After indulging of the Christmas period, many of us have vowed to shed a few pounds this year. Losing weight has consistently been one of the most popular New Year's resolutions in the UK.
A recent YouGov poll on Brits' pledges for 2023 found weight loss was the second most popular resolution (43% of respondents). Meanwhile, the most popular resolution - doing more exercise and improving fitness (53%) - and the third most popular one - improving diet (43%) - were also health-related.
But you might want to think twice before you start calorie counting, avoiding carbs, or opting for low-fat options. An expert has warned that restrictive diets are actually a "harmful distraction" that can actually leave you heavier and unhealthier than before. You can get more healthy living news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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Speaking to inews, Professor Tim Spector, a leading professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and 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," he told i.
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".
A diverse population of gut microbes has been associated with better health, reports i - and the way to ensure you have a healthy gut is to focus on the quality and variety of food you eat, rather than their calories, said the professor. He gave four top tips for anyone who wanted to improve their gut health in order to maintain a healthy weight for good.
The first is eating a fermented food every day, such as kombucha, sauerkraut or plain yoghurt with live cultures. The second tip is to adopt intermittent fasting and not eat for 14 hours each day - though this might not be right for everyone and Professor Spector advised to see if it made you feel better. The third is to eat less bread and choose higher quality, fibre-rich bread when you do eat it, made from wholemeal flour or, even better, sourdough.
The professor's final tip might surprise you - to drink a glass of red wine, which he said was different to other types of alcohol and had some benefits for gut health. "Replacing a glass of wine with a glass of orange juice or a soft drink like iced tea was likely to be just as bad for you if not much worse than if you'd just had the glass of wine," he said.
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