another person's take on mental health and how he deals in a world that he sometimes struggles to feel a part of. But as someone who has struggled to find the ray of positivity in most days of his life, he knows what it's like to feel the relief from a moment of joy.

As well as some life events and recipes, Nat's book has some important perspectives from his own experience on mental health, self reliance and not following the crowd. Part cookbook, part autobiography, part social commentary, part mental health advocacy, part career advice - it just kinda makes no sense, but it’s also absolutely perfect. The book however is a ripper of a yarn by a guy who has been through a lot, and come out the other side wiser, sounder and confident enough to carve his own path. With Nat's nine no-nonsense rules, you'll be on the road to being a better d*ckhead faster than you can say 'get in the bin' to jar sauce.He speaks quite candidly about his physical and mental health issues and his regrets about self-medicating for so many years. Nat’s debut book Un-cook Yourself: A Ratbag’s Rules For Life topped bestseller lists in its first week of release and went on to win Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book Award of 2020 (the proceeds of which Nat donated to Beyond Blue), and was nominated for Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards.

When he’s not filming, cooking or foraging for rosemary, Nat can often be found indulging his love of rock'n'roll and comedy, playing in various bands and stand-up rooms around Sydney.It’s not a 5 star rating, only because as others said better than I did, it perhaps could have used a little more structural editing, but that’s being a bit pedantic. Its full of swears and Australianism but it's a solid book counteracting the psudeo happyism that exist in the self health world. It's worth reading for his interesting life story but probably could have been done really well in 100 pages. Nat’s What I Reckon was the tattooed lockdown savior we didn’t know we needed, rescuing us from packet food, jar sauce and total boredom with his hilarious viral recipe videos that got us cooking at home like champions again. I didn't know much about him prior and assumed he had a background as a chef, but he grew up in church, dropped out of school, was fired from countless jobs for mucking around or being lazy, spent 6 years as a stoner on the dole, travelled a bit as a musician and broke into stand-up after developing a YouTube following for a segment where he walks around with a tiny microphone and makes fun of things.

It's also written in his signature style - 'fucken' rather than 'fucking', 'ya' rather than 'your' - which got a little old by the end. At the time I was struggling with my writing and how it would be received—should I be writing personal things about my sexuality? As someone who has dealt with and is currently dealing with both physical and mental health issues, Nat has received a shitload of vacuous advice and is in his element skewering them all. I love Nat, and have been a big fan of how is talking sounds very similar to mine and which is rare to find lol. Great homely advice as usual, but I feel he may have re-tread older material here as some of what he discusses seems familiar (from his yellow book).Again, this was a perfect Self Care bingo pick for me, and once I get a bit more stability back, I’ll be trying out as many recipes from the book as humanly possible. I enjoyed reading UN-COOK YOURSELF, plenty of fun anecdotes and a lot of decent philosophising about society that I tended to mostly agree with. Nat is an outsider; not fitting the typical mould of society with long hair, tattoos and piercings matching his rock'n'roll persona. Think Jamie Oliver’s skills meets Gordon Ramsey’s mouth mixed with Viv from the young-ones attitude. The good news is, I have done a little investigation and found an easy and very cost-effective way to get hold of this from one of the big booksellers.

I don't always agree with him , some of it is a bit to 'woke' for me but his insight to mentale health skips along side something I have experienced personal. This is a key theme of the book and it explores Nat's experience in getting to know himself and dealing with life's challenges. It is part memoir, part self-help book filled with the internal conflict of someone who has built a career out of hanging shit on stuff but believes it's not fair to make fun of people and if something makes you happy and doesn't hurt anyone else, go for it. His experience with anxiety and panic attacks was written so well, it almost felt like he’d taken my brain and my experiences with it and written it down for me to resonate with. There are no questionable ingredients here: purely Nat's trademark humour, a big dash of cheekiness and some genuinely handy culinary tips to boot.As a not a teenage boy, I felt that his messages of being brave and finding your own way, getting off the couch and looking for an adventure (even if its the 1 star motel just out of town) were some of the things I took away.