What happens when you start eating healthy?

0:00Welcome to Zoe Science and Nutrition, where world-leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health.

0:13The new year feels full of potential, fresh routines, ambitious plans, and a quiet promise to ourselves. This year will be different. For many of you listening to this podcast, your focus is making lasting changes to your diet, to improve how you feel, how you look, and how many more healthy years you live. But setting big ambitions is easy. Following through is the tricky part. So to give you the biggest boost on achieving this year's resolutions, we're doing something we've never done before. We're bringing on two everyday people who started their journey two years ago to show you what's possible.

0:51Because once you can see the goal, it's much easier to score. In today's episode, I'm joined by Becky Tucker and Mark Payne, two individuals we found by putting out a call to our community. Each of them has spent the past two years consistently putting Zoe Nutrition principles into practice through busy seasons, stressful weeks, celebrations, setbacks, life. And somewhere along the way, both of them hit a moment where everything changed. where becoming people who simply eat well became part of their identity. In this conversation, we'll learn how they stayed motivated and on track and the lessons learned and strategies used that worked for them and the unexpected ways that everything changed.

1:38If you're trying to make a change this year or trying to stay committed to one, perhaps today's episode could be the spark you need. And we're not doing this alone. In our fully packed studio today, are Professor Tim Spector and Professor Sarah Berry, two of the world's leading experts on gut health and nutrition science, here to explain the science behind Becky and Mark's success and how Zoe's principles can support long-term health in the real world.

2:06Becky and Mark, happy new year, and thank you both for joining me today. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. And Sarah and Tim, thanks for being here, and I hope you didn't overindulge last night. Oh, I'm such a good girl, Jonathan. and it's Tim that was on the tequilas, far too many. Shouldn't be telling secrets. So Becky and Mark, I think you know this, but we have a tradition here at Zoe on the podcast where we always start with a quick fire round of questions. And we ask you to give us a yes or a no or a one sentence answer if you have to. You willing to give it a go? Definitely. Sure. All right.

2:43Becky, in your experience, do diet plans work? Yes and no. They work in the short term and then they absolutely do not. Mark, can you transform how you feel by changing what you eat? Yes. Tim, to lose weight, should you count calories? Absolutely not. Sarah, can food affect your mood? Absolutely, yes. Mark, is it possible to eat healthily without feeling restricted? Yes. Mark and Becky, to both of you, what's one belief about health or food you no longer hold? I previously thought that what we were being told by big food companies was correct, and I no longer believe that. I would say that fat is not bad.

3:36Some is, some's good, some's in the middle. That was a big revelation for me. Becky and Mark, thank you both so much for coming in. We always have all of these scientists on the show, but we thought it would be great on New Year's Day to do something a little different and almost turn it around because so many listeners today are embarking on like a change. They've made some sort of resolution. This is like day one of trying to do it. And we thought it would be really great actually to have two people who've been on a health journey with changing their diet that you've sustained for a few years now to share what works and the pitfalls and also to recognise that it's not an easy thing to make these habit changes and you've both tried a lot of things in the past as well.

4:23So first of all, Becky, would you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, sure. So I'm Becky and I live in Poole in Dorset, so nice sunny location right by the beach, which is really lovely too. Good for wellbeing, good for health. And on January the 1st, 2023, I joined the queue to become a Zoe member. At that time, that you had to kind of put your name down and get your space. And so I waited. And on the 6th of March, 2023, it is a sliding door moment in my life. I did my testing. But I guess what took me to that point was a very, very long journey of trying lots and lots of other programs and diets because I struggled with my weight.

5:07My weight fluctuated right from having my son at 17 through to 2023, I guess. And that is a journey through lots of diet plans that didn't work for me. My quickfire round question when I said, yes, there are diets that work. Yes, there are. You can absolutely lose weight. Can you maintain that weight? Absolutely not. It's really, really difficult. I lived off of a diet of artificial sweeteners because that gave me the little bit of pleasure in the tiny amount of food that I was allowed to eat, which actually fought against everything that worked for me, I later found out as part of Zoe. When did you first try this first diet plan you're talking about?

5:52I started my life trying Weight Watchers and I was 18. I'd just had my son and I had put on that normal kind of pregnancy, post-pregnancy weight and was struggling to get it off. I'd seen my mum actually do Weight Watchers for almost all of her life as well, up and down with weight. All right when you're on it, because you can do it. In real life, you can't maintain it. And you're eating rubbish essentially to be able to have a little tiny bit of pleasure from life. And by that, it probably isn't pleasure like I know it today in terms of food because I've always enjoyed food and I still enjoy food.

