I have watched the tap water panic go from a fringe worry to a full aesthetic over the last year or so. Hydrogen water bottles. Reverse osmosis systems plumbed in under the sink. Mineral drops to put back the minerals the reverse osmosis just took out. Somewhere along the way, drinking a glass of water became a thing you could apparently get wrong, and get sold a fix for.

So I want to talk about it honestly, because I have a genuinely mixed view on this one, and I think that is the most useful place to write from.

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First, let’s say the thing nobody in the panic ever says

We live in a country where clean, safe drinking water comes out of the wall, on demand, any time we want it. That is extraordinary. It is a privilege so much of the world does not have, and I never want us to lose sight of it while we are busy finding problems with it.

And the water really is well looked after. In England, 99.97% of drinking water tests met the standards in 2024, across nearly four million tests, monitored by the Drinking Water Inspectorate under the Water Supply Regulations. That figure has sat above 99.9% for more than a decade.

Clean water on tap is a privilege. It is worth caring for, not worth panicking over.

And yet, I do think our water could use some love

Because it is not the whole story either. There are older pipes in a lot of homes. There is chlorine. There are microplastics, which we are all still learning about. So no, I am not going to tell you it is all completely perfect and to think about it zero percent, because I do think there is something real here worth being aware of.

The problem is what the wellness world does with that gap. It finds the real thing, inflates it into a crisis, and sells you a very expensive solution. It did it with supplements. It did it with seed oils. Now it is doing it with your tap.

And here is what worries me most about that. When we make people this stressed about water, some of them just drink less of it. I would so much rather you drank plenty of unfiltered tap water than sipped nervously at a £300 bottle and ended up dehydrated. Drinking the water beats not drinking the water. Nearly every time.

What I actually do

Here is my real, unglamorous setup.

I have a Berkey filter, the big steel one that sits on the countertop. It is more around the £300 mark, so it is not a small buy, but it is made of steel with no plastic, it lasts a lifetime, and because it is not reverse osmosis it does not strip the minerals out, which I like. The one annoying thing: it sits on the counter rather than under the sink, and honestly, I think under the sink makes a real difference to whether you actually use it.

Which is why I have been eyeing the Water2 one, the under-sink filter Bear Grylls co-owns. It is around the £100 mark and tucks away out of sight. I have looked at full reverse osmosis too, but the cost and the upkeep just have not justified it for me at this moment.

And if all of that feels like a lot: you can buy a charcoal stick, pop it in a jug of water, leave it for an hour, and it filters it too. There is always a way to work around it.

The minerals and electrolytes question

Here is where I will save you some money. We can largely just eat our minerals. A good, varied diet does a lot of this quietly for you.

Electrolytes have their place, but I do not think most of us need them day to day. Save them for when you have actually earned them: a proper sauna session, or a really intense workout where you have sweated buckets. The rest of the time, a tiny pinch of good sea salt in your water does a surprisingly similar job, for pennies, with something you already have in the cupboard.

If you are worried about minerals specifically, or if you are drinking reverse osmosis water that has had them stripped out, then yes, mineral drops can genuinely be worth it.

Where I would genuinely save your money

The gadgets with endless upkeep. The ones you have to replace, replenish and descale on a schedule. I do not know about you, but I have a million things to do and I forget that kind of maintenance every single time. A filter you never change is just an expensive ornament. Simple and consistent beats clever and forgotten, always.

The bit most people actually need

Most people reading this are not under-filtered. They are under-hydrated. Coffee, tea and alcohol all pull water out of us, and then we wonder why we feel foggy and flat. So crowd it back in: more water, more herbal teas across the day. That will do more for how you feel than any machine under your sink.

If you want the full deep dive on what I actually keep in my kitchen, from the water setup to the fridge staples, that is coming to paid subscribers on Tuesday in The Glow Shopping List.

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Where do you land?

I would love to know, because I really do go back and forth on this one. Are you a fill-it-straight-from-the-tap person, or has the internet got you filtering everything? Have you spent money on something in this world you wish you hadn’t, or found something that was actually worth it? Tell me in the comments, I read every one.

And whatever you decide: if you are not filtering your water, please do not feel bad about it. We have so many things telling us to buy more and worry more. Keep drinking. Keep staying hydrated. And let’s not take that clean water on tap for granted, because it really is an amazing thing to have.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

Creatine is having a moment. It is in every gym bag, on every feed, folded into every “what I take in a day” video. The wellness girlies have moved on from collagen and greens powders and landed here, and for once I am not rolling my eyes.

Because I take it too. Every morning, five grams, stirred into my smoothie. I started this year.

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Why I actually started

I will be honest with you about my reason, because it is personal and it is not about muscle.

A long time ago I did one of those 23andMe tests, the spit-in-a-tube kind. It told me I carry one of the genes linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. Not two, which is the higher-risk picture, but one. And ever since, I have quietly paid attention to anything with real evidence behind it for brain health. Not in a panicked way. In a “if there is something simple, well-studied and safe I can do, I will do it” way.

Creatine turned out to be exactly that.

Most people take creatine for their muscles. I take it for my brain, and the science is finally catching up to why that makes sense.

What the brain research actually says

Your brain is a genuine energy hog. It runs on a huge amount of fuel, and creatine is part of how your cells store and shuttle that energy. So the theory has always been that topping up creatine might help the brain, especially when it is under stress. Now the studies are starting to show it.

In 2025, researchers at the University of Kansas ran the first ever clinical trial of creatine in people who actually have Alzheimer’s. It was small, nineteen people, eight weeks, a high daily dose. But brain creatine levels went up by 11%, and their scores improved on memory, attention, reading and problem-solving. Early days, and a tiny study, but the first of its kind and genuinely exciting. (Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research, 2025)

And you do not need to be unwell, or older, to feel the brain side. There is lovely research showing that a single dose of creatine can blunt the mental fog of sleep deprivation, propping up things like reaction time, memory and processing speed when you are running on empty. (Scientific Reports, 2024) Show me a mum of young children who could not use a bit of that.

The women’s health part nobody mentioned

For years, almost all the creatine research was done on young men. Which is maddening, because women may actually have more to gain. We store less creatine than men to begin with, and our levels shift with our hormones across the cycle, through pregnancy and into perimenopause and menopause.

A big review pulling together the research on women found creatine may be relevant at every one of those life stages, from menstruation right through to menopause, precisely because it sits at the meeting point of energy, muscle and brain. (Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2025) This is one of the most exciting areas in women’s nutrition right now, and it is only just getting the attention it deserves.

And yes, the muscle bit

I am not going to pretend I do not love this part. I put on muscle quite easily when I lift. My mum is exactly the same, she is strong and muscley, and I have clearly inherited it. I use creatine partly as a pre-workout because it helps replenish the muscles so you can train harder, session after session.

The evidence backs this up, especially for women in midlife. A meta-analysis in postmenopausal women found that creatine at five grams a day, paired with resistance training, delivered small but real gains in muscle and strength, with no signs of harm. (systematic review and meta-analysis, 2025) The key words there are paired with resistance training. Creatine is not a magic powder. It is the thing that helps the work you are already doing go further.

One honest note, because you know I will not oversell: the claims flying around about creatine and bone density are running ahead of the science. The muscle and brain evidence is strong. The bone evidence is still fuzzy. Take it for the first two.

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What to actually buy

Here is where I save you money. Creatine is one of the cheapest, least glamorous supplements out there, and that is the beauty of it. You do not need a fancy flavoured tub with fifteen ingredients and an influencer’s face on it.

