Zoe nutrition

[AngelinaJolie21]

Just wondering if anyone signed up to the Zoe app and lost weight? I’ve seen differing views and just really want to know that I will actually lose some weight..I’d like to be healthier n all, but I’d also like to be slimmer…

sorry. After having gestational diabetes. But my blood sugar response turned out to excellent, so it’s more a case of being able to eat more carbs (the good kind) rather than my previous diet having caused any issues. My friend eats a lot less meat than I do, and has been veggie on and off over the years, and has also done low carb eating for longish periods because of PCOS. I’d say overall we have fairly similar previous profiles - she’s probably eaten more sugar recently and I more fat.

Can I ask how big a spike is considered bad? I was thinking about doing this, but I already eat a low carb diet and if I have lots of carbs I feel unwell and get really bingey so wasn’t sure the muffin challenge was ideal.

I’m doing a DIY version with a CGM bought online ( the same one I think, it lasts 14 days) and checking the effects of things like diet drinks, protein bars, flaxseed bread, sweeteners, almond flour muffins and wine etc-

I’m usually in the 4.5-5 zone but the flaxseed and protein bar both pushed me over 6 for a short time. Not sure if that’s a real spike or not.

A rise in blood sugar when you eat is totally normal. The issue is how high it goes and then whether it dips down below your starting point. Your starting level and response there are totally normal.

The range they give you in the testing period is between 4-10 mmol, which is a big band and broader than I would have expected. Mine never came out of that band other than a couple of dips below in the night. I pushed it as hard as I could to see what the worst possible thing for me might be (not sure you’re meant to do that but I became totally fascinated) and even eating a pie and a cake I only managed to get to 9 very briefly. Most of the time I only went up to 7 something at the very most regardless of what I ate and the muffins had pretty much no effect on me at all.

I have seen the results of other people (there’s a good FB group) and much higher spikes are common in those so it does now make sense that I came back with excellent control: like you I tend to feel unwell if I eat loads of carbs but that’s clearly nothing to do with my blood glucose.

<sobs quietly in the corner with a bag of gram flour>

Ah, hello, ‘friend’.

Well howdy, “friend” 😁.

It is extraordinary how different our scores are, considering we both mostly dodge the UPFs and refined carbs.

Those of you doing it - do you think it's worth the money?

It's quite expensive at £300 for the 12 months plus £300 for the test kit.

I think it’s worth it if you have suspicions that your body is particularly bad at processing certain types of food, and want to find out whether that’s actually the case, and if so, what you should/shouldn’t be eating.

Otherwise, I think you’d be fine just sticking to wholefoods and eating lots of veg.

I like the accountability of the scoring system. But it’s probably not worth all the money. For me I’m glad I paid for the tests as I found them so useful. I’m only a little way into the app so not sure yet if it feels worth more money.

I meant to add earlier that for me, red wine scores so highly I can bump up my day’s score with a glass. Half a sausage took me down to almost 0 the other day though. So it does all take some getting used to.

Half a sausage

That’s your next username right there.

Halfasausagemakesmezero

@SaturdayBiscuits it is a lot of money, but if I added up what I've spent over the years on WeightWatchers, Rosemary Conley (anyone else old enough to remember her?), Slimming World, various diet books etc then this seems fair value for money. I'm really hoping to improve my overall health, yes I'd like to lose some weight too but I'm hoping I can combine this with low carb which has worked well for me. I have a long history of IBS, constipation, acid reflux, pre-diabetes and other things pretty much all self-inflicted through my eating. 🙄

I've done all the tests and I'm waiting for my results, due in two weeks. You're not just waiting in limbo, you get daily 'lessons' about carbs, fibre, gut health etc. I suspect it's a sort of 'nudge' theory, and I am only making tiny changes to my food at the moment. Slightly put off by the pictures I've seen on IG and FB of plates full of beans, I like pulses but I'm not giving up meat! I have two friends also doing this and already we have seen that we all had different responses to the glucose monitor, for example white rice didn't affect me at all but one of them had a huge spike. I'm very interested in other people's experience.

I finished all the lessons a few weeks ago (402) and, for me, definitely worth every penny. I have lost about 5kg, mainly around my waist (yeah!!). Feel fitter and happier in my body than I have for decades, lots more energy. Loving the variety of new foods I'm eating, trying new recipes, eating different carbs and fats to the ones I used to eat - but not feeling deprived. e.g. swapping oats for barley and eating edamame pasta rather than wheat pasta, only using Extra Virgin olive oil for cooking.

As others have said, it's not a quick fix diet (though my initial weight came off really quickly and then just stopped, who knows whether I will eventually lose more?) but it's sustainable for life. I've been out for a few meals while doing it, Indian, chinese, Thai, Wagamama, middle eastern .... not at all problematic to have a lovely meal, with wine, and still feel I'm eating sensibly - doing things like choosing to have nan rather than white rice with my curry because my body deals better with wheat than rice.

So, worth every penny for me. I have taken it seriously though, listened to the podcasts, read the books, looked at the science. I decided that I trusted the product and went with it, concentrating on the gut microbiome.

I joined one of the FB groups -but do get a bit exasperated with people complaining that they are being encouraged to eat food they don't usually eat or cut back on foods they really like (sausages was the best!).