6:34That's really part of what Zoe gives you, I think, is that sense that you can eat food and you can eat real food and still maintain the weight that I've done for over two years. So from my perspective, yes, I've tried Weight Watchers, I've tried Slimming World, I've tried calorie counting, all of those. I'm going to ask a question that my mum would tell me I'm definitely not allowed to ask. Would you be able to share how old you are today? Yes, absolutely. I'm 51. So that's a long journey. So you're saying like throughout this period was just a constant cycle of going onto a diet plan and coming off without it working?

7:14Yeah, absolutely. At the starting point of Zoe to now, I very quickly realized that it was a natural byproduct, the losing weight, actually. I didn't do it to lose weight at that point. I did it because I'd recently read some books that had kind of made me think, oh, actually, there's more to diet than just what calories you eat. And Mark, could you tell us a bit about your story? Sure. So my name is Mark. I'm a property lawyer. I've always been interested in food and felt that it's important to your health. My mother was a nurse and brought us up that way. I've never had a sweet tooth. I've never snacked.

7:58I don't eat cakes, biscuits, etc. I've also felt a little bit overweight. But for me, the Zoe journey was less about weight and more about health. The other thing that happened was I read Tim's book, Spoonfed, and found it really fascinating. And this point about, you know, never knowing what's really healthy or isn't. Is salt healthy or isn't it? Is coffee healthy or isn't it? It can drive you mad if you care about that. And then Zoe came along. I was a bit later than you and I had to go on the waiting list to join Zoe and do the tests. I got the results in August, 2023. So what really shocked me was the blood fat bad reading.

8:35And I was so upset because I was looking at a life where I wouldn't be able to eat bread, pasta, red meat, all these things I loved like bacon and steak and things, fish and chips. It seemed to me as though three quarters of my diet was really unhealthy for me now. But at the same time, part of me realized I had to do this. So I started on the journey. And I'm not someone who does things by halves. If I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to do it properly. And I've done it ever since. Now, the first two months were fascinating because first of all, I lost seven kilos, which was helpful because I was a bit overweight.

9:15I have stayed that same way ever since because I feel I've eaten incredibly healthily following Zoe for over two years since then. It was quite amazing, but I got far more energy. My skin's better. I felt transformed actually. And I was quite skeptical, by the way. I was wanting to see evidence and it It was really, for me, the other way around. The evidence was bombarding me. It was obvious this thing was working. And that's why I've kept it ever since. Sarah, do these sorts of stories sound familiar to you before even coming to Zoe? For our scientific co-founder, Professor Tim Spector, the quest for better brain health is deeply personal.

9:57Tim watched his mother live with dementia for years, and he's long known about his own genetic risks for high blood pressure. Recently, Tim underwent comprehensive brain testing. And despite his expertise, his scans revealed something startling. High exposure to microplastics. It was a wake-up call that our environment and our biology are under constant pressure. This led Tim to double down on the nutrition principles that we've developed here at Zoe that protect cognitive longevity. And we've compiled those principles into a brand new guide called Eating for Better Brain Health. This isn't just generic advice.

10:29This is your brain gut blueprint. Inside, we break down five core strategies like pivoting your protein to clear your vascular highways. We even include the kimchi kick breakfast recipe to lower your inflammatory response. As Tim says, for 40 years, we've been going down the wrong path, treating the brain as something different from the rest of the body. Stop leaving your brain health to chance. Learn exactly how to rewire how you think, starting with what's on your plate. Download the guide for free at zoe.com slash brain health. that's zoe.com slash brain health or click the link in the episode description yeah absolutely i mean starting with becky first this cycle of losing weight putting it back on losing weight going through these processes of calorie restricted diets that work exactly like she said in the short term but not in the long term we know that there's very clear evidence that 50 percent of people who go on calorie restricted diets put all the weight back on within a few years 70 within five years it's not a sustainable method of weight loss and it's not a healthy method of weight loss either our bodies work so hard to maintain the weight that you're at you know by as soon as you restrict your calories increasing your desire for food increasing your appetite reducing your metabolic rate and so that's why we really focus at Zoe on the quality of the calories and not the quantity of calories and why weight loss just like with Mark tends to be a byproduct of that and what I loved is what Mark said about how he felt because this is something that I think is great through changing your diet how people feel better so not only has some of his clinical measures potentially improved it's the fact that you said you feel even more energy, you feel better mood, etc.