You want plain creatine monohydrate, one ingredient, five grams a day. That is it. The simple single-ingredient tubs are just as good as the expensive ones, and I would honestly steer you towards them.

This is the one I use and rate. Five grams, every morning, in my smoothie. No loading phase, no complicated protocol. Take it daily and be consistent, because that is what actually builds up the levels in your muscles and brain over time.

And, as always, basics first. Creatine sits on top of good food, decent protein, movement and sleep. It does not replace any of them. If you want my actual short list of what I take and why, The Only 4 Supplements I Actually Take is right here, and if you have quietly bought half the wellness aisle, my honest guide to taking too many supplements will talk you back down.

So. Should you actually be taking creatine? If you lift, if you are heading into perimenopause, if you care about your brain as you age, or if you are simply exhausted and foggy, I think it is one of the genuinely worth-it ones. Just keep it simple.

I would love to know: are you already on the creatine train, or has all the noise put you off? And what do you want me to actually investigate next, because there is a lot of nonsense out there and I am happy to be your filter.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

If you took everything I have learned in fifteen years as a nutritionist and squeezed it down to two words, it would be these: protein and fibre.

Not a superfood. Not a powder. Not the thing being sold to you this week. Just protein and fibre, on repeat, at every meal. Get those two right and honestly, most of the rest sorts itself out. Your blood sugar steadies, your hunger calms down, your gut is happier, your muscles have what they need.

The thing is, most of us are quietly short on both. We need a minimum of 30g of fibre a day, and most people in the UK get around 15g. Half. And protein tends to be an afterthought, a bit of chicken thrown at dinner, when it should be showing up first thing in the morning.

So let me show you exactly how I do it. Not a rigid plan, just a real day, the way I actually eat.

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Let me start with the least glamorous confession going: for the first three or four days of almost every holiday, I cannot go.

Especially after a long-haul flight. There I am, finally on the beach, sun out, cocktail in hand, meant to be having the time of my life, and instead I feel bloated, heavy and just a bit horrible. All I can think about is my stomach. It is not exactly the postcard, is it.

If this is you too, I promise you are not broken and you are definitely not alone. This happens to so many of us, and there are real reasons for it.

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Your gut runs on routine, and a holiday is basically a polite war on routine.

Why it happens (it’s not in your head)

A few things gang up on you all at once when you travel.

Dehydration. Long-haul flights are brutal for this. The cabin air is drier than a desert, and most of us are sipping wine and coffee instead of water. Your colon pulls water from your stool to keep you hydrated, and the drier you are, the harder and more stubborn everything gets.

Your body clock is scrambled. Your gut has its own circadian rhythm, and it likes to do its big morning job at roughly the same time every day. Fly across a few time zones and that internal clock has no idea what is going on. You are also usually sleeping worse, and poor sleep alone can slow everything down.

All that sitting. Hours on a plane, then hours in transfers. Movement is one of the biggest natural triggers for your bowel, and travel days are basically a movement drought.

Everything you’re eating is different. New foods, less fibre than you get at home, more of the fun stuff, eaten at odd times. Your gut is a creature of habit, and suddenly nothing is familiar.

And the honest truth about how I holiday does not help. I like to jam-pack my trips with everything, so I am unpacking, exploring, saying yes to it all, and my poor digestion is somewhere at the bottom of the priority list.

What actually gets things moving

Here is exactly what I do. None of it is complicated, and most of it is free.

Hydrate like it’s your job, especially around the flight. Before you fly, on the flight, and the second you land, keep replenishing. This is the single biggest one. If you do nothing else, do this.

Pack a bag of chia seeds. Genuinely, they come on holiday with me. One to three tablespoons stirred into your morning yoghurt or dropped into a glass of water works a treat. Most hotels have a breakfast buffet with yoghurt sitting right there, so just add them in. Chia seeds are packed with fibre, and fibre is what keeps things ticking along. The brand does not matter at all, just grab any.

Walk, walk, walk. I honestly think walking is the best thing you can do on holiday, full stop. Wander the city you are exploring, pop to the hotel gym, stroll the beach. Getting your body moving gets your bowel moving.

Try a belly massage and some yoga twists. A gentle massage over your tummy and a few simple seated twists get things going in a part of your body that has gone a bit stagnant. It sounds small. It works.

The warm drinks trick. Hot water and lemon first thing, or a peppermint tea, can gently wake your digestion up. Peppermint oil capsules are my travel version of this if the tea is not doing enough.

Bring your basics. I always travel with my magnesium, which helps draw water into the bowel and relax things, and a probiotic to support all that upheaval your gut is going through. These live in my wash bag, not my “maybe” pile.

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The mindset bit

Try, where you can, to give yourself a little routine even on holiday. Same-ish breakfast time, a morning walk, water before wine. Your gut will reward you for the few anchors you throw it.

And be kind to yourself. A few sluggish days does not mean anything has gone wrong. Your body is adjusting, and it will catch up. Usually right about the time you have to fly home.

If you want the fuller picture on why your gut plays up even when you are doing everything “right,” I went deep on it in Why Are All the Wellness Girlies Bloated?!.

So tell me: are you a holiday blocker too? What is your travel trick? As always, I would love to know. Simply leave a comment below.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

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For years, even deep into my healthy-living era, my days ran on a crash timetable.

Eleven o’clock: flagging. Three o’clock: gone. Every single day, this wave of exhaustion would hit and all I wanted to do was eat and eat and eat. Nothing touched it.

Before I knew anything about nutrition, the reason was obvious in hindsight. I was living on fruit, rice cakes, Diet Coke and low-fat yoghurt. Not exactly steady fuel.

But here is the part that took me much longer to understand. Even once I “cleaned up,” the slumps stayed. I would have porridge for breakfast, feeling very virtuous, but with honey and banana stirred through it. Good foods, yes. But that bowl was a huge spike to my blood sugar, and a couple of hours later I would be right back on the floor.

The afternoon slump is not a willpower problem. It is a blood sugar one.

The thing nobody told me is that this is not really about “healthy” versus “unhealthy” at all. It is about how balanced your blood sugar is across the day. You can eat beautifully and still ride a rollercoaster if the balance is off.

That rollercoaster is the whole story of the slump. A big glucose spike is followed by a big drop, and that drop is the wave of tiredness, the brain fog, and the desperate reach for something sweet. Which spikes you again. Round and round.

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When I lived in Sydney in my early twenties, I thought I was the healthiest I had ever been.

Low fat everything. Diet yoghurts, diet snacks, anything with “light” on the label. Diet Coke like it was water. I was ticking every box the magazines told me to tick.

And I was bloated. All. The. Time.

I remember lying on my bed at night with a stomach so uncomfortable I could not sleep, running through everything I had eaten that day and finding nothing to blame. It was all “good” food. I was doing everything right.

Sound familiar?

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“The women doing the most for their health are so often the ones feeling the worst in their bodies.”

Let’s be honest, bloating has become the background noise of the wellness world. The smoothies, the salads, the food diaries, the cutting out of entire food groups. And still the waistband digging in by 3pm.

So today I want to tell you what I tell my clients: it is probably not the broccoli. Here are the four culprits I see over and over again.

1. You’re eating in fight or flight

Digestion is a rest and digest job. That is not a cute phrase, it is how your nervous system actually works. When you are stressed, your body diverts blood away from your gut because it thinks you are in danger. Digestion slows. Food sits. Gas builds.

Which is why you can eat the exact same meal on holiday and feel fine, then eat it at your desk between meetings and blow up like a balloon.

The thing is, most of us are eating almost every meal in a low-level state of stress. Scrolling, working, rushing, refereeing children. Your gut notices, I promise.

