Are Carbs Bad? & Ditching the Pressure to ‘Fix’ Yourself

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0:44Don't worry, though. Sierra also has yoga gear. It might be a good place to find your zen. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Welcome to The Wellness Scoop, your weekly dose of health and wellness inspiration. And as always, we're here as your hosts. I'm Ella Mills. And I'm Rhiannon Lambert. And after a decade in the wellness industry, it can be pretty overwhelming and confusing. And that's why we've created this podcast to cut through that noise and make healthier living simple, fun and personal.

1:23Rhiannon Lambert, and after a decade in the wellness industry, it can be pretty overwhelming. How are you? It's been a busy week. Ella and I were filming something yesterday together and I was actually learning from Professor Tim Spector this week all about the fact that dead microbes might also play a role alongside alive microbes and I was learning how to make kimchi in Notting Hill like you do with Tim. It was really great. This restaurant called The Holy Carrot and they've got like this humongous scoby that's formed from all their fermentation process that they look after like a pet almost.

1:56It was the most incredible experience. And I've just been really getting into autumn, Ella. I'm going to throw a little Halloween party, I think. I love that. Have you been making kimchi at home now? Because I haven't done it and I'm desperate to do it. We actually, spoiler alert, have Tim doing our expert Q &A session coming up for you guys on gut health. He's obviously such a guru in the world of gut health. And he was saying how you've got to have three portions of fermented food a day for optimum gut health and I just don't do that I reckon if I get three a week I'm winning so I've got to up my game which means I'm going to today it's on my to-do list buy water kefir grains I want to try that and I've got to make some kimchi okay well I think I'll let Ella start with it because you have to definitely have all the right ingredients in but he said you can mix and match you know that he was using a purple cabbage and you if you've got any veg you can technically make kimchi but some will be more effective than others and the process really is important to make sure that you are keeping the substance you've made covered airtight for a while using weights on top of the jar it's quite a not difficult but refined process so i think every time you make a batch you'll like get better and better and better and then ella can label her it's homemade homemade kimchis to go with the apple juice my homemade apple juice I know my trad wife era I love kimchi though like when it's really really spicy I love it so Ella is off to the most magical place on earth and I cannot wait for her I am off to Disney in Paris this weekend the girls have been earning Disney points for like six months to be able to go on the trip we're only going for a couple of days but it will be really fun I've taken everyone's advice to bring snacks with me I'm not packing kimchi or water kefir, don't worry.

3:47But a lot of delicious yellow oat bars. So yeah, it's good. But we have got a lot to get into today. Rhi, what is coming up in today's show? So we have the truth about carbs and weight loss and what actually matters, why your habits in your 20s and 30s will shape your long term health. And what's behind the rise in cosmetic surgery among younger people, which is something I know that Ella and I are both particularly worried and fascinated in, how social media is fueling appearance and pressure. What on earth are we going to do about this? And once again, the rape, seed, or debate, is it really something that we need to worry about?

4:27So let's move on to our health headlines. This is what has been in the news this week when it comes to health and wellness. And the first one was from The Guardian and had this graphic of this woman kind of with a loaf of bread and it was all quite dramatic. And the headline was, is it true that dot, dot, dot, cutting out carbs helps you lose weight? I feel like this is a kind of pinnacle of why we do this show. When we started, we were like, gosh, there's so much noise in health and wellness. Every time you open social media or a newspaper app, et cetera, etc. There's so many headlines, there's so many conflicting information.

5:04How on earth are you meant to know what to do? And I feel like this headline, it's giving the conception of wellness scoop and why we do it. I have to say the article itself actually was very short and dare I say it, not very helpful. Sorry. But I thought it was a really good moment actually to talk about this. As I said, one of health and wellness's biggest, most persistent myths, thanks to the Atkins diet, Duke and Diet, etc. I wonder how many clicks it got. I'm so interested because it is the headline that keeps giving that never goes away for years and years and years. So even though the piece didn't go into much detail, you know, we have to have a look at the fact that perhaps TikTok is also stemming this interest because it is a fairly new social app compared to Instagram.

