Can Your Gut Microbiome Affect Your Weight?

Gut health has been the latest health craze in Singapore and all over the world. While some health fads are nothing more than fleeting trends, your gut microbiome is something that could really change your whole relationship with food. 

Your gut microbiome can help with weight loss by improving how your body absorbs and digests the food you eat, reduces inflammation, and helps you feel full. Although there are many benefits of improving your gut health, focusing on a healthy microbiome can certainly help you lose weight.

Keep reading to learn more about how your gut microbiome can affect your weight. 

How Your Gut Microbiome Can Help With Weight Loss

There’s a reason why gut health is becoming so popular in Singapore. Besides preventing and treating serious illnesses like IBS, cancer, autism, and autoimmune diseases, a healthy gut can help you keep your weight down.

Here are some of the ways in which gut health can help you lose weight. 

Your Microbiome Affects How Your Food Is Digested

Your gut bacteria includes over 100 million cells that line your intestinal tract. These bacteria perform incredibly important digestive activities as they help you break down a whole host of foods that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to digest. 

 

By improving your digestion, you will be able to increase your metabolism and keep the weight off.

Your Gut Microbiome Affects Inflammation

Inflammation is much more than just feeling swollen or bloated. Cellular inflammation is a very serious issue that can contribute to weight gain. Besides weight loss, chronic inflammation could lead to:

• Fatigue.
• Gastrointestinal problems.
• Body aches.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.

The link between the gut microbiome and inflammatory problems is well documented. Regulating your gut health can help you take control of your body’s inflammation, which will help you lose weight and take hold of a host of issues with your body. 

Your Microbiome Can Help You Feel Full

Your gut microbiota can help your body produce hormones that signal satiety. By helping you produce hormones like Leptin and Ghrelin, your microbiome can curb binge-eating and over-eating. 

Besides helping you produce more of these hormones, other studies have shown that prebiotic supplements help humans feel full. Increasing your feeling of satiety will help you reduce the amount of food you eat in one sitting and reduce the number of times you eat throughout the day. 

This will help you lose weight by reducing the number of calories you consume on a given day without feeling hungry. 

Best Foods for a Healthy Gut Microbiome

Now that you know how your gut microbiome can help you lose weight, here are some of the most gut-friendly foods you can incorporate into your diet to improve your microbiome diversity.

Fermented Foods

One of the best things you can eat if you’re trying to improve gut health is fermented foods. The fermentation process creates microorganisms that break down the food, making it easier for humans to digest and absorb it. 

Furthermore, the metabolites created by the fermentation process in these foods end up being used by the host, aiding your digestive process. So, the same microorganisms that break down food through fermentation will help you break down the food you eat right in your intestinal tract.

Some of the best fermented foods that you can eat for gut health are:

• Kimchi.
• Kefir, 
• Kombucha.
• Tempeh.
• Sauerkraut.
• Miso.
• Greek yoghurt.

Pretty much any type of fermented food will help you add healthy bacteria into your gut, which will, in turn, help you better digest your food and lose weight. 

Prebiotic foods

Think of prebiotics as the food that your gut bacteria eats in order to live. To keep your gut bacteria healthy and happy, you need to eat a wide variety of prebiotic foods.

The number one indicator of gut health is plant diversity. That means that the more types of plants you can fit into your diets, the more diverse your gut flora will be. 

This is because different types of gut bacteria use different kinds of plants as food, so feeding your gut a variety of plants will maximise the chances of keeping your gut microbes alive. 

Next time you go to the supermarket or farmer’s market, try buying a wider variety of fruits and vegetables in smaller quantities. Instead of adding a lot of one vegetable to your dishes, try adding smaller amounts of different vegetables to your plate. 

Nuts and Whole Grains

Besides fruits and vegetables, eating nuts and whole grains can help increase your gut diversity. As healthy sources of fibre, they can help improve your gut flora, as recent studies show that fibre significantly impacts gut health.

In addition to helping you make more frequent bowel movements, a fibre-rich diet can increase your gut diversity. Try eating nuts like almonds and pistachios as snacks and replace any white grains with whole grains to keep your gut microbiota happy.

Keep Track of Your Microbiome

Although there are many things that we can all do to take care of our gut health and lose weight, there is nothing better than getting a detailed, personalised report that will tell us exactly what we should and shouldn’t eat. 

Everyone reacts differently to different kinds of foods, so it’s crucial to figure out what our bodies are sensitive to and what we respond well to. Thanks to technology, people in Singapore can now order a gut health testing kit from OSbiome directly to their front door to learn exactly what they should and shouldn't eat. 

After analysing a stool sample in our labs, we will give you a detailed health report with specific instructions on what you should and shouldn’t eat based on your gut microbiota. Order your testing kit today to receive your personalised report in as little as one week.