2. It’s how you eat, not what you eat

Nobody wants to hear this one because it is not fancy. But eating fast, barely chewing, grazing all day long and eating standing up over the kitchen counter will bloat you faster than almost any food will.

Chewing is the only bit of digestion you control consciously. Skip it and you send your stomach chunks of work it was never designed to do. And constant grazing means your gut never gets a break between meals to do its housekeeping.

Small mechanics. Huge difference.

3. Your “healthy” diet might be the problem

This is my Sydney era in a nutshell.

All those diet foods I was living on were full of artificial sweeteners, and sweeteners are one of the most common bloat triggers I see. Your gut bacteria ferment them, and the by-product is gas. The Diet Coke I was drinking to be “good” was quietly puffing me up every single day.

The modern version looks different but works the same way. Mountains of raw veg because salads are virtuous. Doubling your fibre overnight because you read about the microbiome. Protein bars sweetened with things you cannot pronounce.

“Your gut does not care how healthy something is on paper. It cares whether it can digest it.”

None of these foods are bad. But more is not always better, and raw is not always superior. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for your gut is cook your vegetables.

4. Your hormones have a say

If your bloating arrives like clockwork in the week before your period, that is not random. Progesterone rises in your luteal phase and slows digestion down, which means more time for fermentation and more bloat, even when nothing about your diet has changed.

I spent years trying to fix a “food problem” that was actually a cycle pattern. If you track one thing this month, track when the bloat shows up. The answer might be in your calendar, not your kitchen.

I went deep on all the sneaky wellness culprits in Why Are All the Wellness Girlies Bloated?! if you want to go deeper.

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So what now?

Here is what I want you to take from this: bloating is not a flaw and it is not a life sentence. It is your body communicating. Asking for calmer meals, slower eating, food it can actually break down, and a bit of patience with your hormones.

On Tuesday I am sharing the exact 7-day plan I use with clients to calm a bloated gut. No juices, no starving, no detox nonsense. One small change a day for a week. That one is for my paid subscribers, so if you want the practical follow-through, this is your moment to upgrade.

Until then, tell me: which of these four surprised you? And what is your bloat story? As always, I’d love to know. Simply leave a comment below.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

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Let’s get one thing out of the way first: this is not a detox.

You will not be drinking your dinner. You will not be hungry. There is no 48-hour juice reset, no cayenne pepper anything, and absolutely no punishment dressed up as wellness.

I have done that version. In my Sydney years I “detoxed” my way through more Mondays than I can count, fuelled by diet foods and Diet Coke, and I stayed bloated the whole time. Because bloating was never a toxin problem. It is a digestion problem, a nervous system problem, and sometimes a hormone problem.

The thing is, a bloated gut does not need less food. It needs calmer, slower, smarter food. That is what this week is.

Seven days. One change a day. Each one stacks on the last, so by Sunday you are doing all seven without it ever feeling like a programme.

“Your gut does not need a punishment. It needs a change of conditions.”

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When I was 23 and living in Sydney, I was tired, bloated and completely confused by food.

I was eating what I thought was the healthiest diet going. Low fat everything. All the “good” foods. And my body was not having it. This was the era I was diagnosed with IBS and PCOS, constantly uncomfortable, constantly exhausted, and with a drawer full of “wellness” that was quietly making me feel worse.

Then a naturopath in Sydney said something that changed the whole course of my life. Stop cutting things out. Start adding real, whole foods, and build your meals around fibre.

That one shift is the reason I have spent the last 15 years as a nutritionist. And it is the reason I have written my fourth book.

“For the first time, I started to understand what my body actually needed. It was not less. It was fibre.”

So here is my news. My fourth book, Fibre First, is coming in January, and pre-orders are open today. I have been sitting on this for months and I genuinely cannot believe I get to finally tell you.

What it actually is

Fibre First is not another restrictive diet. I promise you that. It is the opposite of everything the wellness world is currently shouting at us.

The whole thing is built on one idea I come back to again and again: crowd in, don’t cut out. Most of us in the UK are getting around 18g of fibre a day when we need at least 30g, and that shortfall quietly touches everything, your gut, your hormones, your skin, your energy, your mood. Fibre is the forgotten piece, and it is genuinely the one that pulls the rest into place.

The book comes in two halves.

Part One is the why. The science, made simple. How fibre feeds your gut, steadies your blood sugar, supports your hormones through every life stage, and yes, why it might be the best beauty treatment you are not using. No jargon, no fear, just the stuff I wish someone had explained to me in that gynaecologist’s office all those years ago.

Part Two is the how. A gentle 21-day plan (Foundation, Flow, Glow) and the recipes to go with it, from breakfasts and power lunches to the odd chocolatey treat that happens to be full of fibre. Every recipe has its fibre and macros worked out for you, so you genuinely do not have to count a thing. My 10-10-10 approach: 10g of fibre at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and you are there without even trying.

Why this one means so much

I have written books before, but this is the one that feels the most like me. It is everything I have learned, both as a nutritionist and as the person who lived the tiredness and the bloating and the not-knowing.

If you have ever stood in your kitchen thinking “just tell me what to eat,” this is that book. It is the roadmap I needed at 23, written for you now.

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Pre-order it today

Fibre First: Great Gut Health For Life is out in January, and you can pre-order it now. You can grab your copy here.

Let’s be honest about why I am asking now rather than waiting. Pre-orders genuinely make or break a book. They tell the shops people care, they shape how it launches, and they are the single most helpful thing you can do to support an author you like. So if you have been thinking about it, ordering today is the biggest little gift you could give me.

And when it lands on your doorstep in the new year, I want to hear all about it. Which recipe you try first, how you get on with the 21 days, all of it. Nothing would mean more than seeing this book in your kitchens.

I will be sharing lots more between now and January, sneak peeks, recipes, the story behind it. For now, thank you for being here for all of it. I could not have done any of this without you.

Love, Madeleine xxx

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Walk down the supplement aisle and everything is possible.

Glowing skin. Deep sleep. Balanced hormones. Calm, but also energy. Focus, but also relaxation.

And the wellness girlies, my people, I say this with love, are buying all of it. Doing everything right, taking six different capsules a day, and still tired, still bloated, still not sleeping.

I know because I was one of them.

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My greens powder era

Here’s my confession. I didn’t just buy one greens powder. I bought several. Different brands, over months, because every time one didn’t seem to do anything I decided the problem was the brand, and the next one would be the one.

The tub would arrive looking like it held the secret to life. I’d stir the green sludge into water every morning, gag slightly, and tell myself I could feel it working.

The thing is, it was never really about the powder. My basics weren’t in place. My blood sugar was on a rollercoaster, my sleep was patchy, my plate was more beige than it should have been. No supplement on earth was going to out-perform that.

“You cannot out-supplement a foundation that isn’t there yet.”

Let me be clear about something before we go any further: I am pro supplements. I take four every single day and I’d argue for each of them with my whole chest. Some of the best products in this industry have genuinely changed how I feel.

The problem isn’t supplements. The problem is the order we’re taking them in, and how many.

More is not the answer

Somewhere along the way, wellness culture turned the supplement shelf into a collection. One for sleep, one for skin, one for stress, one for hormones, one because your favourite influencer takes it.

But your body isn’t a checklist, it’s a system. And when you’re taking eight things at once, you have no idea what’s actually working. If something helps, you can’t tell which one. If something disagrees with you, same problem.

The order of operations

Here’s how I think about it now, and what I tell every client:

First, the 90%. Protein and fibre on your plate. Blood sugar balance. Sleep. Movement you enjoy. A nervous system that gets to exhale now and then. This is unglamorous and it is everything.

