On the true benefits of eating mushrooms. Announcement of a new MKD cookbook, cook-booklet, The Mushroom Kitchen.

Analysing the content of a supermarket trolley in front of me, with no judgment, just observation and compassion.

Protein first or vegetables first? That is the question :)

Weightloss happens not how I thought.

Lately, I’ve realised that although I’m losing weight and doing resistance training, I keep hearing that I also need to make a conscious effort to eat more protein to avoid losing muscle mass. Why, and how much more? Have I been doing all the right things? Then I started paying attention to how I felt after meals, and protein turned out to be the quiet lever behind an awful lot of it. I wrote about protein before, here I’m just trying to find the answers to a few more questions that have come up along the way.

I left the house yesterday thinking I'd be gone an hour. Pop over to the dentist, sit through a ten-minute procedure, come home. That was the whole plan. But I've lived long enough inside this body of mine to know that plans are more like suggestions, so I did the thing I always do now: I showered, I dressed properly, I packed a good book and a bottle of water. Not because I expected the day to unravel, but because looking after myself, even in small ways, is the one thing I can always control.

The Italian Kitchen, Metabolically Balanced is officially in the shop: 120 recipes from the cuisine I love most, adapted gently and with enormous respect. Read the story behind the collection.

Here's the secret I learned writing it: Italian food barely needed rescuing. A bistecca with white beans and bitter greens, a pot of mussels, a slow Sunday ragù, much of Italy has been eating in beautiful balance for centuries. So the sauces stay faithful. The generosity stays. Only the platform beneath them changes: courgette ribbons under the carbonara, almonds where breadcrumbs stood, beans where the bread was.

Inside you'll find:
🍅 Eleven chapters, antipasti to dolci
🫒 A Why it works note with every single recipe — the thinking, in plain language
🍑 Desserts built on ricotta, mascarpone and dark chocolate, sweetness kept quiet
🚶 And a whole section on making room for pizza, focaccia and gelato, because life absolutely includes them

No counting. No foods to fear. Just meals built for steadier energy, and a growing curiosity about what works for yourbody.

Print it, splatter it, love it.

There's a version of healthy living that looks like a complete overhaul, new regime, new rules, shelves full of supplements. I've never seen it last, in my own kitchen or anyone else's.

What does last, in my experience, is smaller. Almost embarrassingly small. The habits that have shaped my health most aren't the dramatic ones; they're the quiet ones I barely notice doing any more. So today's diary entry is a collection of them: the little things that make eating well and feeling steadier simpler, on ordinary days, when motivation is nowhere to be found.

Food won't replace medicine. But it can quietly stand alongside it, supporting energy, recovery, and the body's own intelligence.

Where it all began.

A diary entry about cutting through the noise.

Protein is everywhere at the moment. Protein bars, protein powders, protein water, protein bread. If you believed the packaging, you'd think we were all one scoop away from falling apart. And somewhere in all that noise, a genuinely important question gets lost: how much protein does my body actually need, and what should it look like on my plate?

There's a pot of white tea on my counter most mornings. I brew it gently, drink my way through it, then simply top it up with hot water for a second - even third - pour. Soft, pale, barely there, but it keeps giving. 🍵

What I love: it's naturally low in caffeine, so I can sip from morning to afternoon without the buzz-and-crash I'd get from coffee. It carries an amino acid called L-theanine that's often linked to a calm, focused feeling, alongside those gentle plant compounds (catechins) I keep reading about. I don't drink it expecting it to fix anything - it's just a lovely, naturally sugar-free cup to fold into the day.

Six kilos down in four months, much of it lost while I was laid up with a broken foot. Turns out it was never about the exercise — it was about protein, fat and fibre on the plate. Here's the story behind the number.

My lunch looked wholesome — falafel, grains, vegetables — yet my glucose nearly doubled afterwards. The culprit wasn't one villain but a few small things stacking up. Here's what happened, and the gentle way I brought it back down.

It has happened to all of us: hungry, short on time, standing in front of a supermarket fridge with no plan. In this one I walk you through exactly how I read a typical grab-and-go shelf: the steady choices I reach for, how to make a sandwich work harder, and the ones I gently leave behind (and why). No rules, no guilt, no foods off-limit, just choosing that leaves you fed and steady, not wiped out an hour later.

One of the things I love most about metabolic health is how accessible it can be. You don't need a device, a special programme, or a degree in nutrition to start making a real difference to how your body responds to food.

Sometimes it's the smallest shifts that have the biggest impact and these here are a great place to start.

From what you eat first in the morning, to the order you eat your meal, to a five-minute walk after dinner - small, consistent choices add up. Your body is different from mine, and the beauty of a food-curious approach is that you get to find out what actually works for you.

Most people know that GLP-1 weight loss drugs work — but what happens to your body when you stop taking them? I read the research so you don't have to, and it confirmed something I've been quietly discovering in my own kitchen.

The Day Blueberries Surprised Me: A Tale of Two Meals

There's something I love about metabolic health that no diet plan or rulebook can give you: the constant invitation to be curious. To pay attention. To notice. Because just when you think you've figured out how your body works, it gently — or not so gently — reminds you that it's a living, changing thing.

This week gave me one of those reminders. And it came in the form of blueberries…

How we find the funny side of everything in life, even after cancer.

A clear guide to those new to metabolic health.