A wonderful endorsement from Anna Murphy in The Times – proof that even with a hectic schedule like Anna’s, dominated by travelling and hotel rooms, it’s still possible to look after ourselves by eating the HBD way.
“The first three and a half months of HBD — during which, among other things, you have to weigh your food — were challenging. I travel a lot for my job and felt like a drug dealer packing some small electronic scales in my suitcase. And who in the world travels with their own apple cider vinegar? Anyone signed up to HBD, I learnt when I joined the community on an app called Circle.”
Anna, like me, used to be a fan of skipping breakfast and prolonging her overnight fasts well into the afternoon. But as many of us have learnt, this habit, far from being the health hack that others swear by, stresses our bodies, and spikes cortisol which is the enemy of fat-burning.
“I couldn’t deny how much better I felt and looked. I hadn’t signed up to lose weight, but I lost fat and gained lean muscle. My partner and my sister, who both started not long after me, have shed 12kg and 8.6kg respectively.”
Eating a protein rich breakfast within an hour of waking, HBD style, helps prevent the prolonged cortisol spikes that can lead to inflammation and which sap our immune system’s energy. Chronically high cortisol not only prevents us from burning fat, but may also eventually lead to adrenal exhaustion.
It’s not unusual to discover in midlife that what served us well when we were younger stops working when we reach our 40s or 50s. Life certainly felt easier in our 20s and 30s when we could easily lose weight by simply skipping a few meals.
It turns out that this quote, commonly attributed to Henry Ford, which used to be a favourite of mine, logical though it sounds, is not always true after all: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
In order to counteract the inflammation and the tendency to insulin resistance that often accompanies midlife, we need to return to eating three meals a day. To restore blood sugar control, leptin sensitivity and healthy cortisol levels we need to eat breakfast within an hour of waking, and we need to include protein with each meal. And we must absolutely avoid snacking.
Read more and get started with HBD by ordering The Human Being Diet and joining us in The HBD Club today.