Daffodils

Are they the first? You will tell me otherwise. Still a snowdrop free zone.

An active day. What’s new? HIIT session then a walk. After lunch all the decorations were taken down and packed away and up into the loft.

If you’re interested in my Zoe results, read on. If not have a great evening.

Three tests: blood sugars recorded over 14 days, blood fat absorption over a 4 hour period and gut biome.

Blood sugars were, as I expected poor, I was in the bottom 12% of the trial population. Porridge gave the worst result and bread, wholemeal and home made close behind.

Blood fat absorption was good, at better than 57% of the trial population. I was above the average range of 24-55% for men of my age. This means fats are not swirling around in my blood for ages causing problems.

Gut biome was excellent, better than 97% of the trial population. Plenty of good gut microbes and very few of the nasties. Diversity was low though.

The results confirm what I knew about blood sugars. What concerns me is what can I do about it that I’m not already doing.

I don’t think I’m going to continue with the second stage of the trial where I record the quantities of everything I eat over a three month period on the Zoe app which then generates a score for each meal and an overall score for the day.

Life is too short to enter so much data. The app too unreliable and American centric so that many of our products are not in the database. It’s so easy to make a data entry error which invalidates your scores.

The Facebook page is full of people chasing scores and looking for foods that will increase their score. Because we’re all different, what works for one will not work for others. If I wanted to count numbers I’d join Slimming World or such like.

I read that there’s a term for people who pursue healthy eating to extremes; orthorexia. I feel the Zoe way can lead to lead to healthy eating dominating their lives. Some on Facebook were dreading Christmas as it would divert them away from their pursuit of Zoe goals.

It’s also interesting that all the contributors on the Facebook page are women. I’ve not seen a contribution by a man. Does this mean that the Zoe approach doesn’t suit men.

So, what will I do? I will continue with eating healthily, within a time window, exercising and adopting the hints and advice in the Glucose Goddess book by Jessie Inchauspe.

Hope that helps.