[Interlude] My Zoe Journey

For those who have followed my blog over the last year or so, you’ll be aware that I am something of a fan of Prof. Tim Spector and his very sensible ideas about diet. After reading Food for Life – the new science of eating well by Tim Spector, and listening to a bunch of Zoe podcasts I almost subscribed to Zoe but didn’t because I was a bit concerned that I might develop some sort of disordered eating and I put the idea to one side. Then after my brother’s unexpected death from heart failure I decided perhaps the risk of an eating disorder was preferable to the risk of coronary disease and I signed up in April. I signed up for the full thing: the testing and 12 months follow up support. It’s not cheap, perhaps comparable to the cost of a year’s membership to a gym, but I was hoping it’d be worth it. My testing kits arrived in mid-July and I got started. I’ve been at it three months now, which is a good time to stop and reflect on how it’s all been going and what I’ve learned. There’s a lot to absorb. This is my (relatively) quick summary of how it’s been so far.

Phase 1: Testing

Testing is the thing that makes Zoe really different to other diet/nutrition plans, or at least those that I have encountered elsewhere. Your Zoe journey starts with a big yellow box full of nicely packaged little kits and lots of very detailed instructions. There’s an app as well, which I’ll get onto later. The kits all look very professional and the instructions on their use are pretty clear, though I recommend reading them a few times before you try any of the tests. There are three main parts to the testing.

Part 1: the blood glucose monitor

To see how your body responds to sugar you’re supplied with a blood glucose monitor. You have to attach this to your arm and leave it there for a couple of weeks. The monitor continually tracks your blood sugar levels, though this does mean that you have to leave your phone, with the tracking app running, close by at all times over the 2 week period. Attaching the monitor is a bit daunting, but it is pretty easy to do and once it’s fixed in place you soon forget that it’s there. There’s a lovely bright yellow plaster with the Zoe logo emblazoned on it which you stick over the sensor and gradually peels off over the course of the 2 weeks. Very discreet!

Once the monitor is attached you just leave it to do its business, tracking what spikes your blood sugar and what doesn’t. It’s hard not to watch it all the time out of sheer curiosity! Alongside the monitor there are a bunch of tests you can do which test how your body responds to things like sequencing (fats before carbs/sugars and vice versa), the impact of exercise before and after eating, and food combining. The apps suggests some foods for each category and I would highly recommending choosing these foods very carefully because you have to eat a lot of them over the course of the first week. I choose oats and peanut butter, because the combine well, but regretted it later. Eating three tablespoons of peanut butter is much harder than I could have expected, and peanut butter porridge gets old very fast indeed. I found myself wishing I’d chosen bread and cheese – two things I rarely get bored of.

Part 2: the muffins

Your kit comes with two packs of muffins. On one day, probably one when you’re at home and able to stick to a very strict timetable, you have to eat a pack of three muffins for breakfast and the other pack of two for lunch. Afterwards you can have a normal dinner. The time gap between the two meals is precisely timed, and you have to eat each pack of muffins within a fifteen minute window. This sounds super easy but I only just made it with the breakfast muffins (eating them with some fluid is a must), though the lunchtime muffins were easier. The breakfast muffins are probably one of the worst things I have ever eaten – highly sugary and very dry. I had to force them down, it was most unpleasant. At a fixed time after eating the lunchtime muffins you need to do a blood test and then you can go back to normal life. These tests are designed to determine how your body responds to sugars and fats, and how well it processes them. More on that later.

Bleugh

I have heard that Zoe have since replaced their muffins with cookies, which I believe are easier to eat. I would not want to repeat the muffin experiment again! I was so worried I hadn’t done the blood test properly but despite my fumbling it was all okay.

Part 3: the poop sample

I’d like to say this was my least favourite part of the testing, but the muffins were still worse. Still, taking a poop sample is not fun, This tests the health of your microbiome. You don’t need to hear any more about it, whatever you’re imagining is probably fairly accurate. It was not pleasant.

My experience of testing day was quite stressful and I was glad when it was over. Self-testing is nerve wracking; I spent the whole day thinking I had done it wrong and worrying I would have to repeat tests later because I didn’t send a big enough sample or I’d messed up in some way. Those worries probed unfounded, thankfully, but this part of the experience was a bit of a trial. On the other hand I absolutely loved having the blood glucose monitor. It didn’t bother me at all and watching my graphs over the course of a day was quite fascinating.

