Gut Bugs and Extra Pounds? Seriously?!

Apr 12, 2015

There is a whole second universe of little critters living within your gastrointestinal tract, trillions of tiny microbes that outnumber your cells 150:1 with up to 300 times more DNA than you have in your own body, an invisible organ that influences more than 6,300 biological functions from your immune system, your moods, the genes that modulate inflammation and pre-diabetes and yes, even to the hormones that regulate hunger, cravings, how many calories you extract from your food and how many of them you turn into fat. Wow!

Not only do you influence those little guys with your food choices, but luckily the very same dietary choices that positively influence blood sugar (therefore insulin, therefore inflammation, and therefore most every chronic illness of modern man) favorably influence your gut bacteria as well. These beneficial bacteria are called probiotics.

Unfortunately misguided nutrition information and our own reluctance to give up quick weight loss plans have kept many of us from experiencing reasonable appetite signals for years. Now we have science to validate our own frustrating experience that yo-yo dieting and starvation mess up from upwards of a year the hormone signaling relating to hunger and fat storage. Explains a lot, doesn’t it? But even this vital new information is not your whole story.

There wouldn’t be a flourishing 20 billion dollar weight loss industry if it were as simple as knowing what the right food plan is for you, your health history and your unique gut ecology. We continue to confuse a quality meal plan with a successful lifestyle plan for getting to and staying at our goal weight. Permanent change depends upon a whole tool chest of strategies individually tailored to you, your life circumstances and most importantly what you are actually willing to do.

And while it is clear that willpower doesn’t work for sustained weight loss for even the most intelligent and accomplished among us, it is evident that many of us have unknowingly been finding this task well nigh impossible because of out of control cravings and hunger*. Fortunately, today we have many nutritional insights about the causes of the “insatiable American appetite”.

As if it weren’t enough to contend with sugar’s addictive properties, hyper-palatable foods and leptin resistance, now we have a new player in the game: the universe of your gut bacteria – aka the microbiome – and it is the subject of intense research and study. So, if those sometimes unfriendly little critters in our guts are making weight management even harder, what food choice favorably influences this powerful forgotten organ? The very same one that can impact appetite, blood sugar stability, bone mineralization, blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and most chronic life shortening conditions: eat more produce. Ah yes, vegetables yet again.

So, which vegetables should you eat? As a rule? Whichever ones you are willing to eat! Certain produce however contain prebiotic fibers (particularly abundant when that food can be consumed raw) which help to recolonize your healthy bacteria. Your body’s innate wisdom can work hand in hand with Mother Nature to help to rebalance and heal from within.

Prebiotic fibers are abundant in:

asparagus
carrots
chicory
dandelion greens
garlic and onion
leeks
Jerusalem artichoke
jicama
radishes
tomato

Naturally fermented foods contain their own living cultures of bacteria and can supplement your own healthy bacteria.

pickles
olives
sauerkraut
kimchee
capers

For creative ways to build more produce into your life, visit: SusanHolmberg.com > Blogs > Surviving Myself > Strategies for the Vegetable Challenged

For more engaging cutting edge science on:

how your gut bacteria influence hunger, see The Belly Fat Effect by Mike Mutzel and The Microbiome Diet by Raphael Kellman MD
meal plans and recipes, see The Microbiome Diet by Raphael Kellman, MD and Natural Solutions for Digestive Health by Dr. Jillian Sarno-Teta and Jeanette Bessinger, BCHHC
for mind blowing science of the effect of gut bacteria on your brain and mood, see Brain Maker by David Perlmutter, MD

Begin your final weight loss journey now…