A weight-loss holiday where you don’t feel hungry — what more could a stressed-out middle-aged woman want?
After a frantic year writing, producing and publicising the second series of ITV’s Victoria, with too many sponges consumed along the way, I couldn’t think of anything better.
It was only later that my normal sceptical self kicked in: how could any holiday offer both gourmet food and weight loss? The answer, it turns out, lies in your gut, the forgotten organ, which nutritional therapist Jeannette Hyde, author of bestselling The Gut Makeover, calls the ‘second brain’.
There is a kilo and half of bacteria lurking down there, and if they are happy and flourishing, then their host is happy, too.
Daisy Goodwin (pictured) shared her experience of trialing The Gut Makeover in Menorca
Your gut is basically a compost heap — if you feed it with good things, you’ll end up with sweet-smelling, nourishing compost. But if you neglect it and fill it with toxic waste, you’ll end up with foul-smelling slime that will poison anything it touches.
Most of us eating a Western, high white carb, high sugar, beige food diet are in the latter camp. And many of our modern ills, from obesity and mood disorders, to acne and bloating, are because we don’t know how to garden our guts properly.
Jeannette advised me to cut down on caffeine in the week before the retreat, so despite the dawn flight to Menorca from Gatwick, I didn’t slip into Caffè Nero for a quick flat white.
From now on my body was a temple and my gut flora were going to be fit for the gastroenterological equivalent of the Chelsea Flower Show.
As I arrived at the gorgeous limestone finca, the Cugó Gran, which sits in acres of olive groves, and was shown to my enormous room with a view of the Mediterranean, I thought gut gardening was definitely the way to go.
Lunch was a feast, prepared by Jono the chef to Jeannette’s specifications — no grains, no dairy, no sugar. Instead we had delicious tuna steaks and about five exquisite salads, and nobody shook their head if you had seconds. I ate till I could eat no more, chewing every mouthful 20 times as Jeannette advises, and got up feeling full, but not bloated.
It was going so well, but then my body decided to throw me a googly and I developed a blinding headache and started to throw up. It was so bad the hotel manager drove me to the local clinic, where an Antonio Banderas lookalike doctor put me on a drip and started muttering about CT scans.
Daisy ate three meals a day. She was told it is important to have a 12-hour gap between evening and breakfast meals to allow gut flora to regroup and grow during the night
Hours later, the tests revealed that I had a virus, and then the doctor looked at me with his soulful brown eyes and said: ‘And I think also that you are very much stressed, no?’
No kidding. I haven’t had a day off since September — and yes, that includes weekends. I even worked on Christmas Day. ‘You must learn to take it “heasy”.’
Eight hours later, I was discharged and returned to the hotel. Jeannette looked a bit pale when I said the doctor had given me some medicine, but was hugely relieved to find it was paracetamol, not antibiotics.
Antibiotics are the napalm of the gut world — laying waste to the good bacteria as well as the bad, as anybody who has had diarrhoea or thrush after taking a course of them will know.
Feeling battered but unbowed, I got up the next day for breakfast. Dinner was at 6.30pm, breakfast at 8am. Jeannette says it is important to have a 12-hour gap between your evening meal and breakfast so the gut flora can regroup and grow in the night.
Even though I was still a bit weak, my spirits revived at the sight of the food on offer: every berry your heart could desire, figs, mangoes, papaya, pineapple, kiwi. Even banana bread — but one made with nuts and extra virgin olive oil instead of flour and sugar. It was delicious.
Everyone on the plan has a one on one to discuss their eating habits and health
This was definitely my kind of diet. I could feel my gut flora waking up and doing jazz hands. To my amazement after cramming my plate with fruit and banana bread, the waiter then asked if I wanted eggs. I did. Protein at every meal is part of the gut makeover plan, so who was I to refuse? The eggs came with spinach, mushrooms and red peppers (no fried bread), of course.
It was the biggest breakfast I had eaten in years, but it didn’t leave me uncomfortably full, just satisfied and ready for a rigorous hour of pilates with Bernadette Phillips, an Irish firecracker of an instructor, who usually trains the A-list, including royalty from her base in Verbier: ‘Tits out, shoulder back and down, clench your butt, and lift that pelvic floor.’
After that it was time to lie down. That evening over a three-course meal, including a sublime chocolate and avocado mousse with clementine sorbet, I, along with my fellow gut retreaters (all women, all in the prime of life) wondered how we could lose any weight when we were eating so well. Jeannette, who looks like a young Meryl Streep, smiled and said if your gut is healthy, then eating the right foods won’t make you fat — quite the reverse.
