From telegraph.co.uk
By Tim Spector
From ditching muesli and granola to fasting twice a week, these simple diet changes will leave you feeling brighter and more energetic
At the start of the year, we generally don’t go out much and we’re a bit more miserable. We look for ways to reward ourselves, often by eating and drinking more than usual. This sets up spring as a good time for a reset, a chance to think about our diet choices differently – not as much for comfort, perhaps more for energy and health.
We often associate lifestyle changes with punishment after feasting over winter, but it shouldn’t feel like that. It’s simply a moment to take time to reflect; perhaps to experiment and to do a few things differently.
Here are six ideas for diet tweaks this season that should leave you feeling brighter and with more energy.
Get rid of your muesli and granola
Four in 10 people in the UK have cereal or toast for breakfast, and it’s bringing down the quality of their diet. Virtually no breakfast cereal or supermarket bread is good for you. Even if you choose muesli and granola, there are few types that are actually healthy, despite the tempting labels.
So, spring can be a good time to rethink your breakfast. If you can just sort out this meal, which is usually under your control, and cram in lots of nutrition, you’re halfway there to a healthy diet.
I do this by having a bowl of full-fat yogurt, kefir, mixed berries and my Zoe Daily 30 mix (a supplement containing seeds, nuts, legumes, herbs, spices and mushrooms) for breakfast most days during the week, and some variant of a shakshuka with eggs at the weekend for brunch. Both options are full of fibre, variety and protein to keep me energised through the morning, support my gut health and fill me up.
If you want to stick to cereal or toast, consider healthier products (with less sugar and fewer artificial ingredients) that you can swap in, or a good-quality peanut butter or cheese instead of jam. You can also make all these bases better for you by adding different fruit, nuts and seeds.
Experiment with fermented foods daily
Now is the time to get into fermented foods. We know that, if taken regularly, these are excellent for our gut, reduce bloating and inflammation and improve overall health.
Yogurt and cheese are probably the easiest fermented foods to add to your diet – pretty much all cheese counts, including cream cheese, though frozen pizza cheese and most cheese slices do not. Try to remember the four Ks: Kombucha, a fizzy fermented tea; kefir, a fermented milk drink similar to a thin yogurt but with a richer set of microbes; krauts (sauerkraut or beet kraut) and kimchi (spicy kraut). They all have many different microbe species.
Buy some you’ve not tried before and find out which you like. Then, set yourself the challenge of eating three fermented foods a day for a month. This could simply be mixing some kefir into your usual yogurt at breakfast, adding cheese to your lunch, or experimenting with fermented vegetables or a glass of kombucha at dinner.
Before you start, score your mood and energy out of 10 and track over the month how that is changing. Research we carried out on 6,500 Zoe members showed that half of people who hit three portions per day report better mood and energy, as well as less hunger and bloating, within two weeks.
This makes sense because we know these ferments bring down inflammation, a contributor to poor mood and fatigue. Recording your experience with a diary or an app can be motivational and encourage you to stick to healthy changes.
Eat a different fruit each day
The average person in the UK is having around 10-12 different plants a week, when we should really be aiming for 30. It might sound daunting but it’s not. Every different type of fruit and vegetable you have counts, so if you eat a red pepper one day and a green one the next, that would add two to your total. Herbs, spices, whole grains, beans, coffee and dark chocolate all contribute as well.
We want to eat as many different types of plants as possible, as it will encourage better gut health, boosting your good gut microbes – and the extra fibre has also been consistently linked to a lower risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Count how many plants are in your diet at the moment. Are you in a rut and having the same few every week? Then it’s time to mix it up. One way to do this is by adding in a new type of vegetable, fruit or herb each week. Just ease in gradually and don’t overdo the portions, as this might lead to gut discomfort.
Stop buying biscuits and crisps
Regularly eating the worst types of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – which are mass produced and contain ingredients you wouldn’t find in your kitchen – are associated with weight gain, heart disease, mental health problems and cancer, so it’s worth making a conscious effort to cut back on them.
I know this can be tricky. Foods such as chocolate, cakes, crisps and fizzy drinks are designed to addict us into overeating, and we all have our weaknesses. Mine is biscuits: if there are any in the house, I’ll eat them all.
While you don’t need to cut them out entirely, it’s a lot easier to give them up if you stop buying them. I suggest limiting yourself to once a week rather than once a day when it comes to high-risk UPFs. These fake foods shouldn’t play a big role in your diet.
I managed to cut back drastically in 2012 after I suffered a mini stroke at 53 that left me with high blood pressure. This was a powerful sign to change my lifestyle. A health scare is a great motivator. It made me very aware of the risks of my poor food choices and the chance I now had to make the right ones.
Since then, I have found it best not to have UPFs in the house. Changing my food environment at home and stopping regular visits to supermarkets made it easy not to eat these too often. Snacks account for nearly 25 per cent of our calories, so you can also experiment with healthier swaps, such as dark chocolate, popcorn and nuts.
Have two alcohol-free days a week
I made a conscious effort this year to cut back on alcohol, and rather than doing Dry January, I now have two days a week where I don’t drink at all.
I decided to be slightly stricter with myself because as I’ve got older, my tolerance has gone down. Half a bottle of wine used to be no problem, but now even two glasses in the evening can give me a headache by the time I go to bed.
One tip that’s helped me cut back is keeping my fridge stocked with non-alcoholic beer and kombucha, which is good for your gut health and lowers inflammation.
Do I feel immediately better for it? The honest answer is, apart from having fewer headaches and possibly better sleep, only a little. I’m jealous of those people who say they feel marvellous for drinking less alcohol.
However, all the research shows that by reining it in, I’m looking after my longer-term health – lowering my risk of mental health problems and dementia, as well as some cancers. While alcohol is overall bad for gut health, our own studies have shown that around one glass of red wine a day may be the sweet spot.
I recommend finding a sustainable way of reducing your alcohol intake, as you may also find that you’re sleeping better, your mood is brighter and that you lose a bit of weight.
Fasting twice a week
Once you have decided to improve your diet, it can be helpful to follow a different plan for a couple of weeks to make you more mindful about what you’re eating and, importantly, to form new habits that stick.
To push myself into healthier habits after my mini stroke, I needed a jolt, so I went vegetarian. It was a useful framework and set strict rules that forced me to think more about what I was eating. This helped me transition to a healthier diet and made me learn to cook delicious plant-based recipes. Now, years later, I still eat lots of plants but am more flexible and eat fish regularly and meat twice a month or so, as it’s a more balanced way of eating.
However, it was a helpful initial experience that forced me to be more creative with vegetables. I recommend giving it a go for a couple of weeks, or you could try time-restricted eating, where you give your gut a rest for 12 to 14 hours overnight. When we tested this on 140,000 Zoe volunteers, most (but not all) reported a benefit in terms of mood energy and strangely even hunger. It also stops you having late-night snacks, which is a bad habit.
I believe it can be beneficial for everyone to fast as our ancestors did. It will remind you what it feels like to be slightly hungry and it will help you realise that we can do without eating as much food, or snacking as often as we think we need.
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