Michael Mosley post the 5:2 diet

Sarah Berry writes about What Michael Mosley has learnt since the 5:2 diet. Mosley seems to recommend eating mostly vegetables, and NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis), which is just a fancy way of telling us to be more active during the day.

He builds in more NEAT by always walking "if it's less than a mile", always taking the stairs "if it's less than seven flights", and walking up escalators.

"You can easily burn 300-400 calories by just doing that," Mosley says, "[it's the] equivalent of running a few miles and is more achievable for many people."

He also does a set of resistance exercises each morning, including press-ups and squats.

Mosley is in favour of fermented foods, but advises that most of the commercial ones offer no benefits:

"There's a lot of rubbish out there at the moment, and all sorts of probiotic drinks being sold," the father-of-four says. "We did an experiment in the series where we compared the yoghurt drinks that claim to promote good bacteria and compared that to having kefir (a fermented milk drink). The yoghurt made no difference whatsoever ... we couldn't detect any difference ... but the kefir did make quite a big difference."

He adds: "There's such a big difference between the ones you buy, like sauerkraut - out of a jar and the homemade stuff. We tested sauerkraut - it didn't taste great - and the supermarket version had nothing living in it at all. Whereas the homemade version was absolutely rife with bacteria. I've been making some at home myself and ... particularly kefir is really easy to make."

He also recommends a Mediterranean diet:

"One of the main things is switching to a Mediterranean-style diet," Mosley says. "We realised that low-fat diets are not very effective.

"And understanding what a Med-style diet really is - it's not pasta and it's not pizza. It's the oily fish, nuts, olive oil and stuff like that. The evidence is pretty strong now to say that way of eating is one of the healthiest there is.

"When I wrote the Fast Diet, I wasn't all that interested in the things you ate on the fast days, and I've become much more interested in a more Mediterranean-style diet and looking more carefully at looking how much of the sugary, carby stuff you eat.

"Changing what you eat is one of the most important things you can do to lose weight and improve health."

Need to lose weight - try a vegan diet

In Eat carbs, lose weight – lessons from a vegan diet Paula Goodyer reports that those participants in a small study found those on a vegan diet lost double the weight of those on diets including meat or fish.

It seems a vegan diet can also carry other health benefits:

It's not the first study to show weight loss success on a diet based entirely on plants. Six years ago I interviewed  Dr Neal Barnard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at George Washington School of Medicine, about his research looking at using a plant food-only diet to control type 2 diabetes. He found that besides controlling blood glucose more effectively than the standard American Diabetes Association diet, the diet also helped reduce weight and cholesterol.

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What about the argument that eating a lot of carbohydrates forces the body to produce too much insulin, which in turn encourages the body to store fat more easily?

"If this was the case, we wouldn't have studies consistently showing that vegetarians, who typically eat more carbohydrate, have better insulin sensitivity, a reduced risk of diabetes and heart disease and are less likely to be overweight," she says.

But another advantage of a vegan diet may have something to do with the kind of bacteria that reside in a gut where the only available food comes from plants. New research from the City University of New York has found that the gut microbe population of people on a vegan diet is different to that of omnivores and includes more of the microbes thought to help protect against obesity and diabetes.

Low carbohydrate diet for those with type 1 diabetes

Dr Norman Swan interviewed Dr Troy Stapleton on the benefits of a Low carbohydrate diet to manage type I diabetes:

This is the personal story of Dr Troy Stapleton, who developed type I diabetes at the age of 41. In the beginning of his disease he followed the standard dietary advice for diabetics to consume up to 250g of carbohydrates per day and then balance this with insulin injections. However, after extensive research he decided to go on a very low carbohydrate diet, which has improved his life quite dramatically.

It's an interesting interview. I would recommend people consult their doctor before acting on any of the information in this interview. I'm certainly not qualified to offer medical advice, or to make any recommendations.