She’s the founder of a plant-based empire, the host of hit podcast, The Wellness Scoop, and has sold more than 1.5m cookbooks worldwide – but life hasn’t always been quite so rosy for Deliciously Ella's Ella Mills. In fact, there was once a time when she was so ill that she couldn’t leave the house, let alone see a future ahead of her.
Starring on the cover of Good Housekeeping’s July issue, Ella explained how, at the age of 21, she started suffering from debilitating symptoms, including chronic fatigue, digestive issues and pain "everywhere". She was in her second year of a history of art degree at the University of St Andrews and was forced to move back home to Oxfordshire, where she was largely confined to her room.
In time - and after endless tests - she was diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, and while Ella says it was a “relief” to have a diagnosis, it didn't stop her from spiraling to a dark place. “It transpired there was no simple answer, and I quickly transitioned into extreme apathy,” she shares.
“I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel anything. I just didn’t care. I had no autonomy over my body. No friends. No purpose. No future. I thought that if I was depressed, I’d be crying, emotional or sad. I had a year of nothingness. I had no sense of purpose. I was just at home, rotting.”
Her parents, father Shaun Woodward, who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in Gordon Brown’s government and her mother Camilla Sainsbury, the supermarket heiress (Ella’s great-grandfather, Lord Sainsbury, oversaw the expansion of the supermarket chain for three decades), tried their hardest to help their daughter stay positive and, ultimately, find a way forward.
“My mum did her best to make me laugh,” says Ella. “My dad told me I was depressed, but I couldn’t think about that as a possibility. It was too much. I did one session with a therapist who said she understood why I felt so apathetic. I didn’t go back, but of course I should have done.”
In the end, however, Ella saved herself. She realised that while the drugs didn’t work, changes to her lifestyle might. She searched for plant-based recipes to boost her wellbeing and realised there was a lack of resources. And so, one fateful day in 2012, she sat at her computer and typed out a recipe for roasted potatoes with a creamy avocado dip. It was the beginning of her Deliciously Ella recipe blog, which would spawn her plant-based empire, which sells a product every second - as well her route to getting well again.
"It felt revolutionary!" Ella says. “I was doing something. But it was a left-field pursuit; someone I was close to at the time said it was random because I didn’t know anything about food. He wasn’t wrong, but I was trying out new recipes in my parents’ kitchen and learning to cook as I went. I’ve always had low self-esteem and at that point I’d hit rock bottom, but after three months, I got 10,000 hits. The feedback was electrifying; over the next two years, I had 130m hits.”
As her health started to stabilise, Ella came off her medication and learned to manage her stress – which wasn’t easy as her business grew. In 2014, she taught cookery classes and hosted supper clubs; the following year, Deliciously Ella was published and became the UK’s bestselling debut cookbook. A decade on, Ella recently sold Deliciously Ella to the Swiss food company Hero Group for an undisclosed sum, continuing in the role of "founder/brand ambassador", and now runs her Plants business, alongside her podcast.
But, most importantly, at the age of 34, Ella is happy, healthy and more determined than ever to spread some sense about wellness. And it all started with cooking.
Read the full interview in Good Housekeeping’s July issue on sale now.
The Wellness Scoop, hosted by Ella Mills and Rhiannon Lambert, is available wherever you get your podcasts.