life. And I I was ready to check out. I was I was ready to die. And it's really calm about it. And um And I looked at myself in the mirror and I couldn't see myself. Like it was like this emptiness. And then this thought just dropped into my head and it just said, "What if you just kind of started again with just the clothes on your back and did it your way? No one to bother you. No one cares. No judgment cuz, hey, you're willing to let go of everything. So, why not just start with what you've what you've got just here and let's see what happens." And that notion of an experiment, let's see what happens, um became my motto for the next kind of, let's say, well, 10 years. Um and I literally got up and weird stuff started happening. Like just bang, bang, bang because I honestly didn't care. I had nothing to lose. And so, I made a commitment to myself that I would remember that that's what I'd committed to. I would start off again with just the clothes on my back, and I would live by my values, and I would promise never to get caught up again. Um and that's what enabled me to go off and explore things, ring up His Holiness the Dalai Lama, whoever it might be, ask, you know, and ask him questions. Um and I just went and went and went. And so, first we make the beast beautiful was an exploration of how you can do life differently without getting caught up and being stuck in that mold, that square peg, you know, round hole being a square peg. Your ability to reframe, I think, is so important right now as mental health issues appear to be on the rise. There's some debate. Certainly, it the the visibility of it, the opportunity to help people who are struggling with it, whether it's actually more people that have it or not, I think is irrelevant. Being able to paint a new picture, create a new perspective, invite people to um really experience their own life completely differently because they utterly change the frame, I think, is so powerful. you you bring up an interesting point there, Tom, that there is a little bit of conjecture as to whether it is on the rise. And it is I'm one of those people that does question it. Um so, if we're talking uh what I call everyday or fair enough anxiety, um that's on the rise. So, people just kind of being angsty and and so on. In terms of disorders such as bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorder, that's not necessarily on the increase. It's been at around about 4. Sorry, 1.2 to 1.4% of the population around the world throughout history. Um which suggests, and I point this out in the book, that it's an evolutionary quirk that's kind of within the human sort of species to ensure our survival. So that we don't we're not all just kind of lemmings following each other around the planet hunting and gathering. There's some weirdos that go and invent the wheel or penicillin or, you know, lead a country to peace, you know? Some of our greatest thinkers. Talk to me about anxiety as a driving force. That was something I found really interesting. Yeah, well, what I'd say is that if we go back that's a disordered anxiety. In terms of everyday what I call fair enough anxiety, the fight or flight response which is actually inherent to our survival, that is perceived as being on the increase, right? Because and this is I've two theories for it. Um first of all, I think that the way we live our life now emulates the anxious experience. So, toggling between screens, running between activities, being permanently distracted, um and feeling that we should be distracted, focusing is kind of not cool, you know? Learning thoroughly is not cool, reading a newspaper article thoroughly is just not what we do. Um that emulates the same hormonal response in the brain, the fight or flight response. And so, we are perceiving an anxious life because um we are living a lifestyle that that that sort of creates that hormonal response. So, there's that aspect of things and also that A-type busy busy busy kind of uh notion is revered, you know? How are you? Oh, I'm so busy, you know? Well, you know, that means you're on track. Um the second aspect of it is that we lack resilience. So, I don't think we've got an anxiety problem, we've got a resiliency issue, especially amongst young people. So, we can't sit in our [ __ ] long enough to pass through it and kind of find a way of coping. You got to get vigilant, you got to get focused, you got to take responsibility, you know? I refer to having anxiety disorder as carrying a shallow bowl of water around for the rest of your life. And you have to ensure it doesn't get unstable because it'll start to slosh and then it'll get out of control and you'll end up spilling water all over yourself and loved ones and you got to keep going back to the source and starting again. And there's a responsibility that comes with having this condition and that's what I really try to instill in people. So, how can anxiety be something that you can actually use as a a force