Recorded on 7 February 2012 at an open public lecture at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales.

You can also listen and download it from iTunes here

Or in a new tab and download here (It’s a big file!)

And you can download the slides from the presentation here

THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC – HARDBACK. SPECIAL OFFER DURING FEBRUARY 2012

A common question I get is “Am I losing fat or water?” which I answer in this podcast.

Hi Zoe,

Since coming off the pill in late August i’ve had some probs with irregular periods (a 56 day cycle & a 49 day cycle).

Doc wants me to go back in Feb if things are still funny because she doesn’t think i’m ovulating & wants to put me on some drugs to rectify this.

I am not keen to take drugs & was wondering if there’s anything in particular I can eat that would be good for increasing oestrogen levels – (don’t really want to go near soy!)

I also think it might have something to do with the fact that I was on the pill for 11 years & my body is bound to take a bit of time to sort itself out however frustrating that might be!

Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Answer.
Hi there – this is really common when coming off the pill. Some people get caught out and get pregnant immediately! More typically, cycles are quite irregular for quite a few months. You’ve effectively stopped your body releasing eggs each month for 143 cycles! Hence it’s going to take more than one or two cycles to get this back to normal. Having had two period suggests to me that you are ovulating – just not back into a c. 28 day cycle yet. You must have had a couple of cycles or there would be no lining to shed – which is what a period is.

I would take the time to sort it out – if you were 40 and running out of baby time, that would be one thing. But you’re no where near there! So – let the body sort things out naturally.

You really, really don’t want to go near soy because it’s effectively a birth control pill! It contains isoflavones – plant oestrogen hormones – and these a known to severely impact fertility (see Kaayla Daniel’s great work or Dr Mercola’s site on this). You may also like to memorise this fab wiki chart – we get pregnant in the mid part of the cycle and there are 4 hormones at play – LH, FSH and osterogen are all high at this time.

Eat super well (as we do!) Loads of meat, fish – consider a folic acid supplement if you are thinking of getting pregnant – don’t think you can start this too early and let nature sort things out. Manage stress, have some ‘me-time’ every day – all of the well being stuff will speed up getting one’s natural body back!

Marisa Peer (http://marisapeer.com/ and on twitter) is also mega on fertility – may be worth following for a while and deffo one of us!

Good luck!
Bye for now – Zoe

Starting January 2012, Diet & Health Today is available online and as a downloadable eMagazine (PDF) to subscribing club members.

Headlines in this January issue are:

The Big Issues: 10 reasons not to count calories
In The Media: There’s still time to lose a dress size
Diet Tips 1: Getting ready for the last diet you’ll ever need
Video: Most difficult times of the day.
Recipe: Devilled Kidneys.
Diet Tips 2: 3 Top motivational tips
Footnote: Do protein calories matter?

Sample Article.
Diet Tips Part 1: Getting ready for the last diet you’ll ever need.

It is estimated that 15 million people in the UK alone are on a diet at any one time. Most people start a diet each Monday and rarely make it past Wednesday. It is further estimated that eight out of ten women and seven out of ten men start a diet on New Year’s Day! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1343571/Love-slim-Want-lose-weight-The-secret-think-youre-beautiful-just-way-right-now.html I guess a number of these have fallen by the wayside already.

If you’re starting The Harcombe Diet this January, here’s how to make it the last diet you ever start:

1. Get your mind ready: Understandably if you’ve switched from one calorie restricted diet to another, and none have ever worked, you would quite rightly expect the next low calorie diet not to work. This is why you need to try something completely different. The Harcombe Diet is so different that you have every reason to believe that it will work for you. Go in with the commitment that this time you plan to work with your body and have it work back with you – no more starvation, no more calorie counted processed food, just real food, three times a day and plenty of nourishment.

2. Get your body ready: So many people have a last binge before starting the diet “I’ll lose it all tomorrow” is the thinking. This is possibly the worst thing you can do. You want to get the body ready to work with you – not fighting you because you’ve just stuffed it full of things that it doesn’t recognise. The day before a diet you should actually be trying to get all the processed food that you’ve been eating out of your system and then you’re ready to start eating well with stable blood sugar, not a binge hangover.

