Becky Tucker was sitting in a park with her grandchildren one afternoon when she realised her life had to change.
The children were racing around and playing, but Becky, then 48, did not have the energy to get up and join them. Looking back, she describes the moment as a crucial wake-up call.
The risk management consultant, from Poole in Dorset, was experiencing exhaustion, anxiety, mood swings and hot flushes as she moved through perimenopause.
She had also endured severe, debilitating migraines for roughly a week each month for most of her adult life, with the attacks linked to her menstrual cycle.
Weight was another long-standing struggle. At more than 13 stone and with a BMI of 29 –
close to the obesity threshold – Becky had spent 25 years trying different weight-loss plans. They initially delivered results, but the weight returned whenever she went back to her familiar diet of chocolate bars and what she describes as “beige stodge”.
For many people in midlife, it is a recognisable pattern: the pounds gradually accumulate until losing weight begins to seem almost impossible.
Three years later, however, Becky’s transformation is striking. As the photographs show, she is barely recognisable. Four stone lighter and brimming with energy, she says she feels like an entirely different woman.
Becky Tucker lost four stone after following the ZOE diet. The risk management consultant from Poole, Dorset, had previously experienced fatigue, anxiety, mood swings and hot flushes
Weighing more than 13 stone and with a BMI of 29 – close to the obesity threshold – Becky had spent 25 years trying different weight-loss plans.
Earlier diets produced results at first, but the weight returned when she resumed eating chocolate bars and her usual “beige stodge”.
Her newly slimmed-down figure has gone from a size 16 to an 8/10 – a reduction of more than four dress sizes. Her lifelong migraines have
disappeared, and so have the menopause symptoms that once restricted her daily life.
Most significantly, Becky can now run around the park with her grandchildren instead of watching from the sidelines on a bench.
What makes the result even more remarkable, she says almost apologetically, is that she achieved it “without really trying”.
There were no severe restrictions, calorie-counting sessions or constant hunger. Instead, Becky changed the way she ate with guidance from ZOE, the gut-health science company co-founded by Professor Tim Spector. The scientist has led research into diet, gut health and their influence on overall wellbeing, with growing evidence also pointing to effects on mood.
Professor Spector, an honorary consulting physician and epidemiology expert at King’s College London, says his research indicates that straightforward changes to food choices can bring significant benefits. These may include weight loss without hunger, improved mood, greater energy and, potentially, protection against age-related changes in the brain.
From Monday 26 October, readers of The Mail on Sunday will be able to explore those findings in an exclusive six-week newsletter series. It will explain how to apply the research in everyday life, with the possibility of feeling healthier and happier within days – and potentially losing up to a stone before Christmas.
Drawing on Professor Spector’s work at ZOE and featuring recipes from his new cookbook, Good Mood Food, the series will offer a step-by-step guide to a different approach to eating. The aim is to support not only weight management, but also how you feel from day to day.
It will explore the everyday foods that support the trillions of microbes living in the gut, explain why they may be important for mood and brain health, and show how to nourish them.
We’ll show you what to put in your shopping basket – and what to leave on the shelves – and how to build delicious, filling meals.
There will be exclusive recipes, from hearty breakfasts and satisfying dinners to indulgent desserts, along with expert advice on eating to support your mood and thinking as you get older.
Halfway through, Prof Spector will make a live appearance on dailymail.com to answer readers’ questions and talk about his cookbook. And as Christmas approaches he’ll reveal how to enjoy your favourite festive foods without undoing all your hard work – and, crucially, how to make these changes stick for life.
Indeed, research by Prof Spector’s gut health company ZOE found that 35 per cent of around 5,0000 participants lost at least 5 per cent of their body weight in just three months.
Prof Spector says: ‘I’m delighted to be partnering with The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail on this six-week series.
‘I’d like my new book, Good Mood Food, to be the readers’ shortcut to eating better and feeling better every day, with recipes to lift your energy, balance your mood and feed your brain.’
Becky overhauled her diet with the help of nutrition science company ZOE, co-founded by Professor Tim Spector, the scientist at the forefront of discoveries in diet and gut health
Prof Spector’s approach to diet has become a global phenomenon, refined through years of research involving hundreds of thousands of people.
Although more personalised recommendations are available to ZOE subscribers, anyone can follow the basic principles.
These include eating 30 different plants a week, by making simple tweaks such as sprinkling seeds, nuts or fresh herbs over a salad or soup, or adding chopped fruit or greens to a plate.
Prof Spector encourages people to swap meat, particularly processed meat such as sausages, bacon and salami, for plant-based proteins including beans, lentils and chickpeas, and to aim for at least 30g of fibre a day.
However, chicken, lean meat and especially oily fish can still be enjoyed as part of his approach.