of good? Well, one way we can perceive it is to understand the biology of it and how it all works in the brain. And what's interesting is that excitement and anxiety stimulate the same chemical response in the brain. And so, there's some techniques in the book that I share where when I'm anxious, I often choose I actually really go through a process of choosing to see it as excitement and quite often it is. And I think I've actually heard you talk to somebody or maybe Sam Harris about this on one of your podcasts. It came up briefly. It is definitely come up. I I am a little conflicted about this and and maybe because I'm bad and bad at it and I'm very open to trying to get better. It is anxiety for me is is like a self-reinforcing loop in the way that excitement is not. And so, there's something to anxiety that is far more sinister. That's why I found your book so interesting is it was the first time where somebody said, "Well, woah, woah, woah, there's actually elements of this that can be very useful and one thing that it made me think of is this is going to be weird, roll with me for a second. Yeah, I'll listen to you. West. Now, I don't know if he has anxiety or not. I'd be a little surprised if he didn't have something approaching mania at times and you talked about how people that had this kind of disorder in the past would had at times in certain societies become shamans and things where because it allows them to to they're ejected from the box. They're they're thinking so far out in like a different realm and when I think about what I have tried to cultivate, one of the things I had to learn as an entrepreneur was to eject myself from the box, to to be outrageous, to to almost emulate things that from the outside. Like one guy wrote a DM to me and he's like, "Hey bro, I think that you have you're you're manic depressive." And he was like, "I think that you you're prone to mania." And I was like, "That's so interesting." Because I've had to train myself to be able to do that, to get outside the box. And so you look at somebody like Kanye West who lives outside of the box and you start to see, "Wow, it is a double-edged sword. There's no question." Yeah. But in terms of breaking frameworks, in terms of like you said that Hashimoto's is terrifying as it is, actually forced you out of a framework, forced you out of a way of thinking, left you in the cul-de-sac of your life, no choices. And so there is something really, really interesting about do you why do you dispute the notion that you can reframe anxieties as excitement at times, you know, as a excitement? say this. I think it's amazing advice. I will only give you my limited um experience having tried it and come up wanting. So when I am really getting anxious, there there is it's a positive feedback loop. And you talk about this in the book. I laughed out loud when you say like being afraid leads you to run and running makes you feel better. With anxiety, it only seems to make you more anxious. And I was like, "Yes, that is exactly it." It's so [ __ ] weird. So the thing that makes me anxious is anxiety. So I can even get anxious just by being around someone who's anxious. Because that like reminds me, being cold which has the same physiological response for me makes me anxious. And then like once the anxiety starts, like it just [ __ ] snowballs. And so my whole thing is I need to interrupt that mode. And it may stem from a It doesn't quite feel like framing, but it definitely stems from at least partly the the fear, right? So I'm thinking, "Oh, the anxiety's going to make me perform worse, and that's bad, and then I'm worse, and so because I'm worse, that's a reason to worry, and so like I get that that there is very much a mental game. But, the mental game has always felt like I need to interrupt the the positive reinforcement what you're saying is that when you're anxious, one of the things about being anxious is it's very hard to stop and actually say to yourself, "Okay, let's calmly rethink this. Let's reframe it as excitement." It just doesn't tend to happen, and I totally get that. Look, there's a couple of things in terms of that notion of I mean, the worst thing about anxiety, as you say, is that we get anxious about being anxious, and then we get anxious about being anxious about being anxious, and so on and so forth. And there doesn't seem to be an end point. With hunger, we can eat. Most of our pain can be satiated with something else. With anxiety, there doesn't seem to be something that is the end point, that is the satiation point, and so on and on we go. So, we do have to make a We've got to create our own end point. One of the things that I found that really resonated with people is that there was a study that showed that a panic attack, for instance, which is how a lot of people experience anxiety, um only ever lasts 20 to 40 minutes. Now, if you know this, right? Just learning it, reading it in my book, you can actually maybe not the