The Truth About Diets

It's fair to say that the majority of us have tried at least one diet over the years, be it a weight loss mission or
a super-health quest. Most of these diets are publicised in magazines, books, television and other various media outlets and claim to offer astounding results. However a shocking 95% of all diets fail, with the majority of dieters not only regaining the weight they'd lost, but gaining even more weight once they stopped the diet. How can this be?

Is this down to overeating or is something else at play here?

When we diet, we inevitably end up cutting out carbohydrates (yes, there are various weight loss diets out there that don't advocate carb-cutting, and I'll come to that shortly). When you cut out carbs, or even reduce them to just below your body's carbohydrate needs, your body essentially recognises a starvation period. Carbohydrates provide fibre, sugar and energy. When these elements aren't present in our daily diet our bodies shut down. We get most of our energy from carbohydrates, and just to put this into context here are a few everyday carbs you'll probably be eating: all vegetables, all fruits, cereal, oats, pasta, rice, potatoes, noodles, crisps, chips, biscuits, cereal bars, sugar added to any foods or drinks, cakes, pulses, beans... chances are you're eating a lot of carbohydrates every day - which is good! Your body needs carbs! Obviously fruits, pulses, beans and vegetables are much more nutritious and are utilised more efficiently by your body than cakes, crisps and biscuits, but it's important to recognise how many carbs your eating in order to put these faddy diets into context.



Many diets, such as the 5:2 (which I have reviewed here), the Atkins, the vast majority of those found in women's magazines, practically all 'miracle' or 'quick weight loss' diets and even many of the diets labelled as 'healthy', severely reduce carbohydrates. So what is the big problem with cutting out carbs?

When we eat a carbohydrate it is broken down into glucose and utilised for energy and other jobs around the body including building and repairing cells and neural networks, muscle reparation, DNA formation and much more. When our bodies have used as much glucose as they need it is stored in our muscles and liver as glycogen, a water-soluble (i.e. it weighs more than fat) molecule. Glycogen can be quickly broken down back into glucose and used as energy (as well as for its many functions) in times of starvation. So, if you were to embark on a diet which restricted carbohydrates (and remember, it's not necessarily going to be named a "low-carb diet" on the front cover of the book or at the heading of the magazine article), you would reach a point within the first couple of days at which your body had used its entire store of glycogen.

As muscle weighs more than fat, and glycogen is stored in muscle, losing glycogen results in a sudden and extreme drop in pounds on the scales. This is why diet books and the creators of fad diets can, unfortunately, claim that their regime leads to fast weight loss. Technically they're telling the truth. Unfortunately they're relying on your body entering starvation in order to make that claim.



Any diet which advises you to reduce or cut out carbohydrates is not to be trusted. Don't get me wrong, if an overweight person were to embark on a weight loss diet they would have to reduce their carbohydrate intake. However this must be balanced with other essential nutrients and not fall below their body's minimum carb requirement.

When you have severely reduced or completely cut out carbohydrates from your diet, you will indeed experience a very noticeable drop in pounds and, sadly, this is what these diet books and creators rely on. This weight loss is due to muscle depletion and the depletion of essential energy stored in your liver; it is not fat loss. When you then re-introduce carbohydrates into your diet, no matter what the source is - vegetables and fruits, for example - you will regain the weight simply because your muscles and liver are re-building their vital energy stores. And this is why fad diets don't work. No matter how they are packaged, if a diet claims to help you lose "7lbs in 7 days" or anything similar, it is relying on your muscles becoming rapidly depleted.

What about non-carb-restrictive diets?

So what about the diets that allow you to eat carbohydrates, such as Slimming World and Weight Watchers? Unfortunately many of my clients claim to have been successful on these diets. But what these diets advocate is overloading your body with sugar. This leads us to a conundrum: sugar makes us gain weight yet it is satiating, meaning when we eat it we are quickly full up and don't crave any more.

Sugar is, in many ways, the dietary devil. It contains no calories - i.e. it doesn't give our bodies useful energy that can be used for cell restoration, for example - yet it causes the release of insulin. When we produce vast amounts of insulin and have vast amounts of sugar circulating in our bloodstream, our blood sugar levels peak and suddenly dip, causing us to crave even more later on in the day when our blood sugar levels dip. Slimming World and Weight Watchers, for example, rely on point systems, or "Free Foods, Healthy Extras and Syns" (for a start, I strongly believe that no food, no matter how unhealthy, should be regarded as anything synonymous with "sin" - that is the basis for making any dieter feel guilty and will inevitably feed any potential low self-esteem).

