The one simple change that made my life better

At the beginning of 2025, I made a bold decision that probably tells you everything you need to know about my ridiculous “all or nothing” personality type.

- Helen Coffey, The Independent

Having eaten and clubbing myself into oblivion in December, I was now going to do the opposite: take on board all the healthy advice I'd ever heard but never followed for at least two months.And when I say all, I mean all. I cut out refined sugar, alcohol and processed food. I drank 1.5 to 2 litres of water a day, aimed for 8-9 hours sleep a night and upped my exercise regime to four times a week.

I paid for the Fast 800 diet app and meal plans, the brainchild of the late Dr Michael Mosley and his wife, and followed them to the letter — which meant, initially, only two meals a day constituting around 800 calories in total. High-protein recipes were stacked with vegetables, grains, pulses and dairy; carbs were rarely, if ever, invited to the party. Even fruit was kept to a minimum due to unwanted sugar spikes.

By mid-March, I was a stone and a half lighter, fizzing with energy and my mental health had never been better. All the boring guff that's spouted about “wellness” and what's actually good for you turned out to be totally true.

My experiment was somewhat on the extreme end of lifestyle overhauls — there was no way that I could realistically keep everything going indefinitely. But making all those changes at once and seeing the results for IO weeks did permanently rewire my brain in unexpected ways.

This December, I decided to go sober for Christmas party season and managed it without any real difficulty, which also perhaps explains why I'm heading into the holidays feeling fresh and excited rather than like Demi Moore's rapidly-ageing character in The Substance.

Though my diet is far from perfect, the lessons I learned while cooking all those wholefood meals fundamentally altered my relationship with food: for the first time in my life, I see it as a tasty energy source, packed with nutrition to fuel me, rather than swinging between viewing it as my nemesis or the answer to all of life's problems.