November 18, 2025 • 35 mins
This week on The Nutrition Couch, Leanne and Susie unpack three huge topics women are constantly asking about: fasting, constipation, and whether “natural Ozempic” supplements like berberine are worth the hype.
First up, they dive into intermittent fasting and why it often backfires for women, especially if you’re training hard, in your perimenopausal years, or constantly battling cravings and afternoon blow-outs. They talk through what the research actually says, how female hormones and muscle mass change the picture, and why a simple 12-hour overnight break from food may be the sweet spot for most women rather than extreme fasting windows.
Next, they break down the brand-new constipation guidelines from the British Dietetic Association, including the now-famous kiwi fruit recommendation, mineral-rich water, magnesium and that slightly outrageous “six to eight slices of rye bread a day” advice. You’ll hear what’s genuinely useful, what’s unrealistic in real life, and how to build a gut-friendly routine that goes beyond just “eat more fibre”.
In product spotlight, the ladies share their new favourite dip for summer entertaining, Yumi’s Capsicum & Roasted Cashew, and explain why it beats many cream-cheese-based dips nutritionally. They also give practical platter strategies to keep portions, costs and calories in check without feeling like you’re on a diet at the party.
Finally, they tackle a listener question about berberine, the supplement being pushed online as “nature’s Ozempic”. Leanne and Susie explain what the science really shows for blood sugar and weight, the doses used in research, why side effects are more common at effective doses, and why it is absolutely not equivalent to GLP-1 medications. They share the simple, proven strategies that do more for metabolic health than chasing a miracle capsule.
In this episode:
- Fasting and female physiology: why skipping breakfast can tank performance, worsen cravings and backfire for many active women, and when a gentle overnight fast may still have benefits.
- New constipation guidelines: the role of kiwi fruit, mineral-rich water and magnesium, why “more and more fibre” isn’t always the answer, and realistic ways to get things moving again.
- Summer platter upgrade: a healthier capsicum and cashew dip, smart portion tricks, and how to build a party platter that tastes amazing without blowing your goals or your budget.
- Berberine under the microscope: why calling it “natural Ozempic” is misleading, what it can and can’t do for blood glucose, and when you’re better off with lifestyle changes or prescribed medication.
If this episode helps you rethink fasting or finally sort your gut and “magic pill” confusion, please follow the show, tap 5⭐, and share it with a friend who’s always starting a new diet on Monday.
To explore our evidence-based supplement range, including our new Hydrate mix for summer, head to Designed by Dietitians.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Are you a fan of fasting, maybe you still fast
regularly or find that fasting has worked in the past
but does not seem to work anymore. On today's episode
of The Nutrition Couch, we deep dive the latest in
fasting and specifically why it does not always work for women. Hi,
I'm Sussie Burrell and I'm Lean Wood, and together we
bring you The Nutrition Couch, the weekly podcast that keeps
(00:26):
you up to date on everything you need to know
in the world of nutrition as well as fasting. We
have some new guidelines on the management of constipation. We
have a healthier dip to add to your party platters,
and our listener question is all about a popular supplement
doing the rounds so Leam. Whenever I give a nutrition
talk to groups of people, and I have given a
(00:46):
few recently, so it sort of reminded me of the
common questions and things that come up. And these were
talks I gave to both men and women. You know,
if you give a talk to a female group sometimes
the questions will be quite different. But in both our
situations where I spoke, I literally had an equal number
of male and female audience, which is interesting because you
do have to tailor it a little bit, a little
(01:07):
bit less hormones and a little bit more performance. And
one of the most common questions I'm always asking my
talks is about fasting, intermitt and fasting, And inevitably I'll
have someone who is commenting that, even though I might
talk about the importance of protein at breakfast or having
a long overnight period without food, inevitably someone will say,
I don't eat until lunchtime because I regularly fast. And
(01:29):
certainly how long would we say fasting has been around
in the world of nutrition, I'd say about ten or
fifteen years. I reckon it came out around twenty twelve,
And of course the initial information we had on fasting
will actually, first of all, we'd known for several many
years that fasting or restricted calorie intakes for primates in particular,
did lead to longer lifespan, so that wasn't new. And
(01:52):
then we had the five and two that came out
where it encouraged two low calorie days each week to
basic reset metabolism. And then not long after that, we
had a slew of diet books following suit, you know,
trying to flog the latest diet research in a best
selling book and The sixteen to eight really evolved as
(02:13):
an alternative to the five to two, which stated if
you sort of extended the overnight fast and didn't eat
till later in the day, there were metabolic benefits from
a calorie perspective. So in our world, which is all
about trends, it went crazy for several years, everyone swiming
out how good it is that they feel more in
control of their appetite. Skipping breakfast means they were having
(02:34):
less carbohydrate. It was supporting weight loss. Now I am
torn with fasting because what my experience is is that
people do convenient fasting for you. So they say they're fasting,
but they'll still have a cheeky coffee, or they will
not eat until twelve or two, but then over it
all afternoon. Because I want to be clear that really
(02:56):
when it comes to the key metabolic benefits, it's lower
calorie diets that really basically shock the cell into metabolic efficiency.
And I'm not talking about three or four day fast
where people only drink water. I'm not even talking about
twenty four hour fast. I'm talking about specific low calorie
days where you might have an egg, hard boiled egg
(03:17):
or two for breakfast. A salad for lunch and some
prawns and veggies for dinner. Very low intakes five six
hundred calories for brief periods of time are shown to
have metabolic benefits. The sixteen eight I think is convenient
dieting for you, because really, if you are going to
adopt an extended overnight fast, the best time to do
it is in the second half of the day, where
(03:39):
you would have your final meal at four or six
o'clock and then didn't eat until nine or ten in
the morning, or even better, stopped eating at four o'clock
and then eight again at eight, so you're really then
linking into circadian rhythm. So in my clinical experience with it,
even though there is research studies to show some metabolic benefits,
which might be improvements in insulin or fuss in glucose
(04:00):
or cholesterol, when it specifically comes to weight control, I
don't find it helpful because I think, particularly for women,
we miss the metabolic benefit that comes with eating early
in the day. And as I've always argued, when it
comes to low calorie diets, my women need their energy,
they need their calories, and if they've had a long
history of dieting, the worst thing I want to do
(04:20):
is encourage them to eat very few calories. It tends
to promote obsession with food, It tends to lead to
afternoon binging and over eating later in the day, and
really promotes the diet culture that you and I would
say never works long term and just puts people in
a constant cycle of being on and off a regime.
In saying that, if I've got a client who is
well adjusted with their food intake and they are interested
(04:43):
in longevity, and they really do want to have either
a long overnight fast where they might do a twelve
fourteen sixteen hours without food, or a low calorie day,
so they really might not go as low as five
six hundred calories, but might really limit intake on a
day of the week, particularly after a week when we
tend to overindulge. I don't have a problem with it,
but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. And if I've
(05:05):
had a client who's had I said, had a long
history of dieting, has insulin or hormone issues, is perimenopausal,
I certainly don't encourage it. Because I know there's been
more and more evidence in sort of the popular podcast
doing the rounds people like Stacy Simms who are arguing
that really it's not good for women to be delaying
the first meal of the day or training even faster,
(05:25):
because it tends to not benefit us metabolically in the
same way that men may get that given they've got
more muscle mass and are not subject to the hormonal
changes of peri and postmenopause, or even pregnancy and breastfeeding,
which impacts our ability to metabolize our body fat effectively
and efficiently. So my position is I use it occasionally
in those areas. I think I've had one or two
(05:48):
clients in my entire career who have adopted the five
two successfully. One was a lawyer who really was very
limited activity wise because of her job, and she didn't
actually mind having a low calorie day. She actually found
it helpful to minimize her destruction of food. But that's
one client out of hundreds, if not thousands, I've seen
(06:10):
in my twenty five year career for whom it worked
and didn't do more abnormal metabolic damage. But it doesn't
lead to ten kilo weight losses. It might be a
kilo every month. It just is a gradual sort of
reprogramming I find of metabolism if you find someone to
do it properly. But most people I do, creep over
into much higher intakes, and that is not the original
(06:30):
five two. So they might start with the best of intentions,
have a coffee, a salad, and then they might have
a few crackers and another coffee, and five six hundred
calories very quickly becomes eight hundred one thousand, and you'd
argue that you're not really doing it either. So yeah,
that's my position on it. And when I do a
talk and someone says that they don't need until lunchtime,
what I will always say is if that is working
(06:52):
for you. So I had a lady in my talk
who was Brazilian, very slim, very relatively young. I'd say,
you know, thirty forty, And she said to me that
she finds that she eats her first meal at twelve
and then she eats her lunch at three or four
and her dinner at sort of seven eight, and that
worked for her. And I said, there's always individual differences
in this. It's not a one size fits all model.