Unfortunately we're being taught that food is a 'sin'.

Slimming World's "Free Foods" are of course perfectly healthy, as are most of their "Healthy Extras" - in
moderation. However their "Syns" are allowed at any time of day and in any form you like. A chocolate bar for breakfast? That is considered ok providing it doesn't go over your "syn" limit for the day. I recently saw a food diary that showed a person eating three 'Freddo' chocolate bars for breakfast because Slimming World allows it. No healthy weight loss diet would advocate this. What they're doing is keeping you happy; you get your chocolate fix (which I don't disagree with, just not at 7am!) and you flood your body with sugar. This causes happy hormones dopamine and beta-endorphins to be released which, in turn, floods the body with relaxation, happiness and satisfaction. In turn, this makes you feel like you can continue with the day and, essentially, stick to their diet. And let's not forget - they are charging you money for this; they are charging you money whilst claiming to help you to lose weight whilst essentially feeding you chocolate for breakfast.



Weight Watchers have even launched their own brand of foods ranging from breads to crisps to cakes and biscuits. Yes they are all low fat but if you look at the labels, they are in fact high in sugar than any of their competitors. Why? Because they know that sugar tastes good and releases feelgood hormones. I.e. they know how to get they customers addicted. They also know how easy it is to slap on a "low fat" label and entice anyone who may be vulnerable to their marketing tactics (after studying marketing at university I can honestly say the tactics used by such companies are disgusting).

The purpose of this article is to let you make an informed and empowered decision. Your body is your own and it is up to you how you nourish it, but it is so important that you are aware of the deceitful marketing tactics used by those who wish to make money out of our body insecurities. Be mindful of the advice these companies are giving you; are their products low-fat yet laden with sugar (i.e. carbohydrates) or is their advice to cut out or severely reduce carbohydrates (i.e. causing you to lose essential muscle- and liver-mass?).


How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?

We need to obtain 45% to 65% of our calories from carbohydrates. You may find the following chart helpful in determining how many carbohydrates you should consume each day in order to maintain a healthy balance between the individual nutrients.

Activity Level	Maintain Weight	Lose Weight	Gain Weight
Sedentary	190g - 275g	135g - 195g	245g - 355g
Lightly Active	220g - 320g	165g - 235g	275g - 400g
Moderately Active	250g - 360g	190g - 275g	300g - 440g
Very Active	275g - 400g	220g - 320g	330g - 480g

Crash Diets, Meal Skipping and Starvation: Why They Don't Work

In today’s society there is a lot of pressure to be thin. Thinness is associated with success and beauty, and some people go to extreme lengths to achieve this ‘ideal’ body type. However crash dieting, severe calorie restriction and meal skipping do not contribute to permanent weight control and can be dangerous.

When you starve your body – and this doesn’t just mean not eating altogether, it could be cutting out food groups or skipping meals – it enters crisis mode and does everything it can to survive. When calories drop to below your body’s basic requirements, it perceives danger in the form of starvation and its survival mechanisms kick in. Firstly your metabolism will slow down as your body tries to preserve energy until the famine is over; fat stores will remain and only emergency energy supplies will be used to perform bodily functions. This emergency energy comes in the form of glycogen, a necessary molecule produced as a result of excess glucose (sugar), which is stored primarily in your liver and muscle tissues and then as fat. Glycogen is linked to four times its weight in water, so every time your body uses glycogen for energy you will lose fluid and muscle tissue. If you’ve heard people talking about miracle diets in which they’ve lost 10lb in a week, what they’ve actually done is put their body through stress by severely restricting calories and therefore triggering danger signals within their body, causing it to utilise stored energy and lose weight in fluid and muscle mass – they have not lost much, if any, fat at all.

As your metabolism slows down your body will work below its optimum level in an attempt to save energy. You will find yourself suffering from mood swings, tiredness, insomnia, irritability and sluggish digestion because your body is focusing on keeping your heart beating and your lungs expanding and contracting: its sole aim is to keep you alive. A slow metabolism will result in the calories that you do consume being stored as energy, in fat or as glycogen, meaning you won’t lose weight, you are actually more likely to gain weight. Therefore it is vital that you eat regularly and don’t skip meals in order to keep your metabolic rate steady so that you keep burning the calories as fuel.

