Eat your way to health with five key tips
Rangan Chatterjee’s New Year advice
Many of us, especially those over 30, have grown up being told we should eat a low-fat diet. It’s only recently become clear that such advice was at least partly misguided and it’s led to some unfortunate and unintended consequences.
Fat, as long as it’s the right kind, can be good for you, and cutting it out often meant ramping up sugar and refined, heavily processed carbohydrates, with the result that obesity and type-2 diabetes are now at crisis levels in the UK. But having unfairly demonised fat for nearly 50 years, I’m worried that we’re now making the same mistake with carbs. In Okinawa, Japan, for example, people eat a diet high in healthy carbs and are known for their longevity. For me, it’s not about simply the quantity of carbs but the quality. I’m convinced that by simply focusing on improving this, many of our problems, including obesity and diabetes, will fall away.
These five sustainable interventions for this pillar will each do that, and they all connect with each other, so when you start doing one, the other four become considerably easier.
1 De-normalise sugar (and retrain your taste buds)
Sugar has addictive properties and, as our taste buds become used to it, our bodies crave more – storing it as energy in the form of fat. Some of my patients prefer to go “cold turkey” and cut out all sugar for 14 days. No matter where you start, reducing your sugar intake will benefit your health. Begin by looking at ingredient lists.
Sugar is lurking where you least expect – even supermarket roast chicken or wholemeal bread – and in many disguises such as glucose, dextrose, glucose syrup, cane sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, molasses, cane juice and rice syrup. While you are retraining your taste buds, I would also recommend you avoid “natural” forms of sugar such as honey and maple syrup.
Once you have reset your relationship with sugar, you can begin to consume it intentionally. Take back control of your taste buds and tune in to your body’s innate signals. If you want that sticky bun, enjoy it, but make it a treat.
2 Eat five different coloured vegetables every day
My focus on vegetables alone doesn’t mean I’m anti-fruit. I just find that, in
an effort to get up their fruit and veg intake, most end up concentrating on sweet fruit, juices and smoothies, which are just liquid sugar.
Why different colours? The more colours we eat, the wider the range of phytonutrients we get. Plus, the variety is good for the bugs in our gut and their associated genes, known as our microbiome. Studies show that the presence of one in particular, Akkermansia
muciniphila, is associated with better weight control and insulin sensitivity. Obese people tend to have less of it.
While it’s hard to tease out cause and effect, it does appear that there is a compelling link between this particular gut bug and maintaining a healthy weight. It adores onions, garlic, leeks, bananas and Brussels sprouts and will expand if fed accordingly. Fasting also leads to an increase in it.
3 Eat all of your food within a 12-hour window
Autophagy is a hot area of research that I wasn’t taught at medical school. Imagine that you never cleaned your house. You’d leave dirty plates, stinky clothes, toys everywhere, washing baskets overflowing, sinks machine-gunned with toothpaste splats. This is basically what happens in the body as a by-product of its daily functions. The scientific term for this is “oxidative damage”.
This is an inevitable consequence of function – and it’s fine as long as we give our body a chance to clean up. This is what autophagy does. Think of it as your built-in Cinderella. Eating all your food in a restricted time window – say within 12 hours – allows your body to enhance its housecleaning, helping to repair cell damage and burn off fat. Choose a 12-hour period that suits you. And try to keep to the same times every day, even at weekends. Outside your eating window, stick to water, herbal tea or black tea and coffee. Don’t be disheartened if you miss a day or two.
4 Drink eight glasses of water per day
Do you feel tired? Or get regular headaches, dry skin, tummy ache or constipation? Often when worried patients come in complaining of these symptoms, it turns out that many are simply not drinking enough water. Losing just two per cent of body weight in fluid can actually reduce physical and mental performance by up to 25 per cent.
I must stress I’m aware of no study that points to eight glasses as being optimal. It’s impossible for me to state with accuracy what your individual requirements are. But in my years of clinical experience I’ve found that eight glasses seems to be about right for most people, most of the time.
5 Un-process: avoid food that contains more than five different ingredients
For years we were told that the answer lay in counting calories, despite the fact that an avocado contains more than double those in a can of Coke.
There’s no need to count calories, portion size, fats, carbs, Weight Watchers points, Slimming World “sins” or anything like that. All you need to do is remember the number five. It’s a pretty safe bet that any food product that contains more than five ingredients is highly processed. By avoiding them you will, by default, improve your health.
To be clear, this intervention is about encouraging you to eat more unprocessed wholefoods. You are actively encouraged to cook a meal that contains more than five ingredients. The key is to avoid food
products that contain more than five.
Tomorrow: Move your way to a healthier life
Adapted from The 4 Pillar Plan: How to Relax, Eat, Move and Sleep Your Way to a
Longer, Healthier Life by Dr Rangan Chatterjee, published by Penguin Life (£16.99). To order your copy for £14.99 plus p&p call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk facebook.com/drchatterjee instagram.com/drchatterjee