first or the second time, but the third time you have a panic attack and berate yourself and go on that spiral, um you can actually say to yourself, "Hang on, this is only going to last 20 or 30 minutes. I can sit through this. I'm sure I can be resilient enough to last 20 to 30 minutes of agony if I know that I'll come out the other end and we'll be all cool." So, one of the selves that I mention in the book is to read and learn and have new conversations. If we stay in this notion of anxiety being a disorder, and that's the end of the story, we're going to stay anxious about being anxious about being anxious, looking for pills, outward fixes, which, as you know from my book, is part of the anxious condition. Searching outwards when the self is about coming inwards, doing the work to come inwards. Our culture sends us out ricocheting outwards to pills, self-help books, new gurus. Next, next, next, right? That's anxious about being anxious about being anxious. You go and look for more, more, more. Um it's wrong way to go back. We got to kind of come back in. And so, it is practice. It's about reading, having different conversations. It's about also sheer years on the planet. And I really like um the Stanford address that Steve Jobs got gave, and I'm sure sure you know it. Where he talked about how you get old enough where you can look back and join the dots. Mhm. And you realize that all the things that made no sense at the time, they all link up and they create a story. I mean, he went and sat in on a typography class in the Was it the early '90s or late '80s? Made no sense at the time. Well, we all know it was kind of crucial, right? Um so, for me, this is what I often say to young people, is just trust is going to lead somewhere. And so, sometimes that notion of being able to sit and reframe things, even in the wildest of anxiety spirals, it is about just kind of over the years reminding yourself, reading more things, feeling what works, and going, "Oh, that's right." And I do think meditation as a discipline, as a as a practice for that kind of thing, that ability to stop, find a space between all the words and all the stuff, to regroup, refocus, and be vigilant, Yeah. um is non-negotiable. So, there's there's there's there's maintenance so that you can modulate, and then there's stuff that you need to do when you're in the wildest of panics. Mhm. It's a two It's a two-pronged approach, and that's how I live my life. Talk to me about meditation. That that has been the game changer for me, and when I think about the hardest things that I've gone through in my life. Um thankfully, they came after I learned how to meditate. And woah, when I think about what that could have been like if I didn't know how to at a physiological level break the the spiral of anxiety, um oof. Yeah. It's not It's not good. So, um you've sort of tongue-in-cheek said that you're a terrible meditator. That will resonate with so many people. One, walk people through um have you improved? And if you haven't, why it's still powerful. Um okay, so yes and no is my answer to that one. Have I improved? I've been meditating for almost 10 years. Have I improved? No, I'm still a crap meditator. However, that is the beauty of meditation. The crappier you are at meditating, the more benefits you get. Why is that? So, meditation, as we know, is a practice. There's no end point, you know, there's no perfection to it. Um what I feel is, especially in our contemporary culture, the real benefit of meditation, and it doesn't matter whether you're meditating on a flame, a mantra, um you know, your breath, whatever it might be, everybody in within meditation is is instructed to come back, right? Come back to the breath. Come back to the mantra. And I do a Vedic style, and um there's a a Sanskrit word sukshma, which means um effortlessly and innocently. So, you use sukshma to gently come back. And I sort of think of a sort of a child that wanders off, and you just gently bring it back, and off your thought your thoughts go off, you know, you're a crap meditator. You're thinking about what you're going to eat afterwards, and what you want to do, and oh god, this feels really great. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to write a blog post about it, whatever it might be. You gently come back. Now, if you're a great meditator, okay, in your 20 or 30 minutes, you might only have to do that a handful of times. When you're a crap meditator, you are constantly gently coming back, gently coming back. Now, within that 20 or 30 minutes, it's pretty tedious. But what you're doing is you're retraining synapses in your brain that basically say, "Sukshma. Sukshma. Keep coming back. Keep coming back. Wandering off? Come back." So, you go out and get up and start the rest of your day. You have slowly over 10 years reprogrammed your brain to do that in the rest of your life. So, I don't really care if I'm a crap meditator. I care about the impacts for the rest