Davinia Taylor credits her three stone weight loss to ‘biohacking’ and ‘counting chemicals’

She embarked on a lifestyle overhaul eight years ago, after her mother died, and went from a size 16 to a size 8 in the process. 

And recovering alcoholic Davinia Taylor, 43, credited her three stone weight loss to ‘biohacking,’ during an appearance on Friday’s instalment of This Morning and insisted: ‘You don’t count calories you’ve gotta count chemicals!’

The former Hollyoaks actress – who played Jude Cunningham in the Channel 4 soap – also claimed that vegetable oil makes you depressed, while on the show to promote her new book: ‘It’s Not A Diet.’  

Explaining to hosts Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond what her diet entails, Davinia said: ‘You don’t count calories you’ve gotta count chemicals. I what I’ve done over the years is… because I eat on depression.

‘When I’m upset or stressed I reach for carbohydrates, and that’s a form of biohacking. But basically, you’re trying to hack into your hormones to boost your mood.

‘And I was doing that after my mum diet, constantly, because I gave up drinking 13 years ago, so I knew I couldn’t go to that. So I turned to carbohydrates and sugars and pizza and everything… And I couldn’t stop.

‘But what I didn’t realise was, the ingredients in there – a few of them. -were really triggering me to be even more depressed.

‘And the one I found out, more than sugar, would you believe, is vegetable oil and seed oil actually makes you depressed. It’s not meant to be in our diet but it’s everywhere.

‘And when I cut that out, my body started functioning better and I could metabolise the food I was storing and get rid of it, and then improve my mood and start exercising.’

Davinia explained that her new lifestyle began when she went to doctors who told her she was ‘borderline obese’ who needed to moderate her diet.

‘Me, as a former alcoholic, was like “yeah okay”,’ laughed the actress,before revealing that she can’t just have ‘one pringle’ but will end up having the whole pack.

She continued: ‘They’ve actually been designed by mathematicians not dietitians and they have an equation called the bliss point, which triggers chemicals in your brain so you have to eat more.

‘They’re owned by about five major companies worldwide and they make these products – they’re not food – and basically it makes us all into complete lunatics around these products. You just can’t stop eating.’

Divinia explained that she’s changed her ‘gut microbiome’ and has now become ‘metabolically flexible’ so she’s able to have just one slice of pizza, whereas before she would have eaten pizza out of the bin. 

She continued: ‘You can do little things like cold showers that change your hormones. My mantra is: feed the brain and the body will follow.

‘I get up every morning and I feed my brain with fat, not sugar, because sugar triggers me. I put coconut oil in my coffee. It’s called MCT oil – it’s a medium change hyglicoride. It shoots up to your brain and it will power your brain with fat.

‘Your brain is 70 percent fat, and brain is its preferred fuel – not sugar – it sustains it longer, so you don’t get a peak and trough.’

Davinia revealed that if she has’And the one I found out, more than sugar, would you believe, is vegetable oil and seed oil actually makes you depressed. It’s not meant to be in our diet but it’s everywhere. toast or croissants in the morning, she craves more food quickly. Instead, the actress has bacon and eggs every day but won’t have granola, because it’s not an ‘ancient food.’ 

‘Sunflower oil – or rapeseed oil as we call it here – was actually manufactures in the 50s to clean farmyard machinery and in the USA they decided it should become sold for money to make a secondary income for farmers.

‘As soon as I have it I’m so intune with my body that I feel a dip. I always cook in butter, never get spreadable butter it’s got sunflower oil in, this stuff penetrates your cells it causes cellular damage.

Asked to explain biohacking, Davinia said: ‘If you can, in the morning go outside without your sunglasses on.

‘Take your sunglasses off. the natural sunlight – the blue light in the morning will hit your retina so your body knows when to start pumping out the sleep hormones.’