A very craggy graph

Phase 2: Tracking

Once you’ve sent your tests off it takes a few weeks for the results to come back. In the meantime you’re encouraged to use the app to track your meals and there are lots of ‘lessons’ which are designed to prepare you, explain the science and help you to develop healthier habits. Until you get your test results the food tracking doesn’t tell you much but it does get you into the habit of keeping a record of what you eat.

The lessons are very short and quite punchy. My daughter, looking over my shoulder one day, said she didn’t like them because she felt they were reprogramming my mind! I could see why she would say that. The lessons cover all sorts of things from food science, habit breaking and making, emotional eating, how to feed your gut microbiome (and why to care about it in the first place), as well as testing your knowledge and understanding of the material. Everything is very science based, and often stated quite simply so I think most people could easily follow then information. I have mixed views on the lessons. Some of them have been great and have really stuck with me, others have felt a bit broad-brush and not entirely relevant. For example: in the lessons about emotional eating they ask if you recognise the cues for emotional eating i.e. if it is something you’ve experienced. When I am anxious / emotional I feel sick and I can’t eat anything, so I’m the opposite of an emotional eater! However when I said I didn’t experience emotional eating it still went through the lesson as though I did. The lessons are all maybe 3 minutes long, so it wasn’t exactly a problem, but it did make it feel a bit impersonal. That being said, that’s a minor issue and most of the lessons are very imformative. I was surprised that the lesson which has stuck with me the most was one about taking a moment to feel gratitude for your body. As someone who is never satisfied with my body (I’m female, after all) that felt both ookie and revelatory. I have thought about it often. I don’t often think of my physical self in the positive, but actually my body is pretty strong and resilient and I am probably about as healthy as I’ll ever be and perhaps I can spend a moment being thankful for that.

Phase 3: the results

After an anxious wait you finally get your results! Lots of huge emails and lots of data to absorb. This is where Zoe really takes off. You get a score for blood sugar control, blood fat control and a microbiome score. Also if you fill out the diet information in the app then you get a diet assessment too. I was very excited to get my results, but I warn you they take a lot of absorbing. My results were:

Blod sugar control: Poor 😦

Blood fat control: Good

Microbiome score: Excellent

Diet assessment: Good

Like everything in Zoe you get both a rating and a score. Having seen my blood glucose monitor results I was not hugely surprised about my blood sugar control. Neither was I that surprised about my microbiome score. I have been making my own kefir for well over a year now, I love fermenting things and so fermented foods are a big part of my diet. I also pay a lot of attention to my fibre intake. My microbiome diversity could still do with a little improvement. The blood fat control result surprised me. I always seem to have a just over the edge of okay cholesterol score so the idea tht my body processes fats well (but not excellently) really surprised me. I am wondering if part of the issue is that I’ve been eating the wrong kids of fats: animal based fats rather than plant based? Anyway, my next cholesterol check will be an interesting check in. I think I am now eating a lot more fat, but good fats like nuts and seeds and salmon rather than cheese.

The real eye-opener comes when you start to look at what this all means from an individual food persepective. A lot of things I thought were healthy are not healthy for me at all. Oats, for example. I have always thought of both porridge and overnight oats as really healthy breakfasts. Not for me. Oats score 42 for me – enjoy in moderation. Rice, my old friend, scores something between 4 for basic white rice (once in a while) and 28 for brown rice (enjoy in moderation). Bread, my fermented, delectable friend…not my friend at all. I have since discovered it is possible for me to eat bread I just need to choose very wisely. But adapting to a diet reduced in all of these things has been an interesting challenge.

Phase 4: learning how to eat the Zoe way

Once you get your scores the app really takes off. Most foods have a score and you can use this to start to plan a diet which is healthier for your body chemistry. The idea is not to restrict, nothing is off limits. Rather the approach is to be more creative – addition is better than removal. I can eat bread as long as I combine it carefully. For example I can have a wholemeal or seeded bread toasted with avocado smash or almond butter and that’s just fine. Tuna salad sandwich with a bit of hummus, also fine. I don’t generally eat white bread anyway, so it’s wholemeal all the way and if seeded that’s even better. Rice and oats I’ve replaced with pearl barley and barley flakes, both of which cause much less of a blood sugar spike for me.

