Gut microbiota
1. Thin people and obese people tend to have different types of microbes living in their gut. SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Weight loss and specifically when obese people lose weight, their microbiota change accordingly.
There’s a strong positive relationship between healthy gut bacteria and weight loss
Obesity is highly heritable and it probably involves genes that pass from parent to child. Body weight is clearly impacted by diet. So the environment and personal habits also play a role.
Gut bacteria and weight loss: Several studies have also turned up evidence linking obesity to the microbiome:
2. A diet high in fat, sugar, and simple carbs is bad for the “healthy” gut microbes that keep us thin. It also encourages the growth of “unhealthy” microbes that make us obese. Obese individuals harbor microbes that are better at extracting energy from food, as well as microbes that signal the body to store energy as fat.
3. The microbiome is changeable.
The relationship among genetics, the environment, and the microbiome as it relates to obesity is certainly complex. But while the genome is fixed and habits are hard to change, the microbiome is changeable. That is why PHASE ONE in the FOUR PHASES of weight loss examines the role of gut bacteria and weight loss for every individual. Find out more about the gut microbiome here.
Fast fact! Our gut is as unique as our DNA so no one nutritional plan, lifestyle or diet tips or advice can work as effectively for you as it will for somebody else. Let that sink in…..
4. Our body can be malnourished even though we’re eating enough. Malnutrition is not simply a matter of lacking calories and nutrients. Some people eat enough nutrients but cannot absorb them properly. So the body produces symptoms of malnourishment because of nutrient malabsorption. The role of microbes can be described when looking at identical twins: one twin undernourished and the other one not. The twins have the same genes, and they eat the same food—but they have different gut microbiota.
There’s no point building on a foundation that’s anything but solid.
This is why personalised nutrition IN THE FOUR PHASES is key. Each phase is the building block to reinforce the next building block. Every small change made impacts hugely, within the right margins created at PHASE 1.
Taking ownership of our health means making choices about what we EAT DRINK TAKE MAKE. These choices we are making are feeding ‘good’ bacteria in our gut or they are feeding ‘bad’ bacteria in our gut that can than lead to SIBO, for example.