What happens when you start eating healthy?

**Jonathan** (0:00)
Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health.
The new year feels full of potential. Fresh routines, ambitious plans, and a quiet promise to ourselves. This year will be different. For many of you listening to this podcast, your focus is making lasting changes to your diet, to improve how you feel, how you look, and how many more healthy years you live. But setting big ambitions is easy. Following through is the tricky part. So to give you the biggest boost on achieving this year's resolutions, we're doing something we've never done before. We're bringing on two everyday people who started their journey two years ago to show you what's possible. Because once you can see the goal, it's much easier to score. In today's episode, I'm joined by Becky Tucker and Mark Payne, two individuals we found by putting out a call to our community. Each of them has spent the past two years consistently putting ZOE nutrition principles into practice through busy seasons, stressful weeks, celebrations, setbacks, life. And somewhere along the way, both of them hit a moment where everything changed. Where becoming people who simply eat well became part of their identity. In this conversation, we'll learn how they stayed motivated and on track, and the lessons learned and strategies used to work for them, and the unexpected ways that everything changed. If you're trying to make a change this year or trying to stay committed to one, perhaps today's episode could be the spark you need. And we're not doing this alone. In our fully packed studio today are Professor Tim Spector and Professor Sarah Berry, two of the world's leading experts on gut health and nutrition science. Here to explain the science behind Becky and Mark's success, and how ZOE's principles can support long-term health in the real world. Becky and Mark, happy new year, and thank you both for joining me today.

**Becky Tucker** (2:11)
Thank you.

**Sarah Berry** (2:11)
Pleasure to be here.

**Jonathan** (2:13)
And Sarah and Tim, thanks for being here, and I hope you didn't overindulge last night.

**Sarah Berry** (2:17)
Oh, I'm such a good girl, Jonathan. It's Tim that was on the tequilas, far too many.

**Tim Spector** (2:21)
Shouldn't be telling secrets.

**Jonathan** (2:24)
So Becky and Mark, I think you know this, but we have a tradition here at ZOE on the podcast where we always start with a quick fire round of questions. And we ask you to give us a yes or a no or one sentence answer if you have to. You willing to give it a go?

**Becky Tucker** (2:39)
Definitely.

**Mark Payne** (2:40)
Sure.

**Jonathan** (2:41)
All right. Becky, in your experience, do diet plans work?

**Becky Tucker** (2:48)
Yes and no. They work in the short term and then they absolutely do not.

**Jonathan** (2:53)
Mark, can you transform how you feel by changing what you eat?

**Mark Payne** (2:58)
Yes.

**Jonathan** (2:59)
Tim, to lose weight, should you count calories?

**Tim Spector** (3:03)
Absolutely not.

**Jonathan** (3:06)
Sarah, can food affect your mood?

**Sarah Berry** (3:09)
Absolutely. Yes.

**Jonathan** (3:12)
Mark, is it possible to eat healthily without feeling restricted?

**Mark Payne** (3:16)
Yes.

**Jonathan** (3:18)
Mark and Becky, to both of you, what's one belief about health or food you no longer hold?

**Becky Tucker** (3:24)
I previously thought that what we were being told by big food companies was correct, and I no longer believe that.

**Mark Payne** (3:33)
I would say that fat is not bad. Some is, some's good, some's in the middle. That was a big revelation for me.

**Jonathan** (3:41)
Becky and Mark, thank you both so much for coming in. We always have all of these scientists on the show, but we thought it would be great on New Year's Day to do something a little different and almost turn it around, because so many listeners today are embarking on like a change. They've made some sort of resolution. This is like day one of trying to do it. And we thought it would be really great actually to have two people who've been on a health journey with changing their diet that you've sustained for a few years now to share what works and the pitfalls and also to recognize that it's not an easy thing to make these habit changes. And you've both tried a lot of things in the past as well. So first of all, Becky, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

**Becky Tucker** (4:26)
Yeah, sure. So I'm Becky and I live in Poole in Dorset. So nice sunny location right by the beach, which is really lovely too. Good for well-being, good for health. And on January the 1st, 2023, I joined the queue to become a ZOE member. At that time, that you had to kind of put your name down and get your space.