Then, the 10%. Once the foundation is in, supplements stop being hope in a capsule and start actually doing their job: topping up what modern life makes genuinely hard to get. This is where they shine, and this is where they’ve earned their place in my own routine.

How to supplement smartly

When you are ready to add something in:

1. One at a time. Give each new thing 8 to 12 weeks before you judge it, and before you add anything else. It’s the only way to know what’s working.

2. Check the dose, not just the ingredient. The label matters. Look for doses that match the research, not just a nice ingredient list.

3. Buy fewer, better things. A shelf of six half-finished pots costs more than two or three quality products you actually take consistently.

4. Know why it’s there. Every pot on your shelf should have a job description. If you can’t say what it’s for, it’s clutter.

The four that made my cut

If you want to know exactly what I take every day, and what I look for on each label, I broke it all down in Tuesday’s subscriber post: The Only 4 Supplements I Actually Take. It’s the practical companion to this one.

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Now tell me, because I know there’s a story here for every one of us: how many supplements are in your cupboard right now, and how many of them can you honestly explain? Confessions in the comments. As always, I’d love to know.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

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I have some news that still feels slightly surreal to type: my menu is now live at The Ned.

From this week until the end of August, Malibu Kitchen at The Ned in the City of London is serving a limited-edition Madeleine Shaw x The Ned menu. Every dish on it came out of months of tastings and back-and-forth with their brilliant chefs, and honestly, it has been such a fun, collaborative process and such an honour. I am so proud of what we made.

But before I talk you through the food, I want to tell you why I said yes to this in the first place.

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The thing nobody says about health journeys

Here is a pattern I have watched for 15 years, in clients and in myself. We start taking our health seriously, and one of the first things we quietly drop is eating out.

The menu feels like a minefield. We do not want to be the difficult one at the table. So we cancel, or we go and order a sad side salad and feel left out of the fun. And slowly, “being healthy” starts to mean seeing our friends less.

Let’s be honest, that is not health.

“Eating with the people you love is not a break from your health journey. It is part of it.”

Connection is as real a nutrient as fibre. Which is why I did not want to make a “diet menu”. I wanted to prove that food can be genuinely nourishing, protein packed, fibre packed, full of colour, and still be the kind of food you want to linger over with friends for two hours.

So here’s what we made

The bites. Two little plant-based starters I love: falafel with lemon yoghurt, spicy tomato and a green goddess dressing, and cauliflower fritters with crispy tofu and smashed cucumber. Full of fibre, full of flavour, made for sharing.

The signatures. The Malibu glow bowl, which is everything I want in a lunch: edamame, hot honey halloumi, chickpeas, radish, avocado and a miso-tahini dressing. A lemongrass and soy salmon with pickled cabbage, crispy black rice and sesame. A sriracha steak with super green rice and quick pickled red onion. And the one I keep ordering: the sesame chicken schnitzel with quinoa, charred corn and a little kick of chilli. It is just really, really yummy, there is no cleverer way to say it.

And for pudding. Oh, pudding. We made a dark chocolate and tahini pot with olive oil and sea salt, and it has over ten grams of protein. Protein! For pudding! It is so delicious that this might be the dish I am most proud of on the whole menu.

Everything follows the way I actually eat: protein and fibre on every plate, as many colours as possible, and absolutely no punishment.

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Come and see me there

If you do not know The Ned, it is this grand, beautiful building right in the heart of the City, and Malibu Kitchen is the light, gorgeous spot inside it where the menu lives. It is the perfect place for a long lunch with your friends, a catch-up date, or a solo treat when you are in London this summer.

The menu runs until Monday 31 August. I will be popping in over the summer, so if you spot me, please come and say hello. Truly nothing would make me happier than seeing this community around those tables.

The practical bits: you will find The Ned at 27 Poultry, London EC2R 8AJ, right by Bank station. My menu is served at lunch, Tuesday to Friday. You can book a table here, and for groups of seven or more, email restaurants@thened.com and bring all your friends. My kind of maths.

And if you go, tell me what you ordered and what you thought. As always, I’d love to know. Simply leave a comment below.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

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Let’s be honest. You’d expect a nutritionist’s kitchen to look like a health food shop. Shelves of powders, a rainbow of capsules, one of those weekly pill organisers that means business.

Mine doesn’t. My daily list is four things. That’s it.

It took me fifteen years to get here, and I promise the shortness of the list is the point.

The mindset that took me 15 years to shake

For most of my time in this industry, I was in a mindset I suspect you’ll recognise.

Another pill will heal me.

Another powder will cure me.

Another capsule will fix me.

I’d read something, buy the pot, take it religiously for three weeks, then find it at the back of the cupboard six months later, half-finished and quietly going out of date.

“I wasn’t taking supplements. I was taking hope in capsule form.”

The thing is, what actually moves the needle has never been in a pot. It’s the basics. Food, blood sugar balance, protein and fibre on your plate, sleep, movement, a nervous system that gets to exhale now and then. That’s the first 90%.

But here’s the part I want to be clear about: once those basics are in place, some things genuinely are worth supplementing. Not as a cure, but as a top-up for the things modern life makes hard to get. That’s the order. Basics first, then supplement smartly.

These are the four that have earned a permanent place on my shelf.

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There is so much content about working mums, trad mums, stay-at-home-mums. So much. And yet somehow so little about how the behind the scenes of it actually works. The structure, the system, the moments where it all falls apart, feels almost impossible to find. We see the aesthetic. We see the vague reassurance. But we don’t really see how anyone actually does it.

So this is how I do it. Imperfectly. With a lot of trial and error. And with one rule that has made everything else possible.

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The system (because without one, nothing works)

I work three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday and Thursday I am fully with my youngest. And I do school pickup every single day. That is non-negotiable for me. It is the mum I always wanted to be, the one I promised myself I would be, and honestly it’s one of the privileges I am most grateful for in how I have built my work. Emails switch off on those days. Genuinely off… or as close to it as I can get.

On work days, my hours are nine to three thirty. That’s all. Which sounds clean and manageable until you remember that by the time you factor in the school run, the forgotten PE kit, the small person who cannot find one shoe, it’s nine fifteen and you have already spent twenty minutes not working.

I exercise in the mornings so that it does not eat into my working hours. And I want to be clear about what that actually looks like: it is not a beautiful reformer class with a green juice at the end. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I am at Casa Core and it feels like a genuine treat, a small pocket of time that is just mine. But mostly it is me on the floor of my living room, in my pajamas, in between making breakfast and putting cartoons on and fielding requests for more toast. That is what actually happens, and I think it is important to be honest about it.

Wednesday I have turned into a dedicated content day. Recipes, videos, brand work. I try to get four pieces done back to back in one shoot day. It is not how I would ideally do it. Doing things more naturally, in real time as they happen, would probably make for better content. But this is the reality of limited hours. So I batch. And it works.

The rule that changed everything

The single most important decision I have made for my sanity as a working mum has nothing to do with a productivity system or a time management tool. It is this: my children are not online. Not my kids, not my relationship, not my family life. None of it.

I wrote about this in my screen time piece, but it matters here even more. When you are sharing your family online, every moment becomes potential content. You’re at dinner and part of your brain is composing the caption. You’re on a Saturday walk and thinking about the shot. The line between living your life and documenting it gets so blurry that eventually you are never fully in either one.

Not sharing my children means that when I am not working, there is nothing to document. Which means I am actually there. The boundary draws itself.

I am always quietly in awe of people who do not have that line. Because I genuinely wonder: when does work end?

