The summer holidays are over, and you have gone a bit off track – your jeans feel tighter, your energy’s flat and your brain is foggy. What’s more you are storing fat around your middle, waking at 3am and struggling to get back to sleep.

You need a reset.

The good news is that it’s perfectly possible. In only four weeks, you can not only lose the pounds you’ve gained over the past few weeks but longer term you can also improve myriad other symptoms you have been experiencing – constant fatigue, low libido, digestive issues, chronic pain.

For years, we’ve been told these symptoms are just part of getting older but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.

I am a functional (holistic) practitioner and a nutritionist with 15 years’ clinical experience and what I see in my clinic time and time again is that these symptoms stem from the same few core issues we all face in midlife: chronic inflammation, hormonal imbalances, stress and poor gut health.

But there is hope. We can sort out these problems if we address the real issues behind them.

The Reset is a science-backed, four-week plan designed to help your body recalibrate and thrive.

It will give you the tools, tricks, habits and guidelines that you can then use throughout life.

It’s a crash diet or a punishing detox. It’s about giving things up.

The Reset is for real life. It’s built on clinical experience and scientific data, not marketing. It’s a practical, sustainable framework that will give your body back what it’s been missing and allow it to work as it should.

In just four weeks you recalibrate your body and be on the path to feeling and looking better than ever. Plus those jeans won’t feel quite so snug.

This all about preparation.

If you have ever tried to overhaul your diet or lifestyle overnight, you will know how brutal it can be.

Your energy tanks, your head pounds, your cravings roar and, before you know it, you have given up, convinced you can’t stick to anything and you feel worse for starting.

This is classic yo-yo/diet culture. It’s not because you are weak; it’s because you are asking your body to perform without giving it the raw materials or the preparation it needs.

All we are doing this week is removing the foods and habits that inflame your body, disrupt your blood sugar and drain your energy. Then increasing foods that reduce inflammation and add in small, targeted habits that begin to calm your nervous system, feed your microbiome and prime your metabolism.

The rules 

• Get outside for 10 minutes of daylight within 60 minutes of waking. It’s one of the most powerful things you can do for your body as it sets your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that runs everything from your sleep to your metabolism. It’s a simple, free anchor for your day and a daily non-negotiable for The Reset.
• Aim to eat three balanced complete meals each day with no snacking in between and add protein and fats to every meal.
• Increase all plants, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes and beans. Make sure it’s whole fruit – not juices (until advised) – as you want all that lovely fibre from the fruit that slows down the absorption of sugars. Ideally, we want to consume 25-35g fibre per day
• Eat within a 12-hour window, which means no eating or drinking ‘substantial’ drinks (water, herbal teas are fine) for 12 hours overnight. So, if you finish dinner at 7pm, you can eat breakfast at 7am. This is because every time you eat, insulin rises to help shuttle glucose to your cells.

Frequent eating and snacking keep insulin elevated which, over time, reduces its effectiveness and encourages fat storage. The longer the gap between meals, the more time insulin has to drop and the more efficiently your body can switch from burning glucose to burning stored fat.

• Drink at least two litres of water daily and reduce caffeine to no more than one or two cups a day, ideally before midday. You don’t have to cut it out altogether.

• Coffee is packed with health benefits and studies show that regular coffee drinkers may have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
• Avoid ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and refined carbs such as white bread and pasta.
• Also avoid wheat, sugar, dairy, alcohol, dried fruits, highly processed fats, such as sunflower or vegetable oil, and gluten.
• Hit a step count of 7,000 a day by walking briskly and do some light stretching. Feel free to do more, but if you’re new to exercise, this is an excellent goal for week one.
• Have a regular bedtime and no screens for 30 minutes before sleep – this is non-negotiable.

You’ve laid the groundwork and proved to yourself you can make changes. Maybe your energy feels steadier, your digestion is smoother or your mood is more even. Maybe you have noticed that you’re not thinking about food every five minutes. Now we are going to shift gears . . .

