Receiving your ZOE results is an exciting time as you progress through your ZOE journey! We completely understand that it can be a bit confusing to receive lower results than you expected. Rest assured, your programme is designed to guide you through and help you make the most of your results 🧗🏻
Our Foundations Programme is designed to help you navigate your results with confidence. You'll find it in the Home tab, where you'll learn the fundamentals of ZOE: improving your diet quality using your personalised scores, mastering balanced eating principles, and creating sustainable habits to help you feel your best every day.
Understanding your results is a crucial step in optimising your health and nutrition. If you've received a lower score than anticipated, you might be wondering what this means and how to move forward. 🎯
Metabolic results
We understand that receiving lower metabolic results might be discouraging, particularly if you already lead a healthy lifestyle. Rest assured, you are doing great things for your body 🌟
There are a lot of factors that affect your scores. Eating a balanced diet, sleeping well, and exercising are all fantastic things to do, so don’t get discouraged. Chances are, these healthy habits may already be helping.
Being patient with your body and giving yourself time to incorporate healthy habits into your life is the best thing you can do for your body, so keep up the great work!
Your scores are also affected by your age, sex, and medical history. Family history and genetics will also have an impact on how your body responds to food. However, despite all this, keeping these great habits in place will give you the best chance of further optimising your blood sugar and blood fat 🏆
When you receive your blood sugar and blood fat results, you can search for different foods and see how they score for you, try logging some meals and days and take a look at your meal and day scores from when you logged during testing.
You can browse through lists of foods in Food > Browse foods and search for recipes in Browse meals and elsewhere in the Food tab - all foods are scored for you, and based on your unique biology. 🔍
Microbiome results
Your Microbiome Score is just one snapshot of a very complex and dynamic ecosystem. While our research at ZOE shows a strong link between your diet and your gut microbiome, it's not the only factor at play.
It's also worth remembering that changes in your gut microbiome can happen quite quickly - even within 24 hours! However, consistency is key. It's the long-term, sustained dietary habits that really drive meaningful and lasting changes in your gut health. So, try to be patient with your body and give it time to adapt.
Beyond your diet, there are loads of other things that influence your gut microbiome. Your environment, the people you spend time with, whether you have a pet, any past antibiotic use, and even how you were born all play a role here. Other factors, such as poor sleep, stress, and not moving your body regularly can also have a significant impact on your gut microbiome.
So, while your Microbiome Score provides valuable information, it's important to view it within the context of all these other factors. Fortunately, the ZOE app is designed to support your long-term health and gut health.
When your microbiome results are ready, you can view your gut boosters and gut suppressors. You can learn more in this article: Gut boosters and suppressors.
Next Steps
Receiving your ZOE results marks the beginning of your personalised health journey. Your Foundations Programme will guide you through each step, focusing on gradual, sustainable changes. As you progress, you’ll learn how to incorporate higher-scoring foods, build balanced meals and establish new habits, empowering you to make smarter food choices to improve your overall health. Here are some tips to help you get started:
Take your time - read through your results and familiarise yourself with the app.
Make small changes - these are often more sustainable in the long term.
Focus on what to add - Start with adding a few 50+ scoring foods to your usual meals, such as more vegetables or beans. Increase variety by trying new plants such as pearl barley or bulgur wheat.
Don’t avoid all lower scoring foods - some foods with lower scores can be nutritious, and a valuable part of our diet. Instead of avoiding lower scoring foods altogether, combine them with other high scoring foods to form balanced meals.
Honour your hunger and fullness cues - Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re comfortably full.
Check out the Improve tab - If you think you’ve mastered all of the above, take a look at the Improve tab to find a new area of your diet to focus on. Remember, only work on one thing at a time.