Tired and hungry? How the wrong breakfast will ruin your day | Prof. Benjamin Gardner & Professor Tim Spector

18:42Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, absolutely. You need to recognize that our habits are based on the situations that we do them in, the environments that we do them in. And so just that understanding of what the triggers are to some of your behaviors that you don't want to do, that's really empowering because it gives you insight into the things that you're doing. As I mentioned, one of the good things about having a habit is that you can do something without thinking about it. But because you end up doing something on autopilot, you might not even really be aware that you've done it. You might not be aware that there's a link with the environment.

19:14Professor Benjamin Gardner:So I think, yes, it's really important to try and develop that understanding of what are the situations that trigger you to do particular behaviors. And that information is going to be really important in empowering you to think about how to act differently in that situation rather than just in general.

19:31Jonathan Wolf:That might be like family watching TV after their meal, when they're having snacks and things like this, that suddenly that's all their unhealthy eating happens in that moment. And people aren't associating it at the moment. They don't think about it in that way. So it's a different way of thinking about this dangerous environment that need to be thought of differently.

19:52Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, exactly. I think part of the problem is we like to think of ourselves as always acting out of conscious choice. If I did something, it was because I wanted to do it. So we feel like we're in control of what we do. But actually the habit perspective it tells us that actually a lot of the time it's our environments that are triggering us. So rather than thinking, I just need to become more motivated, it's more of a case of I need to work out what situations are causing this kind of non-conscious impulse for me to do this thing I don't want to do, and then think about how we can overcome that particular response.

20:23Professor Tim Spector:Could you tell me something about this fresh start effect?

20:27Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, the fresh start effect is a really interesting phenomenon. And it's essentially where at the start of what people perceive to be a new kind of period, whether that's a new day, a new month, a new year, or maybe someone's just started in a new job. At the start of these new periods, people seem particularly motivated and energized and eager to make changes to their behavior. It's been shown in studies, for example, that Google searches for the word diet, they peak at the start of the year, they peak at the start of a month. It's been shown again that gym attendance is always highest in January.

21:03Professor Benjamin Gardner:And in fact, it's highest across the month when it's the start of the month. And it's all down to this fresh start effect. I mean, to understand the fresh start effect, we've got to understand how people try to change their behavior and their kind of experiences of successes and failures. If you want to change your behavior, you need to not only have a goal, you know, and a motivation to achieve that goal, but you need to feel that you're able to achieve that goal. You need to feel that you can change that behavior and you need to feel that achieving that goal or trying to change that behavior would be something that's worthwhile to you.

21:33Professor Benjamin Gardner:But what often happens is that people try to change their behavior and then they're unable to do it for some reason. You know, there's some kind of failure, some kind of setback. And what that does is it damages people's sense of confidence, their sense of control over whether they can continue. And it makes another failure more likely. And so the next failure happens, then that dents someone's self-confidence even further. And over time, not only do they lose self-confidence, they start to feel like this probably isn't worth pursuing because I'm not very good at doing it. But the fresh start effect is really important because at the start of a new period, whether it's a day, a month, a year, or whatever, this is when for a lot of people, they feel like they're wiping the slate clean.

22:15Professor Benjamin Gardner:Those past failures are in the previous accounting period, and so they can start again. So this is why fresh start is so important. And this is why the start of the day can be so important from a behavior change perspective. Because if you can do something that you want to do at the start of the day, that inspires confidence. It gives you that boost. And so it sets you up for the rest of the day.

22:35Professor Tim Spector:That's fascinating. I think we often see people, Tim, right, where maybe they say, well, I've eaten something bad today. So it sort of doesn't matter. And I'm like, I'm just going to go and eat all sorts of junk. And I think we're like, that doesn't make sense. Don't stress. You ate something that's not so good, but it's fine. Like you can, like everything you eat good is going to be good for your gut health or rest. Don't worry. And I think if I understand rightly, Ben, you're saying that's like something deep in our psyche about feeling like, well, if I've broken it, like it's no good. And I need to get to a restart point before I can start again.

23:14Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yes, it's exactly that. It's getting to the point where you feel like, right, it's a new start now, whether that's at the start of the day or, you know, having moved house, whatever it is, these kind of changes to the status quo or a new kind of temporal period are opportunities to start trying to do something that will help your kind of health and well-being and so on. And to really do it in a way that's more likely to stick.