Ultra-processed foods, or UPFs – industrially-produced foods lacking in nutrients and containing cosmetic additives designed to make food irresistible to eat – are discouraged. Instead, meals should be based on whole foods, with a rainbow of different-coloured plants to maximise nutrients.
‘Studies have found that people who eat healthy diets, full of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, significantly improve their mood,’ Prof Spector says.
‘On the other hand, people who eat the most UPFs such as crisps, biscuits, sausages, sugary soft drinks, chicken nuggets and sugary cereal, have the biggest risk of mental health problems and dementia.
‘When people have moderate depression, giving them a gut-friendly diet can improve or reverse symptoms in a significant proportion of them.’
Despite this, processed foods such as baked beans, Weetabix and high-fibre or seeded bread are on the menu. Fermented foods, including natural yogurt, sourdough bread, kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha and kimchi, also have a role to play, as do dark chocolate and peanut butter. Most of these feature in the cookbook.
‘It’s not about restriction or cutting out all processed foods,’ he explains, ‘it’s about cutting back on the worst unhealthy ultra-processed foods and replacing them with real whole plants.’
Eating more whole foods increases fibre intake – nine in ten Britons fail to get the recommended 30g a day, which can help protect against bowel cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
All ZOE studies to date have shown improvements in mood and energy within the first two weeks in the majority of people.
High-fibre foods also make you feel fuller for longer and can stimulate the release of GLP-1, the appetite-regulating hormone mimicked by weight-loss drugs.
Becky, now 52, is proof of how powerful these changes can be – with benefits she never expected.
From eating less than 10g of fibre a day, she now regularly reaches 60g-75g. She even competes with – and often beats – Prof Spector to see how many different plants she can fit into her diet, notching up more than 75 most weeks.
As she says: ‘This hasn’t just changed what I eat, it has changed how I live. I’m not just lighter physically, it’s mentally that a weight has come off too.
‘The transformation really has been quite extraordinary, which anyone who knows me will say. And while I don’t want to be one of those people who is evangelical about their diet, I will be!’
Becky had struggled with her weight since giving birth to her first child at 17. She would regularly go on Weight Watchers, lose a stone, then regain it through binge eating. As she got older, that regain became two stone.
But despite her weight struggles, it was a desire to improve her long-term health that brought her to ZOE in 2023.
Her monthly migraines were ‘horrendous’, and although she had started HRT it had not fully resolved her hot flushes, anxiety, poor sleep and mood swings.
She says: ‘I was approaching 50 at the time, and I was thinking, “What is going to serve me well for the future?” I was also finding I wasn’t participating in my grandchildren’s lives in a way that was fully immersive.
‘We would go to the park and I had such little energy I would just sit on the bench and watch them.’
She started the ZOE programme in April 2023, gradually introducing more vegetables to her meals and sprinkling nuts and seeds over dishes. Crisps and milk chocolate were swapped for raspberries, nuts or very dark chocolate.
Prof Spector’s approach to diet has become a global phenomenon, refined through years of research involving hundreds of thousands of people who signed up to studies via the ZOE app
She experimented with vegetables she’d never tried, such as aubergines, bok choy and sweet potatoes, and mixed mashed butter beans into her mashed potato before eventually phasing out the potato.
She also made sure her plates were colourful, adding salad leaves and purple and red vegetables rich in polyphenols, antioxidants which can protect cells from damage.
Becky still doesn’t eat breakfast, but a typical lunch now involves roasted vegetables, houmous, salad and nuts. A similar recipe is found in the cookbook called the Roasted Red Pepper and Lentil Salad.
Dinners include lentils, chickpeas or beans with vegetables and salad, or one of Prof Spector’s recipes. Her favourites are aubergine parmigiana – similar to the Stuffed Aubergine Traybake found in the cookbook – and his high-protein, high-fibre cookies. A dollop of kimchi accompanies most meals.
‘Within a month the migraines had gone,’ Becky says. ‘I put it down to a happy coincidence, but they’ve never come back. Within three months I felt more energised and less anxious, and the remaining menopause symptoms had gone.
‘And I noticed that my weight was dropping off. It just happened naturally – and it was the icing on the cake.
‘I’m running around the park with my grandchildren now, and we recently went to Disneyland Paris together, which was incredible. It was easy – I kept up with them, I had fun, and I wasn’t having to think about my energy levels. I can’t describe how good it feels.’
Becky has had no problem sticking to her new regime and has kept the weight off.
‘What’s been most powerful is that these changes feel sustainable,’ she says. ‘This isn’t a short-term fix, it’s a completely different way of understanding how food supports my body.
‘I feel more in control of my health and better equipped to manage this stage of life. I can’t imagine ever stopping.’
Good Mood Food by Tim Spector (Vintage £30), to be published 22 October. © Tim Spector 2025. To order a copy for £27 (offer valid to 31/10/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to or call 020 3176 2937