If your body perceives a famine because you’re severely restricting calories or skipping meals altogether, you may find yourself becoming preoccupied with thoughts of food. Cravings for sugary, fatty foods will dominate and before long you could find yourself bingeing on biscuits or eating a whole pizza. This does not reflect a lack of willpower but instead it is a signal from your body that it needs fuel. When our ancestors were hunter-gatherers they would regularly face periods without food and so when food became available they would eat lots of it in order for their body to store excess energy as fat. Then when the next famine came, that fat would be used as energy until food was available again. However today that famine never comes so the excess fat many people have stored never gets burnt, but we have not lost that instinctive drive to overeat when our bodies believe we are starving. This leads to a dangerous cycle of yo-yo dieting, bingeing and starving and constantly feeling guilty about ‘falling off the wagon’.

Most crash diets have one thing in common: a severe lack of carbohydrates. The Atkins Diet is probably the most well-known anti-carbohydrate diet but it comes with a string of negative side effects. A massive reduction in carbohydrates will result in rapid weight loss, but as I’ve previously mentioned this is not fat loss but vital fluids and muscle tissue being lost. Carbohydrates are in fact the body’s most basic and efficient source of energy; natural sugars (such as those found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains) are converted into glycogen which is then converted into glucose and used as fuel. However when carbohydrates are restricted or completely cut out from the diet, there are no natural sugars to convert into glycogen, and no glycogen to convert into glucose – so where is your body going to find the glycogen it needs? Initially glycogen will be extracted from fat but before long it will be taken from muscles, meaning you are not losing fat. Therefore the success of low carbohydrate diets (or rather, the reason why so many people lose weight on these diets) is actually down to muscle and fluid loss once again.

Side effects of crash diets, namely low-carbohydrate diets, can be very unpleasant and mimic the symptoms of diabetes. Hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) and ketosis (excess blood ketone levels) will lead to light headedness, fatigue, nausea and bad breath as well as constipation as a result of a lack of fibre. Remaining on a low carbohydrate diet for a prolonged period of time can have very serious consequences; one recognised cause of bowel and colon cancers is a lack of fibre in the diet.

Complex carbohydrates are so essential that they actually have advantages to being in your diet. Firstly, you are less likely to gain weight in the form of fat if you eat carbohydrates. This is because the process in which carbohydrates are converted into fat consumes a lot of calories itself. Secondly, eating complex carbohydrates can actually increase your metabolism. This is due to two hormones being released as the carbohydrates are being broken down into sugars and insulin is released. These hormones - noradrenaline and thyroxin - increase the metabolic rate, allowing your body to effectively burn calories.

So if you’ve been successful and lost some weight on a crash diet, or as a result of starving your body of calories, is it possible to keep the weight off? The answer is no. When you return to your normal eating habits, your body won’t just ‘snap’ back to into its ability to function efficiently. You will have slowed down your metabolism, meaning your body will want to preserve every bit of energy it can get, resulting in you putting the weight back on. Often you will actually put on more weight than when you started. The constant hunger, bingeing, guilt and starving experienced during crash diets, starvation, calorie and portion restricting and meal skipping do more damage than good and will never result in maintaining a healthy weight or controlling your weight in the long-term. Your body needs a balanced diet which includes proteins, complex carbohydrates and fats at every meal, eaten regularly throughout the day so that the metabolic rate stays constant and your body can function properly whilst losing weight steadily. This is the simplest, easiest and most effective way of controlling your weight in the long-term. 

The Basics: Your Digestive System

How the Digestive System Works

The digestive system processes and digests the food we eat, allowing our body to utilise the food’s nutrients and energy. It is an essential system of the body as it stores both water and nutrients for immediate use and as energy reserves.

What Constitutes Your Digestive System?

Organs of the digestive system are divided into two parts. One part is known as the alimentary canal – or gastrointestinal tract - which is about nine metres long, beginning at the mouth and ending at the anus. The alimentary canal consists of:

·         The mouth

·         Pharynx

·         Oesophagus

·         Stomach

·         Small intestine

·         Large intestine.

The second part is known collectively as the accessory organs, consisting of the pancreas, liver and gall bladder.).