23:38Professor Tim Spector:And is this like just a sort of universal part of being human? This isn't just specifically because we've grown up in the West with like New Year's resolutions?

23:49Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, I don't think it's specific to New Year's resolutions. A universal principle here is that people have this tendency, this need to segment time into particular chunks. And so I think what is fundamental here is that this notion of a new start, when it is a new day, when we feel like the past period has finished, this is when people are going to feel most motivated and most able to make those changes.

24:13Professor Tim Spector:That's really exciting. So you want somehow to believe I'm in a fresh start place, because that's going to allow me to say, okay, I'm going to have a try at a new habit. I need to try this new thing enough for it to become this automatic habit that you were talking about. Yes, exactly that.

24:28Professor Benjamin Gardner:I've also heard about this idea of keystone habits. What are those? Keystone habits. I mean, it's probably better thought of as keystone behaviors. You know, if you want to change your behavior, you need to recognize that the behavior that you want to do kind of sits within a system of other behaviors as well. So if you want to eat a healthy breakfast, Let's say you do want to eat fruit with breakfast, for example. You want to eat a banana. Now, that's the target behavior, the thing that you want to do. But actually, you've got to recognize there are other behaviors that surround that, one of which is you need to actually go and buy yourself bananas so that you can do that.

25:02Professor Benjamin Gardner:So the idea of a keystone habit is finding the crucial behavior in a particular system of behaviors where if you do that behavior, it's more likely that the target behavior will occur. I mean, for something like going to the gym, for example, one of the keystone habits there that we need to form is packing the gym bag and putting it in an accessible place so that, you know, at an opportune moment when you can go to the gym, you're all ready to go. So, keystone habits are about keystone behaviors, really, and making those behaviors habitual so that you put yourself in a better position to do the thing that you want to do.

25:37Professor Tim Spector:I remember we did this podcast with the author behind Atomic Habits, and he talked about the gym as like the most important habit is actually just opening the gym door. Because if you open the gym door, you're probably going to go and do some gym. And if you get into the habit of doing that, like it doesn't even matter if you do very little to start with, you're going to build up. And so would that be an example of what you're describing almost as a keystone habit is like going there and then the rest of the stuff will happen?

26:02Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, I think we can see it as that. What I and my colleagues have done is differentiated between two different ways in which a habit can come into any behavior. Essentially, you can habitually start doing something, then you can habitually do it. Let's say doing a workout routine in the gym. What I call the instigation habit or the habit of deciding is where habit gets you over that decision point and commits you to going to the gym. It kickstarts that sequence by automating the first step in that sequence. Then there's habitually performing where you have a series of kind of mini habits that people work through to actually finish that behavior off.

26:37Professor Benjamin Gardner:So if it's a workout routine, it might be, for example, you start by lifting weights and then finishing that habitually triggers you to go and run on the treadmill or whatever. So you kind of go through this sequence. But yes, by far the most important thing is that habit of instigating, the habit of starting the sequence off. And in fact, what's interesting is when it comes to the execution, certainly for things like going to the gym, it's often good to vary what you do. But the most important thing for getting that habit up and running, like you said, is getting through the door, doing the first step in that sequence because that unlocks the rest of the sequence.

27:11Professor Tim Spector:I don't love doing the gym, but I feel really good if I've done it afterwards, which I think is quite a common experience. My first step is to do some stretching. And interestingly, if I start doing that, I've never thought about this before, but if I start doing that, I will always do a gym session. I can't think of any time when I don't do the rest. Somehow, because I've started it, I feel like I'm committed. I'm in the pattern of it and I'm just going to do the rest.

27:32Jonathan Wolf:It's like opening the fridge and getting the cereal out, isn't it? You end up finishing the cereal, even if you don't want it, or you've realized you're going to eat later. So this initiation is obviously very crucial. Is the reverse true? Can you do the same to break a bad habit?

27:46Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, the notion of breaking a bad habit is really interesting, because there are lots of different ways in which you could be said to break a bad habit. The way to understand it is, you have a habit association. So you go into a situation where you normally do something, that triggers an association that then triggers an impulse or a kind of non-conscious urge for you to do something. And on the basis of that, you then do the behavior. So breaking a habit can be done in lots of different ways. One is that you can intervene or, you know, try and stop yourself when you've been triggered. So you just watch out for what that trigger is and stop yourself from doing it.

