I've actually made a requested video.

You'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit nervy today.

I was just reading some more back issues of the Dark Phoenix saga

and now I'm really emotional

because apparently the X-Men are my life sometimes.

You may also have to excuse me if I keep checking my phone, which is on my lap,

which I will keep doing a lot

because I am waiting!

I am waiting for a very important text

because I could become an auntie at any moment.

No, OK, well - I'll get the text saying she's gone into labour

but that's something. Yes. If you didn't know, Claudia's sister

is pregnant.

We're going to be aunties.

Now we've got all of the excuses out of the way, let's get onto the actual meat of this video

and that's giving you an update on my diet

situation

and telling you about the supplements that I am currently taking.

Let's begin with a little history lesson

in the food that Jessica put in her mouth

and whether or not that was a good idea.

My parents very much had a policy when I was a child

(to be fair, they still have that policy now)

that you just eat everything - whatever's put on your plate, you eat it.

There's always one thing on your plate that she knows you don't like

to make you eat it and make you try it so that you're trying new things.

It's a great idea; I'd probably do it with my own children

but it wasn't a great idea for me.

See, I'm quite happy to eat anything;

there aren't many foods that I choose not to eat.

Even - like, I hate olives.

I hate olives; they are so disgusting.

And yet

if there are olives

at a party

handed around or something, I will eat them

because I feel like I need to train myself to like them.

Even when I was a tiny baby

and all I had to eat

(eat?)

(Drink, I suppose)

was my mother's milk,

still there was something very wrong with my insides

Which I now know is because I have a connective tissue problem

and ergo

my whole organs...they just don't work so well.

They just don't work so well.

But as a child, no one knew that.

So I would be eating dinner every night, and about twenty minutes after we'd finished,

every night I would get horrific

stomach pains; really bad cramping.

I'd be on the floor like [moans in agony].

Doing my homework.

"And then the Romans did this - owww."

Then, when I was seventeen - as everyone knows;

everyone who watches this channel knows, but, hey, you might be new; you might not know -

when I was seventeen, I paralysed both of my arms for a year and a half,

and the doctors thought that I might have some kind of a brain tumour,

so they did various tests on me, one of which went wrong,

and all of my spinal fluid leaked out

and I was incredibly, incredibly ill.

Very, very unwell.

And I couldn't eat anything because I was just vomiting - basically, my body just rejected everything.

I also got pumped with a lot of drugs.

I don't even know what drugs were given to me, largely because I was a child

and nobody...

Nobody tells you anything.

Yeah, seventeen.

You're still on the children's ward - believe me, I looked really strange.

I was about five times the size of everyone else there.

I'm 5'9" and a half.

The nurses were probably about 5'2", 5'3".

They'd need at least three of them to get me anywhere.

But basically, all of the drugs that went through my body

stripped me of all the good bacteria that lives in your stomach and in your guts.

So my ability to eat got worse and worse and worse,

even as I was getting better from this.

I - every night -

would be vomiting, just...

An hour, even. I couldn't--I just couldn't stop it.

My body would reject everything.

Because I wasn't digesting anything, either; it just sort of sat in my stomach all day long.

I'm definitely going to put some kind of warning about vomiting

at the start of this video.

Warning! now, if you missed that as well.

And the sickness seemed, instead of getting a bit better, it just seemed to get worse

and worse and worse, and it got down to the point where I was being sick after drinking water

and I was getting weaker - and something I now notice is that when I'm tired or weak,

obviously my ability to eat gets worse, and the less you eat, the weaker you get;

the weaker I am, the sicker I get.

So you just tend to spiral, and I still have to watch that; be very careful about that.

And at the time, I...I was obviously still a minor

and some stuff happened in hospital.

Mainly that there were certain doctors who thought that I had an eating disorder.

Purely because I was a teenage girl.

Like, thanks, guys. Thanks.

Not gonna research what's wrong with my stomach? No?

Just gonna...

just gonna put me on the psych ward.

I will say at the time that I definitely

I definitely panicked

quite a lot

when it came to food

because so many things were making me ill

I kind of developed like "safe foods"

that I knew wouldn't make me so sick.

Third vomit warning.

Third vomit warning.

The safe foods were actually

probably less about what didn't make me sick

and more about what wasn't awful when you saw it for a second time.

So, things like rice pudding,

and ice cream.

But don't--you know, there are certain things you don't want to eat. I mean, a curry, for instance.

That's not fun.

And anything involving wasabi.

It comes back straight through your nose.

So, yeah, having

having the safe foods probably didn't

help much.