3. Get your kitchen ready: The right food has to be in the house and the wrong food has to be out of the house – simple as that! If you are following The Harcombe Diet for planners, have the shopping list worked out and have everything you need until the next shop (not just the first 5 days). If you are doing your own flexi plan, again have the meals planned and groceries in the house ready. To get the wrong food out of the house, be ruthless! You don’t need any temptation so don’t hang on to biscuits “in case I have a visitor”. The visitor doesn’t need them either! Either take everything in a bag to a slim neighbour, or to a local shelter, or simply throw it in the bin.

Read more >>, Membership required.

To help you get 2012 off to the healthiest of starts, we’d love to invite you to our online open day on Sunday 8th January 2012. All registered club members are welcome and can participate in the forum on the day – no subscription required (non-subscribing members posts will, however, be moderated to keep gate crashers out)

Anyone can take part on the day, you just need to be registered to post. If you’ve not yet registered, you can do so here…

On that day, the forum will be open all day and Zoe and Andy will be there to answer as many questions as we can. As well as answering questions, we’ll be having some competitions, with prizes, including ‘Most Inspirational Story’, ‘Best Submitted Recipe’ and ‘Most Interesting Question’.

You can enter any of the competitions as many times as you like up to the close of the party. Here’s how…

The forum will be open all day and Zoe an Andy will be online at least during the following times:
10.00 – 12.00 and
16.00- 18.00
Please note that these times are London, GMT.

Most Inspirational Story:
Just send an email to clubadmin @ theharcombedietclub.com with ‘Inspirational Story’ in the subject line (or use the contact us form..) briefly telling us your story: How you found out about The Harcombe Diet; When you started; How much did you lose over what time period; What you found easy/hard about the eating plan; Before and after pics (optional, if you’re happy to share them with other club members); Anything else that you may want to say about your journey. Your story needn’t be about weight-loss; it could be that a long-standing ailment has cleared up or you have gained some other health benefit (more energy to play with the kids or improved skin and hair, for example).

Best Submitted Recipe:
Simply complete this form. Recipes need to be original and ‘Harcombe Friendly’. If you have a photo that you’d like to send in with it, please send it attached to an email to clubadmin @ theharcombedietclub.com with your recipe name in the subject line. If we get enough entries, we’ll do another members’ recipe book.

Most Interesting Question:
We’ll run this on the day, all you need to do is create a new thread and post your question.

Looking forward to seeing you then.

Very best wishes

Andy & Zoe

This podcast was originally published on 19.12.2011 and talks through the times of the day to be alert to.

You can subscribe to all podcasts by clicking on the podcast icon at the top of the right hand column.

Here’s a short video that will hopefully help answer a few frequently asked questions on The Mens Book..

Headlines in this issue of Diet & Health Today are:

The Big Issues: Projection, envy, guilt & attacks – things you may get for Christmas!
World News: What other people will be eating at Christmas.
Video: Vegetables and Salads.
Recipe: Christmas Nut Roast.
Footnote: What is The Harcombe Diet? In case someone shows interest.

What will people be eating this Christmas:

I thought that this may make an interesting change for our Christmas edition – what will different populations be eating on Christmas day?!

We have a very multinational club, so do please tell us what you’ll be having for your festive meal …

The UK classic is turkey with all the trimmings. This means turkey, stuffing (usually meat and wheat based), carrots, sprouts, gravy, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, cranberry sauce and, often, chipolata sausages. Some people have a soup or prawn cocktail kind of starter (completely unnecessarily) and pudding is usually Christmas pudding (dried fruit and alcohol based) with brandy butter or brandy sauce. Mince pies are often served with coffee after dinner – also completely unnecessarily. It is a rare person who can indulge in all of this and NOT fall asleep in front of the Queen’s speech!

Many Australians are moving away from the traditional European meal of roast meat and vegetables, heavy fruit cakes and puddings. Most likely because of the hot weather, many people now prefer to have a barbecue at the beach or a picnic in an outdoor location. This will more likely be meat (steaks on the barby) and/or seafood and pudding is more likely a Pavlova (meringue, cream and fruit) or something cold and special.

France also have the special meal on Christmas day. The starter is usually fois gras (goose liver pate) and then the main course is usually seafood – invariably lobster and oysters. How much healthier is that?!

