The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Moment 107 - Why Counting Calories Doesn't Work: Tim Spector

One of my friends is a prolific calorie counter and you know he eats a lot of Domino's pizzas

he only listens to this podcast he's gonna know exactly he's gonna know that I'm

atting him he eats Domino's pizzas all the time he eats like a real you know

processed food diet but then says to me it's all about calorie counting now will

do you respect friend he's never but it's not necessarily worked for him in

terms of the goal that he's set himself so when I was reading about your

view on calorie counting in your book spoon fared it was I screen-shotted it

this morning and sent it to him and I said I said you are a bullshitter that's

what I said and we had a good laugh about it this morning but what is your

view on calorie counting in this idea that we can you know weight loss or

being healthy is just about having a calorie deficit it's complete nonsense

thank you I will clip that and send it to him there's never been any long-term

study showing that calorie counting is an effective way to lose weight and

maintain weight loss after you know the first few weeks so yes very strict

calorie counting if you deprive yourself for a few weeks you will lose some

weight but even if you're successful your body's evolutionary mechanisms will

make you hungry and hunger every week you go by where you're depriving yourself

of energy your body will go into sort of shut down mode your metabolism slows

down so you're not expending those calories and inevitably I'd say more

than 95% of people will go back to their baseline and many go above it they

rebound back if they're doing this this style of calorie restriction now calorie

counting is a part of that some people try and say okay I'm not going I'm not

going a dramatic diet but I'm going to just try and reduce by 10% my calories

in the day which in the old theory was supposed to make you lose weight well

it's virtually impossible even professionals to count calories and

because they're not very accurate for a start everything on the packet you have

to weigh everything and in restaurants now we're supposed to have these calorie

counts they're plus or minus about 30% because the portion size makes such a

huge difference to it that it's it and it's been shown in the US to be a

worthless exercise anyway so you can't count them going in you can't really

count your metabolism going out either we're all incredibly different you know

your friends probably been told 2,500 calories is what he's allowed well

that's an average but it doesn't mean it's related to him my average is much

lower I mean I tested it so everyone is an individual and this is another thing

we need to move away from this one-size-fits-all guidelines but I think

more importantly is that the whole calorie counting assumption means that it

doesn't matter what format calorie is it has the same effect in your body

therefore whether you're cutting out fat calories or carb calories or you know

low calorie sodas or whatever it is it's going to be fine but we now know that's

not true and there's several science experiments which now absolutely nail

that one was in America where they gave people identical meals for two weeks in

a sort of enclosed semi-prison and one was homemade and one was ultra processed

both identical calories macros the same the group with the ultra processed

foods over it by about 200 calories every day they kept coming back to the

buffet for more okay so yes the same calories but the effect on the body

meant they were hungrier why is that we don't know for sure it could be that

those chemicals in the ultra processed foods affect the gut microbes and they

then send signals to the brain saying eat more this isn't a natural you know

this is a really weird chemical I was doing something weird to me I'm producing

something weird in exchange it could be they get absorbed much quicker so you

get a big sugar rush and you know the nutrients get in to your body in a way

faster than they should do in nature and so your brain doesn't have time to say

I'm full normally takes 20 minutes or so to get that fullness or you know it so

it could be the matrix of the food it could be the chemicals in the food it

could be its effect on the gut microbes but it also could be things like your

sugar spikes so in the Zoe predict studies where basically we've given now

50,000 people in the US and the UK the same foods at the same time same time of

day everyone's got these muffins we show that people one in four people who have

these muffins and are wearing it we wear glucose monitors which tells you for two

weeks every what's happening your glucose one in four people get a real

sugar dip three hours later so this is where you get your rise in sugar which is

normal and then as it comes down it goes below baseline but only in one in four

people and when that happens those people end up overeating the next meal

and during the day they feel more tired more hungry that's this the sort of 11

o'clock slump if you like if you've had a carby breakfast some people feel that

others don't and what's really interesting is that so one in four people

eating an identical muffin of identical calories will then overeat by this you

know another 10% that day so you can see how that just blows the calorie idea

out that the calories in equals calories out everything's the same and and the

third thing is that ultra processed food says it has the calories that's equal

to the whole foods but often they don't account for the fact that it's ground up

it's highly refined and so if you take like almonds or something like this they

use might use ground almonds and you compare ground almonds to whole almonds

there's perhaps 30% less available calories in the whole almonds than there

is in the other ones so the whole thing is a complete nonsense and it's there

because the food industry wants you to focus on the calorie the fat content sugar

