From soap star to wellbeing expert, Davinia Taylor talks about believing in a better future for women’s health and her hacks for a healthier, happier and longer life.
Words: Gemma Calvert. Images: Catherine J. Harbour
It was heartbreaking watching my mum die from cancer. It was also heartbreaking when we lost my husband Matthew’s mum this time last year, and I don’t want my kids to go through that any time soon. Losing those wonderful women reaffirmed to me how important family is plus how we need to really look after ourselves and each other.
When we hear that 50 per cent of us will get cancer, the sense of inevitability can make you think, I may as well enjoy myself, so I’ll drink more and eat more. It’s all a lie because you’re then living in a brain fog with a congested liver, feeling guilt, despair and despising yourself. The [anti-cancer] rhetoric is, ‘Just have a healthy, balanced diet’. Balanced by whom?
You need fats and protein as fuel. As women age, they become more insulin resistant in their brain, so we don’t even respond to glucose. So don’t tell me to have some overnight oats and expect me to feel an energy boost from that! I’m going to get in a carb coma and be asleep at 11am or in a bag of crisps.
That advice is gaslighting in itself. The big scientists are the rock stars who blow me away with their data. Obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe is one of those women. I had the opportunity to speak with her and she annihilated The Eatwell [Guide] plate. She said we shouldn’t be having so many grains and that the agricultural industry paid for the plate.
Change starts with us. My new book Futureproof is about simple and accessible hacks that don’t cost the earth, that helped me lower my biological age, and feel younger and healthier than I did 10 years ago. Basically, it’s a book about hope. You are not destined to just retire, get disease and die like the statistics suggest.
I’m about putting more in to give your brain energy so you feel empowered and have more joy for life. Dieticians tell us to count calories, have low saturated fat and if you’re peckish, just have a handful of nuts. I’ve got four kids. A handful of nuts and then do the school run? No chance! I’ve got to ramp myself up onto another level to work full-time, deal with the influx of emails, the lost swimming kit, the homework, the detention, the head locks and because the dog has just puked.
Oh, by the way, it’s freezing and it’s wet. Don’t tell me to have a handful of nuts and control my diet. I hate calorie counting. It doesn’t work because we need major calories. I’m about getting people feeling satiated and in control of their food and exercise choices because they have the brain energy to stay away from junk food and engage with doing exercise.
I intermittently fast. I do a steady diminishment of food and carbohydrates during the day, using my body fat as a fuel. Then I feast in the early evening with my family and that’s when I have carbohydrates, such as a roast dinner. A biohacking beginner would get up, have coffee with my WillPowders MCT Keto Creamer in it, which is a coffee creamer containing C8 MCT oil.
Within five minutes, it will dampen down food noise, giving you a pause to think before you reach for the granola, croissant, toast or cereal, which all convert to glucose. The last thing you want in the morning is glucose because within 20 minutes you’re going to be looking for snacks. C8 MCT doesn’t kick off the digestive system, which can make you feel sleepy because you’re digesting.
It goes via the lymphatic system to the liver and in the liver this fat is converted into a totally new energy source called a ketone, which then gets released into the bloodstream, shoots up to the brain really quickly and gives you a pause button so you can say, I don’t need that brownie. Then you break a habit of a lifetime. If your body’s constantly digesting and dealing with glucose spikes, you’re going to push your cells into a more chronic state of disease. My products create the opposite of addiction. They satisfy you and you get on with your day.
Mint Aero is my personal kryptonite. If I’m after one, I mix some WillPowders Milk Chocolate Protein Powder into full-fat Greek yoghurt with nuts for a bit of crunch. If I still really want a Mint Aero, I’ll have one, but not until I’ve had that protein. Nine times out of 10, I’ll say, ‘I can’t even be bothered’. I have the protein powder every morning, so do my kids before bacon and eggs. Then they’re out the door full of protein with not one cereal bar or squeezy fake yoghurt that’s full of sugar in sight.
We eat a lot of meat. We’re lucky, we’re in Lancashire where there’s loads of local farms and dairies. By the way, the cheaper cuts are more nutritious than the fillets, which is a great way to save on your weekly shop. I also wouldn’t go for chicken because red meat is much more nutrient dense, but if you do, choose chicken thighs, not breast.
That’s where the flavour is, which means that’s where the nutrients are. So, hurrah for chicken thighs! The fattier cuts of beef are much better for you, so never go for the lean cuts, which is great news for making stews, cooked on the bone for added nutrients. When I was younger, I hated stews and we had them three times a week. Now, I understand why they are so good – it’s just bone broth, meat and natural gravies. It’s about going back to that meat-and-two-veg mantra.
That said, I was a complete carnivore in January. It was for World Carnivore Month, so I ate only meat, eggs and dairy. No fruit or veg. It was an internal reset. Eating that way gets rid of bloating and tampers down that craving mechanism. For three days it was tricky but I’ve read about many women who’ve gone carnivore for several months and got rid of fibromyalgia and arthritis.
All autoimmune diseases seem to pull right away because if you’re eating meat on its own, you absorb 98 per cent of it before it hits the colon. American doctor Anthony Chaffee told me about the carnivore diet. He and his wife have been carnivores for years and their skin is like glass. Nobody knows why the carnivores look so good and why inflammatory diseases disappear because we’ve not studied it yet, but there’s a carnivore community of thousands of people across the world who have this porcelain look, incredible muscles, shredded body fat and a lack of systemic inflammation. I did it for a month and feel like I’ve fallen on my sword. Afterwards, I was straight back on the fruits and sourdough!