5:49And wellness culture on there is just a complete different ballgame. So we've decided anyway to unpack this properly and give you all a clearer picture to finally discuss carbohydrates in detail exactly it's a carbohydrate moment okay so re separate fact from fiction for us let's start let's make this super practical kind of get the basics down what are carbs when people think cut carbs which obviously as i said earlier comes from kind of atkins diet duke and diet the duke and diet went completely viral around the time of the royal wedding oh yeah because they thought princess kate was on it that was the rumor exactly and obviously you know she did obviously look amazing and then you'd had the atkins diet before that that was huge and it had created this trend of basically removing carbs but what do we mean by carbs re well we can start with the fact that they're the brain's preferred source of energy so you get energy from food via three main macronutrients you've got your protein your carbohydrate and your fat but carbs are really important because they give us sugar in the form of glucose, you know, and that effectively fuels our muscles.

6:59Like I said, it fuels our brain and it's really important. But the problem is how quickly those sugars release into our bloodstream and dependent on how active we are. And the quantity and quality is what you need to think about with carbohydrates. What I say in the clinic is the two Qs, it's the type and then how much of that type that you have for you. but it doesn't mean carbs are not bad so let's just start by saying we do need them and anyone that says never eat a carbohydrate I mean there's carbohydrates in certain types of vegetable there's energy in so many different foods we can't be demonizing and when people can't even hit their five a day in this country carbohydrates are actually most of the UK's main source of fiber which if you took carbs out I reckon 100 % of them wouldn't be getting enough fiber not the current stat that I'm writing for the Fibre Formula book of 96%.

7:51So you've got refined carbs, Ella, the ones that we love, the pastries, the crisps, ultra processed foods that we discuss a lot on the podcast and white bread. It doesn't mean they're bad guys. White bread is something I would give to an athlete just before they're out to run because they need that fast releasing source of fuel. Or if one of my kids had an upset tummy, I would probably opt for white bread because I know that it's going to give them some energy when they're really weak and they need something that's not going to be difficult to break down in the body. And essentially, you've taken away the kind of roughage of a carb and you've left it just white.

8:28It's gone through processing. And then we've got Ella and I's favorite things in the world, which is unrefined whole carbs, sweet potatoes, oats. What are your favorite, Ella? Chickpeas, lentils, quinoa, barley, which I was raving about the other day. rye i love rye i love rye bread and obviously these have got as you said that outer layer which means they have that extra fiber vitamins minerals antioxidants so they have these unrefined or these whole grain carbohydrates those have got the extra health benefits so i always just think this idea that kind of carbs as a package is a kind of silly premise because you could be talking about a sweet potato as much as a croissant and it's very difficult we're not demonizing croissants here but they obviously aren't in the same health bracket as a sweet potato or a bowl of quinoa they don't help your gut health either and so the idea that you can lump them all into this one thing that says cut them out is just absurd it's i think it shows how the problem that clickbait creates because what it does is it lacks the nuance to say like hey over here we have chickpeas and quinoa and sweet potatoes mega health foods super super super nutritious and good for you and over here we have got croissants and pastries and muffins and as you said everything can have a time and a place but those aren't health foods as such exactly and what we know about gut health is that you know if you eat something that's good for your gut like a whole grain carb because your gut likes to break down the fiber and the roughage it helps you stay regular we have to remember guys of bowel movements if you want good digestion you want minimal bloating and you want all these other things.

10:08So essentially, the carbohydrates, the right type, feed our gut bacteria, but the refined type don't really do that job. The croissant's not going to give your gut bugs anything that it's going to want to get fizzy over within your digestion. And you've got to keep topping it up. Once you eat a refined carbohydrate, it doesn't just sit in your gut and stay there forever. It gets passed through, which is why we need a constant flow of healthy food to help nourish our gut bacteria and that in turn helps our immune system it helps our weight maintenance it helps with our mental health so carbs are so much more carbs make us happy ella are the right type this message that carbs should be a sad weight loss predicament is just so messed up it is and i think it's really important just to look at where it came from and essentially looking back at it it seems like carbs became the enemy and as i said we know that that lacks any of the nuance to talk about actual health, but as a clickbait premise, carbs became the enemy sort of back in the nineties when low fat was really taking off and food companies started removing fat from products and replacing it with sugar and things like that.