The day that tested everything

A few months ago, my nanny cancelled. The same morning, my son’s school shut because there was no water. I had a hard deadline and what was supposed to be one of my most important work days of the month, recipes I had to hand in, no wiggle room on the timeline.

I called every relative. Every friend. Nobody could help.

So I gave my best to my children all day. I was present. And then I stayed up until two in the morning getting the work done.

Was it the right way to handle it? Probably not. It’s clearly not something you can do sustainably. But in that moment I kept coming back to a phrase I first encountered in Marie Forleo’s book: everything is figureoutable. I come back to it constantly in those moments when life is throwing everything at you at once. It is not toxic positivity. It is just a quiet, steady reminder that there is a way through. That you will figure it out.

And I did.

On guilt (I feel it. I just decided it was not going to be part of me.)

I feel it. When I put the TV on so I can answer an urgent email on a Tuesday. When I let them have the iPad during nap time so I can finish something. When a deadline means I am less present than I want to be. I feel it in those moments.

But at some point I just decided it was not going to define me. Not because I am tougher than anyone else, but because of how I was raised. Because of my mum.

She worked. She had a career she loved. She was a physiotherapist, someone who chose her profession not just to make money but to look after people. My dad is a psychiatrist, still practicing. My brother is a doctor. My sister is a florist. We have all, in our different ways, ended up in careers that look after people or make people feel good. I think that came from somewhere.

Crucially, neither of my parents complained about work. Sunday scaries were not a thing in our house. They loved what they did, and they just got on with it. Watching that as a child, I absorbed the idea that work is not something you endure. It is something you can choose. Something that can matter.

I love my job and I know that is a privilege. But I think it is the other reason guilt doesn't consume me. I am not grinding through something I resent. I am doing something I believe in. Something I can explain to my children, something they can feel part of. They sample my recipes. They know what I am working on. When I am filming and they are around, I might say: do you want to try this? What do you think? They are not on my channel. But they are part of my career. And I think that matters more than people realise.

What I Eat in a Week as a Busy Mum

The girlboss vs the soft life stay-at-home-mum (a conflict I have not solved)

Some days I genuinely wish I could just be a stay at home mum. Fully in it. Nothing competing for my attention.

Other days I wish I had more hours to work, to create more, build more, achieve more.

The conflict is real and I have not resolved it. What I have found is that three days a week is the balance that works for me right now. And right now is the key phrase. Because I know this season will pass. My children will get older. I will go back to full time work. I will earn more, do more, build more. That is coming.

But right now, I have to give in a little. Output is lower. Content is less frequent. My kids’ clothes are not ironed. And that is good enough. More than good enough. It is the right call for this moment.

The most important thing I can tell you (and it is not about being a mum)

This part is for everyone.

I have spent time in my life in a space I now think of as 'I'll be happy when.' When I meet someone. When I have a baby. When I build the business. When things settle down. And what I have come to understand, slowly and through getting it wrong more than once, is that training your brain for “not yet” means you will find “not yet” everywhere. Even on the yacht. Even holding the baby. Even walking down the aisle. If you have trained yourself to look for what is missing, you will find it. Even in the moments that are supposed to be everything you ever wanted.

I know so many people who have so much, and they are still not satisfied. Not because they are ungrateful, but because they have never trained themselves to feel what is right here. The happiness was always going to arrive with the next thing.

So the most important thing I’ve learnt is: stop fighting the season you are in.

That does not mean giving up on goals. It does not mean pretending things are perfect when they are not. It means choosing to notice what is already here. The funny moment with a friend. The cuddle from someone you love. The great TV show at the end of a long day. Those things can light you up just as much as the big ones, if you let them.

Train yourself now. Because I promise you: you will get to the things you want. And you want to be able to feel them when you do.

And in the meantime…

Keep recalibrating. My schedule changes constantly. My children change constantly. What worked six months ago does not necessarily work now. I am always adjusting, figuring it out again, recalibrating.

That is not failure. That is just the job. Both of them.

If you are doing the same, I would love to hear how. Tell me in the comments what is actually working for you right now, or what you are still trying to figure out. As always, I am looking for things that work in real life, not just in theory.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

• Reformer Pilates membership, to go twice a week: £180 a month.

• Red light device: call it £25 a month amortised.

• Sauna sessions: £75.

• Supplements: £300.

• Nails: £150.

• One new outfit, because somehow you always need one: £200.

That is over a thousand pounds. Per month. On wellness.

And before you say that is extreme: is it? Look at your bank statement. Add it up. I am not judging. I am in it too.

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I am part of this. Let’s be honest about that.

I promote wellness. I talk about it constantly. I am a nutritionist who has built a career on helping people feel better. So I want to say upfront: I am not standing outside, pointing the finger.

I am in the reformer class. I have the red light face mask. I have bought supplements I barely finished and devices I used for a month. I had a vibration plate in my Amazon wishlist for, genuinely, ages. I resisted in the end. But I really wanted it.

And I think that is exactly why I can say this: the wellness world has got a bit out of hand. Not because any of this stuff is bad. Most of it isn’t. But the compounding message, from every algorithm, every influencer, every “what’s in my morning routine” video, is that you need all of it. The sauna and the ice bath and the red light and the reformer and the supplements and the clean skincare and the matching workout set. And if you have not got all of it, you’re somehow doing wellness wrong.

But that is not wellness. That is health anxiety with a nice aesthetic.

I have actually toned down a lot of things in recent years, if I’m honest. I stopped using natural deodorant because it just was not working for me. I am less obsessed with the idea of “toxic this, toxic that.” Of course, make good swaps where you can. But I also think that when you start narrowing your life so relentlessly, avoiding things, scrutinising everything, it can harm you more than just getting on with it. Trying to be perfect is its own kind of stress.

The overconsumption nobody is talking about

We spent years talking about fast fashion. The haul culture. The way we consumed clothes at a rate that was embarrassing and unsustainable. And rightly so.

But that same energy has moved into wellness. Into beauty. Into food. We are buying too much, full stop. The algorithm shows us a product on someone we admire and we want it. We buy it. Maybe in multiple colours. We use it three times. We move on to the next thing.

Wellness has become a billion-pound industry in a way it simply was not when I started in nutrition fifteen years ago. What was once a niche promoting a handful of products you can make personally necessary, has become mainstream has become aggressive consumerism. And we are the target market.

The part we really need to talk about: women and money

My audience is mostly women. And this matters in a way that goes beyond just watching your spending.

Women in the UK live on average four years longer than men. Four more years of living expenses, of heating bills, of rent or a mortgage, of just existing. Likely at a time when you’re finished working. And yet women aged 55 to 59 retire with pension pots of around £81,000 on average, compared to £156,000 for men the same age. That is a gap of 48%. Nearly half. And when you factor in women who have no pension savings at all, that gap widens to 62%.

We take career breaks to have children, to look after parents, to do the caregiving that still falls disproportionately to us. We earn less over a lifetime. We live longer. We have significantly more years to fund on significantly less money.

And yet women are also the primary consumers. Marketing is overwhelmingly aimed at us because we drive the majority of household purchasing decisions. We are simultaneously the group most aggressively targeted to spend and the group that most needs to save.

The wellness industry knows this. It is, in large part, built on it.

Men are retiring with twice our pension pot. We cannot afford to be the ones buying everything. So let’s get smart about it.

What is actually free (and genuinely works)

Fifteen years in nutrition and here is the honest answer to what has actually moved the needle, for me and for the people I work with:

Morning daylight. Getting outside within the first hour of waking up, even for ten minutes. It resets your circadian rhythm, regulates your cortisol, and costs nothing.