Germany tends to have fish (often carp) or goose on Christmas day – another healthy choice.

NZ goes for a turkey with trimmings (British style) lunch, but, weather allowing, it will be barbecue and beers in the evening.

Poland is mostly Roman Catholic and their big day is Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is a day of fasting before feasting – not a bad idea! The Christmas meal is known as “Vigil” and it is considered an honour to be invited to such a celebration. Likely menu items will be borscht (beetroot soup – very common in Russia) and herring in various forms is another key item. Cabbage, soup and potatoes also feature – again – typically Russian and Polish staples.

Russia didn’t used to celebrate Christmas, as Christianity was not embraced by communism. Christmas can now be openly celebrated, but not everyone does so. There are two dates to choose from for the main celebration – either December 25th or, more often, January 7th. The latter date comes from the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church uses the old ‘Julian’ calendar for religious celebration days. Whenever Russians decide to celebrate, traditional Christmas food includes cakes, pies and ‘meat dumplings’.

Sweden is one of the many countries to have Christmas Eve as a more important day than C

The Harcombe Household will be having a light breakfast – cappuccino & dark chocolate; berries & NLY kind of thing. Then we will take Roxy for a long walk around the reservoir, to wear her out and give us a roaring appetite for lunch (exercise used to be used to work up an appetite – not to burn off calories!) Our neighbours then come round for a glass of bubbly, to start the drinking. Then they go home for their turkey and we sit down to a perfectly cooked rib of beef with the trimmings – neither of us are big on turkey. I used to have the nut roast recipe from the recipe book (in this edition), but now join Andy on the beef. We have carrots, sprouts, parsnip chips and celeriac chips for trimmings. You can also use the nut roast recipe as a substitute for stuffing – a bit of mixing, but much better than wheat based stuffing. Andy’s brother works in a vineyard in NZ, so he always send over a very special bottle for Christmas day. Sometimes Andy has some Christmas pudding and brandy butter – my mum makes a wicked pud from scratch, so they’re always worth a cheat. Then we sit down to watch a TV series like House (24 when we had some left!) and drink a lot and usually eat a whole Christmas box of Hotel Chocolat. Supper is usually a bit of cold beef and cheese and some ‘garnish’, as Mat would call it!

The countries that favour opening presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day include: Argentina, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden. Apparently the British royal family do this also – thanks to their German heritage. I’d be a bit gutted to wake up on Christmas morning to find all the presents opened already! I like the way the UK, USA, Italy, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, NZ and Australia do it – get a good night’s sleep on Christmas Eve and enjoy the presents on Christmas morning.

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This exotic sounding soup is simple and quick to make and is absolutely delicious. It can be served as a meal on its own or as a starter at a dinner party. This does have a small amount of fat (cream & butter) but that’s OK with coloured vegetables on occasions.

Ingredients:
1 large onion finely chopped,
1 garlic clove crushed,
A knob of butter,
0.5kg/1lb of carrots, ¾ thinly sliced and ¼ grated,
1 litre/1.75 pints vegetable stock,
A handful of freshly chopped coriander,
150ml (approximately a quarter of a pint) of single cream,

What you do with all this:
1) Melt the butter in a large pan.
2) Fry the onion and garlic lightly until the onion becomes transparent.
3) Add the chopped carrots and give the mix a good stir.
4) Add the vegetable stock and bring to the boil.
5) Reduce the heat and simmer lightly for about 30 minutes or until the carrots are cooked.
6) Turn off the heat and allow the mixture to cool for 10 minutes.
7) Use a hand held blender to blend the mixture until smooth.
8) Stir in the grated carrots and coriander and then the cream.
9) Serve with a sprinkle of chopped coriander.

There are some 250 more simple, cost effective and delicious recipes like this in The Harcombe Diet Recipe Book.

Headlines in this issue of Diet & Health Today are:

The Big Issues: Coming to The Harcombe Diet from other diets
News Roundup: World News Roundup.
Video: Can we blame everything on carbs?
Recipe: Roast Lambs hearts.
Footnote: Can you do The Harcombe Diet if you’ve had bariatric surgery?

