WHAT THE HEALTH? Wellbeing panel series

What The Health?

What The Health? ran until 2023 as a platform to discuss health and wellbeing in a more inclusive, diverse and honest way. Alongside my co-founder, nutritional scientist Toral Shah (@theurbankitchen), our aim was to provide a series of fun, inquisitive and positive events that left guests feeling inspired and motivated, and more able to tune out all the BS unhelpful ‘wellness’ information that can leave people feeling confused, guilty and sometimes insecure. Although Toral and I now concentrate on our own personal projects, we are both still dedicated to exploring health and wellness in our own ways – I continue my work as a health journalist, panel moderator and wellness consultant.

The ‘wellness’ trend has a lot to answer for, not just by offering a limited aesthetic view of what health looks like (spoiler: it’s not simply a 23-year-old woman wearing £200 leggings while doing yoga on the beach!), but also by regularly promoting misinformation, so we sought to investigate health in a more authoritative context, with top experts, thoughtful questioning and a 360-degree approach to wellbeing that didn’t just look at health as something physical, but focused on mental and social health too. 

Social health was especially important to us, and community and kindness was vital to what we did - therefore our events were also friendly, age-diverse and encouraging of people to come alone and meet new friends. We also don’t think brains work well when hungry, which is why we provided delicious food for guests to enjoy before the panel starts! The panel also included a workshop session, and all guests left with a goodie bag to take home, too.

Our sold-out events explored topics such as envy and comparison, self help, men’s wellbeing and sex and relationships, as well as more general discussions about what it means to be ‘healthy’. Previous guests included: Shahroo Izadi, author of The Kindness Method; Rhik Samadder, journalist and author of I Never Said I Loved You; Chloe Brotheridge, hypnotherapist and author of The Anxiety Solution and Brave New Girl; Marianne Power, author of Help Me!; Louise Chunn, founder of welldoing.org, editor of Planet Mindful and former editor of magazines including Psychologies and Cosmopolitan; Dr Karen Gurney, clinical psychologist and author of Mind The Gap; Ian Marber, nutritionist and author of Man Food; Jonelle Lewis, yoga teacher; Lucy Sheridan, comparison coach, and Michelle Elman, body positive activist and author of Am I Ugly?.