11:15And after that, we then moved into Atkins, keto, Duke and diet. And that was the moment of low carb. And we always talk about how we kind of cycle between low carb, low fat, low carb, low fat, which is absurd, essentially all of it because it all lacks nuance in terms of actual health. But it was the Atkins, the keto, the Dukin diets that really, really, really put this high protein, low carb premise on the map. And people, particularly again, in celebrity culture, were losing a lot of weight. And it reinforced this message that carbs equals bad equals weight gain. And as we know, particularly in the 90s and noughties, weight and health became terrifyingly synonymous with one another.

11:55and so I think what happened was that we stopped thinking about the nuance of carbohydrates and as you said the fact they fuel our brain and give us energy and we weren't looking at quality we were just saying whole food group see you later and people became scared of potatoes. Well it's really hard as well when you've got the keto camps online and you've got lots of people saying there's one size is a miracle and it cures things like it's very toxic online messaging surrounding this particular food group and I really feel for it but essentially you know if you actually break down the science, it does say most of them, there's lots of small, small study trials that say that, you know, low fat might be more effective than low carbohydrate short term.

12:35But if you look at the long run, they're both the same. And then there was some other studies that suggested that there was no difference between a low fat or a low carb diet, they both had the same outcome. So effectively, you've just got to be really wary of the side effects when you do embark upon low carbohydrate diet, because it will be effective short term, if you're suddenly taking out a whole food group, you're taking out water retention because to every carb molecule, you attract like three or four molecules of water. So straight away, when you don't need as much water in your diet, because you're just on a protein only type diet, you will notice that you are less puffy.

13:09And people notice these aesthetic results. So they're often used very fad diet like, you know, in a very unsustainable, unhealthy way for quick results. And then you just put everything back on when you eat normally again. So to reiterate, health isn't one shape or size. It isn't one look. People on the front of magazine covers probably have embarked upon restrictive diets to get to that point. And then they just eat again, and then they're not in shape for another shoot. And that's how it works. And I think the sooner that we realize that the benefits of eating a balanced diet outweighs the fad diets purely for weight loss, because it's not long term, it's not sustainable, the better.

13:46no exactly and i think that was what was really interesting and the more i was reading about this over the last week or so while i was doing research for this episode the clearer it becomes it's like there is no evidence to say that a low carb diet will long term and we're obsessed with long term over here re and i because long term is what actual health is there's just no evidence that a low carb diet is a holy grail when it comes to weight loss ironically low carb is low fat as well in a way. So what's really interesting is that carbohydrates, the refined type, don't contain any fat really. It's saturated fat.

14:22Things are actually bad for your heart health. They're good for your heart health. It's roughage that protects you from cardiovascular disease. Whereas if you're just so focused on protein and fats, actually you can overdo both of those quite drastically as well. It's not just carbs. Exactly that. So to answer the headline, is it true cutting out carbs helps you lose weight in the long run not really but it is about understanding what carbohydrates are as a whole which is that whole grain carbohydrates are so important become one of the four percent of people in the country who eat enough fiber for good gut health that we know is a cornerstone to total health and whole grains should not be lumped in as a carb a bad carb kind of premise our oats our brown rice our quinoa barley all of that full of fiber full of B vitamins, key for energy, antioxidants, so important for gut health, blood sugar balance, appetite regulation, so important, you know, protecting its heart disease, type 2 diabetes, like the whole health spectrum.

15:17So don't cut carbs, just focus on whole grain carbs when you can, because they are super, super, super good for you. I love that. And I think when people will look at this article, if you're on your own weight loss journey, if this is applying to you listening, you might be feeling vulnerable, you might have read this article at a particular point and thought, oh, this is going to help the rest of my journey. It's not sustainable. And in the nutrition clinic, my clinicians and I have decades worth of experience here. Weight loss is never a straight linear line. I think it's helpful to point that out that anyone that is embarking on this journey, it will go down drastically at the start.

