Here's my summer and what's next.
October 4, 2026
It's been a while, and I hope the summer has been kind to you.
Mine has been full. Time with my family, talking in festival tents, sitting on a food panel, sharing a breakfast with a room of women in London and climbing three mountains with my best friend. I wanted to share a little of it with you, along with what's coming up this autumn and something I'm planning for the new year.
Happy Place Festival
My first talk this year at Happy Place - Eat For Your Nervous System, sold out. Most people in that tent had never connected what they eat with how stressed they feel. We tend to think of stress as something that happens to us at work or at home. Very few people realise that what and when you eat can be part of it too.
When a meal is high in sugar, refined carbohydrate or imbalanced, blood sugar rises quickly. The body releases insulin to bring it down, and often it falls further than it should. Your body reads that dip as a threat and calls on cortisol to bring your blood sugar back up.
It's the same stress response you may feel when managing an emotional or metal challenge, but this time triggered by your plate, and it can happen several times a day. That's often why you can find yourself tired in the afternoon, craving something sweet or caffeine and waking feeling unrefreshed.
My second talk, Light Is Medicine, drew on circadian biology and on a new paper from Glen Jeffery, Robert Fosbury, Scott Zimmerman and colleagues, Metabolism in the Solar Photon Field. They propose that the infrared sunlight helps our mitochondria do their work more easily, improving their efficiency.
Mitochondria are central to the health and function of every cell, regulating metabolism, aging and overall health. Natural sunlight enriched in infrared helps to optimise how well they do their job, helping to optimise how me energy, regulate blood sugar, optimise recovery and anti-aging capacity.
Most modern indoor LED lighting however contains almost none of that infrared, and we spend most of our time indoors. We are essentially deficient in some light frequencies while being over exposed to others, and this is likely negatively impacting our biology, increasing the risk of chronic disease, and down regulating our repair mechanisms accelerating aging.
Light and circadian biology sits at the foundation of everything I do, most of us now spend our days indoors, under a kind of light our bodies were never designed for.
Abergavenny Food Festival
At Abergavenny I was so thrilled to joined a panel with the philosopher Professor Barry Smith, and classically trained chef and chocolatier, Great Taste judge with the Guild of Fine Food, and food author Daniel Jones, chaired by Ritula Shah, to explore the question what is food?
So much of the conversation about ultra-processed food centres on the ingredients list, and that does matter. The question I keep coming back to is a slightly different one, though: what is this food actually doing to our body and my metabolism?
Food that is still close to how nature made it, with the fibre around the starch and the fat still held inside the nut or the seed, arrives in a form our bodies are designed to digest and absorb. It's broken down slowly and in order, and it gives us steady, safe fuel that works with our system rather than overwhelming it. When food is taken apart and rebuilt, the same raw materials can arrive all at once, and the body has to work much harder to manage them.
So rather than asking whether a food is "real" or "fake", I find it more useful to ask how it is changing our biology. One simple way to begin is to ask whether a food still looks like the thing it came from.
A Breakfast at Helm, London
In September I gave a breakfast talk for Helm on women's hormones and health through midlife.
Perimenopause is often described as oestrogen simply running low. In reality, during the forties, hormones can swing higher and lower than they ever have, which is why this stage can feel so unsettled.
Menopause is also the beginning of a real metabolic shift. How the body handles blood sugar, where it stores fat and how the heart is protected all start to change, and heart disease remains the leading cause of death for women.
We finished somewhere hopeful with targeted nutrition and lifestyle tools, including how morning sunlight and proper darkness at night helps steady the body as the hormones become less predictable.
The Three Peak
Last weekend I completed the Tripr Rise & Shine all-women National Three Peaks with my best friend, Gemma: Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon. An incredible experience and achievement, I am so proud to have done it. If you are thinking about doing it new dates are being released soon.
Coming up: Eating for Immunity at Hawkwood Collage
In a few weeks I'll be at Hawkwood College for Eating for Immunity, a practical day on how food, blood sugar, sleep and daylight help your immune system through the winter months.
If you'd like to join me, you can here.
Something New for the New Year: In Rhythm
Natural light sets our internal clock, and that clock guides our hormones, our blood sugar, our energy, immunity, our sleep and repair and recovery. Food matters enormously, but it works best when the rhythm underneath it is steady.
So I'm planning a small winter programme called In Rhythm, running from January to the spring equinox. We'll begin with light and the shape of a day, then explore how we make energy and why a little time in the cold can help, how to eat in step with the shorter days, how to support the nervous system, and how to move outdoors through winter.
Each person leaves in the spring with their own rhythm to carry forward. Running through all of it is one simple habit: getting outside every day, whatever the weather, starting gently and building from there.
I'm looking for just six people for this first group, so it can be personal and properly supported. If this feels like something you'd like to be part of, or you'd simply like to hear more about please get in touch: sarahbaylissnutrition@gmail.com
One small thing to try
Before you look at your phone and open your laptop tomorrow, step outside for ten to 40 minutes. Even on a grey October morning, the light outside is far brighter than anything indoors, and it's one of the kindest things you can do for your mind, mood and metabolism.
It's lovely to be back in touch.
Warmly, Sarah
PS. If part of you is already bracing for winter, the cold, the short days and the pull to stay indoors, and you'd love to come through it feeling clearer, brighter and steadier, In Rhythm is for you, get in touch to find out more.
Sarah x
The information provided by Sarah Bayliss, A Registered Nutritional Therapist, is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before making any dietary or lifestyle changes.
Sarah
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