Does the Hay diet really work?
At 158cm and 66kg you are only a little bit overweight (Body Mass Index 26, compared with a healthy range of 20-25). But though you don’t need to lose weight for any pressing health reasons, I can understand your desire to be a little trimmer. However, I don¹t think you¹ll find that the Hay diet is any more successful at helping you lose weight than any other healthy eating regime. Advocates of the Hay method (also known as food combining) say that by eating starches (e.g. potatoes) and proteins (e.g. meat or fish), separately, you put less strain on the digestive system, thereby aiding weight loss. But I believe there is no physiological reason to recommend food combining, because we’ve evolved with an acid stomach and alkaline intestine allowing starches and proteins to be digested at the same time. However you may well lose weight because you are forced to think about every morsel you put in your mouth, and eating foods on their own often makes you want to consume less of them. Whic
