Have been doing the zoe programme for about 1 month. I joined as I wanted to prevent longer term illness as I age (currently 57) and reduce the middle aged spread, I’ve always been slim but had put on about 4-5 kg over the past couple of years all round the middle. I have never dieted to lose weight. I thought I ate fairly healthily before, mostly home cooked food, but I now have better insight into foods which suit me better and I’ve changed what I eat accordingly.I find that logging my foods is keeping me on track when I get peckish and my crisp and biscuit consumption has fallen dramatically. I like the bite size lessons and incremental approach. I have a high level of trust in the information, I’m a doctor and the data is presented clearly and the limitation of the evidence is not hidden.My intake of veg/seeds/nuts has at least doubled with the positive suggestions from the helpful app and I feel much less bloated, bowels are better and my jeans are less tight already. Cravings for sweet stuff have diminished significantly. Feeling full and satisfied with the meals which work for me.I think the message about eating more of the good stuff rather than restricting the “bad” stuff is good. I work as a bariatric anaesthetist so I know restrictive diets are harmful and don’t work.Overall I’ve been really impressed by the programme and the simple but effective messages. You do need to put time and effort in at the start to get the full benefits but I think this is likely to improve my diet long term helping to form new healthier habits.

I greatly value the individual assessment of foods suitable for your gut biome, blood fat and blood sugar. ( Although part of me questions whether my ability to deal with blood sugar spikes and high blood fat is as bad as reported back to me- I have gone with it though) . They make a complex task as easy as possible. The app works extremely well in helping you identify the foods that suit you best based on a very complex feedback of my test results. I find the educational side invaluable. That the info given is based on peer reviewed research is brilliant. The podcasts are excellent and throw up some very surprising results. It is clear that this app is also to be used by American markets and this is reflected in some of the terms used esp in recipes. In general you can get clear scores for foods eaten but there is a bias towards ready made foods rather than homemade options but this becomes easier overtime especially if you adopt the recommended recipes. Overall though it is a brilliant adventure - where I view my stomach as a ‘garden’ to nurture. Lots of people I talk to are interested in the health study and results although it doesn’t go down too well if a thoughtfully resourced and cooked meal by your friends scores between 0-10 and you then share the score with them. - even though no foods are off limits but frequency of eating them is another matter! So overall a very exciting journey / just started!

The AI point and shoot food logging is excellent, sometimes requires some tweaking but is 80-90% accurate in my experience. There are 4 empty grey boxes next to the weekly number of plants tally against target. If these were configurable to show things like: today’s calorie running total, today’s Zoe food score so far (don’t seem to be able to get today’s running score out of 100 anywhere, only previous days), and today’s protein running total then it would avoid the waste of phone screen space and allow users to quickly check the metrics that are important to them. We are also forced to waste time and screen space on gamification features. Personally I like to know how many days I have continually logged as the mindfulness focus creating a pause before I eat is helpful to me and does improve my choices. However the beans feature for me is silly, time consuming and condescending - given how much I pay for the app I should have the choice to turn it off. I’m not saying remove it, others may find this helpful, just give us a toggle button to choose, feel free to tell me all the reasons you recommend I keep it at the point I turn it off, but if I really want to, let me turn it off! I keep an eye on competitive apps to see if they will let me escape the level of gamification that you insist on, none yet has all the other features I want but if they catch up in those areas and you still insist on force feeding me your view of how I should engage with the app then I will change. If you gave me some basic control of my user experience I wouldn’t even look at the competition.

I thought I ate healthily - mostly home made and never UPF. But what has been fascinating is seeing my unique microbiome results and discovering that I had poor blood sugar and blood fat responses. Some very simple diet tweaks, adding in my gut boosters, no longer eating my gut suppressors but also working harder to diversify my veg intake which isn’t that hard thinking about how I sequence my fat or sugar intake has been incredible. I have energy; I no longer feel I need an afternoon sleep or generally lethargic after eating; my digestion is 100% improved and efficient; and I sleep better. The lessons on the app might seem simplistic at times but over the 4 months I’ve really built up some interesting information about fat sequencing, about glucose hacks, about not ever depriving myself of food I love but how to work around them to stop the glucose spikes. I find it fascinating so I’m totally committed and also now I can really see what difference it makes to me uniquely, why wouldn’t I keep going. And on the days I fall off the wagon and eat stuff that doesn’t suit me, I really notice my body’s reaction to that with my tongue getting sore, my stomach bloating, wind and lethargy. So armed with all this info I can make choices. But I am never hungry, always satisfied and feel great. So thanks to the team and Prof Tim Spector