of my life, you know, what it's doing for me in the rest of the day. And the other thing is I've had to do a massive pivot, a sort of a 180° turn in terms of the way that I was approaching life. And meditation has been the best wrestling pit, you know, me versus my ego, you know? Sometimes my ego wins and sometimes little I, big I wins, you know? And um that is a really important process to go through and to be alive to. And if you don't have that as a daily, disciplined, responsible um regime, um I think it'd be almost impossible to find a calm spot with your anxiety where you can come to use it and thrive with it. But over the years, I've got looser with it. I've felt that I needed to individualize it. So, I bring in some somatic theory, and I do feel that a lot of um healing and shifting can come from your body. What's somatic theory? Well, it's to do with your body, um using different aspects and feelings in your body. We hold so much emotion in different parts of our body, and this is an area that's quite old, but it's having a bit of a revival at the moment. And you mentioned before the flight, fight, or freeze response. And animals, often when they've got that really primal fight or flight thing going on, it gets released because they either run or they tear something to shreds, you know, and survive. And there's a release for that kind of cortisol or adrenal kind of surge, which is very very natural, and then it all drops off. With so much of human anxiety, which it you know, it's kind of generally involved in an office or relationships in on the couch, you know, we don't have an outlet for it. We're not allowed to scream. We're not allowed to bolt. We're not allowed to fight. We've got to bottle it up. And so, animals and and presumably humans, you know, back in caveman days we had an opportunity to flee. Um and that's why exercise is an amazing salve for anxiety cuz it is an opportunity to express all of those hormones out, get them expressed so you don't do anxiety more than once. You get anxious, but you don't get anxious about being anxious about being anxious. You can break that cycle. So, exercise is an amazing um salve. But, um if we're holding all of that in our body, it's been held somewhere. And it sounds particularly woo-woo, but there's quite a bit of science now showing um that therapy that can get you to focus on those parts of your body. The pelvic bowl is where our running mechanism and so much of what we do to defend ourselves pivots from. Uh so, talk to me about the work. So, meditation, that's obviously a practice that you can keep doing. Um what are some other things that that you call the work that people need to do? Take responsibility, obviously that's going to be part of it. Yeah. Um but how if somebody's watching this right now and they're they're fighting that fight, they're in that struggle, but they haven't had that moment of reorienting and and now going down the path, what do they do? Um another thing to do is walk. And again, this um like meditation, there's a lot of science, in fact even more science I would say, around the benefits of just walking. Um it can be done when you're in the middle of a panic attack, when you're in the wilds of it, but also as a modulating um sort of moderating lifestyle kind of um hack. Um what's really interesting is the part of the brain that controls walking is the same part of the brain that controls the flight or fight response. And uh walking essentially shuts down the flight or fight response. It really modulates it. So, you don't have to go off and do anything fancy, you just tie on your shoes and walk out the door. And I remember being a teenager, before I knew the science behind it, before I even understood my own body properly, I knew that walking would fix it. So, I had a post-it note on the back of my door, and I would it said, "Just walk." And it's just my motto now. Um it's also why I hike. I've hiked all my life. Um and when I'm particularly manic, I will throw myself at a mountain. You know, I just go and find, you know, a 6-mi hike, preferably directly up a hill, and I just I just go for it. And it gets me it gets me connected, and it gets me refocused, and and I honestly that anxiety will just drip away. Um so, walking is again another non-negotiable, not eating sugar. Um Yeah. Now, I didn't answer that part of the question, which was right at the beginning of the interview, which is how did I move from the sugar into this space? It's all interconnected. Mhm. Um I actually started writing this book when I first got unwell. Um I moved I lost everything, moved up to a a army shed in the forest in northern New South Wales, um in sort of a hippie commune area, um as you do. And um and I started researching all of this, and I was writing a column for one of the main newspapers, and uh each week I would do an experiment in wellness. And it was this week I dot dot dot met the Dalai Lama, um cried with Brene Brown, etc. etc. So one