(07:13):
If you are healthy, if you have your energy, if
you don't have any negative issues, if you're happy with
your weight and that eating model works for you, I
would never change it. But if I've got someone who
is trying to get the cravings under control, finds that
they're over eating at night, does have metabolic issues, is
struggling with energy, they're the people that I find that
it's more negative than positive. And often people aren't really fasting.
(07:36):
They think they are, but they're still having tea or coffee,
which is of course not fasting. It would have to
be black tea black coffee to be a true fast
and get those metabolic benefits. So I know you spoke
to Stacy Simms on your Land World Nutrition Podcasts, which
is a very in depth nutrition podcast for anyone who
wants to extend what you hear on the nutrition couch.
I know you've done a couple of interviews recently with
(07:58):
hormone health and metabolic health. I'm right in what I
said about Stacy, wasn't it. She had fairly firm views
on that.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. Basically, hope you as anyone who is exercising or
training or looking for a performance based benefit should not
be fasting. And that's mostly women. And if you look
at a lot of the research, unfortunately most of the
research is in men, and most of the research, if
it is in women, it's in a lot younger women,
because it's really hard to get research people who are
women who are going through pregnancy, who are postpartum. And
(08:25):
this is particularly she works a lot with athletes. She's saying,
a lot of these athletes, if they're in those childbearing
or hormonal years, you're not really going to pull them
into a research study. Most of that research is done
on men or a lot younger women. So she was
basically saying, if the goal is to perform, you need
to fuel regularly, and a lot of my clients I
don't recommend fasting for because they are exercising in the morning.
(08:45):
I'm certainly a morning exerciser. If I don't get my
session done in the morning, there's a ninety five percent
chance it's not going to happen for the rest of
the day. I just have to do it in the morning.
If not, the day just gets away from me. I
don't do it. I don't enjoy afternoon exercise. And having
said that, if the goal is to exercise or to train,
you want to be refueling your body and refueling your muscles,
and you can't do that if I'm going to exercise
(09:06):
at six am and then eat my first meal at midday,
you can't refuel and replenish your body effectively if you're fasting.
So from that perspective alone, I don't like most of
my ladies fasting because I want them to train, not exercise,
and I want them to get some performance based benefits
out of those sessions. Get stronger, get fitter, get faster,
build some lean muscle mass, And it's really difficult to
(09:27):
do that if you're fasting for half the day and
you're not eating proper meals. It's really hard to get
all of your required nutrition in just kind of two
three solid meals of the day if it's at back
ended eating. And we do know that larger meals at
nighttime can sometimes impact sleep, impact digestion, and there is
a little bit of research around that longevity and digestive
health that it's not even a huge fast, like sometimes
(09:48):
just extending the overnight fast twelve hours can be beneficial
as well. And I want to argue that most healthy
women should probably be having twelve hours between dinner and
lunch breakfast the next morning anyway, but most of us
are real, we're eating later at seven or eight at night.
Then we're snacking until maybe, I don't know, eight thirty nine,
we've had some dessert. Then we're waking up and we're
eating just because just because you know it's breakfast, we're eating,
(10:10):
or we think we should have something pre workout or
post work or et cetera. So there is a bit
of research around that kind of twelve hours. So your
last meal at six or seven o'clock, the next meal
of the morning shouldn't really be till sort of that
seven or eight o'clock to give your body that extended fast,
which may have some longevities, soular health benefits, gut heals,
digestive benefits as well, So it doesn't have to be
(10:31):
anything crazy. Twelve to fourteen hours maybe enough. But if
you are a female, particularly going through those perimenopausal years,
and particularly who is training pretty heavily, Like if you're
off to a yoga you're going to walk the dog,
you can fast. It's probably fine, But if you are
doing any form of strength or conditioning type or intense
kind of workout, you probably do want to feel a
(10:52):
little bit beforehand. Just a small amount of carbo protein
and then have a proper balanced breakfast when you finish
that workout, and then some new research coming through about that.
A lot of the exercise and hormonal experts such as
Stacy Simms, agree with that trend of thought as well true.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And I would also say that I would never tell
a client to not eat if they were hungry. So,
for example, just say you've got into a routine of
doing a longer fast once a week, so you thought,
right after a Saturday night dinner out or Sunday lunch,
I'm going to extend the fast because I've eaten a lot.
If my client was up at eight or nine o'clock
and starving, I wouldn't say don't eat and ignore that hunger.
(11:26):
So I think it can be a really useful tool
to get back in touch with hunger, particularly when we
do overeat at times and coming into the Christmas period
where there are celebrations and feasting, and you know, you
want to be able to go, and that's what we
work hard for to go and enjoy good food with
friends and family. We're certainly not encouraging people to not
ever indulge. That's not the message of the nutrition couch
More it's having strategies to support health and well being
(11:50):
and longevity even though we do have those eating occasions.
So I would say use it as an opportunity to
reset hunger when you have had heavier meals or celebration.
But if you then wake up and do a walk
on Sunday morning and are hungry by eight thirty, I
would say, definitely feel your body. I would never override
extreme hunger with fasting just to try and get a
metabolic benefit. So that's a sign your body is burning
(12:12):
your food well and you need nutrients, so ride off that.
And if anything, for most of us, it's ending the
eating occasion earlier most nights and making sure you're getting
that decent break without food, because that's where most of
us get a little bit wrong. We're happy to snack
until eight or nine ten at night and then wonder
why we're not hungry for breakfast.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, exactly, And I'm just sad to your point you
were saying, sometimes you get questions around like extended you know,
water fast, and these are multiple days. Like I follow
a big influencer at the moment. She's a mummy blogger
and she's trying to do a two three day extended
just water fast and if I'm being honest, I have
not seen enough research to support that. And when I
think when I look at someone's diet quality overall, there's
so many things that I would change first rather than
(12:51):
just putting them through like an extended water fast like
where most Australians are probably not eating enough vegetables, We're
not sleeping enough, we're scrolling too much, we're not training efficiently.
I'm not eating enough vegetables and not eating enough whole grains.
It's just there's so much wrong with the diet before
even adding something like that, which is pretty extreme into
the mix. And a lot of people are saying that,
you know there's XYSN benefits, but if I'm being honest,
(13:11):
I haven't actually seen the research papers to really support this,
And in particular, even if there are small papers, it
might be in animal based studies, but it's certainly not
in hormonal females within that thirty forty fifty year age group.
So the extended fasting, particularly water fasting, is a hard
no from me. As I said, I've had clients that
enjoy fasting, that don't mind it, but it's often a
few days a week or off the back of a
(13:32):
heavier weekend. It's not seven days a week. It's not
something they actually do long term. So I'm not a
huge yeah fanomt.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I'll be very surprised if we ever see that research
because I think it's that whole idea that you're being
virtuous if you do it. But to me, there's not
any evidence for just having water. But what I was
going to also say is that if for any of
one listening who has stomach problems constipation gas, one of
the worst things you can do for that is not
eat in the morning, because that's one where we tend
to get our fiber rich food, whole grain bread, cereal,
(14:01):
which gets the gut going, and because of circadian rhythm programming,
our digestive system is programmed to process food in the day.
So if you're one of the many females listening who
have tummy problems and you feel constipation bloating, don't go
to the bathroom. Is regularly one of the worst things
you can do is delay that first meal because naturally
it will impact metabolism and also your dietary fiber intake,
(14:22):
which leads, of course to our second point of chat
today which is all about constipation, and I bring to
the chair our leading expert in gut health, Le Edward.
Take the floor, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'll take it away. So there's been a lot of
media coverage around these new constipation guidelines from the BDA.
So for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what that is,
it's the British Dietetic Association and a couple of about
a month ago or so, they published these new guidelines
on chronic long term constipation and it's had a lot
of media press around it because one thing in particular,
(14:54):
which we'll go into admit it is QII frits, which
have been trending quite a lot, and i'd probably say
a good s. Twelve months ago we saw some new
research around Kiu fruits and constipation and there was a
big trend on Instagram Everyone's eating their Kiwi fruits and
I've seen it drop off a little bit lately. But
I find it very interesting that these have actually been
written into to my knowledge, the first clinical guidelines that
(15:15):
actually specifically say qi fruit, not just you know, fruit
or fiber. So it's really really interesting and it marks
a bit of a shift, particularly in guidelines. They're very conservative,
as they need to be because they're making recommendations for
the general population. They don't really ever recommend supplements or
really specific things. So these guidelines are kind of they're
(15:36):
very revolutionary, you know, They're very good and I was
certainly I was really enjoying reading through them because it
really had specific things that people could do if they
were someone that suffered from chronic constipation. So what the
guidelines looked at. The researchers examined I think seventy five
clinical trials to come up with some recommendations around foods
and drinks and supplements that people with chronic constipation could
(15:58):
use to helpfully hope them help them out. Now, I
must say that some of the quality of these trials
weren't great, Like the quality of the seventy five clinical
trials varied quite a lot. So basically what they did
is they just came up with a consensus based on
the quality of the data. So what the guidelines currently recommend.