28:19Professor Benjamin Gardner:I mean, that's quite difficult. It takes a lot of self-control, but if you're aware of when the trigger is going to occur in what situation, then that puts you in a good position. The other thing you can try and do is just avoid the trigger altogether, or you could make the behavior harder to do in that particular situation. And what in theory should be the best way to change the behavior is that you stop yourself from doing the bad behavior and you do a good behavior instead in response to that particular situation so that you set up a new association. So because there are lots of different ways to break a habit, it's difficult to say, is it simply the opposite of forming a habit?

28:53Professor Benjamin Gardner:It's that actually we've got to recognize there are lots of different ways to do this. And actually, which way is going to be best will depend on the person and the situation and the behavior that they're trying to change.

29:03Professor Tim Spector:You're saying through science, something that I guess I've learned just practically, which is the easiest way to not just eat a biscuit at three in the afternoon is to no longer have the biscuit in the house. If it's not there anymore, I can't do it automatically. And then it becomes more conscious. I'm like, well, but I don't really want to go and buy a biscuit.

29:21Professor Benjamin Gardner:I'll go and do something else? Yeah, exactly that. I mean, that's one of the ways to break a habit is to make it more difficult to do the behavior. Because even if you don't have biscuits in the house, you know, there's nothing stopping you from going to the supermarket or wherever it is you need to go to get biscuits. The point is it interrupts this kind of flow of autopilot mode and it makes you consciously think, right, do I want to do this behavior? And if so, am I willing to put the effort in?

29:44Professor Tim Spector:So I'd like to come back actually to breakfast as I'm listening to this. So you're saying I need to be more mindful that that's really important. And this thing about like a keystone habit, the thing that starts, right? Like packing my gym kit or going to the gym. Could we use breakfast as a keystone habit for sort of healthy eating throughout the day?

30:04Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think we should capitalize on breakfast or at least the first meal of the day as an opportunity to get things up and running. You know, if you've got say a a healthy diet goal, then getting your first win on the board, as it were, by eating that healthy breakfast really sets you up. Because the opposite of that would be if you find yourself eating something unhealthy, possibly out of habit, well, you've immediately undermined your goal. And so this is where you might feel like, right, well, it's not worth continuing anymore. I need to start again tomorrow. So yeah, breakfast is a great opportunity to get that success.

30:38Professor Benjamin Gardner:and then that inspires confidence for you to get other successes throughout the day. Something else that's important, of course, is that one of the things that we need in order to change our behavior is adequate self-control. And self-control can be depleted if we're hungry or we're tired. And so actually having a good breakfast, one that stops you from feeling hungry and craving sugar or whatever it is, having that means that you're more likely to be able to control your behavior throughout the day.

31:07Professor Tim Spector:So my takeaway from this is that breakfast is a really great opportunity to build new healthy behaviors. Because if you set yourself up there, it's sort of setting you up for the rest of the day. And equally, if you're not eating a healthy breakfast, it's almost like you've already gone wrong at the start of the day. So it's going to be much harder. Before we go on to how we can build those new habits, Tim, I'd like to get some actionable advice on what we should eat for breakfast to support our day. You told us about your terrible breakfast a decade ago. What are some better breakfast options?

31:40Jonathan Wolf:Well, an example of a better breakfast is what I have. It's my go-to breakfast called my breakfast bowl, which is full fat Greek yogurt mixed with a milk kefir, which is like a super yogurt. I like to have three fermented foods a day. So that gives me two of them. And then I get some frozen berries from the freezer. So I would maybe get three different fruits added to that and mix nuts, or I'd pick the Zoe Daily 30 and just put a scoop of that on top. And I'd have that with a black coffee. You know, I definitely wouldn't have any fruit juice or anything else like I used to in the old days. That would be my fairly standard one i will vary that and sometimes have sourdough rye bread which is high in fiber and i'd have some avocado on that and i might again put another ferment whether it's sauerkraut or or whatever onto that but i also weekends might have some eggs and i know other people like things like peanut butter which in this country isn't a common breakfast but actually would be much healthier than marmalade or jam or anything else.

32:54Jonathan Wolf:And sometimes I'll have cheese as well.

32:56Professor Tim Spector:And Tim, why is that better than the sort of cereal and low-fat milk that you were talking about having in the past?

