Q) Is the Harcombe Diet OK for someone with high cholesterol?
A) Wow – there is almost a book’s worth to answer this question – I’ll try to give the headlines:
0) There’s a point before even getting to point (1), which is that we don’t actually have cholesterol freely floating around in our blood. Hence it [...]

Whilst not a Frequently Asked Question, this is a great question from Helena – one of my friends and fellow researchers:
Q) “I read that many “bad” foods like potatoes, rice, corn, beans, green bananas have quite a lot of starch that passes through your body. It does this after the food is cooked and when [...]

Q) If we avoid dairy products in Phase 1, how is NLY OK?
A) Great Q on the dairy/Natural Live Yoghurt – I can’t believe I haven’t had that one before!
Phase 1 came about by looking at the ‘perfect diets’ for Candida, Food Intolerance and Hypoglycaemia and then trying to design a diet that would be [...]

Q) Can I have fruit teas in Phase 1?
A) Yes – I just group all such things under ‘herbal teas’ – so everything from peppermint to chamomile to rosehip, blackcurrent, raspberry and vanilla – any such teas are absolutely fine in any phase of the diet. They always smell better than they taste I find!
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Q) Can I have Tahini?
A) Tahini is a sesame seed paste. I’ve checked my nutrition composition database and it only lists Tahini in a sesame butter form (it must be butter based, therefore).
It lists 100g of tahini as containing 53g fat and 22g carb (protein is 17g and the rest is water), so it mixes [...]

Q) Can I eat avocados?
A) In Phase 1, no, because an avocado is a fruit.
In Phase 2, in a 150g portion of avocado, there are 23g of fat and 11g of carbohydrate. Avocados are, therefore, higher in fat than carbs, but have quite high levels of both. This means you should eat them [...]

Q) Cutting carbs out of your diet? What will happen if I cut carbs out for a couple of weeks? Have you done it? How did you feel? What were your energy levels like? Concentration? And did you lose any weight? If so, how much?
A) If you cut all carbs out of your diet for [...]

Q) Should I have natural yoghurt with a fat meal or a carb meal?
A) The answer is that if you have a fat meal you can have any kind of natural yoghurt – even full fat Greek yoghurt if you like it (or crème fraiche or fromage frais). With a carb meal you can’t [...]

Q) How can I lose weight for summer time? Tips and advice needed please. I’m 13 years old and about 5′3-5′4 . I weigh about 108 pounds, so I’m not fat or anything, but I’m very untoned and I want to lose at least 10lbs for summer. Any good exercises to tone stomach, bum and [...]

Q) What are transfats and why are they considered so bad?
A) All fats consist of chain-like molecules. In animal fats these chains are very flexible but the molecules in vegetable oils have rigid kinks, which make them less flexible. The animal fats, with the flexible chains, are solid at room temperature. The vegetable oils, with [...]