Walking after meals. Particularly after your main meal of the day. It has a measurable impact on blood sugar and digestion. You do not need a continuous glucose monitor to figure this out. Just walk.

Eating slowly. Chewing your food. Being present at a meal rather than eating in front of a screen. The digestive process begins in the mouth. Give it a chance.

And walking in general. I think walking might be the most underrated thing we do. Low impact, does not make you ravenous, something you can do for life without damaging your body. I work through emotions on walks. I get my best ideas on walks. You can do it alone or with a friend and call it a catch-up. It is also, entirely, free.

It boils down to what I wrote about when I first started this Substack: building up the basic habits that actually make you feel better. Click below to read it

Mastering the Foundations

What IS worth spending on

Not everything in wellness is a waste. Some things earn their place. Here is where I would put my money if I had to choose:

One class a week. Not because home workouts don’t work, but because the community, the connection, the accountability of being in a room with other people is genuinely valuable. Even once a month if it’s what the budget allows. That experience is worth something you can’t quite replicate at home.

Omega-3. If I could recommend one supplement right now, it’s this. Anti-inflammatory, widely evidenced, important for brain, heart, and hormonal health and not a fad. In the summer, get outside for your vitamin D. In the winter, add a supplement. That is really it.

Good cookware. I know that sounds like an odd one for a wellness list, but stay with me. A pan you enjoy cooking in, one good knife, something that makes you actually want to be in the kitchen. Because cooking at home from scratch is one of the most genuinely healthy things you can do. It beats almost every supplement I can name. And it saves you significant money compared to eating out or ordering in.

Use what you already have

Before you buy anything new: look around.

I have a red light face mask. I use it more consistently now instead of eyeing up the next device. You probably have a massage gun somewhere. A foam roller. A yoga mat that has been a clothes horse for six months. Use those things first.

And when you do want to buy something new, ask yourself: will I actually use this? Can it realistically fit into my life? I wanted a sauna. I do not have anywhere to put a sauna. So that was the end of that thought.

How I structure my spending

This has genuinely helped me: I keep separate pots for different areas of spending. Forty pounds a week goes into a clothing pot. Forty a week into beauty, which covers everything from hair appointments to bigger purchases. And a separate pot for holidays.

I try to stay within those. Sometimes I don’t… if something is genuinely necessary. But having that structure means I’m not just drifting through the wellness aisle, adding things to my basket because they looked good on someone else. The wellness world is endless in what it will offer you. Without a limit, the spending is too.

And the irony?

Financial stress is one of the most significant drivers of poor health. Anxiety, disrupted sleep, inflammation, hormonal chaos: chronic money stress causes all of it. Spending your way to wellness is, at a certain point, counterproductive.

You do not need all of it. You never did. Some daylight, some movement, some real food cooked at home, one good supplement, one class. The rest is, honestly, optional.

As always, I would love to know where you land on this. Have you done the maths on your own wellness spend? Tell me in the comments.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

We live in an era of advice (dare I say overload). Podcasts, newsletters, comment sections, your mum, your therapist, internet therapists, that one person at a dinner party who has somehow figured everything out. Everyone has something to offer. Or at least something to say. And most of it washes over us without leaving a mark.

But every now and then, someone says something at exactly the right moment, and it sticks. Not because it was particularly clever or profound on paper. But because you needed to hear it and they said it at the right time.

I have been thinking about the piece of advice that has stayed with me the longest. The one I still come back to, fourteen years later, when I am doubting myself or looking sideways at what someone else is doing. And it came from a friend at a leaving party in Sydney when I was twenty-two.

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The party, the panic, and the scarcity mindset

I had just finished university. I was about to move back to the UK. And I had this feeling, that was equal parts excitement and equal parts terror, that I wanted to do something in health and wellness but I had absolutely no idea where I fit in.

I remember standing with a friend and telling her I wanted to start a health blog. Do some cookery writing. Build something in that space. And in almost the same breath I said it, I immediately undermined myself.

“But it’s already been done, hasn’t it. There’s already so much out there. Who am I to add to it?”

I cringe at that now. Not because it was an unreasonable thing to feel at twenty-two, but because I had barely even started. I had not given myself a single chance. And yet there I was, pre-emptively talking myself out of something before I had done anything at all.

That scarcity feeling. The sense that the table is full, that the seat you wanted is taken, that someone better and more qualified has already arrived. I think a lot of us know it. It is particularly loud in creative fields, in wellness, in anything where showing up requires you to put a piece of yourself into the world and hope that it lands.

What he said

My friend looked at me and said something like:

“There is only one you. And you will bring something different to the world that no one else can.”

That was it. No long speech. No pep talk. Just that.

I have repeated it to myself more times than I can count. At moments when I have felt like I was not good enough, not established enough, not expert enough. At moments when I have watched someone else do something and felt that familiar little pull of comparison. At moments when a new voice has arrived in the wellness space and part of me has thought: does that make me less relevant?

And every time, I come back to it. There is only one you.

Why it’s true (and why we forget it so easily)

The thing about comparison is that it flattens everyone into a single category. You are not comparing yourself to a specific person. You are comparing yourself to a version of them that you have projected, one that has their strengths and none of their struggles, that has their platform and none of their doubt. Them with no context other than their curation. We all know that it’s not a fair fight. It was never going to be.

What that comparison also misses is that your perspective is genuinely irreplaceable. Not in a motivational poster way. In a literal, factual way.

Everything that has happened to you, the places you have lived, the things you have studied, the relationships you have had, the health struggles, the setbacks, the moments that changed you, none of that exists in any other combination in any other person on earth. Which means the way you see things, the way you communicate, the stories you carry, the specific angle you bring to any given topic, that is yours alone.

And people connect with that. Not with an abstract idea. With a person and their particular way of seeing the world.

Think about how you consume content yourself. You don’t follow one person. You do not read only one book. You do not go to one restaurant. There is room for everything that resonates with you, and you make room for all of it. Your audience is the same.

Being you is the hardest and most important thing

I know this is easier to say than to do. Because being yourself, authentically being yourself rather than a performance of you, requires you to get quiet enough to know what that even means.

And most don’t enjoy the silence.

We are moving quickly, absorbing other people’s energy and aesthetics and ideas, scrolling through what everyone else is doing and slowly, without noticing, adjusting our own sense of ourselves in relation to all of it. It is subtle. It happens all the time.

Which is why I think the question I keep coming back to is this one: what do I like to do when no one is looking?

Not when I am performing. Not when I am thinking about how it will land. Just when I am doing something because it makes me happy and there is no audience for it.

That is usually where the most honest version of yourself is waiting. In the quiet. In the thing you do for no reason other than it makes you feel lighter.

And the things that make you feel lighter? Those are almost always the things that, when you bring them into your work and your life and your relationships with other people, make you magnetic in the way that no amount of strategy or positioning ever could.

I think about that friend in Sydney often. She probably does not know that a sentence she said at a leaving party has quietly underpinned everything I have built since. But that is how it works sometimes. The advice that matters most is rarely the most complicated.

There is only one you.

That is not just enough. It is the whole thing.

If you have a piece of advice that has stayed with you like this, I would genuinely love to hear it. Leave it in the comments below.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

Walk into any coffee shop, supermarket, or wellness-forward brunch spot and you will be met with a wall of alternatives. Oat. Almond. Soy. Cashew. Coconut. Barista blend. Barista blend with added protein. What doesn’t have added protein? The message, whether anyone intended it to be, is that dairy is the thing you are opting out of. That the default has shifted. And for a lot of people it genuinely has.