33:03Jonathan Wolf:Well, most people don't respond well to having just a massive amount of refined carbohydrates and sugar in their diet because of this problem of the sugar spike, which has this knock-on effect for the rest of the day, causing lack of energy, mood changes, and hunger. And it also sets you up long-term for getting type 2 diabetes and putting on weight. So moving away from these highly refined breakfasts to real food with real plants, real nuts, real seeds, things that have a structure in them, means that everything is absorbed much more slowly, much more naturally the way it was before highly processed foods came on the market.

33:45Jonathan Wolf:And again, picking full-fat yogurts rather than low-fat yogurts, because we want to have the minimum amount of ingredients, and we know that fat fills us up as well. So these meals will actually make sure that you can get through to lunch without having a desperate urge for snacks. Everyone's going to have a slightly different version of this, and there are some breakfast cereals you can have, like Weetabix or things that do have a lot of fiber in them and are relatively low in processing risk. So I would just advise people to keep it plain and simple and definitely avoid those refined sugars.

34:23Professor Tim Spector:I had lots of questions from listeners about high protein breakfast cereals, which are clearly being promoted everywhere. Would that be a good thing to switch onto? Most of them are rubbish.

34:36Jonathan Wolf:and you're just wasting your money. I know there's a big marketing surge here, knowing that if they put high-end protein on the cover of anything at the moment, they'll sell more of it. But there's no scientific evidence that most of us need that extra protein. Generally, these are highly processed, risky foods that the protein is just masking the poor quality of the rest of it, whether it's a protein snack bar or it's in a cereal or it's in a drink. Generally, these are high-risk foods that are not going to give you anything like the benefits of a natural food breakfast. So most of us are not deficient in protein.

35:17Jonathan Wolf:We're deficient in fiber. So we really need to start building that fiber up early on in the day so that we can get our 30 grams of fiber in. And we don't need extra protein because we just pee it out or it turns to fat.

35:29Professor Tim Spector:The other thing I had a ton of questions on, because apparently you created a storm on social media, is something that's popular here in the UK, a spread called Marmite, which if you're not in the UK, you'll be like, one earth is that. Is Marmite healthy?

35:45Jonathan Wolf:There's some evidence it is healthy. It contains dead microbes, dead yeast, brewer's yeast. And there are some studies showing that this can be beneficial for your health. Very early, very small studies, but I think we need to give a different category to fermented foods. And marmite is actually a fermented food, and these always have some other benefit. And we have to look at that balance very carefully. So I think having something that's really non-sweet is probably good for generally the palates and for setting your thresholds through the rest of the day as well. So I don't particularly like Marmite myself, but I can see why some people do.

36:27Jonathan Wolf:And it's probably a healthier option than most of the ones we're having for breakfast at the moment.

36:31Professor Tim Spector:That's funny. I grew up with Marmite and peanut butter in a sandwich, which is something that my dad taught me, which I have to admit, I haven't eaten now for a long time. And I can see the look on Ben's face. But I love the idea that maybe that was healthy. It might have balanced a lot of the other things I ate. So just to wrap up, Tim, if you were going to create like maybe some very simple principles for thinking about what made a healthy breakfast? What would those principles be?

36:57Jonathan Wolf:Well, first workout, what's your first meal of the day? The less hungry you are, the more you can actually think about it more logically and you're not driven by those massive urges. I think we need to go for real foods that aren't highly processed. That's probably the first thing we should be looking for. So you're going for things that contain the natural amounts of fats. They're not low fat. They don't have additives. They don't have artificial sweeteners in them. And you should be avoiding these highly processed breakfast cereals that are low in fiber and just high in sugars. And Tim, when you talk about sugars, I just want to make sure,

37:36Professor Tim Spector:often you're also thinking about foods which are sort of high in these carbs that get turned into sugars very fast?

37:43Jonathan Wolf:Yeah, so what we call refined carbohydrates. These are highly processed foods like your cornflakes or your Rice Krispies or your Frosties that they claim to have come from some amazing grain. But everything's been stripped away from it so that what you're left is only the tiny middle bit, which is the starchy, sugary bit. All the goodness has been stripped away and it's been repurposed to, again, look like food again. So it's the fake foods you need to avoid. And that's where we have a lot of our fake foods in this country is that first breakfast meal, particularly in children. So they're getting really the worst of the deal.