These new guidelines for chronic constipation in adults, One of
the first recommendations was to eat two to three Kiwi
(16:21):
fruits per day for at least four weeks. You could
choose either the green or gold varieties. You could eat
the skin if you're into that furry qwi skin. If
you didn't, you were still going to get some benefit
from it anyway, but you would probably get more benefit
if you were to eat the skin as well. So
do what you want with that, because why they recommend
quu fruit besides the fiber in it, The type of
(16:43):
fiber in kufruit swells like the water, so it helps
to kind of soften the stools, and it may stimulate
things like mucus production and the gut, which can help
to soften stools, which is obviously really helpful in chronic constipation.
And kiwifruit also contains a really special enzyme called actinidin,
and that enzyme also helps to simulate the gut as well,
so again being quite beneficial for constipation. Now, the other
(17:05):
one that I find was really important was they also
recommended mineral rich water, so water with a higher concentration
of magnesium and sulfate, because that appeared to soften the
stool and of course help with that increased bower frequency.
So what they wanted people drinking was about half a
liter up to one and a half liters of mineral
rich water two to six weeks. Basically, so a lot
(17:27):
of these recommendations, they were saying you had to do
it pretty consistently, ie daily for at least four weeks,
if not eight weeks. The third one, which we love,
Zuzi because where massive fans of magnesium, was to consider
a magnesium oxidize supplement. I don't like magnesium oxide as
a form of magnesium. I much prefer magnesium citrate for
(17:48):
chronic constipation. So they're saying, consider a magnesium supplement about
one and a half grams a day for at least
four weeks under medical supervision is really important. You should
never just randomly take any supplements without first consulting healthcare professional,
and magnesium sulfments have been shown to be really effective
in terms of increasing stool frequency and helping to soften
the stool as well. Then the fourth guideline they recommended,
(18:10):
which I found so random.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in
my life.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The last one, wait for this was eating rye bread,
which I was like, okay, that kind of makes sense,
Like swap your white bread to rye bread. Guess how
many pieces a day? Susie.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I know, I just read it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Six eight slices a day, six two slices for three weeks.
He was eating eight slices of rye bread every single
day for three weeks.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So that one last time, I like, hmmm, you go
to because you explode. That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Anyway, the magnesium is particular board QUI fruits on board
mineral which water yep can do rye bread. I'm gonna
park that one over there. If you typically will have
a couple of slices of bread for breakfast, maybe replies
that with some rye, just a dense whole grain bread.
I think it's going to do you the same benefit.
But six to eight slices of rye bread like no
wonder dieticians get a bad about. But the only thing
I can say, like you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Know, researchers that is research is not being practical, just
about what people are. So it's not pretty light. You know,
it's actually really hard to even find rye bread.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, you can get a potal and a ryce old
if you got a nice market or fourteen dollars, not exactly.
And if you're eating six or eights lasses a day,
you're gonna need like four lobes a week. It's the other.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Problem, and you were so enormous.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So that was the four recommendations in the guidelines. Take
it as you will. Now. What has changed I also
found quite interesting was that traditionally, dieticians and researching guidelines
has always recommended a really high fiber diet, and that
basically means twenty five to thirty grams plus of fiber
a day. Now, the researcher basically saying, out of those
(19:42):
seventy five clinical trials that they looked through, they only
found one that showed a benefit of a really high
fiber diet. So they weren't recommending don't eat fiber, but
they were basically just saying, we don't actually recommend a
really high fiber diet for constipation anymore. Because I've certainly
had clients who have been eating up with a thirty
five forty grams of fiber and they still have terrible constipation.
(20:03):
And once we've started adding in a few things like supplements,
a few diet tweaks without worrying about the overall fiber load,
that has actually really helped their chronic constipation resolve far
more than just eating more and more and more and
more fiber, because we do know that when you're chronically constipated,
things aren't moving through properly. You get a lot more
blocked up, a lot more blowed to a lot more gassy.
If you just keep adding more fiber on top of
(20:24):
that and things aren't moving through, you're just compounding the issue.
So that was one really important point that had changed
in the clinical guidelines was that they don't recommend a
super high fiber diet anymore. They just emphasized basically whole
foods and then also the things I mentioned before, the
kili fruit, the magnese in supplements, the ridiculous amount of
rye bread, and the mineral rich water as well. So
(20:46):
just really really interesting that this is, to my knowledge,
the first guidelines that have really been specific around an
exact type of food and also an exact type of supplement,
because I haven't seen that before in clinical guidelines, have you, SUSI.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Certainly a little bit random, because I also know that
it's very unusual to be highlighting one specific food like
a kiwi. Now, yes, there's a small amount of evidence
for kiwi, but it's not it's fairly new. So I
feel like this is trying to you know, fit in
with the zone of modern nutrition advice more than anything,
because you know, I also think that recom saying or
(21:21):
not super high fiber, like that's a confusing message in itself,
like there are other benefits for digestive health to have
a high fiber diet. So yeah, I think it was
really novel and interesting. I think it's certainly worth listeners
who have trouble with their tummy trying the Kiwi fruit,
trying the magnesium. You know, when we formulated our magnesium restore,
one of the key things was not only to aid sleep,
(21:42):
but also to support digestive health because people do find
that it helps them go to the bathroom each day.
So I think these are quite natural solutions for things
rather than just going super high with the fiber. And yeah,
the only one I'm like you that I think, come on,
the rye bred's obscure and six to eight day is
hardly feasible, So yeah, but definitely worth a try. And
I know myself with my clients, there areas that I'll
(22:03):
try with first for digestive health. And yeah, just like
to be on the cutting edge of what's going on
nutritionally out there.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I will say quickly though, I have had quite
a few clients who have taken kiwi and they have found.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
It to be very effective.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I do think that that is worth a trial,
and it's probably a really easy thing to do for
a lot of people. They're not they're not the cheapest
type of fruit, and a lot of people don't like
the furry skin. But I have had a lot of
clients who have found it to be quite effective, but
they have sort of stayed on that longer term, like
they've been taking two key with fruit a day, you know,
for months on and kind of things. So it is
again that consistency that matters. You can't just take it,
(22:36):
you know, three days in a row and then not
take it for three months and help that it resolves
your chronic constipation. It really is a bad consistency.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
And the trouble with that now is they're out going
out of season, so they do become relatively expensive. Personally.
I will also try with clients just a really good
cereal regularly, so whether it's an all brand or a
multi grain week because it's got the mix. Particularly I
like the multi grain. They've got the soluble fiber at
really high levels or in the case of all brand,
the wheat fiber, and also relatively inexpensive because some of
(23:03):
the supplements really start to get up there in prices
if you're trying specific constipation ones, but food first and
with the gut it always works, tends to work best
if you give nutrients as a synergistic effect of those.
So there's some things that our listeners can try. All right,
the am Welet's party season, we've been plattering it up
and long term listeners of the podcast will know that
Leanne and I were devastated and mourned for quite some
(23:24):
time when our capsicum dip or our vegetable dip disappeared
from Audi and Coals. It really changed the nature of
our platters for quite some time, and there was a
morning period. Now someone suggested we try eggplant dip and
we were just like, that is not the same, Yeah, horrified,
But I found something that's pretty good, Leanne, And this
does feature in our newly released Nutrition Couch Product Guide.
(23:47):
But we've come to back to our friends at Yumi's
who were the original manufacturers of the Mediterranean vegetable dip,
So maybe they have listened to us Lam because this
Yumi's capsicum and roasted cashew is pretty strong nutritionally, and
it's as close as I can get to that in
terms of fat content, because the biggest issue generally with
(24:08):
commercial dips is that the majority of them have a
base of cream, cheese or oil, and hence are very
very high in fat, not the right types of fat
for anyone who is always on the seed oil bandwagon.
Certainly dips can be very rich source of that. And
then if you have dips that are more vegetable, they
don't always taste amazing, you know, like they're pretty bland,
or you know, you've got to have stuff you like
(24:29):
to eat as well. So this Yumis dip which is
available at Coals and wool Worths. In Wolworst it's comes
in the little three pack which I like for push
and control or at Coals. Now, in some cases dips
are the same across brands or no name brands. So
for example, it's entirely possible that Yumis will be manufacturing
(24:50):
for someone like Coals or Woolies, and so the Coals
roast capsicum dip may be the same. That is not
the case in this instance. I checked the Coals roast
caps can dip, which is cheaper. I think the first
ingredient was cream cheese, so not the same. So you
are paying a bit more for a brand like UMIs,
but in this case getting a better quality product. I'll
read the ingredients first, actually, because I think that gives
(25:10):
a better perspective. The first ingredient Land is red capsic
and thirty nine percent, so straight away, if you've got
to dip with a vegetable base, you're on the right track.