so you don't have to think about the quality of the food and it's something

that they can control very easily get their profits higher keep adding stuff

to the product that's synthetic when we know that a lot of things they're adding

are harmful for our gut microbes so that the artificial sweeteners are harmful

the the glues they stick the foods together the emulsifiers some people

react quite a lot to those and they cause problems so the whole thing is like

this giant camouflage and that's that's really one thing I'm you know it might

probably my number one bugbear is to get people to see the light stop obsessing

about calories and start thinking about food much more as quality and what it

does to your body quality food what is quality food in your definition of the

phrase it's the opposite of ultra processed food which is whole food which

is made with from the original ingredients of plants many plant-based but

it's not exclusively that contains all the nutrients that those those plants

produce without it being stripped away or boiled up or highly pressurized

deformed and so they have to add in back those nutrients so you know it's

things in their pure form so it's it's nuts it's seeds it's it's grains that

haven't been ground up super finely it's all the amazing plants and fruits and

vegetables that we've got they they're healthy foods but you know it's it's not

straightforward yes I've got this list of ten superfoods it's it's understand

that many foods that you know are healthy for us most of them are in their in

their original form berries nuts virtually every vegetable is healthy for

us if it's in that original form it's only because we've we had to learn to

preserve things we had to do trickery to make you know margarines and things that

with chemistry that we've moved away from that but you know going back you know

olive oil for example is a great example of something that the vilified often

because it has lots of fats in it and you know certainly I was told men oh the

Mediterranean they have they have olive oil and everything it's horrible it's all

fatty turns out that's that's a perfect you know it comes from the olive the good

stuff extra virgin olive oil has very little done to it and that is a good

healthy quality food but it can be refined you can take that and you can

keep refining it you can take corn on the cob as an example and then you know

and then you've got I don't know tortilla chips or something down the other end

is which bears or corn flakes which bears no resemblance to the original and

they're all versions on the spectrum God it's so confusing you know because what

you've said to me is you know based on research and studies but then when I go

to a supermarket labeling even I just thinking then corn flakes I think I

grew up thinking corn flakes were healthy because it says corn in the title you

know what I mean and it's and when you're trying to navigate I was just

thinking if I'm going down an aisle now hearing what you've just said that that

quality food is food that is not ultra processed and kind of resembles its

original form when you walk down the aisle in the supermarket everything is

trying to pretend that it's good so how do I know what is good I mean I can go

to the vegetable aisle and I can say okay that looks like a cabbage looks like

no one's messed with that there's been no study done on that to it hasn't been

through a laboratory but how do I like I'm in an aisle tomorrow how do I know

what food is good and what is not well you've said the first thing if it's not

in a package you're pretty sure it's good okay so if it's concealed in some

package that's got you know happy children and signals of vitamins in it

that should be a warning sign you know the more they have to advertise the

food and say what its additives are and everything the more you should be wary

about it the number of ingredients is another pretty good sign so once you get

over 10 particularly if there's lots you've never heard of you wouldn't

find in your kitchen you should also be wary that that is ultra processed food

anything that says low calorie that says means they've had to add in lots of

artificial sweeteners or protein extracts or something else is also a big

danger sign low in fat means they've replaced the natural fat with something

else that's cheaper and these are all warning signs you know and you know you

take breakfast cereals and I used to I used to eat lots of breakfast cereals

I was brought up on them highly sugary stuff and then I thought I was being

healthy when I moved to Moosley's and Pasha Pasha stuff but actually when you

still you know that appearance of healthiness it's still got lots of

additives in it it's still got lots of sugar in it it's just and those cereal

packets have added vitamins in it but they're often in a very poor form I did

the experiment once where I took some cornflakes or special care I can't remember

that said has added iron and if you mix it up you can put a magnet on it you can

get off the iron filings they're so cheap that they just added to tick a box

saying it has iron but they don't get into your body or do anything so

anything that's got these things added with this in it low in this is a sign

that they're obscuring the quality of the product so it's you know but there's a

lot of brain you know we've had been brainwashed for years and decades in this

and you know I was as well as a doctor you know I should know better and yet I've

completely changed my seven two of my meals completely so I've gone from having

Moosley with low fat milk and an orange juice and a cup of tea because I did you

know I started doing these tests for Zoe I found out that gave me a massive

sugar spike and it was a terrible way to start the day and I got these dips at

11 o'clock to a high full fat yogurt nuts seeds a few berries and never have

orange juice that's on my that's a really unhealthy drink for everybody and I

have lots of black coffee which I now know is good for me so that's totally

different I changed my lunch for at least 10 15 years when I got in the

house I was having a hospital lunch which used to be in the canteen then it

was marks and Spencer's got a healthy looking sandwich with brown bread

sweet corn and tuna and a smoothie you know little bottle and that gave you a

massive sugar spike and I wouldn't have known that and I was told that should

have been a healthy thing to eat so you know there's there's general rules but

also there are specific rules and this whole idea of individuality is coming

in so it could be that you could you might be fine on that don't know I was

very annoyed because when I started we were starting doing this testing for

Zoe I had all these spare kits and I gave my wife one as well and we sit down

and she's French Belgian and loves croissants and so we'd have croissants

each mine would shoot up she had no change at all in her her sugar which is

really annoying yeah so but it also brings brings home the fact that you

know everyone loves simplistic rules but you can only get so far with them you

have to start experimenting yourself and see what works for you and not just take

everything for granted and that's really the that's the whole essence of

really you know setting up this personalized nutrition research and

Zoe and everything else but on top of this general advice about changing a

whole idea of food I think because I think they do go hand in hand that if

you realize there are these individual differences you realize it's not as

simple as you've been told it's not but fats are evil it's not the calories are

bad you know it's it's much more nuanced

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