binge britain: diet doctors specials (4/6)

Over 60 per cent of people in the UK are either overweight or obese, with many of us binge-eating ourselves into early graves. In this series, six superfit athletes have volunteered to become human lab rats for two weeks in order to illustrate what effect the nation’s favourite food is having on our bodies. This episode sees bodybuilder and powerboat racer Sarah Donohue embark on a carb-packed fortnight. How will eating a whole loaf of bread a day affect Sarah’s muscle-bound body?

Sarah Donohue trains three to five times a week in the gym, lifting heavy weights and working on her endurance. “Her whole life is about training,” says Sarah’s friend Barbara. Dedicated to maintaining the body that has seen the press dub her ‘Britain’s fittest woman’, Sarah also keeps a strict watch on her diet and packs her fridge with protein shakes, energy drinks, tuna steaks, fruit and other lowcarbohydrate, low-fat foods.

All this is about to change. For the next two weeks, Sarah has to put away a whole loaf of bread a day and restrict her exercise to the national daily average of just 5,000 steps – a quarter of what she usually clocks up. Her doctor has given her the goahead to undertake this challenge, and her measurements and vital statistics have been recorded. At the moment, she has a metabolic age of 13 and weighs nine stone six – but for how long?

When Sarah opens the box containing the bread, she realises that this is not going to be an easy task. “I’m going to feel unpleasant,” she predicts. On the first day, she is delighted with the pile of toast she is having for breakfast, but is sure that the love affair will not last long. “It’s so nice,” she sighs. “But will it be this nice after 14 days?”

By the evening of the first day, Sarah is already feeling bloated – a common side-effect of eating too much bread, as digesting complex carbohydrates produces gas. “Is there such a thing as bread poisoning?” she asks. While her question is light-hearted, there is actually a serious point behind it: one in 300 Britons has a diagnosed wheat intolerance, with many more reporting the negative consequences of a wheat-heavy diet.

Surprisingly, Sarah’s bread-eating marathon leaves her extremely hungry when she wakes up on day three. A few hours and lots of bread later, she is feeling over-full again: “It’s only been three days and I’m feeling like a fat bloater,” she complains.

After six days, Sarah is feeling the full effects of eating 120 slices of bread. She is tired, her muscles are losing their definition and she has noticed water retention around her waist. Her friend Barbara comes round to make her a bread-roll packed brunch, and remarks on how the dietary change has also had a dramatic effect on Sarah’s mood – she has been grumpy and often loses concentration. She has also been experiencing lethargy, aggression and insomnia.

When the challenge is finally over, Sarah has consumed a total of 3,849g of carbohydrates and 18,648 calories. “I’m sick of eating bread,” she declares, unsurprisingly. “I’m back to fresh fruit, tuna fish and training!” However, getting off the bread and back to her usual healthy lifestyle is not as easy as she had hoped. A couple of days after the end of the challenge, she gets so sick that she thinks she may need to go to hospital –but fortunately this drastic step is not necessary.

After recovering from the alarming withdrawallike symptoms, Sarah is finally ready to go and find out about the bread’s other effects. In what kind of shape will her once super-fit body be now?