Followed by potato, canola oil twelve percent cashew. Now that's
a very high percentage of cashew, and if you've got
CASHU allergies like Land does, you can't have it. But
it's actually a very high level of cashew or nut product.
(25:31):
To improve the nitiational profile, onion, salt, egg, garlic, food acids,
which is a very innocent ingredient, bazil, a little bit
of sugar, tiny amount i'd say, chili pepper, and one
preservative to stop it going bad, as well as mustard.
That is about as clean an ingredient list as you'll
get apart from being pure avocado. So I'll read the
per hundred. Now, perserve is hard because the serving size
(25:53):
I think is twenty grams. Let's be honest, no one's
eating twenty grams of deer. But per hundred grams it's
four point one grams of protein, twenty one grams of carbohydrate,
just over two hundred calories, so pretty good. Al sorry, Yeah,
two hundred calories and nine hundred and thirty two kilodels
very low saturated fatly and only one point one grams,
which is which is a good thing. Whereas the cream
(26:15):
cheese dips will be higher in fat and high and
saturated fat and then only thirteen point six grams of
fat per hundred so over that ten percent but pretty low.
Most commercial dips are twenty thirty even up to fifty
percent fat for the pesto type dips. So to me,
this is a very good product. If you can stick
to a tablespoon or two, you're really looking at at
(26:38):
less than one hundred calories, quite insignificant, very little fat.
You're getting some whole food. It tastes good. That's the
other thing, because I think in the recent weeksly and
we've been a bit guilty of recommending products we hadn't
necessarily tried, and we got some very strong feedback it
wasn't great. A couple of products. I've tried this and
always included on my platters now and I can say,
and I've had it with you as well, it's it's
(27:00):
a really good one, So top marks from us. I'm
giving it four out of five and it's a good
addition to your party platters this summer holidays.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I will say that tastes is a personal preference though,
because we've had a few people being like, oh, I
didn't like that fetter, Oh I didn't like that soup.
You didn't like it, but we did like I love
that soup. I have it regularly, whereas you know, one
or two people write in and say, oh, that wasn't nice.
Taste is a very personal preference. The heins was the
green Heinz one really strong products.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So she said, yeah, I like that all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
But again, we all have different, you know, different taste palts.
So what one might like, someone else might not. That's fine,
But yeah, I like this as well. I bought it
by accident once. I think a friend brought it over
and Mia has a very severe cashew not allergy, so
me and my friend hit in the kitchen eating it.
And the kids were playing, and then I haven't been
able to buy it since, but it was very tasty
and I would definitely recommend it. It's gooden free and
dairy free as well for all of our non nut
(27:51):
allergy listeners. And the other thing is when you were
reading out the nutritional sushi that was per one hundred grams,
that's half a tub. Like I probably wouldn't eat half
a tub of dip amari to quarter or you know,
two three tablespoons, but that's a lot. Half a tub
of dip is a lot. And so they've really strong
nutritionals for half that half that amount, and I think
a lot of people that it's on a platter you
would eat far less of that. You've also got your majistics,
(28:12):
your crack as, your cheese, et cetera. So I think
it's a really strong product nutrition lyne. I really like
UMIs as a brand overall. I think the ingredients in
most of their depths are really really solid. So I
think if you're in the dip section of they're on sale,
you can't go too wrong with the majority of their brand.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, very good. I believe they've been bought by honests,
but remain a fairly strong company internally to date. What
I was going to say about platter is actually and
something that I do because I love a platter. We
love a platter. I don't ever put the whole lot
of dip or cheese out. I go, I make them
last twice. Not because I'm being overly budget friendly. It's
not that. It's more the more you put out, the
(28:49):
more you eat of that kind of food. So if
I put the whole container of dip or the whole
block of cheese out, everyone will inevitably eat it. If
I put half, they only eat that. So I just
think it's a way to control portions of food that
does tend to be a bit higher in fat. So
you can definitely I sort of spoon it out and
put it into a smaller container. And the same with
the cheese. I'll just put half the round or half,
(29:09):
and you know, I can always add the rest out
if I need, But in more cases than not, after
a few people are done and you sort of don't
need to add that extra calorie load in, particularly with
higher fat cheeses. So that's a little trick coming into
party season.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
But let's be honest, it's also better on the budget
because it's expensive to buy all of the cheese and
the dips and the olives and the nice crackers like
a cheese but I can cost you thirty fifty dollars
if you're buying really nice stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I was in the butcher the other day and this
late I was buying marrowbones for taco and she had
these cheeses. They were like, it was one hundred dollars
worth of cheese, and I was like, you're doing a
nice platter. Like I was like, you can easily spend
thirty would be cheap ads a single of breeze like
ten bucks, Like you know, really, you can spend a
(29:54):
lot of money and they're delicious, but definitely if you
can make them go that little bit further, because you're
going to waste it because once it's been our for
a few hours, you can't really use it again and
if people aren't eating it, So definitely you can sort
of control consumption by limiting exposure to portions. Yeah, all right,
and you want to wrap us up with our listener question.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
All right, let's have a look around you than me.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
It's mine, but I took over your dip section. Sorry,
I was being so greedy. Sorry, I got excited. Burberine, berberine, berberine.
So we've covered berberine before and I am aware of that,
but it's just really doing the rounds at the moment
as a super supplement. And I saw another major supplement
company advertising a metabolic health supplement and I thought, Oh,
you're making a lot of claims there that I don't
(30:39):
believe there's data to support, so we might review that
without getting ourselves sued. I think generally, when you say
supplements claiming to save the world, if it's too good
to be true, it usually is. If the answer to health, longevity,
glucose control, weight loss was in a single capsule, the
pharmaceutical companies would have made it years ago. It's taken
(31:01):
them this long to make GOP medications, which are actually
quite a basic concept. So I think it's too good
to whichreat usually is, and that is certainly my experience
with berberine. Berberine is a plant based supplement that has
been argued to help control blood glucose levels. There is
a smidge of evidence for this. I have had no
clinical experience with positive outcomes with berberine. I've taken it
(31:24):
just out of interest. Nothing. I had a client with
severe PCOS who really wanted to avoid medication took it
at a high dose. Nothing. I see no evidence for
it or I have had no experience to suggest it's helpful.
I think there are far better things you can do
for blood glucose control, like going for a walk after meals,
like food sequencing where you eat your protein veggies first
(31:45):
and then your carbohydrates. Or if you really have blood
glucose control issues, you're probably better to go on met
forman because it's a very effective medication with very few
side effects and very beneficial for sell health long term.
So yeah, I'm not a fan, and I know it's
doing the rounds on TikTok and things like that, but
I can tell you firsthand there's not evidence for it.
(32:06):
In my clinical experience. It doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
It's very limited. When I dove into the evidence as well,
people touted as like the natural osen pick, but we
need to be really clean nothing.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
It is nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And the clinical level of and that research.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Is nothing like it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And the responses that you get at a clinical level
and nothing like that either. And you really do need
to use it at quite a high dose. So the
research is around one to one and a half grams
a day, which in some people can actually have side
effects like nausea, constipation, diarrhea, And that's sort of the
main downside of people taking something like, you know, another
medication for blood sugar control, because they're like, oh, I
(32:40):
don't want to have the nausea or same thing with
ozen pick, like I don't want the side effects. High
dose of berberine, which is the effective clinical dose, is
very likely to give you some of those side effects
as well. But like you, I've had a handful of
clients on it. Most didn't report anything. I did ad
one client who really liked it, and she said that
it controlled hunger more than anything, like she just felt
she wasn't as hungry all day long. And then she
stops it, she finds the hunker comes back. But again,
(33:03):
it had nothing to really do with blood sugar control
and insulince sensitivity, which is why a lot of people
are actually using it. So I don't think it's going
to hurt most people, but I do think you have
to take the right amount for it to be effective,
and I think, like most things, people take a couple
of you know, for a couple of days, forget for
a couple of days. Like they just take it sperotically
in the lowest dose possible, and it's really not going
to do much. So if you're going to do it,
(33:24):
give it a red hot crack, take the effective dose
and take it for a good you know, eight to
twelve weeks, and really make sure it's doing something. Go
and get your blood sugar is measured at the doctor.
Go get your HBO and C and compare that to
your last set of bloods to actually see if it's
actually doing anything. If not, it's just a waste of money.
At the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
If it was that effective, Big Farmer would have claimed
it years ago and sold it under script like That's
the other thing, that's the cynical view of it. Big
Farmer would have identified her as something that absolutely controlled
levels and put a patent on it. So that's another
reason I believe it. It isn't clinically proven. I just
want to go back to oz and peak. What GLP
medication do is quite serious. Not only did they delay
(34:03):
gastric emptying, but they control some of the appetite control
hormones in the digestive tract and that also increases the
production of insulin in the pancreas. These are serious drugs
now for people who need them, they can be extremely effective,
but they are not to be sneezed at, Like, you
cannot compare anything to a GOLP. It's not the same thing.
