Woodward - Deliciously Ella : awesome ingredients and incredible food that you and your body will love

Deliciously Ella

Awesome ingredients and incredible food that you and your body will love

Ella Woodward

www.yellowkitebooks.co.uk

The advice herein is not intended to replace the services of trained health professionals, or be a substitute for medical advice. You are advised to consult with your health care professional with regard to matters relating to your health, and in particular regarding matters that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Yellow Kite
An Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company

Copyright Ella Woodward 2015
Photography Clare Winfield

The right of Ella Woodward to be identified as the Authors of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in Any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978 1 444 79502 8

Publisher: Liz Gough
Editorial Assistant: Emily Robertson
Copy Editor: Kay Halsey
Index: Isobel McLean
Design and Art Direction: Miranda Harvey
Photo Shoot Co-ordinator: Rebecca Coles
Photography: Clare Winfield
Food Stylist: Rosie Reynolds
Stylist: Polly Webb-Wilson
Make-up Artist: Laurey Simmons

With thanks to Anthropologie for the loan of some of the props

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

This book is dedicated to everyone who has shared this journey with me on my blog. I couldnt have done it without your love, support and enthusiasm. I hope I can give back as much inspiration as youve given me. Thank you for sharing all of this with me, it means more than I could ever explain.

CONTENTS

Until just over four years ago I was a sugar monster, and I mean a total addict. Id always had a serious sweet tooth and as a child my favourite foods were sprinkle sandwiches and what we liked to call chocolate mess. Chocolate mess was pretty amazing, and just as sticky as it sounds. To make it my sisters and I would raid our kitchen cupboards for anything sweet and throw together whatever we could find into a bowl usually a mix of milk chocolate, marshmallows, gummy sweets, caramel, golden syrup and Rice Krispies which wed melt in a saucepan until it formed a gooey pile of chocolate deliciousness. The three of us would then sit with our teaspoons and demolish the whole bowl! My love of sugar grew from there, peaking during my first year of university in St Andrews when my friends and I basically lived off a delicious mixture of Ben & Jerrys Cookie Dough ice cream, mountains of chocolate (preferably filled with gooey caramel) and lots of fizzy pick n mix. We were all totally hooked on sugar-laden convenience foods, and nutrition was low on the priority list!

It seems crazy that my diet has transformed so dramatically in such a relatively short amount of time, and Im sure that as you flip through this book youll have a hard time believing that I used to eat this way. It will probably seem even crazier still when I tell you that I actually didnt like any fruits or vegetables, but I promise you I really didnt! Other than bananas and corn on the cob I steered clear of anything fruit or veg related.

Things all changed really quickly though, and very unexpectedly. In the summer of 2011, just after Id finished my second year of university, I was diagnosed with a relatively rare illness called Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS. Its a very strange illness and even now my closest family and friends cant quite get their heads around it. The syndrome effectively breaks down your autonomic nervous system: the system that controls everything that is meant to happen automatically in the body your heartbeat, digestion, circulation, immune system etc. As you can imagine this had a pretty devastating effect on my life I literally couldnt walk down the street, I slept for sixteen hours a day, was in chronic pain, had blackouts, never-ending heart palpitations, unbearable stomach issues, constant headaches and the list goes on. It was anything but fun and I was bedridden ninety-five per cent of the time. Life as I knew it was put on hold.

Being this ill was a bigger challenge then I could ever have imagined. Up until this point Id always been really healthy and so I really never saw it coming. At the time I was just nineteen and had been spending my summer in Paris, pursuing a career in modelling and having the best time. Going from that to a hospital bed within the space of just a few weeks really shook me and as my hospital trips got longer and longer and doctor after doctor ran out of suggestions as to what was wrong with me, I really fell apart. It took four months of hospital visits and hundreds of tests to finally get a diagnosis, and I still remember that huge sense of relief when my wonderful doctor gave my illness a name. At the very least people could no longer tell me it was psychological!

The thing was that even though my illness now had a name, this didnt really make anything much better, and certainly not as much as I thought it would. I was put on a whole series of different drugs and steroids, some of which gave me new symptoms and none of which really helped. I was still essentially bed-bound, which created a huge sense of isolation, and my confidence and self-esteem vanished. It felt impossible to keep up with any friends. This was partly because of a lack of energy and a desire to sleep all the time, but it was also because I was too embarrassed to tell anyone what was really happening. I didnt want everyone to look at me like a sick person and I felt like a total alien, so different from everyone else that I just couldnt really relate to them.

In January 2012 I decided to try and be a normal person and take a trip with my boyfriend. We went to Marrakesh, but the trip in some ways was a total disaster and I ended up being brought home, semi-conscious, in a wheelchair. Of course in lots of ways this wasnt ideal, but it was actually exactly what I needed as it woke me up to what was really happening to me. It became clear that it was my responsibility to change my situation. I could no longer rely on my doctors and I had to find a way to get my life back. So I spent the next week researching holistic, natural approaches to healing, which is what led me to change my diet.