Over the holidays, I studied some really interesting facts taken from Professor Tim Spector’s scientific research which I’ll be sharing with you this year about gut health and how important it is to understand what that means and how to maintain it for your full mental and physical health to be consistent.
Professor Tim Spector a leading professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and is best known for creating the “Zoe” Covid Health Study, the app that helped us track coronavirus as it spread across the country. Tim is the author of bestseller, The Diet Myth, said losing weight was not simply about eating less or following a fad diet, like the Atkins or Keto diets. “That’s been the dogma for years – yet the nation has steadily got fatter despite many people cycling through endless diets,”
According to Professor Spector, while people may lose weight in the first few weeks when restricting calories, their bodies then “turn against” them. “These genetic evolutionary pressures make you hungrier and hungrier, and slow your metabolism down so that it gets harder and harder to lose any more weight,” he said.
When restricting yourself you also tend to have a less balanced diet and eat more processed, less filling foods that are void of proper nutrition and lower in fibre, he added. So, what is the answer to losing weight and keeping it off long-term?
It lies in the importance of our gut microbiome, which affects our appetite and is “essential to how we digest food”, according to Professor Spector who told i that gut microbes controlled the calories we absorbed, provided vital enzymes and vitamins, and kept our immune systems healthy.
For instance, artificial sweeteners in processed foods cause gut microbes “to produce inflammatory and metabolic chemicals that make you more likely to put on weight or get diabetes”. Meanwhile, reduced calorie foods – like low-fat fruit yoghurt instead of full-fat plain yoghurt – can be “full of other chemicals that interfere with your gut microbes”.
First tip for a healthy gut is to try to eat 30 different plant based foods per week, along with your usual good quality fish, meat, and dairy.
Plant based food includes:
vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, whole grains, pulses, black coffee, black tea, green tea and fermented foods.
As a goal try for 30 different ones per week as each plant based food has different natural chemicals and nutrients which we need for our gut microbes to work properly enabling us to have a healthy immune system.
Doing this will help grow healthy microbes found in our stomach which help fight disease and illness.
Second is, try time restricted eating. This means you give your body 12-14 hours per day without food. By doing this your gut microbes go into cleansing and healing mode, cleaning up your cells and allowing your immune system to become stronger. For example having breakfast at 7am and finishing the last meal of the day around 6-7pm. Or breakfast at 9am and finishing eating around 8-8.30pm.
Tim’s scientific findings are absolutely fascinating in relation to our health, weight management and how to eat properly so our bodies function at the optimum level. More detailed blogs to come on the benefits of fermented foods and switching to black tea and coffee.
For more information and to look at Tim Spector’s books visit: https://tim-spector.co.uk/
