The Therapy Edit - THROWBACK - One Thing with Tim Spector

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

On this guest THROWBACK episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna asks author, Zoe co-founder and Professor at Kings College London for his One Thing. Tim offers mums around the globe the advice that calories are meaningless when it comes to measuring how healthy your diet is.Tim is one of the top 100 most cited scientists in the world and is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Food for Life.You can learn more about Tim by following him on Instagram at @tim.spector and you learn more about the health and wellness website Zoe (which runs the largest in-depth nutritional science study to help you reach your best health) at @zoe

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I love bringing bite-sized thoughts and conversations to support your well-being in your busy lives. Behind the scenes, we are working on bringing you a whole new series, but in the meantime, we have delved into the archives and will be sharing some of our most loved nuggets, lightbulb moments and powerful chats. I hope you enjoy them. Hello and welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. I'm really excited. Today I have with me, Tim Specter. Tim is a professor of epidemiology at Kings. He is in charge of the Twins Research Unit, which I find absolutely fascinating. He's a co-founder of personalized nutrition company, Zoe, and the author of several books on nutrition and gut health, including some Sunday Times bestsellers. His most recent book out now is called Food for Life, the new science of eating well. And what I love is learning about the gut. and Tim is really passionate about kind of researching the microbiome, the large community of microbes

that live in our gut, our skin and our body. And he shares hugely accessible science, tackling urgent issues that matter not just for our health, but for the future of our planet as well. So there we go. Tim, hi. How are you? I'm great. What a lovely intro. Thank you. Oh, well, it's a real pleasure to have you. I was just mentioning before we hit record that so far, but we've always spoken to mothers. So you are our very first kind of male guest, and it is really, yeah, great, great to kick off with you. What a great way to start.

Lovely to be an honorary mother. Oh, well, thank you very much. I had to change the questions at the end. We just chatted through what those might be, so I'm looking forward to hearing your answers. But the question we ask all our guests here is if you could share one thing with all the moms, what would that one thing be for you?

it was really tough to pin it down that's why I've had to write so many books about the subject but I guess if I had one thing I would say that you shouldn't believe in calorie counting that and I think this is a real common misconception that people think that calorie counting is a good thing and you know calories obviously exist We use them in science and research.

But this whole area of calorie counting is a multi-billion pound industry that encompasses all the diet industries, the snack industries, the food industries. And it's all basically a con. And the reasons are that calories are really hard to measure. If you're trying to just cut down your calories by, I don't know, try to stay on a 1,200 calorie diet or something, it's even as a professional, it's virtually impossible to do that. And so, you know, you end up, even if you weigh things and you'll be out by 10 or 20% most of the time because the packs are not accurate and the way you're measuring it is really, really tough. And you also can't easily measure how much you're expending.

So we have this general rule that, you know, looking after your weight, for example, it's just a question of balancing what goes in and what goes out. You know, and we say, well, just run more and eat less, you know, stay active, move more, eat less. And that sort of implies that the two are exactly balanced, and that's not true. And so, you know, we have this general rule that for women, I can say us women, as a monorne mother, burn 2,000 calories a day. And we know that's a rough average, but many are more than that and many are less than that. And it's not stable.

So if you exercise and you move more, you actually slow down that metabolism and will burn less calories. So that's sort of why when you're trying to restrict your calories and moving more, your body is doing everything it can to return you to the weight you started at. It's fighting it. And that's evolution. And increasingly, you know, you may be able to do quite well for a couple of weeks, but then your appetite starts building up. You get obsessed with food. Your body's slowed right down, so you get more tired and lethargic.

And everything is telling you to eat more food that's, you know, genetically programmed in us to do that. So the idea that, you know, weight control should be just a question. question of calories and exercise is, I think, the biggest myth we've had in nutrition for the last 50 years. And all the studies show that it doesn't work for 95, 98% of people. And currently I went to an obesity meeting, all the obesity researchers, they all agreed this is now actually the state of the current science, that we shouldn't rely on this nonsense anymore. And I think many, you know, many people have tried this, failed and felt

somehow guilty or that, you know, they've let themselves down or it's a question of willpower and that they just go from one of these diets to another. And we know that people who do these crash diets and then have a rebound, the so-called cycling end up actually in a much worse state than if they hadn't done it at all. And we had a lovely study in twins where we showed identical twins where one was a sort of keen dieter and the other wasn't and they started the same weight and the one who was doing all the dieting ended up on average more overweight than the one who didn't bother. So it's really interesting and you know and the other the other real reason I hated is that it's a disguise for real food. Put it, you know, it's, you know, it's,