15:49It always nearly always plateaus for a while. And then something else changes and tweaks and it goes down again, then it might go up and it might go down. we're not robots as human beings and I do feel the media sometimes treat human beings like robots when it comes to dietary headlines and that it's just so oversimplified well we don't live like robots either I love saying I was just thinking that this idea that you can like write a plan on a page and follow it and suddenly you're like so tired or so stressed or so overwhelmed or at a birthday party where there's you know espresso martinis flowing

16:25that's like a good one I don't think it's what's happening at Disneyland you know what I mean it's like life happens and so this idea if you say of like all being robots it's nonsense anyway talking about nonsense this is not nonsense this is a great headline I loved this it actually came from something I saw on my Instagram so social media is not all bad and then I went to look at it and I thought this is a nice prompt actually so long-term finished study finds unhealthy habits take a toll on health much earlier than expected. And there was a major long-term study that came out of Finland and it basically found that unhealthy habits, and here we were talking about smoking, drinking too much alcohol and not exercising, this actually wasn't focused on diet, unsurprisingly affects your health, but it doesn't just impact your health later in life.

17:11What they were showing actually is you start to feel the effects of these things by your mid-30s, by 36. And I just thought that was a really interesting point, because quite often, we don't necessarily think when we're a little bit younger that these habits are going to be affecting us. But it was very, very clear to show that by the time you're 27, people who are smoking, drinking heavily, physically inactive, they had significantly worse health already by 36. Do you know, I was being served this as well, like my algorithm, but it was targeted for me, I had the number of 40. If you don't change your habits of seeing all these posts at 40 years old, that's when you're more predisposed to neurodegenerative diseases and all sorts of things.

17:53So I think it is really, really key to discuss the fact that, you know, it was linked to people that smoke and drank heavily, were physically inactive at the age of 27. And those kind of three unhealthy habits are noticeably poorer for mental and physical health compared to those who don't have any of those habits. And it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Because like we said, if you eat a better diet, you're nourishing your brain, you will feel better. If you move more, we know you feel better producing more capillaries, you get more oxygen throughout your body that benefits your gut bugs as well benefits everything.

18:25And if you don't smoke, you're just looking after your lungs. So it really is the more unhealthy behaviors that you have. So there's always a chance in our life, no matter what age, to reduce that. and that's what I loved about this because if you take the real positives here what we're saying is actually like early mid-adulthood amazing window to focus on prevention on your health span or feeling good for decades to come and that actually I think again if anyone's feeling a bit uninspired a bit stagnant with the colder weather the darker mornings like no this is your moment what you do now can affect you for decades to come get on a walk I'm full of my good vibes today Reese she's laughing at me.

19:07No with the snap. I was like, yeah, guys, I just think there's always this difficult thing with health and wellness where we struggle with the kind of leap between I'm tired today. I'm frustrated with my boss or I'm having just a really sucky week at work. I can't really be bothered. I'd rather eat a packet of popcorn and sit on the sofa. We all have that. Like, I don't mean it by judging it, but it's quite hard to link that to how am I going to feel when I'm my 60s so you're in your 30s now and I think actually these sorts of pieces of research are good reminders that like not that you should never sit on the sofa with popcorn and have a cozy night and you should absolutely do that but it's just that actually what you do now it does matter for your future self and actually we owe it to our future selves and maybe for our grandchildren in decades to come or whoever it is to make those little changes and find that motivation to go for a walk to go to bed a bit earlier to make a delicious veggie tray bake with crispy lentils that we love tonight because actually making these habit changes early in your life even when you feel in great health actually makes a humongous difference to who you are in the future talking of popcorn as well in my next book and i don't know if you've probably done loads of popcorn recipes over the years ella but the nutritional yeast cheesy popcorn is so delicious like oh my goodness I'm obsessed and popcorn if you pop it yourself in the pan is a really good source of fiber I was looking at all the plant points and the fiber counts and actually a night in if you do want to do it with popcorn just don't buy it make it and you save loads of money and it's quite fun if if any of you listening do have kids they get to listen for all the pops in the pan so you just kind of like heat the pan a little bit of coconut oil or whatever at the bottom add your kernels in and just put the lid on and then just listen out for a for a pop I really need that with my kids actually I don't like popcorn I don't get it I know sacrilegious over here I just always have thought it's like one of those foods that just like doesn't have that much going for it I am sorry in shock I apologize to all popcorn lovers I'd much rather have a crisp crisp really satisfying and crunchy I find popcorn just like not crunchy enough or flavoursome enough I find it a bit I get it a bit bland no I can understand I guess if you'd said you didn't like chocolate there would have been something else going on there oh my god I love chocolate my niece hates chocolate like my sister lucked out she just doesn't want chocolate she just doesn't want anything like that so she has to have different bags of things anyway I digress completely so the take-home messages guys for this study are try your own popcorn or avoid it like the plague.

