Ella Woodward, author of Deliciously Ella, wants us to feel good about healthy food, without being 'smug'

Yet one reason she strikes a chord with so many is that, despite her material advantages, she’s had her fair share of knock-backs. While studying History of Art at St Andrews University, she was suddenly struck down by a rare illness called postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), which is characterised by an abnormal increase in heart rate after sitting or standing up, and which left her physically exhausted and struggling to get out of bed in the morning. ‘I’d get this sort of “rush out” feeling where my heart rate would go from 60 to 190. The blood just drops out of you. Every time I got up, the world would go black.’ Without the energy to see her friends, her social life fell apart, she lost confidence, and despaired of her future. ‘I thought, nobody’s going to stick around for this. I will have no friends, I will live at home forever, I’ll never have a job or kids.’ To make matters worse, it took weeks before she received a diagnosis; her GP initially claimed the problem was psychosomatic and recommended therapy.

At the time, her diet was high on sweet treats and low on leafy greens. On her blog she describes her former self as a ‘sugar monster’; tomatoes were picked out of sandwiches and baby sweetcorn would only be ingested if melted in macaroni. Her kitchen speciality was Rice Krispies cake, made from Kellogg’s finest golden syrup, marshmallows and melted Cadbury’s Caramel chocolate bar, topped with a bag of pick’n’mix sweets. But that all changed during a denial-fuelled trip to Marrakech with her then boyfriend.

An attack of food poisoning left her on a drip and led to her being repatriated less than 24 hours after she arrived. Back in the UK, on a course of steroid-based medication, she decided to take her health into her own hands. Inspiration came via the fruit and veg regime of American wellness guru and best-selling author Kris Carr, who has incurable stage 4 cancer but whose upbeat writings about healthy living (which she sees as a complement, not an alternative, to more conventional medicine) have won her millions of fans, and seen her tour medical schools, hospitals, wellness centres and universities to deliver lectures.

When she told her pasta-loving parents of her plans to cut out gluten, dairy and refined sugar, and document it all on a blog, they were dumbfounded. It was pointed out that she could neither write nor cook. ‘Both of which were true, of course,’ laughs Woodward. There’s undoubtedly a certain irony to it: at school she had been placed in the bottom set for English. ‘I was a very, very slow learner. I was good at nothing,’ she says self-deprecatingly. Despite this, she says she came up with the blog’s now-famous name in ‘a few seconds’: ‘There was no sitting down with a bunch of creative people for a branding meeting or anything like that.’

Perhaps it’s this detail that offers the biggest clue to her appeal. While her lifestyle may be aspirational, Woodward presents it with such warmth, and with so little affectation, that it’s difficult — even for a cynical, croissant-loving hack — not to warm to it. And you can tell from her writing that she’s motivated not by book sales or profit margins but by enthusiasm. As she puts it on the blog: ‘More than anything I want the blog to show how easy and delicious healthy food is — it’s so much more than bland salads and iceberg lettuce!’

Having graduated from St Andrews in May 2013, she says she has no plans to ‘do a Jamie’ and market a line of products or politicise her dietary message to sugar-rushing school kids. Anyway, she’s far too busy cracking America, having recently appeared with presenter Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show and on Good Morning America (which pulls in a total viewing audience of around 11m), writing her second book and training as a nutritionist at the College of Naturopathic Medicine — all while maintaining a punishing regime of yoga, spinning and boxing (see her Instagram for headstands, far left, and the like). ‘I’m going to write the next book and then stop. Take a bit of time to decide what I want to do next.’

But it’s not all work and no play. Currently single, she enjoys eating out at Soho’s famous vegetarian, Mildreds. Does her no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, meat, eggs or anything processed diet make her something of a waiter’s nightmare at other, less ‘Deliciously’ on-brand spots? ‘I just ask for a simple piece of fish — any decent restaurant can do that, can’t it?’ She also loves to shop at the haute-grungy fashion houses of Rag & Bone, The Kooples and Sandro, and lives in an Earls Court house with a large kitchen where she experiments with recipes, helped by her two assistants. Does she ever feel the desire to go crazy, get wasted and pull an all-nighter at a club? ‘I go out quite a lot,’ she insists. ‘Just because I like being healthy doesn’t mean I can’t have fun — I don’t drink excessively but I’ll have a couple of vodka-and-sodas.’ Who would have thought it? The poster girl for clean-eating, a fan of hard spirits. You heard it here first.

Deliciously Ella by Ella Woodward is out now (Yellow Kite, £20) . Portraits by by Helen McArdle. Styled by Nathalie Riddle. Food throughout provided by online supermarket . Food for crew provided by Little H.