I see it all the time, you know, on those
(34:24):
they say this recipe is the same, These oats are
the same as golp or osep. It's complete bs and
it's completely misleading because, for example, berberine or say a
met formum, which is an oral medication, they work on
the cell in a very gentle way. In the case
of a GOLP, they are working on an organ and
(34:45):
completely changing medtabolism. So these are serious medications and should
be talked about as such, and we should never be
comparing a food to the effect of a serious medication
like that. So let's be very very clear. You cannot
mimic ozen peak from dietary changes or even oral medication.
At this point, they are in the process of developing
(35:07):
and releasing oral versions of GLP medications, but to date
these are not available. It's a rant. We've got a
lot of feedback about our rant. Everyone loved it. We
have to rent more often positive, so yeah, that also
annoys me. You cannot be talking about serious medications like that,
so that's a little rant all rightly. Well, that brings
(35:28):
us to the end of the nutrition catch for another week.
Please keep telling your friends about us, and if you
haven't seen our supplement range designed by dieticians, that's our
new hydrate mix especially for summer. And you can learn
all about our evidence based supplement range which have clinical
evidence behind them to support the various outcomes we're promoting.
So we'll catch you next week for our regular episode drop.
(35:48):
Thanks for listening. At you next week.
Are you a fan of fasting, maybe you still fast
regularly or find that fasting has worked in the past
but does not seem to work anymore. On today's episode
of The Nutrition Couch, we deep dive the latest in
fasting and specifically why it does not always work for women. Hi,
I'm Sussie Burrell and I'm Lean Wood, and together we
bring you The Nutrition Couch, the weekly podcast that keeps
(00:26):
you up to date on everything you need to know
in the world of nutrition as well as fasting. We
have some new guidelines on the management of constipation. We
have a healthier dip to add to your party platters,
and our listener question is all about a popular supplement
doing the rounds so Leam. Whenever I give a nutrition
talk to groups of people, and I have given a
(00:46):
few recently, so it sort of reminded me of the
common questions and things that come up. And these were
talks I gave to both men and women. You know,
if you give a talk to a female group sometimes
the questions will be quite different. But in both our
situations where I spoke, I literally had an equal number
of male and female audience, which is interesting because you
do have to tailor it a little bit, a little
(01:07):
bit less hormones and a little bit more performance. And
one of the most common questions I'm always asking my
talks is about fasting, intermitt and fasting, And inevitably I'll
have someone who is commenting that, even though I might
talk about the importance of protein at breakfast or having
a long overnight period without food, inevitably someone will say,
I don't eat until lunchtime because I regularly fast. And
(01:29):
certainly how long would we say fasting has been around
in the world of nutrition, I'd say about ten or
fifteen years. I reckon it came out around twenty twelve,
And of course the initial information we had on fasting
will actually, first of all, we'd known for several many
years that fasting or restricted calorie intakes for primates in particular,
did lead to longer lifespan, so that wasn't new. And
(01:52):
then we had the five and two that came out
where it encouraged two low calorie days each week to
basic reset metabolism. And then not long after that, we
had a slew of diet books following suit, you know,
trying to flog the latest diet research in a best
selling book and The sixteen to eight really evolved as
(02:13):
an alternative to the five to two, which stated if
you sort of extended the overnight fast and didn't eat
till later in the day, there were metabolic benefits from
a calorie perspective. So in our world, which is all
about trends, it went crazy for several years, everyone swiming
out how good it is that they feel more in
control of their appetite. Skipping breakfast means they were having
(02:34):
less carbohydrate. It was supporting weight loss. Now I am
torn with fasting because what my experience is is that
people do convenient fasting for you. So they say they're fasting,
but they'll still have a cheeky coffee, or they will
not eat until twelve or two, but then over it
all afternoon. Because I want to be clear that really
(02:56):
when it comes to the key metabolic benefits, it's lower
calorie diets that really basically shock the cell into metabolic efficiency.
And I'm not talking about three or four day fast
where people only drink water. I'm not even talking about
twenty four hour fast. I'm talking about specific low calorie
days where you might have an egg, hard boiled egg
(03:17):
or two for breakfast. A salad for lunch and some
prawns and veggies for dinner. Very low intakes five six
hundred calories for brief periods of time are shown to
have metabolic benefits. The sixteen eight I think is convenient
dieting for you, because really, if you are going to
adopt an extended overnight fast, the best time to do
it is in the second half of the day, where
(03:39):
you would have your final meal at four or six
o'clock and then didn't eat until nine or ten in
the morning, or even better, stopped eating at four o'clock
and then eight again at eight, so you're really then
linking into circadian rhythm. So in my clinical experience with it,
even though there is research studies to show some metabolic benefits,
which might be improvements in insulin or fuss in glucose
(04:00):
or cholesterol, when it specifically comes to weight control, I
don't find it helpful because I think, particularly for women,
we miss the metabolic benefit that comes with eating early
in the day. And as I've always argued, when it
comes to low calorie diets, my women need their energy,
they need their calories, and if they've had a long
history of dieting, the worst thing I want to do
(04:20):
is encourage them to eat very few calories. It tends
to promote obsession with food, It tends to lead to
afternoon binging and over eating later in the day, and
really promotes the diet culture that you and I would
say never works long term and just puts people in
a constant cycle of being on and off a regime.
In saying that, if I've got a client who is
well adjusted with their food intake and they are interested
(04:43):
in longevity, and they really do want to have either
a long overnight fast where they might do a twelve
fourteen sixteen hours without food, or a low calorie day,
so they really might not go as low as five
six hundred calories, but might really limit intake on a
day of the week, particularly after a week when we
tend to overindulge. I don't have a problem with it,
but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. And if I've
(05:05):
had a client who's had I said, had a long
history of dieting, has insulin or hormone issues, is perimenopausal,
I certainly don't encourage it. Because I know there's been
more and more evidence in sort of the popular podcast
doing the rounds people like Stacy Simms who are arguing
that really it's not good for women to be delaying
the first meal of the day or training even faster,
(05:25):
because it tends to not benefit us metabolically in the
same way that men may get that given they've got
more muscle mass and are not subject to the hormonal
changes of peri and postmenopause, or even pregnancy and breastfeeding,
which impacts our ability to metabolize our body fat effectively
and efficiently. So my position is I use it occasionally
in those areas. I think I've had one or two
(05:48):
clients in my entire career who have adopted the five
two successfully. One was a lawyer who really was very
limited activity wise because of her job, and she didn't
actually mind having a low calorie day. She actually found
it helpful to minimize her destruction of food. But that's
one client out of hundreds, if not thousands, I've seen
(06:10):
in my twenty five year career for whom it worked
and didn't do more abnormal metabolic damage. But it doesn't
lead to ten kilo weight losses. It might be a
kilo every month. It just is a gradual sort of
reprogramming I find of metabolism if you find someone to
do it properly. But most people I do, creep over
into much higher intakes, and that is not the original
(06:30):
five two. So they might start with the best of intentions,
have a coffee, a salad, and then they might have
a few crackers and another coffee, and five six hundred
calories very quickly becomes eight hundred one thousand, and you'd
argue that you're not really doing it either. So yeah,
that's my position on it. And when I do a
talk and someone says that they don't need until lunchtime,
what I will always say is if that is working
(06:52):
for you. So I had a lady in my talk
who was Brazilian, very slim, very relatively young. I'd say,
you know, thirty forty, And she said to me that
she finds that she eats her first meal at twelve
and then she eats her lunch at three or four
and her dinner at sort of seven eight, and that
worked for her. And I said, there's always individual differences
in this. It's not a one size fits all model.
(07:13):
If you are healthy, if you have your energy, if
you don't have any negative issues, if you're happy with
your weight and that eating model works for you, I
would never change it. But if I've got someone who
is trying to get the cravings under control, finds that
they're over eating at night, does have metabolic issues, is
struggling with energy, they're the people that I find that
it's more negative than positive. And often people aren't really fasting.
(07:36):
They think they are, but they're still having tea or coffee,
which is of course not fasting. It would have to
be black tea black coffee to be a true fast
and get those metabolic benefits. So I know you spoke
to Stacy Simms on your Land World Nutrition Podcasts, which
is a very in depth nutrition podcast for anyone who
wants to extend what you hear on the nutrition couch.
I know you've done a couple of interviews recently with
(07:58):
hormone health and metabolic health. I'm right in what I
said about Stacy, wasn't it. She had fairly firm views
on that.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. Basically, hope you as anyone who is exercising or
training or looking for a performance based benefit should not
be fasting. And that's mostly women. And if you look
at a lot of the research, unfortunately most of the
research is in men, and most of the research, if
it is in women, it's in a lot younger women,
because it's really hard to get research people who are
women who are going through pregnancy, who are postpartum. And
(08:25):
this is particularly she works a lot with athletes. She's saying,
a lot of these athletes, if they're in those childbearing
or hormonal years, you're not really going to pull them
into a research study. Most of that research is done
on men or a lot younger women. So she was
basically saying, if the goal is to perform, you need
to fuel regularly, and a lot of my clients I
don't recommend fasting for because they are exercising in the morning.