Nothing is off limits, but at the same time there are foods which you still should avoid like the plague. There was one morning when I made a breakfast which was going to score me about 80 (enjoy freely). My hubby said “let’s add this bacon grill” which I did (of course bacon grill is something to avoid like the plague). I added it to my meal and the score dropped from a solid 80 to…zero! Bacon in all its forms is a big no, and ultra processed foods in general are going to give a low score. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat this stuff, basically you can eat whatever you want, but for optimal health you really want to be aiming for a score of 75+ on most days. This takes some time to adapt to.

The basic tenets of the Zoe approach are really quite simple. Eat for your body chemistry. Avoid ultra processed foods if you can. Add rather than subtract. Think about sequencing (try to spread out your fat), aim for 30 + portions of plants in a week and eat fermented foods. If you track your eating in the app then you can see what meals work for you and what doesn’t, there are coaches on hand if you need assistance and each week you get an ‘improve’ score which breaks down how much ultra processed food you’ve eaten, how many plants, how much protein and fibre you’ve had an the quality of the fats you’ve eaten. It’ll also recommend recipes for you, which you can add to your weekly plan. There’s a lot of support, but you need it because it really makes you overhaul your diet which isn’t easy.

A end of week summary

What’s the verdict?

Overall I’ve been very pleased with my Zoe journey, and glad I decided to embark upon it. It’s not been easy. The testing is challenging, and adapting to a changed diet is effortful. I spend a lot more time in the kitchen, though that is evening out a bit more. Meal planning has become more intensive. I have to juggle my dietary requirements with the dietary preferences of my family, which are quite different. No one else has done Zoe, which I’m glad for because I don’t know how we’d cope if we discovered that my husband had poor blood fat control but excellent blood sugar control, making us polar opposites. It is possible to strike a balance, it just takes some work.

It’s not cheap either, which makes it inaccessible to many. Aside from the initial cost, the dietary adaptation mean that more money is spent on fresh foods which are inherently more expensive. Good quality foods simply cost more. Getting hold of a wide range of foods is also more challenging outside of London. On one of the challenges they suggested a type of vegetable which you simply cannot get in the North of England. It makes it feel very middle class, which is sad because so many people would benefit from learning how to eat well for themselves. I find myself walking around the supermarket now feeling very depressed. Not because I can’t find the foods that I want (though barley flakes are an internet only proposition, sadly) but because so much of what supermarkets stock is just…bad. People will eat what is available, and what’s available is mostly rubbish.

You need to be confident in the kitchen, too. There’s a lot more cooking from fresh, though batch cooking does make this easier. Because my usual ‘healthy’ foods turned out to be so bad for me I had to experiment with alternatives. Not everyone is going to have the confidence to do this, and a failed experiment can be expensive. Another potential barrier.

On the plus side, I have felt…better. It’s hard to explain exactly. When I eat the Zoe way, when I manage to keep my scores high, I have a lot more energy. I am rarely hungry. My snacks have transformed – I don’t eat crisps anymore. I eat a lot more nuts and seeds, a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. As a woman in the early stages of perimenopause, I haven’t suffered with hot flashes or any of the usual side effects. I do have some emotional ups and downs but my sleep is good, I have no brain fog and I feel, in the main, strong. I don’t know if that’s the diet, but I do know I feel considerably better than I did back in June before my holiday. I was exhausted then. Now I have energy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

I haven’t become dysfunctional either. I was worried about that happening but I seem to have avoided it. I have had times when I’ve felt despondent, fed up and tired of thinking about it, but I got over that hump and now I just get on with it. I am still not getting 75+ scores every day, my average is around 70, but that’s okay. The perfectionist in me is learning to accept that each day is a learning experience and the more widely I range with my eating the more I will learn.

And my food is, honestly, pretty amazing. My meals now look much more like this:

A nice salad

and this

Barley pancakes

they’re varied and delicious and quite satisfying.

So I’m happy. I’m glad that I did it and if you can afford it, and you’re interested, I recommend it. I guess if you’ve read Tim Spector and it resonates then this is going to reasons to with you too. It is costly, you have to accept it, but it’s no more costly than my (climbing) gym membership. I’ve learned a lot and I’m still learning. It feels like a valuable investment in my health. In Zoe terms I would give it a score of ‘enjoy freely’ though I wish it were cheaper and more accessible, because it feels like this knowledge should be out there for more people to take advantage of.