I am a nutritionist. I work in women’s health. And I can tell you that the only question that rivals how much I get asked about gluten is how much I get asked about dairy. Should I cut it out? Is it inflammatory? Is it making my skin break out? Is it fine and everyone just got swept along by a trend?

The honest answer is: it depends. And I know that is the least satisfying sentence I could write, but it is the truth. So let me give you the full picture and let you decide.

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I’ve been working in social media for 14 years but now it’s going analogue that is trending. The new luxury is the ability to be offline — which ironically, everyone is posting about from their phones.

But I started before social media was really a career you could point to. Before ‘content creator’ was a job title, before anyone other than ‘tech bros’ used the word ‘algorithm,’ before your phone was something you stared at over dinner. And like you, I’ve watched it go from something fun and genuinely social (remember when you actually saw what your friends were posting) to something that genuinely has the power to shatter people’s mental health. Naturally, I’ve had my own ups and downs with it over that time. More some years, less others…

And my honest answer to ‘how I manage my screen time’ is: imperfectly, and through a lot of trial and error. However, there are a few things I have landed on that have made a real difference. And I want to share them, because I think a lot of us are struggling with this and the analogue obsession tends to teeter on preachy condescension or vagueness to the point of being useless.

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What changed everything? Becoming more private

The single biggest thing I have done in recent years is choosing not to share my family online. Not my kids, not my relationship, not my parents or my close friends. None of it. And the impact this has had on my actual screen time is more significant than any app or setting I have ever tried.

Here’s why. If you are sharing your family life, every moment becomes potential content. You are at dinner and part of your brain is thinking about the shot. You are on a Saturday walk and you are mentally composing a caption. It is not malicious but it is insidious. That’s just how it works. The line between living your life and documenting it becomes so blurry that eventually you are never fully in either one.

So when I am not working, I am switched off. Not because I have superhuman discipline, but because there is nothing to document. My personal life is my own. Which means when I am with the people I love, I am actually with them.

There is also a values piece here that I feel strongly about. Other people have their own story to tell, or not tell, as they choose. My kids especially. I do not want my children on social media as children. I actually signed a petition for restricting social media for under-sixteens and I promote that position because I believe in it. Honestly, it always felt contradictory to me to say ‘children should not be on social media’ while simultaneously putting my children on social media. You cannot hold both of those things at once so I had to make a decision.

The phone does not sleep in my bedroom

This one sounds so small but it is not.

I have a charging station downstairs, and my phone goes there as early as possible in the evening. No phone in the bedroom. No phone before bed. I read a book instead. A real one, made of paper. This has been important for my sleep, but honestly it has been just as important for my relationship. The phone in the bedroom is quietly corrosive in ways we do not always want to admit. Something shifts when it is not there.

Getting a work phone… and why I tried a Nokia first

I get my next upgrade soon and the plan is to have two separate phones: a work phone with email and social media apps on it, and a personal phone with banking, photos, travel apps, the things that are genuinely mine.

The reason? A habit I catch myself in constantly.

1. I pick up my phone to check something practical

2. I end up on Instagram.

I did not pick up the phone with the intention of going on Instagram. I did not consciously choose it. My thumb just went there, an automatic response, and it’s difficult to interrupt when everything lives in one device.

About five years ago I actually went back to a Nokia. An old school brick, no internet, no apps. And it was genuinely wonderful in some ways. But I also got completely lost trying to get somewhere because I had no maps, I could not pay for things on my phone, and I once ended up stranded in the rain with no way to get an Uber home. The Nokia lifestyle is beautiful in theory. Practically it is quite difficult in 2025. Maybe one day. But for now, the two-phone approach feels like a workable middle ground.

Habits over hacks (literally)

There are tools that can help. I have heard good things about Brick, which physically locks your phone away. There are screen time settings and app limits and all of it. And I think those things have their place, especially if you are trying to break a really entrenched habit.

But what I keep coming back to is that the tools only work if you are also building the habit underneath them. The phone does not go in the bedroom because I set a rule. It goes there because I have built a different way of ending my day that does not involve it.

Some small things that have actually shifted things for me:

1. Bringing a book on my commute so I am looking at that instead of my phone.

2. Setting an intention in the morning before I open my phone. Something like: before I go online, I am going to cuddle my dog, say good morning to the people I love, maybe step outside for a minute. Just connecting with something real before I connect with the internet. It sounds like a small thing. It is a small thing. Which is exactly why it works.

Of course, we are all guilty of the opposite, including me. I can assure you not every morning looks like that. From the quick work email I fire off at the dinner table to the thing I suddenly need to look up that cannot wait, we all do it. But making little moments matter, going analogue I guess, makes a real difference over time. It changes the relationship gradually rather than requiring some dramatic intervention. A bit like fad diets, the overnight fixes drive obsession, while the real lifestyle change comes from small swaps you can eventually stack that actually feel manageable.

Which is actually why I’ve been drawn to doing more in-person events lately. There is just something about being in a room with real people, no phones, no filters, no algorithm deciding who sees what, that genuinely resets something. For me, they’re an easy way to connect that I get excited about, and that diminishes my obsession with parasocial scrolling.

If you feel the same, I’m hosting a workshop at Casa Core on Saturday 27th June and would love to see you there. We’ll move through a Pilates flow, followed by a talk on holistic health, hormone balance, and burnout prevention, plus an open Q&A. Whether you need to boost your energy, support your wellbeing, or simply carve out some time for yourself by logging off, come along.

Join me at Casa Core

The thing meditation taught me about screen time

This might be the most useful thing I have found, and the least obvious.

Meditation teaches you to do nothing. To sit with your thoughts and let them be there without reaching for something to make them stop.

My meditative exercises

And I think a huge proportion of our screen time is about exactly that: not wanting to sit with our thoughts. We feel bored, or low, or anxious, or restless, so we immediately reach for that dopamine hit. A funny video. Online shopping. A deep dive into an internet black hole. Anything to fill the space where the uncomfortable feeling was. Our phones are simply the most acessible numbing tool we have. But it is in good company with food and alcohol and shopping and all the other things we use to not feel things.

Plus, suppressing thoughts does not work. They keep coming back, which will be news to nobody. And they will keep coming back until you actually sit with them. What meditation taught me is that sitting with thoughts is safe, not scary. The thoughts are not the emergency they feel like. They are just thoughts. And when you build even a small regular practice of being with them without reacting, the compulsive grab for the phone starts to lose some of its pull.

I don’t think you need to be a dedicated meditator to feel this. Even a few minutes of sitting quietly, of not reaching for a screen, starts to shift something. It is like a muscle. It gets easier. I actually shared some easy breathwork techniques recently if you want to simply dip your toe in.

4 breathwork techniques to try today

The result?

Fourteen years in, I still do not have this perfectly figured out. Does anybody? But I have found that the things that have genuinely helped are less about restriction and more about building a different relationship with being present. With my own company. With the people around me. The phone fills the gaps we leave for it. The trick is filling some of those gaps with something else first.

If any of this resonates, I would love to hear how you manage it. And if you have a small habit that has actually shifted your screen time, tell me in the comments. I am always looking for things that actually work in real life, not just in theory.

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Love, Madeleine xxx

Let’s be honest about Ozempic, because at this point, if you’re in any kind of wellness space — or online space at all — you’re taking it, thinking about it, know someone who is, or are quietly judging someone who is. And all of those positions deserve a more honest conversation than the internet is currently giving them.

I’m not here to scare or sell you on it. I’m a nutritionist, and my philosophy is about arming you with all the facts so you can make your own call. So here it is.

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What actually is it?