38:22Professor Tim Spector:And my toast, I found, was also quite a lot like this.

38:26Jonathan Wolf:Yeah. So bread is another one. So most of the bread we buy is highly processed, very sugary. It releases the sugar into your bloodstream very quickly. and we should be looking for the high fiber breads. Just look at the fiber content of the bread on the back is really important. And this will narrow down your search a lot. And when you've got that bread, you should be looking to maybe, rather than putting jam or marmalade on it, you should be looking to put fats on it, whether it's cheese, that's a good fermented food you can add. Cream cheese is actually good. or you're putting avocado or eggs, which are high in protein and fats as well.

39:07Jonathan Wolf:So again, moving away from these refined carbs, having more fats, having more protein, we see this as fending off hunger. So you're less hungry later in the day and you're getting all the good nutrients. And again, you're building good habits because you're thinking I'm going to have a healthy breakfast, therefore sets you up, as Ben's been saying, for the rest of the day and avoid things like smoothies and juices, which are just ways to generally get lots of sugar into your system far too quickly. And that will result in two or three hours later, you being hungry. So we can avoid all that just by rethinking your breakfast, which is for many people, quite a big shock.

39:47Jonathan Wolf:For me, it was the most important thing I did when I changed my diet.

39:53Professor Tim Spector:I actually feel like that's a brilliant place to now hand over to Ben. So like, we've got this idea of this new breakfast you'd like to have, but Tim's also saying that's hard. It's like a big shock because I've got this habit. Can you help us with practical advice on how we might try and change our habits? And I'm tempted to link that back to the quick fire question at the very beginning, where we said like, is it true it takes 21 days to change a habit?

40:19Professor Benjamin Gardner:Okay, I'll answer the 21 days thing first. It is a myth that it takes 21 days to form a habit and several years ago now, I looked into the source of this and I tracked it down to a book by an American plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz. And he observed in his book that among his plastic surgery patients, it took them around three weeks to get used to their new appearance. And then he said, it tends to take me three weeks to get used to living in a new house. I don't know how many times he moved, but the point is that's the sole evidence base for 21 days to form a habit. I mean, that's not even habit formation, as psychologists understand it.

40:57Professor Benjamin Gardner:That's habituation, getting used to something. What the real scientific evidence tells us, there was a classic study done now about 15 years ago that found that among people who recruited on the basis that they wanted to make a change to their diet or to drinking water, it took them an average of 66 days to get to a point where this behavior was something that they were saying felt automatic to them. Now, the key thing to point out here is that 66 days was just a middle point among the data. And in fact, some people reached their habit peak after just 18 days. One person didn't reach their peak at all during the 12-week period.

41:40Professor Benjamin Gardner:And it was forecast that if they kept going, they'd get there in 254 days. So this is a massive range. And in fact, what we think is that how long it takes to form a habit is going to depend on the behavior that you're trying to do, the situation that you're trying to do it in, and properties of you as an individual. So some of the things that we can do to increase the likelihood that we will form a habit, first of all, choose a behavior that you find kind of intrinsically motivating, something that you're going to enjoy doing. If we're talking about breakfast, don't think of something that you know is healthy, but you're not really going to enjoy eating.

42:16Professor Benjamin Gardner:It has to be something that you're going to want to eat each day. And if we're talking about replacing an old habit, then I think try and find something that essentially fills the hole that will be left by the old thing that you're replacing. Also, when it comes to the individual, we think that it's probably going to be more likely that people who have a strong need for routine, they're more likely to be able to build these habits. And also when it comes to the situation, I think one of the things that can help us is kind of piggybacking on existing habits that we already have. And this has been called habit stacking by some people, whereby you form a new habit in a situation in which you already have a particular routine.

43:02Professor Benjamin Gardner:So how might you apply that to breakfast? So practical advice for forming a habit for breakfast. I mean, it might be worthwhile experimenting for a while. Try and work out what works for you. Which foods do you find pleasant as well as meet the criteria for being healthy? Once you've determined what those foods are, then what you need to do is make sure that you have enough supply of that food and you actually form a habit for buying that food as part of your regular shop. And then just each time it's breakfast, make sure that you eat that food. And you can make that more likely by, again, making the behavior accessible, making the food options accessible to you.