·         The pancreas is approximately six inches long and located deep in the abdomen between the stomach and the spine. It secretes digestive enzymes into the small intestine to complete the chemical digestion of foods. It also secretes the hormones insulin and glucagon which regulate blood sugar.

·         The liver produces bile and secretes it into the small intestine.

·         The gallbladder stores and recycles excess bile from the small intestine in order for it to be reused for the digestion of subsequent meals. 

How is Food Digested?

The digestive system begins at the mouth (oral cavity), where our teeth grind food into small pieces which are moistened by saliva before it is swallowed. By the time the chewed food reaches the stomach, the saliva has already started the process of breaking down carbohydrates thanks to the enzyme salivary amylase. The stomach contains hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes which aid the breakdown and digestion of food. It acts as a storage unit, allowing the body time to digest the food sufficiently.

The next stage in the digestive system involves the small intestine, in which 90% of all nutrients are extracted from the food that enters it. Food then travels to the large intestine where water is absorbed and symbiotic bacteria help to break down waste products, allowing faecal (waste) matter to enter the rectum and be excreted through the anus. 

Keeping Your Digestive System Healthy

 There are three things you can do every day to ensure your digestive system stays healthy.

1. Drink plenty of water and clear liquids such as herbal teas

Water plays a vital role in the process of converting food into both energy and tissue. Digestive secretions have a high water content which softens, dilutes and liquefies the food, aiding the digestive process. It also aids peristalsis (the wave-like movement of muscles which help you swallow and move food through the digestive system) by lubricating the gut walls to encourage the efficient movement of food along the gastrointestinal tract, or alimentary canal. Different water content on each side of the intestinal tract allow for the proper absorption of nutrients. Water also helps to soften stools which aids elimination and helps to prevent, and ease, constipation. Not only do drinks contain water, but many foods contribute to our intake of the water. For example, eggs are comprised of around 75% water and fruit and vegetables’ water content ranges from 70% to 95%. One kilogram of fruit and vegetables (around eight portions) contains up to a litre of water. Water even comprises approximately 35% of bread.

2. . Eat plenty of fibre

The main component of dietary fibre is derived from cellulose. Cellulose is comprised of three or more sugar molecules bound together and takes longer for the body to break down into glucose, providing a slower and more sustained release of energy and keeping you fuller for longer after a meal. Eating plenty of fibre will help to prevent constipation, however if you suddenly increase your fibre intake from very little to lots, you will probably notice a few side effects in the form of bloating, trapped gas and flatulence. These symptoms will pass after a few days, once your body has become accustomed to the new higher intake.

Fibre is found in abundance in the following foods:

• Beans

      This doesn't have to mean eating baked beans every day; try kidney beans, adzuki beans, cannellini beans or borlotti beans, there are many more varieties to choose from. They are easy to incorporate into your daily diet, try using them instead of mince in a shepherd’s pie or Bolognese or add them to salads, soups and stews. 

•       Whole grains

Swap white bread for wholemeal, white pasta for wholewheat and regular rice for brown rice.

• Potatoes and sweet potatoes with their skin

The potato’s skin contains the bulk of the nutrients and fibre. Try boiling, baking or roasting with a drizzle of rapeseed or olive oil.

• Bran cereal and porridge oats

Any cereal which contains 5g of fibre per serving counts as ‘high fibre’.

• Nuts

Choose almonds, pecans and walnuts as these have higher fibre content than other nuts, and always choose raw, unsalted nuts.

• Fruit and vegetables

If it’s plant based, it’s fibrous. Fruit and vegetable skins provide a great source of fibre so if possible, don’t peel them! Green vegetables contain less starch and more fibre than the other foods mentioned, meaning they provide less of a sugar hit. Try broccoli, spring greens and kale.

3.  Exercise regularly

Taking regular exercise keeps your digestive system healthy and strong by toning the muscles in your digestive tract. This means you’re more likely to have regular bowel movements and less likely to suffer from inefficient digestion. Acid reflux, heartburn, a bloated ‘heavy’ feeling in your stomach, constipation and bad breath are all signs that your digestive system is not as healthy as it could be, so by exercising you will increase the blood flow to system while toning and building strength. Yoga is a particularly good exercise to try if you’re suffering from uncomfortable symptoms and constipation. Any asanas – or postures – that involve twists and forward bends will improve blood circulation and help ease the symptoms.