So I had the dietitians at the hospital who were putting me on all of these different diets,

which were so much worse, and

my stomach felt like it was getting more out of control.

Some of which helped a bit.

And at the same time, I was trying to find ways to protect my stomach

essentially.

And I was still being pumped with loads and loads of drugs, and I also had this other group of doctors,

who were...talking over me

and telling my parents that it was essentially my fault

that this was happening to me.

Anyway. It's a kind of period in my life that is awful and hard, and I guess I don't talk about it

that much, because if I think about it too much,

I cry like you wouldn't believe.

If I one day write a book about my life,

um...it will probably feature, and I will tell you everything

in that, but maybe it's not something I can discuss.

Listen to your kids. There you go.

Moral for the day.

Eventually, though: adult

I got to do some adulting

and tell those particular doctors to shove off

out of my life.

No, no, no.

I was like, "No, I'm gonna take control."

"I'm gonna find the thing that helps my stomach and save myself."

I think it was my hospital's dietitian, who suggested to me the ketogenic diet

which is where you

have absolutely no carbs or

any kind of starches.

All you have are fats and proteins, and in fact it's mainly fats.

Mainly fats and a little bit of protein. It's something that body builders do quite a lot.

And it really works for children who have epilepsy,

and it's been shown to help people who have neurological problems.

Neurological and neuropathic problems - so, issues with their nerves.

Well, hey. That's this girl.

So I started that, and it did almost feel kind of magical.

The change.

The way that it happened. Suddenly I had lots of energy - well,

energy compared to what I'd had before;

I wasn't being sick all the time.

Didn't feel so weak.

I felt like I was finally beginning to get my body back on track; I was putting on a bit of muscle,

which was really nice.

I say "body back on track;" that's because my body

looked like this.

That's my brother

by the way.

So, there you go, ketogenic diet. But the problems with the ketogenic diet are that you have to eat

constantly.

[Quietly] Constantly.

So I'd be eating like eight times a day

and...it's really expensive, because all you're eating are fats and proteins.

Two pounds for your bag of rice

and it can last you for an entire week

but then if you buy some chicken...thighs,

that's like £4

and that's two meals.

Oh.

You basically can't go out, even,

because you have to carry your little tub of cream cheese with you.

So I did that. I'd go to class with my tub of cream cheese.

And because your body's in a ketogenic state, it uses just fat

to power you.

The only energy you have comes from your own body fat.

So, if you've not got much of that to start with, that's not great

and if you don't eat enough, you get horrendous headaches.

But we pulled that back, and the ketogenic diet morphed into the low carb diet.

So, now I also had vegetables -

green vegetables; leafy vegetables. Any vegetables that were grown above the ground.

Root vegetables I still have an awful lot of trouble digesting; that was just not going to happen.

And some fruits, but not sweet fruits - so, berries were fine;

but bananas wouldn't be.

Even strawberries, if they were too sweet, they wouldn't be.

Around this time, I also found that my ability to eat red meat was declining

and so it was, you know, turkey; chicken;

and fish and seafood. Those are the only...

proteins--oh, wait, eggs. Eggs are a protein.

Dairy.

Well, no, actually. Dairy wasn't that great, either.

Yeah, so that was all I was eating.

Any kind of carb was a complete no-go.

Any kind of sugar, my body would read as "poison," essentially.

It's a thing where you basically get a whole body

muscle spasm.

But, essentially, for ten years of my life,

that worked.

A bit.

I just had to avoid any of the stuff I couldn't have

and I was OK.

And people were like--

I made a video about this, and people were saying, "How can you eat? What can you eat?"

Looking back - excellent question.

So, yeah, from the ages of seventeen to twenty-seven,

I...just didn't eat carbs.

And then I met Claudia, and she was like, "OK..."

"I can kind of get behind this, but also...weird."

"Really weird."

"Have you considered maybe that you might have some kind of a bigger problem that needs fixing?"

"When was the last time you even saw a doctor about this?"

And I kind of had a problem, obviously, when it came to doctors

relating to any kind of food or stomach issues.

For obvious and very fair reasons.

Sorry if the camera angle just changed; there was a dog issue.

So, I met Claudia.

Claudia's family are medical,

so she took me to some new doctors.

A new gastroenterologist; to see a new dietitian

and they were like, "OK, I think your issue, with not being able to eat any kind of starches

or sugars, probably isn't something that you should just ignore for the rest of your life.

Maybe we should try and fix it?

And then you can eat more stuff."

I was a little scared. I was a little scared; I was apprehensive.

Because, you know, if you've done something for ten years,

changing that kind of feels like a big leap. A very big leap.

And I was pretty terrified of just being so sick all over again.