Rosemary Ferguson: "I Am So Sick of Hearing About Protein"

Wellness wasn’t meant to be this complicated

Nutritionist and model Rosemary Ferguson has spent fifteen years watching women override their own bodies until something breaks. Ahead of the launch of her new book The Reset, here exclusively for theALLBRIGHT, she muses on diet culture, sleep myths, midlife health, and why ageing doesn’t need to mean falling apart.

Most people are really surprised that I had a really good experience as a model. My relationship with food is solid. I'm terrible at restriction. I'm very tall, I was very slim, so it wasn't really about that. It was more to do with how I was living, I was going out quite a lot, so I had to learn to balance my books. I would go out late and then have to look good on set the next day. I coped by feeding my body with green juices and plants. If you give the body what it needs, it will take care of you.

I see people all the time who are not being listened to [by doctors]. In Western medicine, you have to hit a threshold and then they will try to cure it. I've had my nutrition clinic for 15 years; I look at things the opposite way; I work to support whatever system seems to be under pressure before they get to where medication is required. I grew up in a world of homeopathy. It was never really spoken about, but the doctor was not the first port of call if something was wrong.

The protein obsession is just legitimised diet culture. These women look healthy, so it doesn't look like a problem, but it's so compulsive that it can't be good for you. Just eat whole foods for three meals a day, make up half your plate with plants. If you loosen that tightness a little, there might be more joy around it rather than restriction. I am so sick of hearing about protein, and even more sick of not hearing about the carbohydrate conversation. We need carbohydrate; being afraid of having some rice or a bit of sourdough is madness. Counting everything is exhausting too, who's got time? I don't care if it's 30 grams of protein, I just want a nicely balanced meal.

My book The Reset, is about not accepting little niggles. This idea that you're just ageing, is absolute bull***t. There's this idea that as you get older, things are just going to fall apart. I don't subscribe to that at all. Obviously, we are changing, we're not static and we're under different biologically pressures at various stages whether that's hormonal shifts or otherwise. Women are unbelievably brilliant at doing all of it, but it’s usually to our detriment.

Even just saying, ‘once a week, I'm going to take an hour and do something for myself’ makes me feel a bit emotional, because I'm like, oh my god, what would I do with that hour? I’d likely just potter around my bathroom, have a little look at my things.

I'm very happily married, nearly 20 years, and I love my kids, but when I look back, I'm like, wow, why were women giving all of that up? I think this next generation, with the fluidity in how they talk about relationships will do things differently, when I see my daughters interacting with their partners, it's different. That's reassuring.

For breakfast, I'm a big lover of kefir, nut butter, cashews and pomegranate. I also quite like a boiled egg.

The advice I don’t take that I give others? Stress. Stress, stress, work, work, work. What I am good at now is leaving my phone outside my bedroom at night. I feel like I've got my evenings back.

The data says that Generation X, Millennials and Midlifers, have the worst metabolic health of all time. We're tracking in the wrong direction, considering all the chat around health and wellness, the data doesn't support that we're going in the right direction, it's the exact opposite. There’s so much chronic illness, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, thyroid issues, it’s all escalating.

The wellness world can feel inaccessible to many. I trained in healthcare, and honestly, I don't feel like the words "health" and "care" are reflected in many parts of wellness industry very much at the moment.

My book can help anyone see how powerful what we have at our fingertips really is. We eat every day; food is the biggest piece of information our body gets, and we are all able to change that, we have charge of what we eat. I was very careful not to include anything in the book that was overly technical. I want it to be a revolution for people who think being well is not for them; for people who've just given up.

Stop stressing about not sleeping. If you're that person, get rid of whatever you're wearing to track it. Most people who can't sleep know all the things about having the right environment and so on. I'd be looking a bit further afield, at how stressed you are, and whether you're having sudden spikes of energy before bed. If this is the case, a supplement called phosphatidylserine is really helpful for blunting that late night cortisol spike. But if you're waking up at 3am, that's often blood sugar, so you could think about eating earlier. The point is, you need to learn your own weak point, and that means as much real feedback as possible: write a journal. Find out what's driving your sleep issue, don't just label yourself as a bad sleeper.

For women in perimenopause, it's a shit show. It's really difficult if you're struggling with perimenopause symptoms on top of already being at a stressful time of life.

Biohackers are brilliant at pushing the envelope. My advice, take little bits of what they do; I love cold plunging, I love heat therapy, but those things aren't actually modern, they've been around forever. No one's got time for biohacking all day long.