(08:45):
I'm certainly a morning exerciser. If I don't get my
session done in the morning, there's a ninety five percent
chance it's not going to happen for the rest of
the day. I just have to do it in the morning.
If not, the day just gets away from me. I
don't do it. I don't enjoy afternoon exercise. And having
said that, if the goal is to exercise or to train,
you want to be refueling your body and refueling your muscles,
and you can't do that if I'm going to exercise
(09:06):
at six am and then eat my first meal at midday,
you can't refuel and replenish your body effectively if you're fasting.
So from that perspective alone, I don't like most of
my ladies fasting because I want them to train, not exercise,
and I want them to get some performance based benefits
out of those sessions. Get stronger, get fitter, get faster,
build some lean muscle mass, And it's really difficult to
(09:27):
do that if you're fasting for half the day and
you're not eating proper meals. It's really hard to get
all of your required nutrition in just kind of two
three solid meals of the day if it's at back
ended eating. And we do know that larger meals at
nighttime can sometimes impact sleep, impact digestion, and there is
a little bit of research around that longevity and digestive
health that it's not even a huge fast, like sometimes
(09:48):
just extending the overnight fast twelve hours can be beneficial
as well. And I want to argue that most healthy
women should probably be having twelve hours between dinner and
lunch breakfast the next morning anyway, but most of us
are real, we're eating later at seven or eight at night.
Then we're snacking until maybe, I don't know, eight thirty nine,
we've had some dessert. Then we're waking up and we're
eating just because just because you know it's breakfast, we're eating,
(10:10):
or we think we should have something pre workout or
post work or et cetera. So there is a bit
of research around that kind of twelve hours. So your
last meal at six or seven o'clock, the next meal
of the morning shouldn't really be till sort of that
seven or eight o'clock to give your body that extended fast,
which may have some longevities, soular health benefits, gut heals,
digestive benefits as well, So it doesn't have to be
(10:31):
anything crazy. Twelve to fourteen hours maybe enough. But if
you are a female, particularly going through those perimenopausal years,
and particularly who is training pretty heavily, Like if you're
off to a yoga you're going to walk the dog,
you can fast. It's probably fine, But if you are
doing any form of strength or conditioning type or intense
kind of workout, you probably do want to feel a
(10:52):
little bit beforehand. Just a small amount of carbo protein
and then have a proper balanced breakfast when you finish
that workout, and then some new research coming through about that.
A lot of the exercise and hormonal experts such as
Stacy Simms, agree with that trend of thought as well true.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And I would also say that I would never tell
a client to not eat if they were hungry. So,
for example, just say you've got into a routine of
doing a longer fast once a week, so you thought,
right after a Saturday night dinner out or Sunday lunch,
I'm going to extend the fast because I've eaten a lot.
If my client was up at eight or nine o'clock
and starving, I wouldn't say don't eat and ignore that hunger.
(11:26):
So I think it can be a really useful tool
to get back in touch with hunger, particularly when we
do overeat at times and coming into the Christmas period
where there are celebrations and feasting, and you know, you
want to be able to go, and that's what we
work hard for to go and enjoy good food with
friends and family. We're certainly not encouraging people to not
ever indulge. That's not the message of the nutrition couch
More it's having strategies to support health and well being
(11:50):
and longevity even though we do have those eating occasions.
So I would say use it as an opportunity to
reset hunger when you have had heavier meals or celebration.
But if you then wake up and do a walk
on Sunday morning and are hungry by eight thirty, I
would say, definitely feel your body. I would never override
extreme hunger with fasting just to try and get a
metabolic benefit. So that's a sign your body is burning
(12:12):
your food well and you need nutrients, so ride off that.
And if anything, for most of us, it's ending the
eating occasion earlier most nights and making sure you're getting
that decent break without food, because that's where most of
us get a little bit wrong. We're happy to snack
until eight or nine ten at night and then wonder
why we're not hungry for breakfast.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, exactly, And I'm just sad to your point you
were saying, sometimes you get questions around like extended you know,
water fast, and these are multiple days. Like I follow
a big influencer at the moment. She's a mummy blogger
and she's trying to do a two three day extended
just water fast and if I'm being honest, I have
not seen enough research to support that. And when I
think when I look at someone's diet quality overall, there's
so many things that I would change first rather than
(12:51):
just putting them through like an extended water fast like
where most Australians are probably not eating enough vegetables, We're
not sleeping enough, we're scrolling too much, we're not training efficiently.
I'm not eating enough vegetables and not eating enough whole grains.
It's just there's so much wrong with the diet before
even adding something like that, which is pretty extreme into
the mix. And a lot of people are saying that,
you know there's XYSN benefits, but if I'm being honest,
(13:11):
I haven't actually seen the research papers to really support this,
And in particular, even if there are small papers, it
might be in animal based studies, but it's certainly not
in hormonal females within that thirty forty fifty year age group.
So the extended fasting, particularly water fasting, is a hard
no from me. As I said, I've had clients that
enjoy fasting, that don't mind it, but it's often a
few days a week or off the back of a
(13:32):
heavier weekend. It's not seven days a week. It's not
something they actually do long term. So I'm not a
huge yeah fanomt.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I'll be very surprised if we ever see that research
because I think it's that whole idea that you're being
virtuous if you do it. But to me, there's not
any evidence for just having water. But what I was
going to also say is that if for any of
one listening who has stomach problems constipation gas, one of
the worst things you can do for that is not
eat in the morning, because that's one where we tend
to get our fiber rich food, whole grain bread, cereal,
(14:01):
which gets the gut going, and because of circadian rhythm programming,
our digestive system is programmed to process food in the day.
So if you're one of the many females listening who
have tummy problems and you feel constipation bloating, don't go
to the bathroom. Is regularly one of the worst things
you can do is delay that first meal because naturally
it will impact metabolism and also your dietary fiber intake,
(14:22):
which leads, of course to our second point of chat
today which is all about constipation, and I bring to
the chair our leading expert in gut health, Le Edward.
Take the floor, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I'll take it away. So there's been a lot of
media coverage around these new constipation guidelines from the BDA.
So for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what that is,
it's the British Dietetic Association and a couple of about
a month ago or so, they published these new guidelines
on chronic long term constipation and it's had a lot
of media press around it because one thing in particular,
(14:54):
which we'll go into admit it is QII frits, which
have been trending quite a lot, and i'd probably say
a good s. Twelve months ago we saw some new
research around Kiu fruits and constipation and there was a
big trend on Instagram Everyone's eating their Kiwi fruits and
I've seen it drop off a little bit lately. But
I find it very interesting that these have actually been
written into to my knowledge, the first clinical guidelines that
(15:15):
actually specifically say qi fruit, not just you know, fruit
or fiber. So it's really really interesting and it marks
a bit of a shift, particularly in guidelines. They're very conservative,
as they need to be because they're making recommendations for
the general population. They don't really ever recommend supplements or
really specific things. So these guidelines are kind of they're
(15:36):
very revolutionary, you know, They're very good and I was
certainly I was really enjoying reading through them because it
really had specific things that people could do if they
were someone that suffered from chronic constipation. So what the
guidelines looked at. The researchers examined I think seventy five
clinical trials to come up with some recommendations around foods
and drinks and supplements that people with chronic constipation could
(15:58):
use to helpfully hope them help them out. Now, I
must say that some of the quality of these trials
weren't great, Like the quality of the seventy five clinical
trials varied quite a lot. So basically what they did
is they just came up with a consensus based on
the quality of the data. So what the guidelines currently recommend.
These new guidelines for chronic constipation in adults, One of
the first recommendations was to eat two to three Kiwi
(16:21):
fruits per day for at least four weeks. You could
choose either the green or gold varieties. You could eat
the skin if you're into that furry qwi skin. If
you didn't, you were still going to get some benefit
from it anyway, but you would probably get more benefit
if you were to eat the skin as well. So
do what you want with that, because why they recommend
quu fruit besides the fiber in it, The type of
(16:43):
fiber in kufruit swells like the water, so it helps
to kind of soften the stools, and it may stimulate
things like mucus production and the gut, which can help
to soften stools, which is obviously really helpful in chronic constipation.
And kiwifruit also contains a really special enzyme called actinidin,
and that enzyme also helps to simulate the gut as well,
so again being quite beneficial for constipation. Now, the other
(17:05):
one that I find was really important was they also
recommended mineral rich water, so water with a higher concentration
of magnesium and sulfate, because that appeared to soften the
stool and of course help with that increased bower frequency.