I’ve been sober for 15 years and there’s not one person I know who’s better company after a glass of wine. I find it super-boring. It’s the opposite. I’m much more ‘Let’s have a breakfast’ rather than dinner. I couldn’t think of anything worse than relapsing and having to claw myself back out of hell. It’s a fate worse than death. For me, drinking is not even an option. It’s the same as if I was allergic to peanuts. No way. People are still fascinated by the fact I don’t drink. I’ve heard that 18-24-year-olds are drinking less these days but the cynic in me is asking what are they doing instead? What is going on behind closed doors?
Ozempic will put you off your food, much like an amphetamine, but what else is it doing? We need so much fat and cholesterol to manufacture our hormones to feel okay. Never mind if you’re in peri-menopause and your hormones are almost depleted. We need fat to get us through. Never mind with everything else we’re doing, then we’re going to take away fats?
The fuel that creates cholesterol and creates all my hormones? Then you can’t come off it because you’re terrified of piling on the weight, which you’ll probably do tenfold. My new book is about how to build bone, and it’s not just weight lifting but static moves that will get you out of osteoporosis and sarcopenia. Anyone who’s on Ozempic needs to read that book and understand what they’re dealing with.
My favourite investment is a £230 FirZone zip-up sauna that I bought during lockdown. That is my glass of wine now. To an extent, I thrive on stress. I’m not very good in a relaxed state unless I’ve got a good book. Stress is something we need to metabolise as it ends up in your liver. In an infrared sauna you detox from the inside out, so you target those major organs. If you sauna every single night, all-cause mortality drops by 40 per cent and the only way you can account for that is the detox. You’re detoxing stress.
I’ll sauna for 35 minutes, then get into a cold shower to get the shock factor all over my body, which helps the body pump out the parasympathetic hormones oxytocin, serotonin and melatonin – all your cosy sleep hormones. Then lie on my bed, put in my ear plugs and pop my eye mask on. The following morning I wake up refreshed, in ketosis, ready for the day. I’m happy because I’ve got a clear liver.
Bovine collagen is really good for every woman, child and man. It’s not just about skin, hair and nails. This is about your gut health, which is your mental health. Peptides are the building blocks for protein and collagen in skin. Leaky gut can be caused by things like ultra-processed foods, alcohol and excess antibiotics. Your gut is only a couple of molecules thick, so you need to plug that with something that it understands – beef collagen. After you’ve healed that, your skin, hair and nails will start looking fabulous, but you need to figure out the major organs first.
Had I known 20 years ago what I know now about ADHD, my life would have been so much better. That inner monologue of: you’re useless, you forget everything, you’re a daydreamer – it would have been great to know that I can deal with that. I’d have thought, “What can I do then? Where are my talents?”. It’s great that these days we have more diagnoses.
I don’t take ADHD medication because I’m into ketones to give me the stimulant in my head to give me consistency. I listen to house music, I run. I use nootropics, all of that is great for me. The bedtime hack of going from hot to cold gives me a superb night’s sleep. I wear an Oura Ring to track my sleep score, and it’s always 98 per cent.
I don’t feel a sense of responsibility for people’s wellbeing. I feel like I’m a daily news round-up, a conduit. I can somehow take deep science and turn it into normal speak so people don’t have to concentrate that much, telling people that by fuelling your brain, the body will follow. If you get up in the morning and fuel your brain, trust me, you’ll start shredding body fat and you will feel a million per cent better.
What I’m doing feels like a natural evolution. At WillPowders, I’m working with a team of the world’s leading biohacking experts, pioneers and innovators, who are constantly striving to offer women easy access to products to help them take control of their physical and mental wellbeing. I’m just using what I learned through extensive personal research.
I’ve got ADHD and, naturally, we overshare a lot of the time, so it just works because I’m not being told what to say and my content is relatable. Some people still say, “Oh, you’re her out of Hollyoaks!”. I think: “You’re the same age as me if you remember me from then. You’re old enough, you need my help!”. Now I rarely get recognised for my TV character. People normally say, “I’ve got your powders!” or “I love your electrolytes!”, which is amazing!
Davinia’s kitchen staples
• Salted grass-fed butter. We all need salt. Salt is a mineral, and sea salt, in particular, is extremely good for you. It doesn’t raise blood pressure like sugar does. Electrolytes are full of salt and absolutely necessary for mental health because they create an electrical charge. Your brain runs on fat and electricity.
• Eggs. They are nature’s multivitamin and are full of choline, which is fantastic for kids’ mental health and brilliant for children with ADHD. I eat five eggs a day, and the kids have bacon and eggs in the morning.
• Olive oil. Rapeseed and sunflower oils are inflammatory. A great book by Catherine Shanahan called Dark Calories explains why vegetable oil drives up insulin resistance and reduces energy. Remember too that it crosses the blood-brain barrier because it’s a fatty acid – that’s why I feel brain fog whenever I’ve had vegetable oil. Instead, you need a good quality olive oil.
• Kombucha. I’ve just released some in powder form, which I add to fizzy water in restaurants instead of wine.
• Meat. I love lamb mince. I’ll add some spices and some chopped vegetables, which I eat in lettuce leaves. Duck’s great, and liver paté is full of B vitamins. All vitamins in animal products are available to your body. Your body doesn’t have to convert them, so it’s less of a burden on your liver. Try chicken liver with some red onion – it’s gorgeous on sourdough.
• Sourdough. It’s fermented for 48 hours, which breaks down the gluten molecule, so the gluten is not as inflammatory. Don’t get me wrong, sourdough will raise your insulin and blood sugar, and without question, you’ll start storing body fat. However, it is way better than a supermarket loaf!
Futureproof: Build Resilience, Feel Younger, Live Longer, by Davinia Taylor, will be published by Orion Spring on May 22, 2025. Visit willpowders.com and follow instagram.com/daviniataylor.