43:41Professor Benjamin Gardner:But I think it's really about consistency. So making sure that you do that each day, that's going to form into a habit. Now, I mentioned a study about habit formation and how long it took. And one other interesting finding from that study was that the odd missed opportunity here and there, The failure to do it on one or two days doesn't really seem to be that detrimental. So don't worry if you don't manage to keep it up every single day. But the key thing that you need to aim for is consistency. So choose a food that you will enjoy eating. Make sure you've got enough supply of it. Make sure you try to eat it each day and be consistent.

44:20Professor Benjamin Gardner:And if you do that, then over time you should find that it's starting to become something that's automatic to you. It's starting to become a part of what you do. And you no longer have to think about doing it. It's just become a habit.

44:32Professor Tim Spector:So let's say we were trying to get you off your banana and cereal onto something that Tim's selling us would have like a better impact on your blood sugar in the morning. Maybe talk us through how you might approach that.

44:44Professor Benjamin Gardner:I would see this as kind of, there'd be two periods to this. The first period would involve me experimenting with other foods that are healthier, finding what works for me, finding possibly like a range of food that works for me, and then making sure that I add it to my weekly shop so that I have it accessible to me and possibly stop buying that particular cereal that I eat. And then that sets up everything in my environment that I need in order to start that new habit. And because I have a breakfast routine, as I mentioned, you know, I get downstairs and then I start preparing the same breakfast in the same way each time.

45:17Professor Benjamin Gardner:It means I can piggyback on that structure and just swap in the healthier breakfast and take out the unhealthy breakfast.

45:23Professor Tim Spector:I'm really interested by this piggybacking. because I think about my own habits. So Tim mentioned this daily 30. So I take this daily 30 supplement every day and I take it on my breakfast because I've got the habit where it just like naturally goes on. And if I, for some reason, miss my breakfast, then I forget to take it that day. Like it doesn't happen, but I am really like, I'm convinced about it. Could you explain to me what's going on inside me?

45:54Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, that's really interesting. So this is where you, it's a bit of a double-edged sword. You know, you've got the structure already in place whereby when you eat your breakfast, so that's your kind of trigger, then you will add in this particular supplement. So that's great in that it's an easy thing to add into what you already do. But the flip side of that, of course, is that if you're not triggered by the eating of the breakfast in the first place, then you may fail to do that. I mean, personally, what I do in these kind of situations is I will set a reminder on my phone to do certain things.

46:27Professor Benjamin Gardner:And a lot of the time I will be able to tick it off because I do that at the start of the day. But if I don't, well, I know that I've still got to do it later. So people have written about this concept of what's been called backup habits. So if you don't manage to act in line with your habit, what's your backup plan? So I think that's really important. You know, recognizing that habits are really useful for increasing the likelihood that you'll do something. but at the same time if you don't do it what's your backup plan if someone's doing something once a day every day it tends to take them around two weeks to start to feel like it's becoming a habit i mean one thing that we haven't even talked about is you know this notion of habit is not really a dichotomy you don't just have a habit or don't have a habit and there's not the it's not the case that you know if you're doing something every day on one day it's suddenly automatic and the day before it wasn't so actually habit strength varies on a continuum habits can become stronger or they could possibly become weaker, it's typically around two weeks before people really start to subjectively experience that automaticity.

47:28Professor Benjamin Gardner:It can still get stronger after that, but two weeks seems to be critical.

47:32Professor Tim Spector:I think it's really interesting. I think you've definitely painted this picture that I can do this through step-by-step change. So let's say someone is listening to this. They've been completely sold on Tim's pitch about changing your breakfast and Ben, yours, that you've got to create a habit to sort of make this happen. If I asked you to say like, what are the three steps or the three things that they can try and do now, if they want to start to make a change to their breakfast habits, Ben, what would you tell people to do?

48:02Professor Benjamin Gardner:First step, experiment, try and find foods that work for you and that are healthy. Secondly, once you've decided on what those foods are, make sure you've got them in plentiful supply. And thirdly, make sure that you consistently eat those foods each morning as part of your breakfast.

48:19Professor Tim Spector:And Tim, if there's one thing you were going to focus on really trying to get out of breakfast that was like going to be there, what would you be saying to people?