12:22And I think that's a story we're hearing more and more from people following the Zoe program, who when they were consuming their previous diet, it was just the normal way of feeling on their diet. They didn't realize there was a better way to feel. And Tim, why have we been told for decades and decades that the key thing is, you know, energy in compared to energy out, just focus on calories. That's definitely been government advice, sort of all around the world? We were always looking for a very simple explanation for people gaining weight or losing too much weight. And so it came after the war.

13:00It was all about deprivation and kids, babies weren't getting enough general energy in that they couldn't grow and maintain their weight. So it was a sort of logical thing to say, well, it's very complicated, but let's just reduce it to something that we can approximately measure and give some guidelines to people. And it came about like that. It was a simple concept to sell to people, although it was based on flawed science and evidence, when it turned out to the practicalities of people's individual experiences. But overall, it was a simple thing to say, yes, women need 2 ,000 calories, men, 2 ,500, one size fits all, nice and easy, guidelines done, move on.

13:49And you blame people if they go over it and you'll reward them if they stay under it. But it never worked. And essentially it was missing this huge complexity of human metabolism and the complexity of food. And of course it missed the complexity of gut health, which a recent discovery is this sort of missing link between why just basing it on calories didn't work. I think as well, Jonathan, the concept of energy in, energy out is compounded by the food landscape we now live in. And so we're surrounded by very different types of food that just encourage this overconsumption and have a different kind of calorie effect than the kind of foods that we were consuming a hundred or more years ago.

14:35I did actually want to ask about Mark's story, which is obviously focusing on health, which is really interesting. You're telling the story of trying really hard to deal with your health for like three years and then still staying in this sort of pre-diabetes range, despite the fact that you felt that you were doing all of this. Are you surprised to hear that this isn't just about weight, but this is very much about health? Yeah, absolutely. And something that I picked up on that Mark said quite proudly, you don't snack you don't eat cakes and biscuits but actually there's all the other foods that you could be eating that we now have in our current food environment that could be really bad for you because of the way many foods are processed so it would be interesting to know what kinds of foods you were having even though you didn't snack and you didn't have a sweet tooth yes i mean things like bacon i didn't eat a huge amount but but i did like it quite a lot i tended to like meat a lot and and eat plenty of meat i of course i always ate vegetables but not enough not in the right balance i know that now i loved fish always the cutting out the fruit was obviously a mistake i was doing it to keep the sugar down did you eat low fat foods at all or low calorie foods they sort of attract you when you went to the no i never i never believed that actually the low fat thing.

15:58And I always tried to shy away from things I could see clearly were processed. So take bacon, and maybe I was completely wrong, but I assumed bacon wasn't very processed. I assumed it was just a bit of meat. I knew there were nitrates in it. And that was probably completely wrong, you'll tell me. But I thought that wasn't too bad. And the same with red meats. And I bought good quality ones, and I always tried to buy organic. So I did all the things I thought were good for me and healthy. And, you know, sometimes I was right, and often I wasn't. I think conversely for me, I didn't do any of those things.

16:31I was driven by a diet program that said for these many points per day, Becky, you can have whatever you want. And whatever you want was mostly ultra processed. Now I reflect back on that. So in the UK, we have the Mars bar and I can remember working out that on my points for a day on Weight Watchers, I could have three. I could live and that would be okay. That would be okay. And you know what? I'd lose weight. And looking back on that, how do you feel? I'm horrified. It actually makes me feel quite emotional because the reality of that at the time was almost a, well, do you know what? I'm addicted to that.

17:15So yeah. And I will use that word addicted because I was. I was addicted to sugars in all the wrong way. And I think that's sad that, you know, the information that I was given at that time, I didn't realize, A, that I was addicted to those things. And that actually all that made me do is make life really difficult for myself because, you know, you could have three bars, but then, oh, I could have another one now then and so on and so forth. And that's what happened. And that's, you know, you fall off the wagon again until you put on loads of weight and then you're back on it again. But also, even if you were managed to keep the weight off, the food that you're eating, the mass blood that you're eating will cause serious long-term health effects.

17:58And so again, this is why we have to move beyond calorie counting. We have to think of the overall quality of the food. Do you mind if I mentioned something that I think might help people? Because it's one of the things that's helped me the most. I mentioned that at the start, I was really, you know, really demoralized about all the things I'd have to cut out of my diet, and it felt awful. The key to that has been displacement, a concept that you've explained to me, which is actually that as long as you can eat enough to be satisfied, you don't feel deprived and you can choose so many foods that I like.