Ozempic is the brand name for semaglutide, a drug originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes. It works by mimicking a hormone your body already makes called GLP-1 which is released naturally after you eat and does three things:

1. It tells your pancreas to produce more insulin.

2. It signals to your brain that you’re full.

3. It slows down how quickly food leaves your stomach.

And what Ozempic does is all of this, but more powerfully and for longer. Its half-life (which is the time required for it to reduce to half of its initial value in the body) is about seven days, which is why it’s injected just once a week. The weight loss effect wasn’t the original intention. It was the side effect that made it famous, much like Viagra was first a blood pressure drug. (A fun fact if you didn’t know) What it showed scientists is that one of the major mechanisms behind obesity runs through the brain. Suppressing appetite, it turns out, is a major key. We spent years blaming metabolism. It turns out it’s much more about hunger signals.

The weight-loss-specific version of semaglutide is called Wegovy, at a higher dose. Ozempic and Wegovy are the same molecule. The brand name just depends on what dose you’re prescribed and what it’s being used for.

Who might actually benefit?

This is where nuance matters. These drugs were developed for people living with serious obesity and its health consequences, not as a shortcut for someone wanting to drop a dress size.

For people who have struggled with their weight for decades, for whom every diet has failed, and who carry the physical and psychological burden of food dominating their entire mental landscape, semaglutide can be genuinely life-changing. One patient account that has stayed with me described being able to think more clearly because their mental space was no longer consumed by hunger, guilt around food and planning meals. For someone in that position, that is not a trivial thing. It is a lifeline.

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I know this because I lived it. I lost my period for two years, and I know what that feels like: the fear, the overwhelm, the questions that keep you up at night. Will I ever be able to have a baby? Is something seriously wrong with me? I went on to have two babies. And I want to say something I wish someone had said to me sooner: not having your period is a signal, not a life sentence. The body is not broken. It is asking for something.

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But before we get into the causes, I also want to flag something I care about deeply and something so many of you have written to me about: PCOS/ PMOS. It is very common, very misunderstood, and it needs its own dedicated approach rather than generic wellness advice. I say this because I didn't want it buried at the end of a long post with PCOS/ PMOS girlies making themselves feel guilty for external causes when this condition often requires deeper and more tailored treatment. This is why I built the PCOS/ PMOS programme on The Glow Space launching on the 1st of June. It is a structured, evidence-based programme that gives you the knowledge, the tools and the daily habits to start managing your PCOS through food, movement, supplementation, sleep and stress management . If this feels right for you, sign up now.

Sign up for the PCOS/ PMOS programme

Generic health advice is genuinely helpful, but as women, so many of the changes driven by our hormones and physiology are overlooked. Which is why the period is a vital sign... When it goes missing, the body is communicating that it does not feel safe or resourced enough to sustain a pregnancy right now. That is worth listening to, not panicking over. And it is worth understanding, because the causes are more common in wellness spaces than most people realise.

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If you’ve been following along, here or on Instagram, you’ll know that PCOS/PMOS is something I have lived with, studied deeply, and built an entire programme around. And I’m so excited to say that the programme is here and you can sign up now.

My PCOS/ PMOS story

What is it?

My 21-Day PCOS/PMOS Programme on The Glow Space is genuinely 360 in its approach. One thing it is not is a diet plan with a side of advice. Instead, it covers the whole picture: a full meal plan with shopping list, a movement plan, meditation, supplement guidance, and educational content woven throughout so you actually understand what is happening in your body and why. As anyone with this condition will be familiar with, knowledge (sifting through it and figuring out what’s relevant) is half the battle, and I wanted to make sure that was central to everything.

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When does it start?

We go live on the 1st of June and if you are in from the start, you get an exclusive extra — free weekly live calls with me throughout the programme. Real-time access, researched honest answers and crucially real support as you go through it.

Of course if you miss the 1st of June start date, you can still join at any point. But the live calls are exclusively for those who are in from the beginning. Once that window closes, it closes.

The risk-free bit

The programme is £14.99 a month with a 7-day free trial. Which means there is genuinely nothing to lose by signing up now, getting settled in during the prep week, and being ready to go on June 1 with the rest of the group. Click below to start your free trial.

Start your free trial

If you have been told you have PCOS/PMOS and sent away without any sort of therapeutic treatment (mental or physical), this is the plan. And right now, you can try it for free.

Love, Madeleine xxx

If you’ve been here recently, you’ll know I’ve been unpacking my own PCOS/ PMOS experience and before I really understood my PCOS/ PMOS, I was eating what I thought was a healthy diet. Medjool dates with nut butter. Fruit-heavy smoothies. Energy balls that were essentially sugar held together with oats. They tasted incredible and I genuinely felt like I was being good to my body.

My PCOS/ PMOS story

What I did not understand was that my body was on a blood sugar rollercoaster all day long.

Every spike was followed by a crash.

Every crash sent a signal to my body to produce more insulin.

And excess insulin, for many women with PCOS/ PMOS, drives up androgen levels, which drives the symptoms: the irregular periods, the skin issues, the weight that will not shift no matter what you do, the fatigue that never really lifts.

Blood sugar regulation is at the heart of managing PCOS/ PMOS for the majority of women who have it. Once I started understanding that, everything changed.

Before we get into the practical detail, there’s something worth flagging if you missed it. Recently, PCOS/ PMOS got a new name. A global consensus published in The Lancet has renamed polycystic ovary syndrome as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS. The old name was a red herring at best and inaccurate at worst. Not every woman with this condition has ovarian cysts, and that framing meant the broader picture, the hormonal complexity, the metabolic and mental health implications, was consistently overlooked. PMOS is a more honest reflection of what this condition actually involves. The name has changed. Our understanding and what we know to be the most effective treatment has not, so throughout this post I’ll be using both so nobody gets lost in the switch.

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Here is what blood sugar balance actually looks like in practice. It is not about cutting out sugar entirely or following a restrictive diet. It is about building meals that slow the release of glucose into the bloodstream.

That means always pairing carbohydrates with protein and fat. It means not eating fruit on an empty stomach. It means starting the day with a savoury, protein-rich breakfast rather than something sweet. It means small shifts you might not have considered, like eating the vegetables on your plate before the carbohydrates. And it means moving your body after meals, even a ten-minute walk, because muscle contraction helps the body clear glucose from the blood.

It also means being honest about the things that seem healthy but are quietly spiking your blood sugar. The medjool dates. The oat-based snack bars. The large smoothies with four portions of fruit and a tablespoon of honey. I am not saying never eat these things. It is just worth identifying and acknowledging that if you have PCOS/ PMOS and you are eating them every day, they might be working against you.

One of the most powerful shifts I made was starting to strength train regularly. Muscle tissue is one of the most efficient places the body stores glucose, and the more muscle you have, the more effectively your body can manage blood sugar. This is one of the reasons strength training is such a central part of the PCOS/ PMOS Programme.

The other thing that made a real difference was working with Emma Cannon, an incredible acupuncturist, who helped me understand the connection between my lifestyle, my blood sugar and my hormonal health in a way nobody had explained to me before. Sometimes it takes the right person explaining something in the right way for it to finally land.

Which I’m hoping is what my 21-day PCOS/ PMOS Programme on The Glow Space will be. Launching June 1st, it covers nutrition, movement, supplements and weekly live coaching calls every Monday at 7.30pm, built around the things that actually work. I have done the learning so you don't have to.

If this strikes a chord, come join us at The Glow Space. Sign up early, (there is a prep week the week before) to hit the ground running.

Sign up for the PCOS/ PMOS programme

And if you have any questions, or anything you want to share in this community, simply leave a comment below.

Love, Madeleine xxx