week bereft of a topic I quit sugar and hence that became the name of the blog post, the newspaper column, the book and the and the digital business. Um So the two projects were always interconnected. However, I was on a mission always to try to modulate and find a more beautiful way to manage my life and to live a better life. And quitting sugar had an immediate impact on both my Hashimoto's and my bipolar. Immediate 2 weeks. In 2 weeks I noticed a discernible difference. And so I would say that's a non-negotiable. And look now, many many years later there was all this science that was happening and gradually they were showing the effects of sugar on mental health. And of course mental health and sugar intake has increased at the same rate. Same as obesity, diabetes, the whole lot. Um interesting correlation is what the the sugar industry would like to call it. So yeah, now we see studies that show there's a there's a clinic in in Switzerland that do run a trial giving some bipolar patients a tablet and the rest all they did was take sugar out their diet. And the latter group did a hell of a lot better. And what they found is there's a connection between uric acid and and bipolar. And uric acid is is produced when we eat too much sugar etc. So there's a lot of science happening in that area. But we also do know that it's not about a chemical imbalance in the brain. It's more about gut health. Um Crazy. It is crazy how much the gut impacts neurotransmitters. I heard you talk about serotonin and how 80% or more is stored in the gut. The first time I heard that I was like, is that a typo?" Yeah. Like, it is utterly fascinating to me that, and and speaking personally, 6 years ago I didn't even know what a microbiome was. I didn't know that we had one. I had no concept of that whatsoever. And now realizing that it's like a second brain essentially, your your enteric nervous system. One, there are more neurons from your esophagus to your anus than there are in a cat brain. It's insane to think that there are that many um neurons just like you have in your brain Yeah. in that space. And then to think that there are more cells in your body that are bacterial, viral, fungus than there are human cells by a lot. Yeah. Um and that they can communicate both ways is really That whole notion of cutting the head off from the rest of the body, you know, sort of since Descartes, um has dictated the whole way we see mental illness. And we're now unifying the two. And we're starting to really question some of the science. So, that whole chemical imbalance science, by the way, in the last, I think, two to three years has been completely debunked. And guess what? Guess who came out with that science? Oh, the first drug company to prevent to provide a pill for anxiety. Which, by the way, was in 19, I think, the late '70s, a year or two before anxiety entered the DSM as a official disorder. So, these are all the questions we've got to ask. Um sugar, as well, is as just as controlled by various you know, influential groups. And you've got to ask robust questions about that. The great thing, just to go back to some of the stuff that people can do, is that it's all free. It's all free. It's a bit hard. Meditation, like, meditation is shitty, right? But you just do it. We all learned We're a generation who learned to clean our teeth twice a day and to wear seat belts. We got over it pretty quickly, right? There's a generation now that has to get used to not carrying plastic bags. You get used to it, you know? Humans are pretty good like that. So, meditation twice a day, you just do it, non-negotiable. Walk. One of the best things you can do for your health, particularly mental health, is to sell your car. Bit hard in LA. Interesting. So that people will walk. So that you walk. I don't I haven't owned a car for many, many years. I walk everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. And it's a mental health strategy. And it forces me to walk. Um so, walking, um not eating sugar, and eating a a whole food diet, like And if you want to know another really simple tip in terms of wellness, just learn to cook. Um you know, when you stop eating sugar, you stop eating processed food, which means you've then got to buy real food, which means you've then got to cook. So, just learn to cook. Um stop eating packaged foods. It is a silver bullet straight through to kind of stable mental and physical well-being. These are not expensive things. These are things our grandparents used to do. Um they kind of sound boring and really unsexy cuz people want the thing with the TM on it, right? They they and they want the person who's got the five the five best hacks for such and such. Um but really some of it some of what we need to realize about where we need to head politically, spiritually, physically is that it might just be a bit more ordinary than we're used to. And that's a good and beautiful thing. Which makes sense. Like when you think about