Top 5 FAQ’s

The “Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight: The Harcombe Diet” book contains more than 100 Questions & Answers – these have been carefully compiled to be exactly the questions to which you’re looking for an answer.

You can always join our wonderfully friendly on-line support club to ask your own questions freely and/or to get motivation and support all along your journey to great health and natural weight.

Here are the Top 5 most Frequently Asked Questions (on Sweeteners, Yoghurt, Avocados, Soya Milk and Sweet Potatoes):

Q1)     Can I have sweeteners/sugar substitutes?

A1)    My advice would be not to eat artificial sweeteners because this book is all about a) eating naturally and b) getting rid of cravings. Let us look at each of these two points:

a) I can’t see how anything artificial fits in with natural, healthy eating. Some sweeteners have been banned. Some should be banned – e.g. Aspartame (brand names include NutraSweet, Equal and Canderel). We may discover others to be harmful, in time. We can be confident that sweeteners have no positive impact on our health and that we have no physiological need for them, (because they have no nutrients – just like sugar).

b) The second key thing is that we are trying to get rid of cravings and the most common cravings are for sweet foods, whether as a result of Candida, Food Intolerance, Hypoglycaemia, or all three. If you continue to feed your body artificially sweet things, you will continue to want artificially sweet things and the cravings won’t disappear.

I have also found compelling evidence in obesity journals that sweeteners have much the same impact on the body and insulin mechanism as sugar – the body can’t tell the difference and so releases insulin unnecessarily.

If you absolutely insist on keeping your sweet tooth fed, one of the ‘least bad’ alternatives is something called Fructooligosaccharide (FOS). This is a non-digestible, soluble-fibre carbohydrate that is claimed to support the growth of good bacteria in our guts (I have no evidence for or against this). You can buy it in health food shops and sprinkle it on porridge, or other cereal, if you really long for something sweet. It turns into a chewy, toffee like substance in your mouth.

Q2)    Should I have natural yoghurt with a fat meal or a carb meal?

A2)    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 would need to have (very) low fat natural yoghurt /crème fraiche/fromage frais. This is why you can have skimmed milk with cereal, as the milk is so low fat it is OK to have with the carb. Not mixing fats and carbs takes a bit of effort, but it is so worth it, as this ‘rule’ really impacts weight loss.

If you want something with yoghurt for dessert, the one fruit that you can have after meals is berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries etc. Berries are so low in carbohydrate that they can be eaten with fat meals and they also don’t cause bloating after eating other foods.

Q3)    Can I eat avocados?

A3)    In Phase 1, no, because an avocado is a fruit.

In Phase 2, in a 100g portion of avocado, there are 15g of fat and 9g of carbohydrate. Avocados are, therefore, higher in fat than carbs, but have quite high levels of both. This means you should eat them in moderation in Phase 2 and have them as part of a fat meal on the occasions when you do have them.

In Phase 3, they are a healthy cheat. There are some great nutrients in avocados – they are one of two fruits with a fat content (the other being olives) and therefore have some useful fat soluble vitamins – vitamin E especially.

Q4) Can I have soya milk?

A4) Ideally no. The concern I have with soy(a) milk is much more about health, than weight. It is made by soaking dry soybeans and grinding them with water. Soybeans are one of the biotech crops, which have been genetically modified. More than 60% of processed foods contain soy(a) in some form – it can be found in anything from processed cheese to pet food or from noodles to hydrogenated oils. Soy(a) in its various forms doesn’t pass the basic ‘real food’ rule of The Harcombe Diet.

If you are intolerant to milk, either avoid it altogether or try raw (unpasteurised) milk. Many people find that they can tolerate milk that hasn’t been ‘food processed’ at all. Try milk from different animals e.g. sheep’s or goat’s milk, if you think that it may just be cow’s milk that causes you problems.

If you are still keen to consider a non-animal option, almond milk would be better than soy(a) milk and so would rice milk. I would recommend reading the soy information on the www.westonaprice.org website and then you may choose to avoid soy products. You may also like to read Dr Kaayla Daniel’s book: “The whole soy story”.

Q5)    What about sweet potatoes? Are they the same as normal potatoes?

A5) Yes. They should be treated as a staple carb, not as a ‘free vegetable’. Sweet potatoes are actually higher in carbohydrate than normal potatoes (that shouldn’t be a surprise – the word ’sweet’ is a big clue). Sweet potatoes are 95% carb (5% protein) and normal potatoes are 92% carb. They are not allowed in Phase 1, therefore. In Phase 2, they should form the basis of a carb meal and be eaten with other carbs e.g. veggie chilli or with very low fat products, like virtually fat free cottage cheese.

I do get questions like – what about parsnips and other root vegetables? Are they not the same as potatoes? The key points here are:
-    Carrots, for example, contain 10g of carb per 100g and sweet potatoes have got 20g of carb per 100g. So, potatoes are in a different carb league amongst the root vegetables. (Please note that water content makes the numbers look odd. When we say sweet potatoes are 95% carb, we mean, of the bit that is not water, 95% is carb i.e. there are 20g of carb and barely 1g of protein and the rest is water).

-    Parsnips do have almost as high carb content as potatoes, but the quantities in which they are normally consumed are quite different. Whereas a baked potato can be 200g in weight, you are unlikely to serve yourself 200g of parsnips. If you were planning to have this quantity of parsnips, make sure you’re having a carb meal.