Dr Camilla Stokholm was in good health and thought she had a great relationship with food until she moved to the UK from Denmark and became a doctor.
From following a broadly Mediterranean diet, she began eating convenience foods crammed with ultra-processed ingredients, sacrificing shopping and cooking time to devote herself to the long hours and high stress of the NHS.
The result was weight gain and debilitating IBS and then a period of clutching at straws to try to regain her health and previous positive relationship with food.
Initially Dr Stokholm turned to “fitfluencers” who recommended calorie restriction and a high-protein diet. But this approach, too, followed a diet that was packed with UPF. She didn’t lose any weight and felt worse.
Then her mother gave her the 2016 book The Diet Myth by microbiome scientist and ZOE app founder Professor Tim Spector.
She was amazed by what she learned about how our gut influences so many aspects of hunger, appetite, health and weight. She switched from starving herself to eating to feed her microbiome, transforming her diet from ready meals into home-cooked, gut-friendly dishes.
She began sharing insights with patients and on social media, and now has almost 150,000 Instagram followers (@whatyourdoctoreats). A lucky few have even been invited into her own home for cooking classes.
Now in her new book, What Your Doctor Eats, Dr Stokholm shares science-backed insights into what, exactly, makes us hungry. Having a large appetite has nothing to do with being greedy, and is instead determined by the complex relationship between genetics and lifestyle.
Here she shares the many factors that influence how peckish we feel, and how often we want to eat?
Willpower is a myth One of the key messages in What
Your Doctor Eats is that our weight and appetite isn’t our fault.
Dr Stokholm says one day fatphobia will be as unacceptable as racism and homophobia, as more of us understand how genes, environment and microbiome control our size far more than willpower. Insulin levels Our bodies are either in a state of fat storing or fat burning, explains Dr Stokholm. If we produce too much insulin and become insulin resistant, we aren’t able to burn fat, whatever we eat. Stress hormone cortisol contributes to insulin resistance, therefore stressed people are more likely to put on weight or develop diabetes. Hunger hormones The feeling of hunger and fullness (satiety) are also governed by hormones, including ghrelin, leptin and GLP-1. If any of these aren’t working properly, you might feel hungry however much you eat, or full when you haven’t eaten.
But you can easily influence your hunger hormone, ghrelin, by waiting it out, as it is only in the bloodstream for 20-30 minutes. Food noise This phrase is used more and more to describe a state that many of us experience almost all the time, and confuse with hunger. Food noise is constant thoughts about food or eating, that may lead us to overeat without being hungry.
The causes range from poorly functioning hormones to our food “environment”, for example being surrounded by adverts for fast food, or not having access to fresh ingredients. Soaring rates of food noise have led to the popularity for appetite-suppressing medication. Where you live Our food environment has one of the biggest influences on weight and health. The average man from Ghana increases his risk of obesity by 11 times if he moves to Europe.
This is key evidence when it comes to handing out blame to anyone struggling with excess weight. We’re not suggesting you move to Ghana to curb your appetite, but it’s positive to know that your size isn’t your fault. Your genes “We know that, on average, your genes can account for 70% of your weight,” explains Dr Stokholm.
Though we can’t change our genes, we can influence how they show up in our bodies. It is called epigenetics and describes how our lifestyle determines whether many of these genes, good or bad, wake up.
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When you eat Snacks, treats, parties? there are so many opportunities to enjoy food outside of typical mealtimes. It isn’t necessarily what we eat that can cause health problems, but the fact we’re constantly grazing, which doesn’t give our body any time to rest.
Some are ‘skinny which them obesity
Dr Stockholm recommends time restricted eating (TRE) rather than calorie control, which gives bodies time to rest and repair, as well as reducing appetite signals and the risk of chronic disease, while boosting gut health. Though she eats within an eight-hour window, she says that 12 hours can be just as effective. Researchers have found that eating this way can stave off diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol. Soft drinks It’s common to use soft drinks, tea and coffee to fill up if you’re trying not to eat between meals, but unless you’re drinking plain water or tea and coffee without milk, that drink will actually stimulate ghrelin, the hunger hormone, triggering appetite and leaving you hungrier than before.
Try out herbal teas or go without the milk.
Happy memories Our good memories of food experiences when we were children, whether of healthy or unhealthy foods, will govern how we want to eat and treat ourselves as adults.
So if you grew up enjoying grilled fish and salad whenever you saw your favourite grandparents, you will likely enjoy it for the rest of your life.
The good news?
We can reprogramme ourselves by eating gut-friendly foods. One of Dr Stokholm’s patients didn’t like sprouts or sauerkraut, but now craves both. Lucky bugs Some gut bugs protect us from weight gain, while others fuel it.
We can feed our microbiome to promote better health, but some people are just born with “skinny bugs” such as Christensenella and Blastocystis, which appear to protect them from obesity, no matter how unhealthy their diet.
The best way to improve your microbiome through food is by eating as many different plant foods as you can.
Hormone health Many women put weight on during perimenopause because lowered oestrogen levels mean that the hormone that makes us feel full, leptin, is also reduced, therefore perimenopausal women might eat more because their brain isn’t getting the signal their body is sated.
people with bugs’ protect from
So what does Dr Stokholm eat herself ? She makes sure every plate of food, from sweet potato nachos to dark chocolate pomegranate bites, contains a decent portion of protein, fat and fibre. For extra microbiome points, add something fermented and some polyphenols.
FEATURE BY SOPHIE MORRIS ? ?What Your Doctor Eats: The New Science of Eating to Beat Disease, Live Longer and Feel Well (Vermilion), £16.99, is out now. Follow @whatyourdoctoreats on Instagram