Saskia Gregson-Williams - Naturally Sassy: My recipes for an energised, healthy and happy you – deliciously free from meat, dairy and wheat

My aim is to make changing the way you eat easy with simple, healthy plant-based recipes full of unprocessed natural ingredients that taste great. SASKIA

Be fit not skinny, happy not guilty with 100 healthy recipes for every day that are all deliciously free from meat, dairy, wheat and refined sugar.

Recipes are quick and simple, ingredients are easy to find and affordable, and you dont need lots of expensive equipment. As a ballet dancer, Saskias recipes give her all the energy and nourishment she needs to train, recover and perform. Her recipes will make you glow with vitality and feel amazing energised to live life to the full.

Im on a mission to show people that the food that does you the most good can be the most delicious and, better still, effortless to prepare. Yes, you heard me right: no more slaving away in the kitchen, running around from shop to shop for specialist health ingredients youve never even heard of, or forking out all your earnings on superfoods! This is the book I so desperately needed not so long ago when the how to of healthy eating was a mystery to me. Sure, I had a few recipe books, but none that told me how I could eat well in a way that would not only be easy and affordable but realistic, something I could do every day of the week. As a ballerina, I have discovered the hard way that food is as important to the body as the training is, and I have had to learn how to make being healthy simple enough to fit into my everyday routine.

The demands of a career as a ballet dancer forced me to grow up quickly. At the age of thirteen, I took my GCSEs so that I could focus exclusively on ballet for the next few crucial years. I moved out of home at a really young age, which brings with it its responsibilities, the biggest being cooking for myself. Like most teenaged girls, I didnt really have any idea about nutrition. I knew my carbs from my protein, but hadnt a clue about what those foods actually did. From my thirteen-year-old perspective, carbs made me fat and protein made me strong.

With image such a vital part of ballet, I found myself counting calories to stay skinny and filling myself with low-fat, low-calorie foods. But my body couldnt take it: I experienced burnout; chronic muscle fatigue; numerous serious injuries, followed by months of rehabilitation; acute inflammation in my joints and muscles, resulting in (far too) many steroid injections; chronic eczema from constant stress; and, to cap it all, campylobacter a type of food poisoning which kept me in bed for weeks. At the time, it just seemed like one unfortunate event after the other, but now, in hindsight, it is strikingly clear that my diet was at the root of all of these problems. The type of fuel we use is reflected in the power of the engine, and as you can see, mine had just enough to let me crawl along in first gear!

When I recovered from the food poisoning, after half a year of taking antibiotics, lying in bed watching TV and gorging on chocolate, I came to see that I simply had to do something about what I was eating. I started to understand the relationship between inflammation and illness that they are closely linked (see My Food Philosophy for more on this). So the huge issue I faced during this time was how to get rid of excess inflammation, which I believed to be the root cause and main factor behind all the problems I had encountered that year.

The next revelation was how directly the diet can affect the body and its role in inflammation and subsequent illness. I learned how certain acidic foods encourage inflammation while alkaline foods promote all-round health (for more on this, see I studied nutrition, read every scientific and nutritional report related to inflammation I could lay my hands on and started having a go in the kitchen, cooking up healthy recipes I found on blogs, in books and magazines. In six months, I went from living in a sugar coma utterly depressed and keeping myself going on low-calorie, sugar-loaded protein bars and energy drinks to being high on health, and loving every aspect of my life. I cut out meat, dairy products and anything containing gluten or sugar, and ate more vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds and gluten-free grains. I found that these swaps completely changed my life, improving my performance as an athlete tenfold.

At first it wasnt that easy cutting out all these foods at the same time inevitably made me feel lethargic and groggy. Could I eat in this new way and feel my best? It took some fine-tuning to establish a proper balance and make sure I included all the nutrients I needed. But perseverance paid off and all the changes, little and big, came together to transform my outlook on food.

I started experimenting in the kitchen, and discovered a passion for cooking, developing recipes that not only tasted good but targeted the problem I was facing on any particular day, from sore muscles and fatigue to inflamed skin. You name it, I was in the kitchen concocting a remedy! My family and friends were intrigued and began to take an interest, implementing this new approach to food within their own lives and reaping the benefits. It soon became clear that, though this approach was being tested in pretty extreme conditions as a dancer, I train for eight hours a day the principles could work for anyone, regardless of their lifestyle. Following a plant-based diet gives you a feeling of greater clarity and alertness. Youll have more energy and sleep better; your skin will be clearer, youll lose excess weight and have a better digestion, with no bloating.

Seeing the transformation that this way of eating has made in my life and the lives of people close to me, I wanted to make what I have learned available to everyone, which is why I started my blog Naturally Sassy and now written a book. I aim to make changing the way you eat easy, attainable and completely undaunting. I want to take food back to basics: simple, healthy, plant-based recipes, full of unprocessed natural ingredients that taste great. While delicious is the bottom line for all my recipes, I hope to show that what we eat has so much more to it than basic refuelling.

I often get asked: Whats your thing? Is it carb-/gluten-free, vegan? Healthwise, labelling the way you eat doesnt mean a thing, as while you can be everything-free and appear to lead a very healthy lifestyle, you can actually be filling yourself with rubbish. My philosophy is to eat only unrefined, plant-based, natural food that does your body nothing but good. Purposeful eating is something I base all my recipes and meals around, using ingredients that heal, strengthen, reduce inflammation and increase energy or target any other problems I may be facing on a particular day.

For most of us, the sad fact is that what we eat doesnt give us the best chance of feeling the best we can. The processed foods that make up the majority of the western diet leave us feeling lethargic, groggy, bloated and constantly on the edge of getting ill. Meat, dairy products and foods containing gluten or sugar are all acidic foods that is, they have an acidic effect on the body when they are digested, triggering inflammation, the bodys response to harmful stimuli. This makes us more prone to disease, for inflammation is at the root of nearly every physical ailment. Acne, flu, headaches, cramp, bloating, cardiovascular disease, cancer, you name it inflammation is the cause or a big contributing factor. Why would I choose to eat food that made me feel groggy or weakened my immune system? When a close family member contracted breast cancer and, in recovery, was told to completely cut out acidic dairy products and red meat, as well as limiting any meat or fish intake, it really hit home. Why wait for something to happen when you could prevent it, by simply eating well? This example is taken from the extreme end of the spectrum, but if simply by eating natural food you gain a better perspective and outlook on life as well as a stronger immune system and more energy then why wouldnt you go for it?