21:49Unhealthy habits basically don't just cause long-term health risks. They can start lowering your quality of life by your mid-30s. So it's not too late, guys. Don't look at that as doom and gloom. Just try and do what Ella said with her snaps and be like, let's just do something that we can actually actively do to feel better every day. Is it just reducing that glass of wine by 25 mil each time or just something slightly smaller? Add another glass of water and instead in between. Just try, move more. It's just not too late. That's the message today. Can I give a recommendation? There is a brand I have just found.

22:23I found it in a local farm shop and actually I'm obsessed with it called Mother. And it's this kind of, I was about to call it a cordial and it's not a cordial, but it's a ginger mix that has ginger, honey, a bit of cider vinegar. It's quite spicy. That with ice and sparkling water is so delish. Anyway, it's called Mother. it's a ginger drink but just for a kind of tuesday night i want something that's not water it's absolutely lovely because i think finding non-alcoholic alternatives for a kind of midweek just a nice evening is sometimes a little bit difficult because they're often very very sweet but this is not sweet it's kind of fiery and a bit tangy and with lots of sparkling water it's absolutely delish it reminds me of every christmas my dad and me um my dad and i i should say have ginger wine and it reminds me it must be like ginger wine it's this really strong brewed um substance but much better for you so i'm going to give it a go ella it's so good i've just found their website mother root like mother like a mother mother root.com and it's called mother root and it's non-alcoholic ginger firing fresh the feel-good aperitif this is not an ad i bought it at the farm shop and i've become addicted yeah no i love that that's what this podcast is all about we just want to be honest and share things as well that we like.

23:43My eldest son, my five-year-old is obsessed with ginger shots. He will down the whole thing, doesn't matter how far it is. I know. Oh my god. I've been making ginger turmeric lemon shots on repeat and I feel really good about myself in the morning when I do that. Yeah, really, really, really good.

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26:40So this World Mental Health Day, join us in saying a big thank you to the therapists who help people every day. And if you're ready to find the right therapist for you, our listeners get 10 % off their first month at betterhelp.com slash wellness scoop. That's betterhelp.com slash wellness scoop. So we're going to move on to our next headline, which is extremely different and a bit daunting because body positivity still seems to be a bit of a fashion pipe dream. with 97 % of catwalk models are size 4 to 8. Although I will say, Ella, after we wrote this brief, I saw some clips from the Victoria's Secrets fashion show with Ashley Graham and there was a pregnant lady walking it and that was so amazing.

27:25The first model out of the Victoria's Secret fashion show this year was nine months pregnant. Amazing. Which is really cool. I totally agree. I saw that and I loved that. So maybe this headline will start swaying now Victoria's Secrets have made a move. I mean, I did see some other accounts say it's not enough. There's still not any plus plus sizes in there. And, you know, I don't think anyone's ever going to be entirely happy because everyone's unique and a different size and shape. So you can never cater for everyone on a catwalk. But I thought, what a step forward. I've never seen that before.