So what they wanted people drinking was about half a
liter up to one and a half liters of mineral
rich water two to six weeks. Basically, so a lot
(17:27):
of these recommendations, they were saying you had to do
it pretty consistently, ie daily for at least four weeks,
if not eight weeks. The third one, which we love,
Zuzi because where massive fans of magnesium, was to consider
a magnesium oxidize supplement. I don't like magnesium oxide as
a form of magnesium. I much prefer magnesium citrate for
(17:48):
chronic constipation. So they're saying, consider a magnesium supplement about
one and a half grams a day for at least
four weeks under medical supervision is really important. You should
never just randomly take any supplements without first consulting healthcare professional,
and magnesium sulfments have been shown to be really effective
in terms of increasing stool frequency and helping to soften
the stool as well. Then the fourth guideline they recommended,
(18:10):
which I found so random.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in
my life.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The last one, wait for this was eating rye bread,
which I was like, okay, that kind of makes sense,
Like swap your white bread to rye bread. Guess how
many pieces a day? Susie.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I know, I just read it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Six eight slices a day, six two slices for three weeks.
He was eating eight slices of rye bread every single
day for three weeks.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So that one last time, I like, hmmm, you go
to because you explode. That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Anyway, the magnesium is particular board QUI fruits on board
mineral which water yep can do rye bread. I'm gonna
park that one over there. If you typically will have
a couple of slices of bread for breakfast, maybe replies
that with some rye, just a dense whole grain bread.
I think it's going to do you the same benefit.
But six to eight slices of rye bread like no
wonder dieticians get a bad about. But the only thing
I can say, like you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Know, researchers that is research is not being practical, just
about what people are. So it's not pretty light. You know,
it's actually really hard to even find rye bread.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, you can get a potal and a ryce old
if you got a nice market or fourteen dollars, not exactly.
And if you're eating six or eights lasses a day,
you're gonna need like four lobes a week. It's the other.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Problem, and you were so enormous.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So that was the four recommendations in the guidelines. Take
it as you will. Now. What has changed I also
found quite interesting was that traditionally, dieticians and researching guidelines
has always recommended a really high fiber diet, and that
basically means twenty five to thirty grams plus of fiber
a day. Now, the researcher basically saying, out of those
(19:42):
seventy five clinical trials that they looked through, they only
found one that showed a benefit of a really high
fiber diet. So they weren't recommending don't eat fiber, but
they were basically just saying, we don't actually recommend a
really high fiber diet for constipation anymore. Because I've certainly
had clients who have been eating up with a thirty
five forty grams of fiber and they still have terrible constipation.
(20:03):
And once we've started adding in a few things like supplements,
a few diet tweaks without worrying about the overall fiber load,
that has actually really helped their chronic constipation resolve far
more than just eating more and more and more and
more fiber, because we do know that when you're chronically constipated,
things aren't moving through properly. You get a lot more
blocked up, a lot more blowed to a lot more gassy.
If you just keep adding more fiber on top of
(20:24):
that and things aren't moving through, you're just compounding the issue.
So that was one really important point that had changed
in the clinical guidelines was that they don't recommend a
super high fiber diet anymore. They just emphasized basically whole
foods and then also the things I mentioned before, the
kili fruit, the magnese in supplements, the ridiculous amount of
rye bread, and the mineral rich water as well. So
(20:46):
just really really interesting that this is, to my knowledge,
the first guidelines that have really been specific around an
exact type of food and also an exact type of supplement,
because I haven't seen that before in clinical guidelines, have you, SUSI.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Certainly a little bit random, because I also know that
it's very unusual to be highlighting one specific food like
a kiwi. Now, yes, there's a small amount of evidence
for kiwi, but it's not it's fairly new. So I
feel like this is trying to you know, fit in
with the zone of modern nutrition advice more than anything,
because you know, I also think that recom saying or
(21:21):
not super high fiber, like that's a confusing message in itself,
like there are other benefits for digestive health to have
a high fiber diet. So yeah, I think it was
really novel and interesting. I think it's certainly worth listeners
who have trouble with their tummy trying the Kiwi fruit,
trying the magnesium. You know, when we formulated our magnesium restore,
one of the key things was not only to aid sleep,
(21:42):
but also to support digestive health because people do find
that it helps them go to the bathroom each day.
So I think these are quite natural solutions for things
rather than just going super high with the fiber. And yeah,
the only one I'm like you that I think, come on,
the rye bred's obscure and six to eight day is
hardly feasible, So yeah, but definitely worth a try. And
I know myself with my clients, there areas that I'll
(22:03):
try with first for digestive health. And yeah, just like
to be on the cutting edge of what's going on
nutritionally out there.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I will say quickly though, I have had quite
a few clients who have taken kiwi and they have found.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
It to be very effective.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I do think that that is worth a trial,
and it's probably a really easy thing to do for
a lot of people. They're not they're not the cheapest
type of fruit, and a lot of people don't like
the furry skin. But I have had a lot of
clients who have found it to be quite effective, but
they have sort of stayed on that longer term, like
they've been taking two key with fruit a day, you know,
for months on and kind of things. So it is
again that consistency that matters. You can't just take it,
(22:36):
you know, three days in a row and then not
take it for three months and help that it resolves
your chronic constipation. It really is a bad consistency.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
And the trouble with that now is they're out going
out of season, so they do become relatively expensive. Personally.
I will also try with clients just a really good
cereal regularly, so whether it's an all brand or a
multi grain week because it's got the mix. Particularly I
like the multi grain. They've got the soluble fiber at
really high levels or in the case of all brand,
the wheat fiber, and also relatively inexpensive because some of
(23:03):
the supplements really start to get up there in prices
if you're trying specific constipation ones, but food first and
with the gut it always works, tends to work best
if you give nutrients as a synergistic effect of those.
So there's some things that our listeners can try. All right,
the am Welet's party season, we've been plattering it up
and long term listeners of the podcast will know that
Leanne and I were devastated and mourned for quite some
(23:24):
time when our capsicum dip or our vegetable dip disappeared
from Audi and Coals. It really changed the nature of
our platters for quite some time, and there was a
morning period. Now someone suggested we try eggplant dip and
we were just like, that is not the same, Yeah, horrified,
But I found something that's pretty good, Leanne, And this
does feature in our newly released Nutrition Couch Product Guide.
(23:47):
But we've come to back to our friends at Yumi's
who were the original manufacturers of the Mediterranean vegetable dip,
So maybe they have listened to us Lam because this
Yumi's capsicum and roasted cashew is pretty strong nutritionally, and
it's as close as I can get to that in
terms of fat content, because the biggest issue generally with
(24:08):
commercial dips is that the majority of them have a
base of cream, cheese or oil, and hence are very
very high in fat, not the right types of fat
for anyone who is always on the seed oil bandwagon.
Certainly dips can be very rich source of that. And
then if you have dips that are more vegetable, they
don't always taste amazing, you know, like they're pretty bland,
or you know, you've got to have stuff you like
(24:29):
to eat as well. So this Yumis dip which is
available at Coals and wool Worths. In Wolworst it's comes
in the little three pack which I like for push
and control or at Coals. Now, in some cases dips
are the same across brands or no name brands. So
for example, it's entirely possible that Yumis will be manufacturing
(24:50):
for someone like Coals or Woolies, and so the Coals
roast capsicum dip may be the same. That is not
the case in this instance. I checked the Coals roast
caps can dip, which is cheaper. I think the first
ingredient was cream cheese, so not the same. So you
are paying a bit more for a brand like UMIs,
but in this case getting a better quality product. I'll
read the ingredients first, actually, because I think that gives
(25:10):
a better perspective. The first ingredient Land is red capsic
and thirty nine percent, so straight away, if you've got
to dip with a vegetable base, you're on the right track.
Followed by potato, canola oil twelve percent cashew. Now that's
a very high percentage of cashew, and if you've got
CASHU allergies like Land does, you can't have it. But
it's actually a very high level of cashew or nut product.
(25:31):
To improve the nitiational profile, onion, salt, egg, garlic, food acids,
which is a very innocent ingredient, bazil, a little bit
of sugar, tiny amount i'd say, chili pepper, and one
preservative to stop it going bad, as well as mustard.
That is about as clean an ingredient list as you'll
get apart from being pure avocado. So I'll read the
per hundred. Now, perserve is hard because the serving size
(25:53):
I think is twenty grams. Let's be honest, no one's
eating twenty grams of deer. But per hundred grams it's
four point one grams of protein, twenty one grams of carbohydrate,
just over two hundred calories, so pretty good. Al sorry, Yeah,
two hundred calories and nine hundred and thirty two kilodels
very low saturated fatly and only one point one grams,
which is which is a good thing. Whereas the cream
(26:15):
cheese dips will be higher in fat and high and
saturated fat and then only thirteen point six grams of
fat per hundred so over that ten percent but pretty low.
Most commercial dips are twenty thirty even up to fifty
percent fat for the pesto type dips. So to me,
this is a very good product. If you can stick
to a tablespoon or two, you're really looking at at
(26:38):
less than one hundred calories, quite insignificant, very little fat.
