The “Stop Counting Calories” book contains more than 100 Questions & Answers – some asked frequently, some quite personal and particular to individuals – but you may find that’s exactly the question to which you’re looking for the answer.

The top 5 most Frequently Asked Questions are these (Sweeteners; Yoghurt; Avocados; Soya Milk; 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 healthily and b) getting rid of cravings. Let us look at each of these two points:

a) I can’t see how artificial anything fits in with healthy eating. We don’t know enough about sweeteners yet to be sure that they are harmful, but we do know enough about them to know that they don’t do any good (because they have no nutrients – the same as 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, recently, come across evidence that the body responds to sweeteners in much the same way as sugar (from an insulin perspective) (e.g. “The effect of artificial sweetener on insulin secretion.” Hormone & Metabolic Research. (1987) Liang, Maier, Steinbach, Lalic, Pfeiffer). As insulin is the fattening hormone, we want to avoid having it released any more often than we need to.

What you can have, as an alternative to a sweetener, is something called FOS (Fructooligosaccharide). This is a non-digestible, soluble-fibre carbohydrate that supports the growth of good bacteria in our guts. It passes through our intestines and is cleverly used by lactobacilli and other friendly flora to aid their growth. You can buy it in health food shops and sprinkle it on porridge, or other cereal, if you really long for something sweet. I actually take a tablespoon of it most days, after taking my tablespoons of essential fatty acids, just to take away the taste of the oil. When you have a spoon just on its own, it turns into a chewy, toffee like substance in your mouth and it is a nice reward for having taken your ‘medicine’!

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

A2) 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 have fat, so 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 is the ‘rule’ that really impacts weight loss.

(Remember, 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 carbs 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 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 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 – cheat with them as much as you can and want to.

Q4) Can I have soya milk?

A4) In Phase 1, ideally not, as we’re trying to get you away from things that you’ve eaten regularly. However, if you have never craved it (so there is no risk of food intolerance), it is not going to be that bad if you have it in Phase 1. Particularly for vegetarians, it can be useful to have soya milk for some more food options for Phase 1.

In Phase 2 – yes you can. Soya milk is naturally low fat (it is less than 2% fat, which is only slightly higher than skimmed cow’s milk). Check the fat content on your particular product. If for some strange reason your version is a more concentrated version of soya milk, it may be higher than c.2% in fat. If this is the case, try and find a lower fat version. If it’s no more than 2-3% fat, it’s absolutely fine with pure porridge oats or brown rice cereal – perfect carb breakfasts!

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, have got 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;

- parsnips do have almost as high carb content as potatoes, but the quantities in which they are normally consumed are so different. Whereas a baked potato can be 200g in weight, you are unlikely to sit down to 200g of parsnips. If you were planning to do this then don’t! You would need to treat parsnips as a carb meal, if you were going to have this kind of quantity. If you are having roasted vegetables with peppers, courgettes, aubergines, parsnips, carrots etc (in the recipe book), then the quantity of parsnips should be relatively small and fine to view as a vegetable, not a staple carb.

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