just stripping things down to their essence, getting back to first principles, what what are the things that are more likely to work? It's going to be physiological, what I call physiological hooks. So, will meditation, right? Is a physiological way to interrupt like the thought patterns and all that, but using something that evolutionarily we would have anyway. Um eating whole food whenever you can, getting, you know, um, things you can trace back where it came from. Yeah. I will say that I am I am so sad that I missed the obviousness of the first principles of this, that what your food ate matters. I just you couldn't have convinced me that 10 years ago. Like it just seemed so ridiculous to me. Yeah. And now that seems so patently obvious. When you think about the fact that your cells turn over every 7 years, some much, much faster than that. You're made of the things that you eat. And if you're made of the things that you eat, the things that you eat are the made of the things that it ate. So, it's like or didn't eat. How it was how it was formulated in a lab somewhere by a multinational company, um, with, um, you know, a vested interest in seeing you addicted to their product. I mean, that's that's the that's the frightening thing. And the best thing you can do is stick it up the system by cooking your own food and don't buy stuff from packets. Um, some of the other hacks that I think people quite like and find helpful is getting touched. And this is a weird one, but I Getting touched? Mm. Human touch. So, if you're not in an intimate relationship, it can be difficult. And there's an anecdote, I don't know if you remember in the book where I was having a panic spiral. Um, I was in a shopping mall. There was a running shop nearby. And I went in there, I said, "I don't know what size my feet are." And I said it cuz I knew he would have to pull out one of those metal slidey things. You know those old school Yeah, yeah. And he'd have to measure my foot. And he'd have to touch my feet. And he'd have to talk to me. And that calmed me down. I didn't buy the running shoes. I think I bought a pair of socks, actually. Um, but, um, yeah, I've had to do things like that. Or I go and get a cheap Thai massage. And then in between I do experiments. Let's see. Let's see what happens. So, when you're anxious everything annoys you, noises, chewing noises, uh, everything seems to just go wrong. You sit down at a cafe, you're really looking forward to it, it's a special thing, it's your one day off, and the bloody table's wobbling. You know, and then the coffee comes out, spills everywhere, it's cold, and it's just, you know, life sucks. And what I do now is I go for the wobbliest table, and I sit there with the air conditioning unit dripping on top of me. And meditation teaches you that. I meditate outside each morning. I do exercise every morning, that's another tip is have a morning routine. The decision-making part of your brain again is the same part that modulates the flight or fight anxious response. And so, if you have to make too many decisions in a day, it will actually trigger anxiety, anxiety, and when you're anxious, you can't make decisions. Um, and so, the less decisions you've got to make in the morning, it frees up that that capacity and prevents you from getting anxious in the rest of the day. So, yeah, go to the pain, sit in it, practice it, and when you're meditating, sit there with flies buzzing around, you've got a leg cramp, you've got an itch, sit through it. Practice the resilience. I was going to ask you, like if you have recommendations for people to become more resilient, is it as simple as meditating when your nose itches like crazy and not scratching it? absolutely as as simple and powerful as that. Do you have other ones? Um, well, going to the wobbliest table at the cafe, I think really works. I have a little thing in my head that says stay, stay. So, when I'm reading, of course I want to go and check Instagram, I want to get up and just, you know, see if somebody's emailed me, I want to go and ring somebody. I've got one page, you know, through one page. We can't focus on long reads anymore, and there's a part of our brain that's really starting to suffer from that. And so, I will practice reading, and I have to read a chapter before I go and check my phone, and I put my phone on the other side of the room. It's dumb stuff like that, but it works cuz we've got to rewire our brain in different ways. So, yes, there's a whole bunch of resilience like kind of techniques that I practice. And I experiment constantly. You know, I'm a really bad swimmer. I I spend more energy just trying to stay afloat, and that's why I do it. I live across the road from the beach, and sometimes I go down. I go, "All right, well, I'll go there. I'll go to the the pool." There's a pool at where I live, which is in the ocean. It's ocean water. It's a, you know, Olympic-size pool. And that's easier. But, that's more