The life advice edition with Melissa Hemsley

"Be unapologetically and gloriously you!"

Aug 23, 2024

Hello dear Uplift subscribers.

This week, the one and only Melissa Hemsley has generously shared her time and advice for a life advice edition of The Uplift. She has a wonderful new cookbook out: Real Healthy, which focuses on cutting back on ultra-processed foods with practical, healthy and easy recipes. Melissa’s Feel Good which came out in 2022 made a massive impact on my love for cooking so I can’t wait to get stuck into this one too!

I hope you enjoy this newsletter. I’ll level with you: I am running on empty at the moment and trying to take steps to feel more balanced, so keeping the newsletter running with life advice editions for now.

What’s the best advice anyone’s ever given you?

Be unapologetically and gloriously you!

If you could go back and give yourself some advice to yourself at a certain point in your life, when would you go back to and what would you tell yourself?

I can’t pick instantly. I think of multiple times in my life where I would love to offer myself advice. I’m always a bit jealous of people who say that they have no regrets but focusing on regrets is something that I am focusing on not doing so much. In general though, when I look back at moments of my life I do feel a sense of compassion and want to give myself a hug and say you did the best you could at the time with what you knew. P.S. If you believe in signs, a song just came on, that I’ve never heard before, just after I wrote that, with the lyrics “I give my best and I am proud of me” - spooky!

What's your best life advice for other people?

If in doubt walk it out. I have always loved walking both by myself with my dog and now baby and I also love walking in a group. (Shout out to the Mental Health Mates community of which I’m an ambassador. It’s a volunteer-led organisation. You can go on the website, type your postcode and see where your local free walk is.) I’ve never regretted a walk.

What inspired your latest book and what would you say to anyone thinking of reading it?

My cookbook Real Healthy - Unprocess your diet with easy everyday recipes is inspired by the quite scary statistics that in the UK we eat more than we eat more ultra-processed foods than any other country. On average about 2/3 of our diet is made up of ultra-processed foods and the reason this is concerning is because eating ultra-processed foods has been linked to serious health outcomes - physical and mental - and some of our under 14 year olds eat an almost 80% heavy UPF diet, which is affecting their learning, their social skills and their health.

There is so much to say about why ultra-processed foods are so prevalent and how unfair and inequal the food system is in the UK. Everyone deserves nourishing real food. I thought about how I could make a difference in my work as a food writer and Chef and so this cookbook is all about delicious durable recipes for every night of the week, especially the busiest nights of the week when we rely most on the convenience foods that might be full of UPFs as opposed to real food. There’s lots of meal prepping, batch cooking, one pots and 30 minute meals focused around delicious and familiar ingredients and I’ve focused on life friendly methods and family-friendly favourites. The easiest way to eat less ultra-processed food is to eat more veg, more fruit, beans, whole grains, herbs, and spices so my recipes celebrate those.

Anything else?

I know that there’s many obstacles to home cooking - the cost of living crisis, shopping bills, oven bills, time pressure, lots of us working longer and later more than ever time, all the pressures of modern day living, as well as confidence in the kitchen and the fact that many of us haven’t been taught to cookery schools. I hope my recipes are a helping hand in your life to help make getting food on the table a bit easier. Small steps really build up as we know. One tip I’ve got is a little weekly challenge; if every time you do a weekly shop, you aim to buy one less ultra-processed food and aim to buy one more whole food (eg a fresh fruit or veg, or a tin of chickpeas or beans for the cupboard or a bag of berries or spinach for the freezer ), then in a month you’ve eaten four less ultra-processed foods AND four more whole foods than you’d usually have. In a year, you’ve eaten about 50 less ultra processed foods and 50 more wholefoods.

Thanks so much for this Melissa. My eating has certainly got a bit sporadic with a transient summer so I am looking forward to being more intentional as we move into September and love the idea of the wholefoods challenge.