7553/20482
Don't worry. No poo in this one.
I wasn't totally convinced by the Zoe app and blood glucose tracker. I didn't mind sending my poo through the post (oh sorry, I lied), but I wasn't so into tracking all my food and it was hard to make sense of the graphs I was creating as my blood sugar spiked and dropped. There's a long waiting list to even get on the programme and then you have to wait for your results.
BUT now I have my results it's starting to make a bit more sense and I've been doing the thing properly for the last couple of days and in the short term at least I find it appealing and helpful.
My Microbiome score was excellent, which means I have a good balance of good and bad bacteria in my gut (where my poo starts it's journey - sorry I lied again). But my blood sugar control was poor at 33, my blood fat control worse at 25 and the assessment of my diet came in at 39 (when you're aiming for 75 ideally). To be fair I'd done the tracker whilst I was away on holiday so my diet wasn't what it would usually be, but I have to concede I have let things slide on the snack and sugar front of late, so I don't think it'd be far off reality.
Now using all your results the app gives you a personlised score for all the things you eat and you're aiming to end up at 75/100 (though if I ate nothing by avocados and almonds I could get up to 100). Unsurprisingly it's pushing you towards vegetable and pulses and fish and away from things with no nutritional value or processed foods. Even if the scores are bollocks and they send out the same thing to everyone that would probably work for you, but I was surprised by a few things that I thought were good for me or at least neutral and turn out not to be.
I've done it for two days now and it's definitely made me swing away from certain things. Trying to push my diet score upwards definitely works for my competitive mind, at least in the short term.
I thought I'd done pretty well on day one, but ended up with a score of 53. I'd been surprised to see the diet coke and diet ginger beer had an affect on my score, as I'd considered these things carcinogenic but otherwise not bad for you. My daily Solero also sent my score plummeting with a score of zero. The app is not trying to make you cut out this kind of stuff completely, but obviously it makes sense to moderate. I've been on my Solero a day diet for a long time now and it wasn't a disaster when I was watching what I ate and was exercising in 2021 (but it was close oto being my only treat then), but it certainly didn't help if it was one of six or seven anti-nutritional treats.
So it seems that if stuff like that is going to fuck up my score, especially the diet sodas, then I can do without them. It pushes me back towards the sort of things I was doing on my last proper health kick, herbal teas and just plain water.
Today I had porridge for breakfast, packed with nuts and seeds and thought that would score well, but with an oat milk cappuccino and a bit of mango everything scored under 50. The rest of the day I ate like some kind of health nut with a stir fry for lunch (81), a bit of cheese (50), salmon and veg (95), some unsalted pistachios and an orange (97), plus coffee (77) herbal tea (84) and water (100) and an apple (87) . But those high scores could not save me from that breakfast and my daily total was 57.
We'll see how I go tomorrow (but I am going to start the days with eggs, smoked salmon and avocado and that's going to give me a brilliant opening total. The idea of all this is to nudge you towards the foods that will keep your personal blood sugar and blood fat at a good level and avoid spiking. It's not very different than what I did when I lost the weight in 2021. But there's no calorie counting and it feels a bit more scientific.
I always used to say dieting was easy and no more complicated than making sure you expended more calories than you consumed, but it is apparently more complex than that. And the real issue with staying healthy is that as good as my intentions are, evil afternoon and evening Richard Herring usually hijacks the whole thing and stuffs my face with Haribo and biscuits. This app does at least promise to help you work out how to understand your body and your cues and just the act of being made to think of the effect of a food and logging it is (again short term only maybe) a good way to prevent pointless snacking.
Might be bullshit. Might not change anything, but two days in to the proper part of it, I am liking it so far. Plus you get to send your shit in the post to a scientist, so even if you aren't interested in your diet, it's worth it for that. (I will never mention faeces again - apart from just then).
I am not being paid or sponsored by these massive cunts. As that sentence should prove.
Another guest added to the first Norwich gig - the wonderful Emma Sidi.
Book here. 