exciting. I see octopus, and I see, you know, um stingrays. Sometimes I'll see 20 stingrays, you know, um and beautiful fish and and so on. And sometimes I just want to go there, but I'll often choose the harder thing just to see what happens. Yeah, I think that's incredibly good advice. And what I love about what you're saying is that I think a lot of people think that to build their resilience, they have to do crazy [ __ ] When in reality, it's it's pretty simple stuff. Meditation, I think is huge. Like, if you have an itch and not scratching it, you'd be surprised what that does. Cold showers are big. Not wanting to do it, but doing it and then staying in the water. That the notion of repeating stay, that's really strong. I like that a lot. The gym is big. So, that I want to stop. This hurts. My muscles are on fire, whatever. And you keep going, showing yourself that you really can go a lot farther than you think you can, which is really, really powerful. Yeah. And start where you are. Pema Chödrön says that. She's uh it's just a wonderful concept. Wherever you are is an opportunity to wake up or to practice resilience or to stay longer or whatever it might be. Wherever you are. And um I suppose that's how, you know, and that's ordinary. But, from the ordinary, amazing things can happen. And apart from anything else, it gets you mindful. You know? Um all of these things get you mindful. They can seem draconian. They can seem kind of a bit rah-rah, you know? Um, but mostly it's about the the vigilance that you apply while you're doing it. It It really doesn't matter what you do. Morning pages, you know? Um, there's all kinds of things. Going to the gym, as you say. Cold showers. We see these fads coming in and out, but they all have the same principle, don't they? And that is vigilance, applying yourself to something that's just a little bit painful. Mhm. Yeah. No, love that. Love that. Um, where can people find the book? Um, well, it's pretty much anywhere. First, we make the beast beautiful. It's on Audible. It's in on Apple. It's in bookstores, um, around the country. Um, and you can also buy it buy my website, sarawilson.com, as well. Amazing. And where should people connect with you if they want to learn more, know more, say hi? Well, I do a lot of my stuff, a lot of my hiking experiences, um, on, um, my Instagram, which is, well, it's _sarawilson_, but if you just put in Sarah feet at the end of my name, at the beginning and end of my name. Um, that's probably the best spot. Um, and then sarawilson.com, as well. Nice. What is one change that you would have people make that would have the biggest impact on their health? Look, I I we've been talking about it a fair bit. I would say walking. Really? Interesting. I'd go one step further. I'd say hiking in nature. Okay. I think there's a lot to be learned from from going into nature and from what nature can mirror back to us. I think we Tell me more. I don't understand that. So, I think a lot of the lessons that we're seeking about connection and about what life is meant to be about plays out in a very still and present and awesome way in nature. Um, we we are a a species that responds incredibly well to awesomeness, you know? And getting an overwhelming sense of how we are both both small and therefore we can back off a bit, but then we're also part of something just infinitely enormous. That kind of juxtaposition, that gets us fired up. That gets us truly connected and motivated and inspired and everywhere is metaphor. Metaphor for what matters, you know? It's just reflected right there. You know, the science on walking is amplified when you do the walking in nature. So, in Japan they've got a whole kind of wellness program that the government funds of called forest therapy which has taken off here in the states as well. South Korea now sends busloads of their tech-addicted children to forest therapy camps. And the science on just what these trees can emit and the impact on endorphins and various other kind of hormonal responses in the brain is really substantial now. And the other principle behind that is while you're hiking, you're not consuming. You're not consuming technology, you're not consuming crappy food, you're not consuming messages on billboards and you're not consuming stuff you don't need in shopping malls. And that is a recipe for you know, kind of infinite happiness. I love that. Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. It was absolutely wonderful. Guys, trust me, you're going to want to read the book which is absolutely fantastic. Everything that she puts out is a lot of fun and I think it is really really useful, especially now. Learning how to take control of your own mental well-being is one of the most powerful things that you could do and somebody that understands how it relates to diet and all that just doubles the impact. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. 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