03 Magazine: November 03, 2023

Food | Magazine 61
“Challenging yourself
to have more fun with
flavours and thinking
about the personal
benefits through the
cooking process can be
a very mindful thing.”
Alby Hailes knows better than most how important it is to
look after yourself.
Not just because he is a doctor and has been working in
the field of mental health, but because he too nearly fell into
the burnout trap.
A doer by nature, Alby thrives on being busy, and was
working 60-hour-plus weeks as a psychiatry registrar while
writing and photographing a cookbook in his “spare time”
when he noticed some physical health problems.
“Last year was very hectic.”
He went to a general practitioner, something he had not
done in eight years, who suggested burnout and stress were
contributing to his problems.
“I took two weeks off to re-evaluate.”
It led to some important reflection on the direction his life
was going. He had spent six years at medical school at the
University of Otago and worked as a doctor for four years
while also taking part in The Great Kiwi Bake Off in 2021.
“I’d done all that without taking a significant step back and
when you throw everything else in, it’s not that sustainable.”
He and his partner quit their jobs, decided to sell their
house in Whangarei and move south again as his partner
wanted to study public health in Dunedin.
“My parents live out in Waitati so it’s nice to be close to
them for a little bit.”
Alby decided it was time to take things a bit easy for a
while. The couple have moved into the central city and
instead of taking a permanent job, he has been working as a
locum for one week a month around the country.
“It’s the first time I’ve lived almost in the city centre where
you can walk to everywhere and it’s cool that it’s just a fiveminute
walk and you’re in the Octagon.”
That has given him plenty of time to focus on his new
cookbook and cake order business.
“I like being very busy and I miss that. I’m using this year as
an opportunity to reassess my goals for myself and I think I’ll
launch back into things. It’s about finding the balance and I think
I have a better idea about how I can do that in the future.”
He hopes to return to psychiatry and finish his qualification
as he believes there is a lot to do in the mental health and
food area, especially in the areas of food security and the
impact of nutrition on mental health.
“I think if I’m to return to doctoring full-time now, while
also doing some of this on the side, I’d have better boundaries.
Working in the mental health space is quite challenging and
you really take home with you a lot of what is going on. I was
starting to become quite cynical about the world and it was
bringing down how I was feeling about myself as well.
“So understanding why that was happening and how I can
approach things in a different way has been really useful to do
in this time.”
Alby has been working on his cookbook for years as he
slowly built up a range of recipes. After winning Bake Off –
something he entered to get him out of his comfort zone
– he sent off an email to all the publishers he could think of
with a proposal for a “fully realised” cookbook.
He was riding high on adrenaline from the high-intensity
three-week TV shoot and while he went straight back to his
day job after his win, he knew he wanted to do more in food.
“I’ve always been very passionate about food.”
Growing up with a mum who was an “amazing” cook and
a dad “who wasn’t too bad either”, he always loved flicking
through cookbooks. At university, he self-published Scarfie
Kitchen, which he describes as a “very different beast”.
“There is something really beautiful about a book – there
is no replacement for it. It’s not the same scrolling the
internet, you’re tangibly holding a cookbook and getting
butter all over it.”