The rules 

• Extend your fasting window from a 12-hour fasting window to 16 hours, ensuring that everything you eat and drink is done in an eight-hour window.
• Continue to eat three balanced, complete meals each day with no snacking and include protein – animal or plant – in every meal.
• Increase your steps to 8,500 steps a day – this can be made up of several brisk walks – and carry out two short strength sessions of up to 20 minutes or more of bodyweight or light weights such as squats, lunges and push-ups.
• Eat eight portions of vegetables and fruit each day with as much colour and variety as possible. So that might be an apple or banana, a portion of berries or salad leaves and a fist-sized serving of broccoli or carrots, half an avocado or three heaped tablespoons of beans or lentils.
• Add one tablespoon of fermented foods – such as kefir, miso or sauerkraut – to your meals each day. These feed your microbiome to help support the ecosystem in your gut, encouraging the bacteria that are right for you.

Two points to note: they’re generally high in histamine so if you know that you don’t tolerate histamine well, go gently here. Also remember that sugar is part of the fermentation process so avoid things such as kombucha with added flavourings and sugar as they undo all the good stuff.

• Continue to avoid the same foods as week one, plus no eggs and nightshade vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines and bell peppers. Why? For a small number of people, eggs can cause digestive issues so as we work on calming inflammation and rebalancing hormones, we are going to leave eggs out this week while we focus on repairing the gut. As for nightshade vegetables, although we don’t have gold-standard studies linking them to inflammation, I have seen clients who noticed improvement in their digestive systems after a break from nightshades.

• On day five have one liquid-only day – blended soups, vegetable-based juices, smoothies, etc. Plan ahead – the less you have to think about what you are going to drink, the smoother the day will be and your gut can focus on repair and renewal.
• Keep up with the 10 minutes of daylight in the morning, no screens before bedtime and sticking to a regular bedtime.

You are halfway through The Reset – how are you feeling? The first half is no mean feat and getting this far is an achievement you should be proud of, so this week is all about maintaining the progress you’ve made so far but at the same time moving forward.

We’re going to slowly bring back foods you have eliminated, one at a time – and, just to be clear, I don’t mean the ultra-processed foods, but real foods. As 70 per cent of your immune system is based in and around your gut, when something isn’t right, your body will let you know.

The rules 

• Bring back the following foods in this specific order – nightshade vegetables, eggs, gluten-containing foods, dairy – and ensure there is a 48-hour gap between each introduction. Always use a whole, real version of the food – a boiled egg, an actual tomato – rather than a processed version.

When you have reintroduced each food, notice how it affects your digestion, your energy, mood, skin, joints and sleep. Make a simple note of what happens after adding the food back in and then put that food on pause again, step back to The Reset baseline and reintroduce the next food in 48 hours.

• Eat eight portions of plants daily – this is now your new normal. And add protein to every meal. Continue with no snacking.
• Alternate your fasting windows – this week you’ll alternate between 16:8 and 12:12, with one liquid-only day in the mix.
• Aim for 9,000 steps a day and three short strength training sessions.
• Keep up with 10 minutes of sunlight in the morning before any screen time. Keep hydrated and limit caffeine as before.
• Aim to eat at least two hours before bed to allow your food to digest, which will improve sleep quality. And step away from the screens an hour before bed.

The Reset not only feels good but looks good and by this point you’ll have more energy and people will be commenting on how well you look. Think of it this way – the first three weeks were about cleaning the house, this week is about turning that house into a home you want to live in for a very long time.

The rules 

Maintain a fasting window of 12:12. It’s sustainable long term and keeps metabolism steady without over-stressing the system.

• Eat ten portions of plants daily and have protein with every meal.
• Snacking is still a hard no. Eat three complete meals only.
• If you want to bring alcohol back in, you can have one glass of wine, one bottle of beer or a measure of a spirit with a non-sugar mixer twice this week, but pay attention to how it impacts your sleep, mood and digestion.
• Increase to 10,000 steps daily and three short strength training sessions, ideally spread across the week as upper body, lower body and full body.
• Continue getting outside within an hour of waking and follow the bedtime routine.

The Reset isn’t about measurements, what the scales or your fitness tracker say. Data is useful, but how you feel – your energy, mood, cravings, sleep, clarity, digestion and general sense of being in your body – tells you far more. Notice the shifts. These are the markers that matter most during The Reset, and they’re the ones that will show how far you’ve come when you reach the other side.

Extracted by Jill Foster from Rose Ferguson’s The Reset: The 4 Week Plan to Feel Better Than Ever – with a foreword by Sir David Beckham (£16.99, HQ, HarperCollins) published on September 10, Available for pre-order now.

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