News Roundup:

If you are up for a really mind stretching session, there has been an interesting debate carrying on in blogs between Gary Taubes and Dr. Stephan Guyenet, ever since the Ancestral health conference in August. Dr Stephan blogs on http://www.wholehealthsource.org and Gary Taubes blogs on http://www.garytaubes.com (there are far more blogs about this on Taubes’ site)

The gist of the argument is that Guyenet thinks that we get fat because certain foods are so palatable and stimulate such a reward that our brain responds by making us eat more of them. Taubes thinks that we get fat because we store fat – facilitated by insulin and carbohydrate consumption. The fact that carbs (especially processed ones) are more likely to cause reward sensations in Guyenet’s model and carbs (especially processed ones) are more likely to stimulate insulin and facilitate fat storage in Taubes’ model, somewhat confuses the debate. i.e. they appear to agree on what makes us fat – they disagree on how.

You won’t be surprised to know that I’m on Taubes’ side. I just can’t see Guyenet’s view as an explanation. I completely accept that we eat/overeat/binge/are drawn to etc certain foods and not others. I have often said – I’ve never seen anyone binge on salmon and green beans. However, this may explain why we eat certain things over others (as does Candida, Hypoglycemia, Food Intolerance – the idea that certain foods are addictive is not new) – it doesn’t explain why those things make us fat. Or, as Taubes says – the idea that eating too much makes us fat is the calories in and calories out ‘conventional wisdom’ that he has spent his last five years trying to knock down. Taubes challenges Guyenet to say how this is not a calories in and out theory and has, as yet, had no reply. Taubes will, of course, say that these foods make us fat because the body wants to store the carbs as fat and it can because insulin has been released.

While saying I’m on Taubes’ side and while the debate has been academically stimulating, it is disappointing that two real foodies are spending a lot of time and energy apparently at war with each other. I tweeted to this effect. The real enemies are those setting public dietary advice and the ‘food and drink’ companies and they get off scot free while two brilliant minds engage each other.

Here are three far more straight forward stories for us all to enjoy:

1. South Africa – mums ‘making their kids obese’:

This was reported in South Africa, but the study was done at London’s Guy’s & St Thomas’s Hospital.

I found a few things interesting about this story

i) that increases in leptin had been found in obese mums-to-be and this increase had then been passed onto their new borns. From the Light and Sleep Diet & Health Today, you may remember that leptin is key in regulating appetite and metabolism and babies may be being born with an increased appetite and reduced metabolism – that’s pretty serious;

ii) less positively, the recommendation that women just need to lose weight before getting pregnant is about as sensible as saying a person needs to learn French before going to work in France – obvious and easier said than done!

iii) even less positively still – the women are effectively being advised to get off their lazy backsides and do a bit of exercise and all will be fine. Patronising women/mums in this way is just not helpful.

2. Trinidad and Tobago Obesity problem:

Over to Trinidad and Tobago for the next one. Obesity is a significant problem on this Caribbean island, as this news report shows:

Urgent attention is needed cries the headline and then the same old advice is repeated – exercise and follow a fat-free diet. As America has led the way in obesity and in exercise and low-fat diets and in making obesity worse, not better, you would think that countries starting to see this as a problem would look for a different solution. They don’t.

3. Irish times – pregnancy and sugar intake and birth weight

Another pregnancy one – I often tweet that pregnant women are frequently and aggressively attacked by the media. It’s as if people take the view that their children are properties of the state and the country has a duty to protect them. Woe betide the woman who has a glass of wine or puts on a few pounds during pregnancy – the media is there to judge immediately. I also find the judgements only directed towards women. We know that the health and lifestyle of men impacts sperm quality significantly, but the media attacks the mum-to-be for diet/exercise/exposure to smoke etc and rarely, if ever, dad-to-be.

Having done my bit to defend pregnant women, this is a short and interesting article. I like the fact that they refer to white bread and fruit juice as sugar. The idea that sugar consumed by the women during pregnancy can impact the weight of the baby is logical (it can also increase the chance of the woman getting gestational diabetes). Note the unhelpful advice again for mothers – just lose weight! This gets a bit tenuous for me on the ‘high birth weight’ is associated with future obesity argument – causation has not been proven. However, if you don’t want a ten pounder, you may want to skip the Haribo! (That would be very good advice anyway).

Read more >>, Membership required.