27:56I totally agree. I was served quite a lot of Victoria's Secret fashion show content as well. And it did feel like there was more diversity, certainly than I had seen, not that I'm like an avid Victoria's Secret fan. Surprise, surprise. But it felt inherently, I agree, like a good step forward. This headline was a few days before that. So maybe they'll change it. But yes, that was from the Times. Body positivity is still a fashion pipe dream. Catwalks still don't reflect real bodies. and basically it was just a new report that had come out and it was showing despite years and it does feel like years now of body positivity messaging campaigns for inclusivity the fashion industry is just overwhelmingly so different and I think that matters not because most of us or most consumers or people listening are kind of deeply embedded in the world of sort of catwalks and hype fashion but actually because it's what we're then being advertised all the time we know how much that affects us um and researchers analyzed over 9 000 different looks or outfits across 219 major runway shows and found that as we said 97 percent of models in these clothes were between a uk four and eight and only 16 models across all of those shows were above a uk size 14 so that's sub 0.2 percent and i think it's just interesting in terms of actually our collective mental health going backwards people really struggling with the pressure on their appearance and again just not the struggle yeah between what we see and how we feel in ourselves yeah it's the stigma isn't it it's um weight stigma massive biases it's a really hard i don't know why it's really hard to do it should be a really easy thing for people to do by the way guys this isn't about us criticizing slim bodies at all this is not that some people will naturally be those sizes and that's okay.

29:49But for so long, it's only been about those sizes on a runway. And it's so hard because even I find, and I live in a slim body, that when I go to the shops and maybe I try on, if I ever get that time to do that, but I'll try on something, you know, and it looks so different to me than it does on that mannequin that has no hips. And it's just, you know, and that's not, not to say anyone that is in those smaller sizes isn't fantastic. They always look incredible. It's just, it would be nice to know what it would look like on different sizes, how the material moves, how it clings, where it falls.

30:22Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think the big thing for me when I saw this headline and why I was keen to talk about it is that I think obviously just a few weeks ago, we were talking about that new piece of research that had landed in our inboxes showing that two in five people in the UK now felt more pressure to lose weight than they did a couple of years ago. And I think it's just, again, you know, we're very interested in the macro, like what does the overall landscape look like? And I think the collective impact of weight loss injections and kind of celebrity culture bodies shrinking, what you're seeing from a fashion perspective still just being teeny, teeny, tiny, the collective impact of it just feels, as I said, like more and more people are feeling pressure to shrink.

31:04And then you get headlines like, you know, should you cut all carbs? and I'm not saying one directly links to the other but there is that overall you know people start to look for it and as a result you ultimately you know weight and health obviously do correlate at points and obviously there is an intersection between the two but that's not always the case it really really isn't and I worry so much that people then you say I've got to cut all carbs out and as we said then you're losing your sweet potatoes and your fiber and your oats and all these like deeply beneficial things for a chasing of perfectionism that just doesn't exist and so when I see headlines like this I just I just kind of worry about I guess as a mum as well of two young girls I am really conscious of that and I'm conscious of teenagers and you know how is that gonna make everyone feel I know I think the current climate just isn't helping because the survey also included over 2 ,000 people that said that nearly a third of those believe that these body trends, Ella, that are changing is making everything worse because there's been a huge shift in GLP-1 medications.

32:09And we have to remember how that makes people feel like we discussed before. And we had our episode with Dr. Jack Molesley that discussed GLPs and the impact on people that are already in that BMI range that they're not designed for a healthy BMI, taking these medications. It's almost a diet culture and celebrity standards are just plastered everywhere. And what makes me really sad about it is I feel it all started when my favourite film, Wicked, came out even more so, you know, the headlines that were coming up around that time. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the next film for good.

32:44But whenever I see it now, it's got a slight taint for me. And I'm the biggest musical theatre fan in the world, but I just see the issue at hand. And I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels that way, that beauty standards feel like they have to just still be shrinking all the time. Mental health is really difficult right now for anybody to navigate. And, you know, just to say as well, this affects boys, not just girls. You know, even I as a boy mum will worry about this with mine growing up, how they're meant to appear a certain aesthetic to be seen or taken seriously. I think it's everybody now is being bombarded.