48:27Jonathan Wolf:I think it's a fantastic opportunity to get fermented foods into your diet. Throughout the day, you want to be getting your 30 plants a week. So again, some diversity in what you're eating, but generally fermented foods, they're coming from your fridge generally. So it's the really good time to get the cheese, the yogurt, the kefir, put on some sauerkraut. That's the time really to get the ferments in so you can get your three a day. And if you can do a mixture of those, that plant diversity and those fermented foods, you're really on the way to success.

48:59Professor Tim Spector:Amazing. I would love to try and sum up here. And I think it's been really fun to combine like both what you want to change about what you eat and how you might do it. So the first thing that springs to mind is that most of us are eating a breakfast. We're on this sort of blood sugar rollercoaster, I think you said, Tim, where you're eating something maybe like smoothies or juices or cereals, which are just leading to this massive spike in blood sugar, then this collapse. So then you're really hungry at 11 and everything starts to go wrong and you're eating the wrong things. And so what you want to do is choose something that is going to remove all of that blood sugar a roller coaster and give you all this good stuff, like lots of plants and like the fats and protein that keep you stable.

49:43Professor Tim Spector:And Tim, of course, the fermented foods, if you can add that on top. And then I think what I'm hearing is like, what would it actually take to change and make a habit? And the first thing I think you said, Ben, which sounds really obvious is you need to actually decide for a new breakfast that you're going to want to eat. Because if you already start by saying, I don't really want to eat this. I'm thinking about my dad, like it's rabbit food, or it tastes like cardboard, you're never going to stick with it. So you actually have to start by experimenting and finding something. You're like, oh, actually, I could eat this.

50:12Professor Tim Spector:And I think for a lot of people, I'd be surprised that a lot of this stuff that is healthier might actually taste good. So you've got to start by experimenting.

50:17Jonathan Wolf:And it can take you a few days to do that. And certainly with fermented foods, it can take a week or so to get used to it. So don't give up just on day one. I think that's the other point on some of these foods. Brilliant.

50:29Professor Tim Spector:So experiment, don't give up right away, but find something you're like, actually, I can do this. It's not like horrible. And then you've got to go and create like the situation that's going to make it work. And I think, Ben, what I'm understanding is habit is so driven by what's automatic. So you have to create something that's going to make that happen. So firstly, it needs to be in the house in plentiful supply. So you need to have also create a habit that's going to be in the house every day. So you need to rethink sort of what you're doing in the supermarket. And you need to probably remove the thing that you would eat otherwise, because that's going to make it so much easier if you just get rid of all those cereal.

51:04Professor Tim Spector:Get the new breakfast, get rid of the old breakfast, make a decision that's what you want to do. And then the third thing you said after experiment and having it in plentiful supply is consistency. So you need to do this like every morning so that it becomes a new habit, so that you just walk into the kitchen and start doing it automatically. It will take time. You said on average about two weeks to start to feel a habit, which is not as long, I think, as I was expecting you to say. You will miss it from time to time. And the key thing here I think you talked about is it's very easy to give up.

51:36Professor Tim Spector:But I actually need to say it's like it's okay to miss it once, but I need to get back into the habit in order to make that happen. And then it starts to suddenly switch from being hard to easy because it's automatic. And I'm remembering this popcorn experiment you described where I can end up in the situation where I will eat the disgusting stale popcorn because it's what I would have. And you're sort of saying, well, actually, it just becomes so natural for breakfast that I will just eat it. And I think the final thing I take away is there is something really special about breakfast because it can be the sort of keystone habit you're describing.

52:08Professor Tim Spector:It's like the starting point in the day. So if I can shift my breakfast towards something better, actually, there's real science. This can set me up for the rest of the day. Just like if I get breakfast wrong, then somehow it can set me up in a bad way. Because as a human being, we have this sort of thing about where you start with and this fresh start. So if you start well, everything will go well. But if I somehow get pushed off course, it's very easy to be like, oh, I'm just a failure. It doesn't work. And I almost have to wait till the first of the next month to start again.

52:40Professor Benjamin Gardner:Yeah, that's correct. I mean, you don't have to wait until the start of the next month. It could be the next day. But the point is, the next day could be the point at which you're wiping the slate clean. So yeah, just stick at it. The first day of the rest of your life. Exactly.

52:54Professor Tim Spector:As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day. If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high-quality, hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber. Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion, and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives.

53:37Professor Tim Spector:Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life. Becoming a daily healthy habit you'll always have time for. By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains four grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants. So, order yours today at zoe.com slash daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

54:19You