it's the way the food manufacturers sell us rubbish food on the base that has slightly less calories than the rubbish food that has more sugar in it and they just added more chemicals. And this has major impact on our gut health as well. Yeah. Wow. I mean, what a massive topic. And it just throws me back to years ago when my life was dictated by numbers. And I kind of knew the so-called caloric amount of everything. And I think, over the last eight years, I've really, really been freed from that, but then suddenly they're putting the calories on every single item of a menu again. And it's, you know, I think there's a resurgence almost in this encouragement to kind of look at the numbers. And I think, you know,

what I love about what I love about your books and what I love about your recent book, you know, the new science of eating well is that actually when we just focused on, on numbers and data, what does that take away from our ability to enjoy, both enjoy and eat well for our bodies and be responsive? And yeah, what does it do to our relationship and our health? I think absolutely right. It's, yeah, it sort of kills the pleasure in food, I think. And, you know, it's been shown not to work. I mean, these, these calories, counts in restaurant menus have been used in the U.S. for 10 years and shown that after the first few weeks, people ignore it or those that do look at it, make sure that they pick the low

calorie one and then have two desserts. You know, it's sort of, you know, it's just used sort of for the wrong reasons. But, you know, for me, it's, you know, all those things you see on processed foods in the supermarket, low calorie, low food. fat, gluten-free, extra vitamins, they're all hiding the poor quality of that food. And they're distracting us from looking to say, well, actually, is there any fiber in there? Are there any real plants or anything vaguely natural in it? Or is it just all made from ultra-processed foods in a factory that we know now have very different effects on our body and it sort of leads into this other whole area that I discovered

in my research and that, you know, we assume that ultra-processed foods are bad for us because they've got sugar and salt and fat in them. But that's not really the story. The really story is that they're made by brilliant food scientists to make us overeat. And there was this great study in the U.S. about three years ago where for two weeks people stayed in a laboratory and were given foods, either homemade food or ultra-processed food that looked very similar and had exactly the same calories. And the group that was given the ultra-processed food over at by about two to 300 calories a day. And they just have these chemicals in them and that exact blend of sweetness and fat and sugar you don't find in nature that means

they're sort of irresistible. So people who are picking low calorie ultra-processed foods are much more like to eat much more of them than if they picked an equivalent whole food or something that didn't have all those extra chemicals in it. And I think this is, this also fits in the idea that, you know, if we think calories are the key, And it's a nonsense because the same two meals have the same calories. But over time, one group would be steadily getting fatter and fatter compared to the other group eating the whole food. So I think it's, you know, to me it's the key myth we have to sort of bust.

And also it's really bad for our gut health. We haven't talked much about. I was about to ask that because I think, you know, when we choose those foods perhaps, those foods perhaps, we're so focused on what it doesn't have that actually we're overlooking what we need, you know, and what, yeah, what our bodies are craving, what our, what our guts and our whole beings need in terms of nutrition and color and tell, yeah, tell us a little bit about the importance of the microbiome and how this comes into into that quandary. Yeah, well, very briefly, it's hard to sort of do it.

do justice to the microbiome, which is a whole new organ in our bodies, really. It weighs the same as our brain. And it's all, it's these trillions of microbes that stay in our lower gut that are actually like mini pharmacies. They are pumping out chemicals every second that are vital for our immune system, our health, our metabolism, our mental well-being, fighting depression, fighting, aging, all kinds of things. And they are fed from the food that we eat. And they don't get any nourishment from ultra-process foods. But they do get chemical signals which mess them up.

So things like sweeteners and these emulsifiers that make them stick together, make them produce nasty chemicals that actually bad for our immune systems and may be responsible for us overeating as well. Whereas if we fed them well with fiber and lots of whole plants, they're very happy and they've produced lots of good chemicals for us and have a much more diverse sets of species in there which protect us from infections, flu, COVID, all these kind of things. And even menopausal symptoms as well. So they have important effects on our sex hormones.