18:30And if you eat those, you don't miss the bacon rolls. Why? Because I'm satisfied. I'm happy. I love the food I eat. I love beetroot and preserved lemons and all sorts of healthy stuff. You just can't buy the convenience quick foods anymore. Sometimes you don't have enough time to eat properly, so you buy a sandwich previously. And now I really can't. So it takes a bit of time to adjust practically to that, like make a little lunch box of healthy food that you can eat quickly at your desk for 10 minutes. You know, I have a little nut pot that I take to the theatre and that keeps you going until you can eat a proper, healthy plate.

19:03I think that's a fair point. It's planning ahead. And that's what Zoe teaches you to do. I travel a lot for work also, and mainly in a car. So if you imagine driving on a three, four hour drive from where I live in Dorset to Birmingham or wherever, the only options you've got along the way are service station. Have you looked at what's on offer in a service station shop? Because there is nothing for me there, actually nothing. And I think that's horrifying. It's, as Mark says, it's planning ahead. Yes, I've got my obligatory pot of nuts as well. So Sarah, how do you think about things being forbidden?

19:41So I think absolutely nothing should be off limits. So if you want to have bacon, have it. But very, very, very occasionally is about what you're adding to your plate. Because exactly like you said, by adding in healthy foods, you're naturally going to displace the less healthy foods. the more you deny yourself things whether it's calories whether it's specific foods the more you're going to crave it and so don't totally take everything away cut down the foods that are bad replace them with the healthy foods and let yourself have the odd treat you know a little bit of what's bad for you occasionally can be good for you bacon's come up a number of times a lot of listeners may be saying what is it about bacon that it's been given all the hard wrap after oil is January the 1st.

20:28Quite a few of us have probably been having some bacon over the last month. What's the story there? Oh, a bacon sarnie after a hangover, Jonathan. Nothing beats it with loads of butter. But we know processed red meat, like bacon, like ham, increases our risk of many chronic diseases. Particularly cancer is clearly linked with increased rates of cancer. And we're not sure exactly why it could be a lot of the chemicals in there as well as some of the unhealthy fats. But if you're having that regularly, several times a week, then that gives you this extra risk. Okay. So this is genuinely, this is like really a high risk food.

21:05Yeah. Across the board, it comes out in all the studies as being a high risk processed food that you really want to be avoiding having regularly. Having it once a month or having tiny sprinkles of it you know as you do if you go to italy or or spain where you can't avoid a little bit of this um it is probably fine but having it in in the amounts that we have in the uk and the us i think uh definitely bad for you and also thinking the overall quality of how you're having that so imagine the traditional british or american way of having that bacon it was probably with some white bread it's probably with some tomato ketchup with some butter that's not very healthy or you can have the more Mediterranean style way that they do include some red meat in a small amount but alongside that you'll have beans, pulses, vegetables, extra virgin olive oil.

21:57So that's something else that I hope you found through the science that we try and distill down is it's about thinking about the overall meal again and not demonising or denying yourself one specific part of it. It's really interesting to hear the kind of meat discussion because I accidentally became vegetarian when I went on Zoe. And I mean accidentally because I ate less and less and less meat, not through choice, but because there were other things that I wanted to eat more of. And that has just been revolutionary for me, I think, that I didn't intend to be vegetarian, but I'd go weeks without having chicken or steak or any of those things.

22:40So much so that in the end, I just thought, well, I'll just as well go the whole way and not eat meat anymore. And I chose to do that because I can then eat more of the things that bring me joy. A plate of vegetables and nuts and seeds and my daily 30, I'm going to get that in because I have that every single day. All of those things give me more pleasure than meat does. So I choose not to when i transitioned to many a plant-based i sort of said oh well you know i can have meat when i want it but i found i was wanting it less yeah because you've sort of perhaps changed your palate you know as you've gone on and the idea of eating some enormous steak which people you know listening might say i could never do without it but actually once you you do start to have all this range of other plants someone offers you a bite you might yeah well that's great but i find I can't have much more than that now it's interesting how you do change I mean for me I I still love meat and I concentrate my efforts now on venison which I know is really healthy and and turkey and chicken and then fish I love and eggs and cheese and all of these things so I definitely haven't turned into a vegetarian but it's true I eat far more plants and one of the things that struck me recently is how in the old days the way I ate before and maybe how most people eat, you tend to have maybe three things on your plate, if you think about it.