Some people really seem to have lost loads of weight - I'm guessing they are the ones who have made the most radical change to their diet - some a bit, like me, some none at all - and some people have put weight on. Maybe they were on a restrictive calorie controlled regime before and their body had adjusted its metabolic rate to compensate? maybe they are eating their weight in salted nuts every day?

Who knows? the one very clear thing is how different we all are, there is not an easy "one size fits all" model, but the Zoe analysis has definitely helped me understand my own body better and hopefully head off some of the health issues I might have faced had I continued with my old way of eating.

Thanks for that @ohyesiknowwhatyoumean , really helpful to know about your experience.

Sounds great for you!

I think it’s a way of eating that is quite easy to sustain if you actively enjoy eating vegetables and legumes, and are happy to experiment with recipes. It doesn’t seem hugely restrictive; there is an acceptance that you will eat things that are NOT very good for you sometimes, and it encourages balance across a day. It even suggests you might just not score if you don’t think it would be helpful. I guess because the focus is on shifting the balance of what you eat more than weight loss (I realise their own publicity emphasises that part of it quite heavily though), you should be able to do it without feeling you’ve failed when you eat certain foods.

BUT it is very much in the doing. The FB group I’m in is showing me how it’s perfectly easy to get obsessive, to talk about sinning or cheating, if that’s the way you approach it. If the recommended food is very different to your previous diet and you don’t really enjoy it, or it feels like a lot of effort, then of course it’ll be less sustainable, and you’re not guaranteed to get the speedy weight loss that keeps you moving on.

I’ve lost a kilo so far. I’m quite a way heavier than is healthy so I need to look not just at what I’m eating but how much of it, and how I’m getting my good scores, so it’s more complicated than just following the recommendations.

My results have arrived (two weeks earlier than they originally said). I have a microbiome health score of 74 (which is good, apparently), but I am poor at blood sugar control and (surprisingly to me) pretty good at blood fat control.

Like 3/4 of the participants in the Predict study I do not have any beneficial Blastocystis parasites in my gut. Apparently I have a lot of Claude and Felicia (no sign of any Freddie, Hannah, Finn, Patrick, Veronica, Valentina, Billy, Rumi or Violet). I don't have a lot of bad bugs, but I do have a high level of Chloe (as well as some Ruth, Edi and Esther).

An AI bot has looked at my food diary and seems happy for me to munch away on cheese and nuts and blueberries, but wasn't keen on me eating bread or pasta. Pizza and jacket potatoes were a big "no no", which is a shame.
My 1/2 pint mugs of tea seemed to score differently at certain times of the day, too so I'll go back to check that.

With Easter approaching I've decided to start Zoe 201 on Tuesday. I remember seeing that none of the staff were going to be around over the Easter break and I am bound to need help with something.

I notice the second £300 slipped out of my bank account fairly sharpish.

CDC says https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/blastocystis/faqs.html is bad.

That’s fascinating @lljkk That’s the total opposite to what Zoe says which is that people with less adipose fat have it so it’s beneficial. That might be causal: thin people also have lower adipose tissue anyhow and according to CDC weight loss is expected with the bacteria. I truly don’t understand this.

I’m doing Zoe a while now and am doing well: eating the rainbow, cutting carbs, trying to limit carb spikes etc.But I haven’t lost weight at all. I know their approach is to expect weight loss in the long term as your body adjusts to fewer spikes but i had hoped for some improvement.

I wrote to the nutrition team who took ages to respond and yes blah blah 80% lose weight with an average of 3lbs. That doesn’t sound that great.. I wonder how many of those are women?

This says blastocystitis microbes might not be bad for you.

This article in the Lancet might be easier to read: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(22)00196-3/fulltext

I wonder whether we'll all be getting prescribed probiotics in 5-10 years time? Science is evolving so fast.

This thread got me looking at Zoe reviews on Trustpilot. fwiw, I always read the negative reviews first and trust them most. Most the complaints are about simple customer service, some are petty ("what, nobody working over Easter!?"). A large group are about the glitchy app. A couple of posters claiming they are microbiologists and the whole thing is unproven and speculative, or that the advice given out is obvious and not truly personalised and not actually useful for doing actions with, and no followup to see if the advice "worked" to make someone's gut health "better".

Lots saying it's very expensive.

Make sure to download, save all your data before you quit, when you decide to quit. You can't access it after subscription expires.

TBH I can't think what "data" I would want to keep from the app. I could screenshot recipes if I wanted them - Along with a list of my gut boosters - but once I embed the principles into my life and diet I don't really need to know what I ate three months ago..... there are more than enough "Zoe friendly" recipes online and in my new library of cook books to compensate for the ones in the app.

If Zoe is right, and following their gut booster recommendations will positively impact my microbiome, then the scores should shift slightly anyway as my fat handling improves along with the microbiome. I don't want to be a prisoner to scoring / counting / weighing for the rest of my life. Zoe is definitely geared towards freeing us from that, both implicitly and explicitly in the final lessons.

What I am loving about Zoe, especially now that I have finished the "lessons" and no longer score anything, is NOT having to carefully weigh every strand of pasta .... I chuck stuff together with a fair amount of abandon and am very happy with my weight loss, feelings of fullness, and general enjoyment of new foods.

well I'm not an App user so I dunno what's there. Claude counts, maybe?

Look at TrustPilot to make sure you know what data you could extract about yourself.