So really important to feed your gut microbes. And that's the thing that if you obsess about calories, you also miss out on. I think one of the crucial things about understanding our nutrition is if you look after your gut microbes, you know, the diet takes care of itself. You don't really have to think much further. What do my microbes want to eat today? And that is, you know, if I could sum it up in sort of four key points, try and eat lots of hot. plants and a plant is a nut, a seed, a herb, a spice. And I try and eat 30 a week, different ones. It's not the same kale salad, it's different ones. Try and eat the rainbow. So always pick

your fruit and veg, different colours because they've got important defence chemicals in them called polyphenols. And microbes eat these polyphenols and they are like rocket fuel. for them. Third thing is fermented foods. We haven't really discussed that. But again, you know, forget the calories. You just want live microbes inside you from yogurt, from cheese, from kaffir, which is fermented milk. Then you've got kombucha, fermented tea, all sorts of things you can have now and kimchees and crouts. So fermented foods, a small amount regularly is what your gut needs. And then finally, give it a rest overnight. Don't snack or late in the evening, give yourself at least 12, ideally 14 hours for your gut to recover

overnight and it will look after itself. So they're the tips. And if you follow those tips for your gut health, generally everything else follows. And this is what we're seeing also with the Zoe nutrition product where we test your gut microbiome as well. We realize the importance of feeding that new organ in our bodies, which we haven't really thought about at all before. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely, it just sounds so vital. And I think you're right when the focus is on the numbers, we miss all of this. You know, we're when actually, when we're trying to feed, when we're feeding the microbiome, we're actually benefiting every, every other part of our body, our future, our brain. And I think often the focus can be on controlling

the things that give the visual difference around kind of external, you know, how we look when actually we're missing something vitally important, aren't we, that has a massive impact on the way we live, the way we think, the way we feel. Absolutely. And in a way, the reason we all have very different microbes, which gives us incredible individuality, and that's why different diets, you know, the same diet doesn't work on everybody and why we respond to certain foods, and that's what we've discovered with the Zoe program is that even identical twins respond differently to the same food. So one would get a big sugar spike after a muffin, the other wouldn't, and vice versa with fats. So we're all very different,

even with the same calories. So it's our body's response to these things. It's these sugar spikes, these dips that make us hungry or tired. And we're just starting to understand, all this, unraveling it. But it all comes back to our gut health that, you know, we've all got totally unique microbes inside us. We all need to learn, relearn nutrition, learn how to be the perfect zookeeper or gardener, however you want to call it. Look after our own gut microbes and they will look after us. Yeah, thank you. So, so affirming. And then also there's your new book isn't there, food for life? So if anyone, including myself, feels inspired by this conversation just to get some more information, to get some more inspiration and to understand more of

the accessible science of what is going on inside of us so that we can start being responsive to our individuality, our humanness instead of driven by data that doesn't have as much meaning as we have been told all along. So thank you so much for that. And So, Tim, I've got some quick five questions for you to finish off. What is a fatherhood high for you? Fatherhood high, I would say, it was for the first time I skied with my two kids together and took them down a mountain. That felt like a really nice experience that all that pain was worth it.

Yeah, all that working towards. And there it was that moment. And what's been a fatherhood low for you? I think the three years that my teenage daughter didn't talk to me. And it was payback time because I was a sulky teenager. And so in a way, I was getting my own medicine that would I, you know, give my mother such grief on. But that was the, yeah, the toughest time. And now we're the best of friends.

So it just shows if you can just get through that really grim period, then you can reap the rewards, as long as you don't break anything irretrievably. But every mum's out there going with teenage kids, yeah, I feel for you. But you can come through the other end, fine. That reconnection must have been so good as it came. And what's one thing that makes you feel good, anything you do, makes you feel good? I love talking about my passion and changing people's lives at the moment. So hearing stories about how my books have changed people lives

and how what we're doing with Zoe and everything else is just gets me up in the morning, gets me super excited. So I love my job and that's a fantastic feeling. Reconnecting people with themselves and the stuff that they need to know to thrive. And how would you describe fatherhood in three words to finish off? Difficult, impossible to do right, but ultimately fulfilling. Yeah, yeah, those all resonate with me as well. So thank you so much.

And for those that want to find you, they can, I guess everything comes out of your Instagram as well. It's all linked there, but you've got your books. Obviously, we've spoken about. food for life, the new science of eating well. You've also got the diet myth, the real science behind what we eat, identically different, why you can change your genes and spoon fed, why almost everything we've been told about food is wrong. So thank you so much for helping us reconnect to ourselves and giving us the accessible information and science that enables us to do that, especially in a world I think that is encouraging us to always just be living by

living by standards, which actually are not. There's so much more to life and us than that. So thank you. My pleasure. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Grab a copy of my new book, The Uncomfortable Truth. Change your life by taming ten of your mind's greatest fears, where we tackle some of life's uncomfortable truths

that rob us of energy, joy and headspace, such as some people don't like me, I'm going to fail. bad things will happen and as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence and confidence than ever before you can find it at your usual bookseller but in the meantime just feel free to hit subscribe and if you enjoyed this episode please do share it so that we can get more ears benefiting from the words that we share Thank you.