ballet body
Read my food confusion story.

As a society we are so trend led when it comes to health. How you choose to eat should be entirely bespoke to you, based on how YOU feel. In a world where information and inspiration is so accessible online, it’s so easy to get swept up in somebody elses ‘healthy’, that you don’t seek to find your own.

I’m on a mission to educate and enthuse the food confused. I want to separate food from body image and make it all about how you feel, getting people passionate about cooking the foods that make them feel their best. Inspiring them to educate themselves in the lesson that is their kinda of healthy.

My mission is to educate young girls and women that there is no one ‘ideal’. Food shouldn’t be looked at as the root of how we look, but the root of how we actually feel. If you say to someone, “do you feel good within yourself?” 9/10 times you’ll find that they think of their body image, a reflection of themselves that they may or may not be happy with. When I think “do you feel good within yourself?” I don’t mean look in a mirror, I mean how does your body feel? Do you feel healthy? energised? strong?

To find out if you are food confused or not ask yourself these questions:

1) Have you ever followed a certain bloggers/celebrities diet without understanding why it’s good for you, or even considering if it’s good for you personally?

2)Do you relate food to Body Image more than how it makes you feel?

3) Have you ever cut out a food group based on an article you have read?

4) Have you ever been overwhelmed by conflicting information about food/food groups and not known which one to follow?

5) Have you ever felt like you needed to spend a lot of money on specialised ingredients in order to be healthy?

If you tick yes to any one of these five questions, you too are food confused!

Diet and nutrition should be bespoke to you which is why you should always speak to a qualified nutritional therapist before embarking on any of the so called ‘fads’ out there. We are all so very different.

Coming out of my food confusion bubble before I started Naturally Sassy, I aimed to use this online space to inspire you all to eat more veg, the most straightforward thing we can all agree on to pave the way to a healthier you. I hope my recipes will be a starting point for you to empower yourself to love and look after your body, setting out to find what works for you.

Read about my Food Confused Story Here.

Everybody has their insecurities, it’s part of being human, but certain careers heavily promote the feeling of never being good enough, ballet is certainly one of them. It doesn’t matter how many articles you read where dancers tell you that the skinny starving ballerina is simply a stereotype, it is, but the stereotype is there for a reason. This of course is not exclusive to the dance world but I think it’s a great demonstration of how extremist professions can not only effect your mentality but your life long health.

When I look back to why I started Naturally Sassy, I now see clearly that amongst many reasons it was a way for me to try and create a positive outlook on food. I had used food for years to support my emotions not my health, used it to make me look better, thinner, fitter never healthier. There was a time before Naturally Sassy was even a speckle of an idea that I thought about food more than most other things. This was not because I was excited to create an “awesome new recipe”, but because of the sheer amount of pressure I felt to be a better dancer, to look like the fantasy.

You don’t have to have a profession that is based on aesthetic to feel like the way you appear affects everything, we’re built to make constant comparisons, and we generally never truly feel at peace in our own skin. The degrees of which vary dependant on the people that surround you, your confidence and ultimately your goals.

I was lucky enough to have great mentors in my ballet life, they supported me through my struggles, constantly assuring me that every single dancer has their own. I would question if that was true, how would thousands of people day in day out feel utter misery with only glimmers of joy. Why would they put up with that?  Because like most things when you get too deep, you don’t see the bigger picture.

In a world of mirrors, lycra leotards and thousands competing for the same position there is only so far talent can get you. I’ve seen many friends who have tried and failed at getting a professional dancing career simply because of the way they look. They’re not heavy set girls, they’re slight, but not as slight as the girl next to them. Because at the end of the day it’s a visual art, and each one of us is creating the so called ‘correct’ visual, setting higher, and more dangerous standards for the next generation. 

My first memory of feeling ‘food confused’ I  was on a dancing trip abroad. I went to America on my own for 6 weeks to train at an intensive ballet summer school. It was the first time I’d been so far away from my family and the first time I was truly responsible for myself. It was so long ago now that I don’t remember the specifics of what triggered such a huge change for me, but I do remember parts. I met an older, incredibly talented dancer at the summer school, who I began to look up to. I admired her for her popularity, her skill and how incredible her body looked when she moved. She was skeletal, but to everyone that ‘graceful’, ‘delicate’ body was the only view in the room. Over the weeks I started to become friendly with her. The closer I got to her the more I was exposed to her restrictive, warped way of viewing food and slowly but surely I started to listen.