She was told her diet could also influence her moods
Most people who follow her gut makeover plan for four weeks lose at least half a stone, and people who come for the retreat go home 4 to 5 lb lighter. We looked at her in disbelief, but two days in, despite having eaten like a queen (although not like Victoria, who gobbled food, and whose gut was probably in a bad way thanks to all those scones), I was definitely feeling lighter. The skirt, whose waistband was just a little bit snug, was now comfortably loose.
One woman announced she had already lost 4lb, ‘and I had second helpings at every meal!’
The secret, I think, is you eat only three meals a day — there is no snacking.
Leaving gaps between meals allows bacteria to do their job and extract all the nutrients from your food. If you are a grazer, or a fridge dater, then your gut bacteria never get the chance to their job properly.
Everybody on the makeover has a one-on-one with Jeannette where she probes you about your eating habits, and asks, delicately, if you would mind talking about your stools. There is a box of tissues on the table. Some people get tearful talking about their digestion, apparently.
I have filled in a questionnaire about my health — I tell her about my headaches, mood swings, insomnia and other aches and pains — and Jeannette gently suggests I am probably producing too much cortisol due to stress and it might be an idea to support my mood and health by upping the probiotics in my diet so I grow more of the good bacteria in my gut.
The vagus nerve runs from the gut to the brain, hence the expression ‘gut feeling’, so, says Jeannette, if you get the balance of bacteria in your gut right then your mood will benefit.
The plan is designed to restore full digestive health and consider the balance of bacteria within the gut
Jeannette speaks from experience. Fifteen years ago she was the travel editor of a national newspaper, mother of two children under five and living on what she calls a ‘beige diet’ — ‘a coffee and croissant on the train, lunch was a sandwich at my desk and dinner was pasta with a supermarket sauce washed down with half a bottle of wine. One day I woke up and found I couldn’t move my neck.’
She resigned from her job and took a degree in nutrition. After practising for a few years, she realised bad gut health (dysbiosis) lay behind many of her clients’ problems.
As she researched further, she realised her hunch was in line with recent scientific findings — ‘the microbiome [the bacteria living on and in our body, the highest concentration of which is in our gut] is the control centre of all health,’ is the consensus among leading scientists.
The gut bacteria of hunter-gatherer Hadza tribesmen of Tanzania are like Kew Gardens compared with the cellophane- wrapped petrol station bouquets of the average Westerner: and it is no coincidence they don’t suffer from obesity, autoimmune disorders and many forms of cancer.
From her own experience and that of her patients, Jeannette has devised a plan designed to restore even the most barren gut to full digestive health. She recommends I increase my consumption of probiotics — foods with active bacteria. So instead of yoghurt in the morning, I should switch to the more potent kefir, which, properly made, contains up to ten billion microbes per cup.
Daisy revealed that she lost 5lb after completing five days of the plan and went from a size 16 to size 14
She also believes if I work to cultivate my gut garden then I will be better able to deal with the stress life throws at me. She says I should skip the coffee and limit my tea habit to two cups a day, and I should try to eat 30 to 60 different kinds of vegetables, herbs and fruit a week.
It sounds like an enormous amount, but it’s that diversity that results in a healthy garden growing in your insides.
On the last day of the holiday I really begin to feel myself again — the headaches have gone, my neck has relaxed, my skin has gone from grey to glowing.
The pool lengths that had left me panting at the beginning of the holiday seem effortless now. The last supper ended, I kid you not, with a sticky date pudding, which tasted almost unbelievably sweet, but when I looked at Jeannette in amazement she said it was perfectly legal.
So did five days gorging delicious food (plus a detour to a Spanish hospital) result in weight loss? To my surprise, I found I had dropped 5 lb and had gone from a size 16 to a just-about size 14. It was the most painless diet ever, and it has made me think that I will try to stick to Jeannette’s gut fertilisation plan for the full four weeks.
If eating kefir, and putting more colours on my plate than a Farrow & Ball paint card, will make me calmer, less tired and thinner, what’s not to love?
I am already feeling quite fond of my microbiome. Every time I am tempted to scarf my food, I picture the bugs gambolling happily about in my gut, liberated from the horrors of beige carbs and the demon drink.
My house plants may die when I look at them, but my internal garden will rival the Eden Project in its biodiversity.
Cugó Gran in Menorca offers Gut Makeover Retreats from €2,500 (£2,225) for five nights based on two people sharing (cugogranmenorca.com). The Gut Makeover, by Jeannette Hyde (£9.99, Quercus), is out now.