24:09Fish and chips, and you know you've got to have something green, so you put peas in as well, let's say. Or steak and chips, and again, perhaps a green thing. Three things. My plates almost never have only three things anymore. I mean, when I'm making up a plate of salad or whatever, it's got 15 things on it. It's got beetroot and maybe three herbs chucked on top, and tomatoes, and so on and so forth. There will be protein there too, but smaller amounts, a bit like you said, Tim. But it's actually more fun now. The food's more interesting, much more varied. You've got this thing where you've got to eat lots of different types of plants.

24:41I find that a great game. So last week, I think I had 81, believe it or not. No way. Honestly. That's better than Tim, I think. 81. Yeah, beats me. So thank you for sharing all of those stories. And I think there are going to be a lot of people listening for whom those stories resonate and looking for inspiration as we begin the new year. So I'd like to talk maybe about those first few months. And some of our listeners may know that one of the first things you do as a member is to take a microbiome test. And we talk a lot about the science and the results of the microbiome test, but it has to be said that we don't tend to talk a lot about the process of the microbiome test.

25:17Mark, can you guess why that might be? Because it's all about testing your poo, isn't it? Do you want to talk us through what you have to do? Yes. Okay. So you have to collect a little bit of your poo, which isn't so hard, actually. a tiny little bit pop it in a little tube and send it off in the post it's actually very easy it didn't put you off when you first did it or thought about it no not at all we make it really nice though we give you a little hammock that you put on the toilet how did it go for you becky it was fine you pop it off in the post and it took about two weeks i think to come back the results and you get a very comprehensive report of lots of very long names that i can't pronounce which I'll leave to these guys.

25:56I was going to say, Tim, can you explain a little bit about that gut microbiome test and what's going on from the point you put it in the mail to the results coming back? Yes. So we pioneered this over 10 years ago, this poo in the post concept. A little bit of poo, which is a tiny quarter of a teaspoon, goes into this liquid which preserves it and stops it degrading. You get it in the lab and then essentially we extract the DNA from the rest of the stuff. And the rest of the stuff actually is dead microbes, most of it. The DNA from that then goes into our analyzers. Every single microbe has its own DNA and that goes into this big puzzle, basically, when our computers then link those DNA structures to the database and work out what the microbes are in your particular sample.

26:51And that's a huge computational exercise. We're trying to work out every gene in every microbe, you know, what it's called and which one is then associated with. So we sort of reconstruct your gut microbiome. It's really clever. Many gut tests still only look at one gene in every microbe, but we do every single gene. And so it's very comprehensive. and then from that we then work out now how many good bugs you've got and how many bad bugs this is based on our study which we published in nature 50 good bugs 50 bad bugs and we look at the ratios and that is now the best way of looking at your gut microbiome it used to be i can't remember whether you did the test it was diversity and a number of different species do you remember what your results were?

27:40Yes, I do. My first ones were 630 and then 535 and then 550. What was yours like? I remember getting the overall gut health score, which was the first time I did it before retesting 12 months later, I think, was 44 out of 100. And then when I retested, it was 88 and I was like jumping for joy. The difference between that in 12 months. That's amazing. I doubled my gut health and I just thought, wow, that's just incredible. What was that experience in the first month or two, if you can think back? Because you were describing coming from this world where as long as you only ate three chocolate bars a day and nothing else, this was fine.

28:22So I think probably the advice that you were suddenly getting from Zoe being pretty radically different. The magic began for me when I got my results back because it was astounding. So I hadn't realised at all that I was very poor at processing sugar and yet lived off of a diet of artificial sweeteners. So it's no surprise I was struggling and really good scoring and ability to be able to deal with the fats. So already I was looking at some figures that were the complete opposite of my diet. So everything that I was doing basically would have scored horrendously for me when I was scanning it on the app.

29:01So it took a little while for me to kind of get my head around that, to look at the consequences of if I ate that, my score would plummet versus if I ate that and it would shoot through the roof. So it was a learning process. And I always say to my grandchildren, if you try something 10 times, you'll get to like it. But I had to live by that myself at that time because it did take a few weeks, I would say, to actually kind of turn around what I wanted to eat and how I wanted to eat it. I did it. And actually, it was surprisingly easy. But at the time, it was quite a stand on the edge of a cliff moment going, this is going to be hard.