My body at this age was that of a ‘strong’ ballerina. I was small and petite but not skinny. I had breasts, strong legs and a full-face, I looked healthy, I looked like an athlete. In the back of my head I always wanted to be the ideal, but until meeting this dancer and hearing how I could so easily make it happen, the reality wasn’t something I ever considered a possibility.

Back home from another ballet tour to Morocco a year or so later, I returned suffering with severe stomach cramps. After a month of continual problems I went  to see my Doctor who, after testing, found I had been living with a serious strand of food poisoning called Campylobacter. I went on very strong antibiotics that only seemed to make my problems worse before making them better.

I spent hours resting and not dancing, too weak to spend time in the studio. This time off was my first moment of clarity. I saw what I was doing wrong, and I knew that I was creating my own worst enemy.

The thing about this girl, years ago, is that she isn’t me. I don’t relate to her in any moment but my most insecure. She feels like a myth, a dream (or a nightmare) that doesn’t add up to who I am today. But she does, and she’s the reason I do what I do. My love of food and cookery transformed my mindset to thinking of food as the most important tool we have.

Food shouldn’t be looked at as the root of how we look, but the root of how we actually feel and though it took me an emotional rollercoaster to realise that, It was worth it to create a love and respect for myself and my body that never dwindles.

The effects my food confusion had on me entirely dissolved over the year following, I felt like an entirely other person. I decided to make the dance world love me, instead of trying to conform to a ridiculous standard that I didn’t want to be. In order to do so, I lost opportunities, and was told endless times to lose weight. I didn’t listen. My talent hadn’t changed but at a healthy weight my opportunity had. This is because of an industry standard, that needs to be changed, and it’s my mission to be a small part of that.

At the beginning of my story I talked about the ballet summer school; During a long day of rehearsals I twisted my right ankle and consequently tore my tendon. This at the time didn’t seem like a big deal, but this one food-deprived exhausted mistake was the reason my ballet career ended. I dealt with the ups and downs of this injury for 6 years. 50 physio therapists, acupuncturists and masseurs couldn’t help me, and I spent months injured trying to get my ankle better. In the end I resorted to steroid injections and had 7 in this tendon in the course of two years. But ultimately the pain always came back, and I couldn’t do it to my body any longer. Over the years of injury, one thing was always apparent – above and beyond improving my talent, people always wanted me to improve my body. At the risk of my health, that wasn’t something I was willing to do and so I decided to stop dancing professionally and work on my other love full time. My love of movement is still a huge part of what I do with my Ballet Blast by Sassy method and my talks on food confusion, nourishment and self love.

My mission is to educate young girls and women that there is no one ‘ideal’. Food shouldn’t be looked at as the root of how we look, but the root of how we actually feel. If you say to someone, “do you feel good within yourself?” 9/10 times you’ll find that they think of their body image, a reflection of themselves that they may or may not be happy with. When I think “do you feel good within yourself?” I don’t mean look in a mirror, I mean how does your body feel? Do you feel healthy? energised? strong?

Eating Disorder is such a taboo term, and I want to change that. Yes, I loathe the phrase, it’s alienating and frowned upon. However, what it represents is important and It’s not something we openly talk about. The spectrum of an eating disorder is so large, and the kind is so varied – but I do believe each and everyone of us at some point has had a version of this problem. This is why I coin it Food Confusion, a term that really reaches everyone.

The dance world needs a wake up call, and young girls from all walks of life need to be educated that they do not need to conform to an industry or medias ideal. You do not need to be her, you need to be you. I truly believe there needs to be a plan in place so that young athletes, dancers and students can learn about nutrition, food and cooking as part of their studies.

Confused eating patterns needs to be an open conversation. Without going against the trend it will always be there, and we’ll always be aspiring to an unnatural extreme.

My mission is to inspire women to love the skin they’re in through good food, inspiring movement and self-love. We only have one body to grow old in, it’s time to treat it right.

food confusion stories