You're getting some whole food. It tastes good. That's the
other thing, because I think in the recent weeksly and
we've been a bit guilty of recommending products we hadn't
necessarily tried, and we got some very strong feedback it
wasn't great. A couple of products. I've tried this and
always included on my platters now and I can say,
and I've had it with you as well, it's it's
(27:00):
a really good one, So top marks from us. I'm
giving it four out of five and it's a good
addition to your party platters this summer holidays.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I will say that tastes is a personal preference though,
because we've had a few people being like, oh, I
didn't like that fetter, Oh I didn't like that soup.
You didn't like it, but we did like I love
that soup. I have it regularly, whereas you know, one
or two people write in and say, oh, that wasn't nice.
Taste is a very personal preference. The heins was the
green Heinz one really strong products.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
So she said, yeah, I like that all the time.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
But again, we all have different, you know, different taste palts.
So what one might like, someone else might not. That's fine,
But yeah, I like this as well. I bought it
by accident once. I think a friend brought it over
and Mia has a very severe cashew not allergy, so
me and my friend hit in the kitchen eating it.
And the kids were playing, and then I haven't been
able to buy it since, but it was very tasty
and I would definitely recommend it. It's gooden free and
dairy free as well for all of our non nut
(27:51):
allergy listeners. And the other thing is when you were
reading out the nutritional sushi that was per one hundred grams,
that's half a tub. Like I probably wouldn't eat half
a tub of dip amari to quarter or you know,
two three tablespoons, but that's a lot. Half a tub
of dip is a lot. And so they've really strong
nutritionals for half that half that amount, and I think
a lot of people that it's on a platter you
would eat far less of that. You've also got your majistics,
(28:12):
your crack as, your cheese, et cetera. So I think
it's a really strong product nutrition lyne. I really like
UMIs as a brand overall. I think the ingredients in
most of their depths are really really solid. So I
think if you're in the dip section of they're on sale,
you can't go too wrong with the majority of their brand.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, very good. I believe they've been bought by honests,
but remain a fairly strong company internally to date. What
I was going to say about platter is actually and
something that I do because I love a platter. We
love a platter. I don't ever put the whole lot
of dip or cheese out. I go, I make them
last twice. Not because I'm being overly budget friendly. It's
not that. It's more the more you put out, the
(28:49):
more you eat of that kind of food. So if
I put the whole container of dip or the whole
block of cheese out, everyone will inevitably eat it. If
I put half, they only eat that. So I just
think it's a way to control portions of food that
does tend to be a bit higher in fat. So
you can definitely I sort of spoon it out and
put it into a smaller container. And the same with
the cheese. I'll just put half the round or half,
(29:09):
and you know, I can always add the rest out
if I need, But in more cases than not, after
a few people are done and you sort of don't
need to add that extra calorie load in, particularly with
higher fat cheeses. So that's a little trick coming into
party season.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
But let's be honest, it's also better on the budget
because it's expensive to buy all of the cheese and
the dips and the olives and the nice crackers like
a cheese but I can cost you thirty fifty dollars
if you're buying really nice stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I was in the butcher the other day and this
late I was buying marrowbones for taco and she had
these cheeses. They were like, it was one hundred dollars
worth of cheese, and I was like, you're doing a
nice platter. Like I was like, you can easily spend
thirty would be cheap ads a single of breeze like
ten bucks, Like you know, really, you can spend a
(29:54):
lot of money and they're delicious, but definitely if you
can make them go that little bit further, because you're
going to waste it because once it's been our for
a few hours, you can't really use it again and
if people aren't eating it, So definitely you can sort
of control consumption by limiting exposure to portions. Yeah, all right,
and you want to wrap us up with our listener question.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
All right, let's have a look around you than me.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
It's mine, but I took over your dip section. Sorry,
I was being so greedy. Sorry, I got excited. Burberine, berberine, berberine.
So we've covered berberine before and I am aware of that,
but it's just really doing the rounds at the moment
as a super supplement. And I saw another major supplement
company advertising a metabolic health supplement and I thought, Oh,
you're making a lot of claims there that I don't
(30:39):
believe there's data to support, so we might review that
without getting ourselves sued. I think generally, when you say
supplements claiming to save the world, if it's too good
to be true, it usually is. If the answer to health, longevity,
glucose control, weight loss was in a single capsule, the
pharmaceutical companies would have made it years ago. It's taken
(31:01):
them this long to make GOP medications, which are actually
quite a basic concept. So I think it's too good
to whichreat usually is, and that is certainly my experience
with berberine. Berberine is a plant based supplement that has
been argued to help control blood glucose levels. There is
a smidge of evidence for this. I have had no
clinical experience with positive outcomes with berberine. I've taken it
(31:24):
just out of interest. Nothing. I had a client with
severe PCOS who really wanted to avoid medication took it
at a high dose. Nothing. I see no evidence for
it or I have had no experience to suggest it's helpful.
I think there are far better things you can do
for blood glucose control, like going for a walk after meals,
like food sequencing where you eat your protein veggies first
(31:45):
and then your carbohydrates. Or if you really have blood
glucose control issues, you're probably better to go on met
forman because it's a very effective medication with very few
side effects and very beneficial for sell health long term.
So yeah, I'm not a fan, and I know it's
doing the rounds on TikTok and things like that, but
I can tell you firsthand there's not evidence for it.
(32:06):
In my clinical experience. It doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
It's very limited. When I dove into the evidence as well,
people touted as like the natural osen pick, but we
need to be really clean nothing.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
It is nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
And the clinical level of and that research.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Is nothing like it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And the responses that you get at a clinical level
and nothing like that either. And you really do need
to use it at quite a high dose. So the
research is around one to one and a half grams
a day, which in some people can actually have side
effects like nausea, constipation, diarrhea, And that's sort of the
main downside of people taking something like, you know, another
medication for blood sugar control, because they're like, oh, I
(32:40):
don't want to have the nausea or same thing with
ozen pick, like I don't want the side effects. High
dose of berberine, which is the effective clinical dose, is
very likely to give you some of those side effects
as well. But like you, I've had a handful of
clients on it. Most didn't report anything. I did ad
one client who really liked it, and she said that
it controlled hunger more than anything, like she just felt
she wasn't as hungry all day long. And then she
stops it, she finds the hunker comes back. But again,
(33:03):
it had nothing to really do with blood sugar control
and insulince sensitivity, which is why a lot of people
are actually using it. So I don't think it's going
to hurt most people, but I do think you have
to take the right amount for it to be effective,
and I think, like most things, people take a couple
of you know, for a couple of days, forget for
a couple of days. Like they just take it sperotically
in the lowest dose possible, and it's really not going
to do much. So if you're going to do it,
(33:24):
give it a red hot crack, take the effective dose
and take it for a good you know, eight to
twelve weeks, and really make sure it's doing something. Go
and get your blood sugar is measured at the doctor.
Go get your HBO and C and compare that to
your last set of bloods to actually see if it's
actually doing anything. If not, it's just a waste of money.
At the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
If it was that effective, Big Farmer would have claimed
it years ago and sold it under script like That's
the other thing, that's the cynical view of it. Big
Farmer would have identified her as something that absolutely controlled
levels and put a patent on it. So that's another
reason I believe it. It isn't clinically proven. I just
want to go back to oz and peak. What GLP
medication do is quite serious. Not only did they delay
(34:03):
gastric emptying, but they control some of the appetite control
hormones in the digestive tract and that also increases the
production of insulin in the pancreas. These are serious drugs
now for people who need them, they can be extremely effective,
but they are not to be sneezed at, Like, you
cannot compare anything to a GOLP. It's not the same thing.
I see it all the time, you know, on those
(34:24):
they say this recipe is the same, These oats are
the same as golp or osep. It's complete bs and
it's completely misleading because, for example, berberine or say a
met formum, which is an oral medication, they work on
the cell in a very gentle way. In the case
of a GOLP, they are working on an organ and
(34:45):
completely changing medtabolism. So these are serious medications and should
be talked about as such, and we should never be
comparing a food to the effect of a serious medication
like that. So let's be very very clear. You cannot
mimic ozen peak from dietary changes or even oral medication.
At this point, they are in the process of developing
(35:07):
and releasing oral versions of GLP medications, but to date
these are not available. It's a rant. We've got a
lot of feedback about our rant. Everyone loved it. We
have to rent more often positive, so yeah, that also
annoys me. You cannot be talking about serious medications like that,
so that's a little rant all rightly. Well, that brings
(35:28):
us to the end of the nutrition catch for another week.
Please keep telling your friends about us, and if you
haven't seen our supplement range designed by dieticians, that's our
new hydrate mix especially for summer. And you can learn
all about our evidence based supplement range which have clinical
evidence behind them to support the various outcomes we're promoting.
So we'll catch you next week for our regular episode drop.
(35:48):
Thanks for listening. At you next week.
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