What Does Your Gut Have to Do With Your Weight Loss?

Turns out a LOT!

Image from pixabay.com

When we talk about the gut, we really talk about the tiny creatures living in our gut, which are also known as the gut microbiota, the gut flora, or “gut bugs”.

Research shows that if you’re trying to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle, you definitely want to make sure your gut flora creatures on your side!

There are trillions of them inside you, and you must keep them happy!

How do gut bacteria affect your weight?

• They affect the energy levels you get from your food, if your gut bacteria are inefficient, you’ll waste a lot of calories.
• Gut bacteria affect inflammation, which in turn is responsible for fat accumulation in some people.
• Gut bugs affect your feelings of hunger and fullness.
• Your gut bugs also affect your insulin sensitivity and general metabolic health.

What should you eat to keep your gut bacteria happy?

• Healthy fats are essential for keeping your gut healthy - like coconut oil, avocados, grass-fed butter, fish rich in omega 3s, and extra-virgin olive oil.
• Fermented food also offers lots of benefits to our guts – yogurt, kefir, kambucha, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, miso.
• Eat a VARIETY of vegetables, these will promote bacterial diversity in your gut, which in turn will help you lose weight. Always eating the same type of vegetables reduces the bug diversity in your gut.
• Eat foods rich in prebiotics (lentils, chickpeas, beans, onions, bananas, asparagus, garlic, leaks, nuts, Jerusalem artichokes).
• Eat foods rich in polyphenols, they are often digested by bacteria in the colon (e.g. green tea, red wine, dark chocolate, blueberries).
• Take a probiotic supplement with Lactobacillus Strains

What foods to avoid?

• Bad fats full of omega-6 oil. Refined omega-6 rich vegetable oils should be avoided.
• Polyunsaturated fats from soybean, canola, and other seed oils are inflammatory and negatively affect gut health.
• Sugar and artificial sweeteners.
• Too much alcohol.
• Antibiotics, which can cause a short-term decline in beneficial bacteria.

What else can you do to keep your gut bugs happy?

• Stay active – recent research indicates that physically active people have a higher abundance of health-promoting bacteria.
• Quit smoking, which will, in turn, increase your gut bacteria diversity.
• Get enough sleep. Did you know that your gut follows a daily rhythm, a kind of internal clock if you like? If this rhythm is disrupted through lack of sleep, shift work or midnight snacking, that has harmful effects on your gut flora.
• Reduce stress. It turns out that stress can negatively affect your gut bacteria by reducing the number of good bugs and increasing the number of harmful bugs inside your gut.

I hope this short overview of how your gut bacteria affect your weight and overall health will be useful.

Choose a couple of things from the list above that will help you promote your gut health and keep that unwanted weight off!

Love,
Vytene

P.S. In order to help you lose weight and stay healthy through controlling your gut flora, I went out and found a great program which focusses on your gut health for weight loss. This program focusses on your gut health, rather than prohibiting you from eating certain foods.

Check it out here:
http://tiny.cc/e736az

Thanks for stopping by and reading!

All content is my own.

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I originally wanted to share this on Facebook, but it prevented me from posting because of the link above... apparently posting something that promotes natural health solutions goes against their terms and conditions... what an interesting world we are living in!