Go Hybrid: The Real ‘Balanced Diet’

I forget how many ‘new’ eating plans and diets there are, and out of all of them, only a few last and are based on real studies and outcomes.

Patrick Holford is a top health and nutrition expert who has studied how food affects our wellbeing and here shares his thoughts on what he thinks is the best way to lose weight effectively, and healthily.

What is a balanced diet?

For years there has been much argument about what is a ‘healthy way of eating’ and how best to lose weight, with opposing groups condemning certain food types.

Despite all the knowledge and argument, Western Society isn’t in a better situation. Too much weight is common and a staggering 700 people a day get diabetes.

Confusion rules about what we should eat, but no food group should be ‘condemned’. To me, a real healthy way of eating would have the best of all options, enjoying fatty food and not having to avoid all carbohydrates or always track food amounts. The worst of all options is a diet high in animal fat.

There are many different kinds of fats; polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, hydrogenated, saturated and trans fat. The body needs healthy fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) as they provide energy, allow you to absorb fat vitamins (A, D, E, K), are critical for brain function and nerve health as well as part of your hormone production.

In today’s common diet we have processed ‘quick releasing’ carbohydrates and sugar and studies show that this mix creates the same effect as junk food habit and quick weight gain.

Why ‘dual fuel’ has become a problem

Our bodies are not made to eat the same food each day. Our bodies being able to use glucose or ketones for energy and gave us a big advantage in our evolution. It allowed us to eat lots of carbs in the summer and live off our fat stores in the winter.

However, what many people eat today is very different, and this has helped cause many of the long-term illnesses of the twenty-first century.

People regularly choose unhealthy foods that get half their energy from sugar and half from fat. This causes a constant craving – a bad ‘perfect spot’ that is almost never found in nature.

So, grains are mostly carbs and a little protein and proteins are essential nutrients for the human body .This is what our most common dietary items contain:

Beans are mostly protein and a little carbs, nuts and seeds are mostly fat and protein, meat, fish and eggs are fat and protein, fruit is almost all carbs, hard cheese is fat and protein, milk is fat (49 per cent), protein (21 per cent) and carbs (30 per cent).

The only food group that is both fat and carbs is milk – designed to be addictive and prmote rapid weight gain.

Variation in your diet, not moderation, is the key to health.  

The main issue with typical diets is the mistaken idea that your weight is only decided by how many calories you eat compared to how many you burn. Even though eating a lot and not moving would make you gain weight, and exercising a lot without eating would make you lose weight, this misses the many complex and adaptable ways your body processes energy. Part of this adaptability is managed by the hormone insulin.

Insulin is a hormone that the pancreas creates. It helps the body’s cells take in glucose (sugar) from the blood. This is why David Ludwig, a nutrition professor at Harvard Medical School, places insulin as the main part of his ‘Carbohydrate–Insulin Model of Obesity,’ which should take the place of the old ‘calories in, calories out’ method. Simply put, the usual advice to eat low-calorie foods.

Calories show how much energy food has. Knowing the calories in the food we eat helps us balance our intake by cutting fat because it has the most calories per unit (1g fat = 9 calories, while 1g protein or carbs = 4 calories) results in eating many carbs.

This leads to more insulin being made, which means more sugar turns into fat and is kept in the body. Also, as insulin lowers your blood sugar, you start feeling hungry.

If you eat the opposite – a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates – your insulin level drops, which moves fat out of storage to provide your body with the energy it needs. Also, the fat helps you feel full.

Another way is to eat few, slow-releasing carbohydrates. This means your body does not need to make a lot of insulin, so no fat is stored, and you avoid the blood sugar drops that make you feel hungry. Eating a combination of these approaches uses both of these methods.

Insulin is not ‘bad’ by itself. It is a vital hormone for growth. However, having too much of it, and especially developing a condition called ‘insulin resistance’, is the main cause of most common non-infectious diseases today.

Insulin resistance is similar to an addiction: your body keeps needing more to achieve the same result. This causes very high blood levels (too much insulin), which causes many harmful problems.

The ketogenic diet became popular because it promised a healthy alternative to overdosing on carbohydrates and achieved rapid, impressive results in terms of both weight loss and reversing diabetes.

These are the natural consequences of a high fat diet because the body releases much lower quantities of hormones such as insulin and IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor) – both of which are linked to weight gain..

Take a break from carbs

By switching between a high fat phase and a slow carb time you gain the advantages of both and let insulin and IGF-1manage all the growth needed to do well.

One of the interesting results of taking time off slow carbs and using ketones for a bit is that you will manage your blood sugar better when you go back to my low GL (Glycaemic Load) diet.

This is because your body learns to use food energy in different ways during the keto phase, and you get used to using carbs smarter. Also, after some time on the low GL diet, you will be used to using fat for energy when you choose to switch back to the keto diet. This means you will get into ketosis faster, and the effects of ‘keto flu’ will be less severe.

This better way your body uses food for energy is partly because you improve your body’s weak reaction to insulin and make it react better to insulin. This means your body learns to keep blood sugar low, and weight and energy levels stable.

Also, by trying out the two main energy sources – sugar and ketones – and watching how they affect you, you will know much more about how certain foods and drinks change things.

This will help you choose better, so think of it as a kind of food practice where you use all your ways of making energy to keep yourself flexible and in good health.

Action plan – the 5 day diet

One way to enter ketosis is by fasting, but it can be hard and only some people are willing to try it. There are different types of intermittent fasting, each with its own benefits and support; all can help shift your metabolism from using carbohydrates for energy to using fat, including burning your own body fat.

However, I believe that fasting for five days with fewer calories and limited protein, while eating special foods, supplements, and drinks is much more effective. This process is important for fasting to improve your health, rejuvenate your cells, and help you move away from disease.

More help:

There is no doubt that one of the biggest challenges at Menopause is the weight that is gained, often through excess oestrogen, that sits around the belly.

There is a huge variety of diets you could choose from, but the healthiest option is one that you can maintain long-term and gives you other benefits as well.

If you want to try it, begin with Holford’s 5 Day Diet book, which explains the science and offers daily meal plans, recipes, a supplement plan, and exercises. The diet is made to help you start ketosis, lose weight, get more energy, and improve your health in only five days. It is available in bookshops or direct from his website.

One of the other factors that greatly affects weight gain is stress, and this is often related to oestrogen dominance, so the following article can also be helpful.

Are Stress, Weight and Oestrogen Dominance Affecting You?