An influencer since before the term was coined, Isabel Llano (Gijón, 1976) remains a reference for those for whom the Internet is their main source of information, that is, a population volume that is growing at an exponential rate. As in any other area, on the Internet you can come across fakes and undocumented immigrants, but also people like her. Isasaweis, that is her nickname, she has spent enough years sharing knowledge and experiences – which she has collected in informative books – to be taken into account. The most recent is Eat Everything, Train with Me and Change Your Life (Planet), in which he also addresses a part of inner work that his followers (almost 600 thousand on YouTube and more than 400 thousand on Instagram) will greatly appreciate.
15 years journey as an 'influencer'. If you are not the first, I believe that there is no other left from those times.
I don't know if I would say the first one, I've never been asked that way... When I started there were only four or five girls; In fact, I looked at them to begin with but it is true that later they have not continued. Or at least they haven't had that much impact, so maybe when the term influencer was created, I was the one left.
Where does your name come from?
When I was young I was a radio amateur and I called myself Edelweiss, after the flower. At that time my uncle passed away and he affectionately called me Isasa, so I combined the two terms.
How does a computer engineer think of opening a blog to give cooking, beauty and lifestyle advice?
I wanted to dedicate myself to communication, to something related to advertising, but I had to leave Asturias and it was very complicated for me, so I ended up getting into Computer Engineering because my friends did it. I also valued being a teacher, like my father. When I finished my degree I took competitive exams but... it didn't end up being what I wanted either. So this arose as a hobby, 14 years ago. I thought it was made for me, because it is a way of teaching what you like, communicating how you want, you have your own space... Be careful, everything I did has been worth it, competitive examinations and computer science in terms of study , discipline and way of thinking about things.
In recent years we have seen similar books by well-known people, from models to celebrities of different types. How is yours different?
It is different because each person is different and in my case I tell my personal experience. I also have an age, I'm going to be 47 years old and I can communicate things in a different way, and a background: I have been through many diets and this has worked for me. Finally, the proof is me: the book came about because people asked me what I had done for that change.
From starting with beauty and makeup tips, you have gone deeper into yourself to propose tips on internal care. It has been quite an evolutionary journey from the outside in.
We all evolve in life and if you are a restless person with a desire to improve and learn, even more so. I started with beauty videos; 14 years ago there were four girls and what they did were makeup videos. In reality, what I wanted was to communicate, not so much to talk about makeup, and when I was three or four months old I started talking about cooking, then I got pregnant and started talking about maternity things. That evolution ended up uncovering what I really was: the desire to help others, to communicate, to tell things, to generate currents and have my own space to tell what I want.
What sources have you drunk from to learn about nutrition and recipes?
I have been a nutrition geek since childhood. With my first salary, studying and working at El Corte Inglés, I bought a small TV for my room and the Food Encyclopedia. I read it all. And studying computer science, as a free choice I took nutrition subjects. Besides, in my family there are many people who work in the health field, so I have also learned from them. Lastly, I am also very up to date because I read all the studies that come out.
To what extent is “eat everything” not a cliché? Is there nothing edible that is prohibited? Popcorn, pastry cream, sugared…
Well, eat anything that is a food, but there are many things that are not. Industrial pastries are not a food but a set of fats and sugar without any type of nutrient and your body is not going to get any benefit from it. For example, a glass of wine with friends but I'm not saying it's part of my diet; I would call them a pleasure, if you like. Within foods, there are things that provide more and others that provide less. Those that we know are not as good, such as sausages, should be more sporadic in your diet, which should be based above all on vegetables, proteins, legumes, grains. That should be 90% of your diet.
“There is no point in getting carried away by the fad diet or the new trend on Instagram.” What has been the most absurd or debatable thing you have come across?
Phew. One of them is 'Every day a food', be it steaks or bananas. Or the color diet. They are ridiculous because since they restrict your field so much, in the end you end up eating less. I went on many diets when I was a teenager, like the magic soup diet, you made with tomato, cabbage, leek, onion, various diuretic vegetables. It was like puree. In the end it was an absurd low-calorie diet. Diets do not teach and if you want to instill a new habit in a person, the first thing is motivations and new tools. A diet teaches nothing, a diet prohibits. That is why they do not last over time and are doomed to failure. And normally, as a gift, you get some obsession, anxiety, frustration or extra kilos due to the rebound effect.
From your experience and without making value judgments, can you have a healthy life being a strict vegan?
I believe that you can have a healthy life; obviously, supplementing vitamin B12, which is what vegans lack. Foods like quinoa contribute but are not enough. I take supplements from time to time but when they are a plus because you can't eat wrong and supplement yourself. But I do think that vegans may have shortcomings: if you want good muscles, I don't think you can build them based on vegan foods even if you get protein through grains and legumes; Just like non-heme iron, it is not assimilated in the same way. Musculature is the basis of good health from a certain age onwards because muscles will protect you from injuries, from bone fractures... It is one of the changes I made, I lost weight and was left with a pair of arms... And now I lose weight and I have muscle, my arm is formed because I do strength exercises and eat more protein. So, if you want to build muscle without eating eggs, meat, fish... It is very difficult.
Differentiate between effort and sacrifice.
An effort is something that costs you, but is bearable. For which you have to put strength, will and dedicate time; It's not pleasant, but it's bearable. And a sacrifice is something that you're really letting too much into and it's costing you happiness.
The sports routines in your book are outlined because with a QR code the reader goes to the YouTube tutorial where we see you in motion. This is a great success.
It occurred to me precisely to motivate people to do sports. I want to make it easy: if you don't do any sports and you want to start going to the gym, no matter how cool it is in the city, if it's on the other side, you're not going to go. Sign up for the one below you, even if it's the worst, and when you pick up the pace we'll see. So I talked to the publisher about the matter: if we put little drawings or photos of me, that was not going to motivate; Yes, it works for a recipe, but you don't open the book at six in the morning and say come on, I'm going to do these exercises here. And more so in the current era.
Live for today, start from within, attend to our relationships, develop the mind... In addition to your own reflection, have you drawn on oriental sources to create this guide?
I'm not very oriental, to be honest. And I wanted to, but she didn't call me; neither does meditation. But I have drawn from many sources: I am always reading a novel and several popular books at the same time: psychology, productivity, motivation, a little of everything. Also if I find out that an old book was the most popular at the time or if one comes out that is about a new trend. From all the books I have read in my life I get some idea.
