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How Gut Bacteria Affect Your Weight Making Hard or Easy for You to Lose It

How to turn your gut into a fat-burning machine to start drop weight and achieve your dream body

Boost gut bacteria to lose fat

How Gut Bacteria Affect Your Weight Making Hard or Easy for You to Lose It

Your gut bacteria exist in more than 1,000 species and work together to keep active your immunity, digest better your food, and eliminate toxins from your body. 

Every person has an individual and unique gut microbiome, which is dependent on everything from your diet and how you live to your genes. 

So if you struggle to lose weight or to maintain a healthy weight, it would be beneficial for you to find out how exactly gut bacteria affect your weight and how to restore and stimulate them to accomplish your health and weight goals.

What is Gut Bacteria?

There are subsisting more bacterial cells than human cells in your body.

Trillions of bacteria and microorganisms exist and live inside your body and on your skin (1).

For example, in a study has calculated that in a person who weighs 154-pound (70-kg), live roughly 40 trillion bacterial cells but less than 30 trillion human cells (2).

There are hundreds of different types of bacteria in your intestines, and most of them live in a section of your large intestine called the cecum.

While some of these bacteria may cause health problems, most of them work hard to support and maintain your health (3).

For illustration, your gut bacteria create specific vitamins(like vitamin K) and interact with your immune system to support your body to fight infections(4). 

They also impact how you digest specific foods and encourage your body to produce chemicals that help make you feel less hungry during meals.

What Scientists Reveal of How Gut Bacteria Affect Weight

Modern research has found that lean and obese people truly have different sorts of bacteria in their gut.

In one study in 2016, researchers analyzed the gut microbiomes of obese and lean volunteers(5). They find that the obese group had a lot more inflammatory gut bacteria and less bacterial diversity. In contrast, thin people had had significantly more diverse and rich in anti-inflammatory gut bacteria.

Other researches have shown almost the same results, where scientists put mice on a high-fat diet and have found that the mice gained or lost weight depending on the bacteria species living in their gut(6).

In another case study observed at 77 pairs of twins, it was found that one twin was obese, the other wasn’t. But here also the researchers reveal that the obese twin had different gut bacteria than their non-obese twin, as well as less bacterial variety(7)

In conclusion, having a complete palette of beneficial bacteria in your gut and their good quality appears to have a critical role in your weight and health state.

How Your Gut Flora Influence Your Waistline Size

gut bacteria

More and more cases point to the connection of gut health and your weight, from which follows the logical question: What are the mechanisms through which gut bacteria affect how you accumulate extra weight and excess body fat?

Gut Bacteria Affect Your Metabolism and Food Digestion

Studies have seen that the type of bacteria and a diverse mix of bacteria in the gut is essential to staying thin and fit.

The state of your gut bacteria impacts your metabolism quality, and more specifically, how efficiently your body can transform food and your body fat into energy(8)

Your gut bacteria are in contact with the food you eat and thus affect your nutrients absorption and healthy weight. Some bacteria aid in weight gain, while others affect how fat is stored in the body.

For example, naturally lean people have more bacteria from the Bacteroidetes phylum type[9]. 

Contrarily, people who are overweight or obese have more Firmicutes type bacteria in their guts, which is associated with their tendency to gain weight[10].

The facts indicate that Firmicutes consume more energy(calories) than Bacteroidetes, which suggests that obese people can assimilate more calories from food than non-obese people — even without a change in diet(11).

Therefore, the quality of your digestion and food absorption, which largely depends on your gut bacteria, is with huge impacts on the way how your body gains or loses weight.

Gut Microflora Affects Inflammation

If your gut bacteria promote the inflammations, that’ll influence not only your health but also your weight state.

There are intestinal bacteria that reduce inflammation and help to prevent weight gain while others type bacteria contribute to the development of inflammatory processes throughout the body.

Body inflammations occur when your immune system fights infections.

Some species of gut bacteria produce chemicals called lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and when these substances pass into the blood, they promote inflammations occurrence(12).

In that way, the type of bacteria that produce LPS  seems to support the unhealthy extra weight gain and the subsequent one’s health complications as insulin resistance, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.

On the other hand, inflammation by themselves also leads to hormonal imbalance and digestive complications, causing illnesses like autoimmune disease, leaky gut, and mood disorders. 

These are conditions that additionally encourage the process of gaining weight and the accumulation of unhealthy visceral fat.

However, the primary cause of inflammation is associated with an unhealthy diet rich in too much sugar and very toxic junk foods.  Therefore, the first imperative step to fight inflammations is through diet adjustments and restrictions of those foods, which you will see below.

Gut Bacteria Affect Your Hormones

The different bacteria in the gut impact your feelings of hunger or fullness by influences over hunger control hormones that your body produces (13).

Leptin and ghrelin are two of them which have been recognized from dietitians to have significant influence over these two vital processes.

Leptin participates in long-term regulation of energy balance, suppressing the feeling of hunger and thereby promoting weight loss. Ghrelin is a fast-acting hormone that playing a role in meal initiation(14).

Certain gut bacteria promotes the production of chemicals that control your feelings of hunger or satiety

Let’s see how it happens.

The certain species of gut bacteria break down fiber from food in chemicals, which are known as short-chain fatty acids. They appear to be the primary source of nutrition for the cells in your colon. One substance of these fatty acids is well known as propionate. Propionate is a hunger suppressant substance.

In a study included 60 overweight adults revealed that intake of propionate for 24 weeks highly increased levels of the peptide (PYY) and glucagon(GLP-1)–hormones also with an important role in appetite control. People who had taken propionate, as a result, have had reduced food intake, which resulted in weight loss (15).

Another such study points out that probiotics supplements contained compounds that are fermented by intestinal bacteria, which may have the same suppressing appetite effect as the propionate(16).

In that case, people who have been intake 16 grams of prebiotic per day for two weeks have had good gut bacterial fermentation, which led to less hunger and higher levels of the hormones GLP-1 and PYY (which give you a sense of full) (17).

Hormonal imbalance, for sure, affects how full you feel after meals, and may drive you to overeat when you’re stressed, making you add and store more fat.

How to improve gut bacteria to work for our health and to support our efforts for losing excess weight?

Learn how to boost the “good” gut microbes in your gut, which is one of THE KEYS to fat loss, weight loss a faster metabolism, and excellent health!

Gut Health

10 Proven Essential Rules to Follow for Excellent Gut Flora


Many modern diseases have their roots in the failure to keep fit our most fundamental and enduring relationship: that with our microbes.

You can change our bacteria for the better, which should be your primary goal if aiming health enhancement and better weight control. It’s a crucial moment because that can protect you from predisposing to becoming obese, diabetic, or other weight-related diseases.

In general, the power to take control of your gut and maintain a thriving and healthy digestive system is in your hands, and it depends entirely on your eating habits and lifestyle behaviors.

Optimal gut balance is directly affected and begins with your diet. You should eat food with lots of fiber, healthy protein, and healthy fats.


1. The rule of thumb is to eat whole, unrefined, unprocessed foods

Make your plate to be  75 percent of vegetables and plant-based foods. The reason is that your gut bugs adore these high-fibre plant foods.


2. Eat more fiber

It’s one of the best things you can do to better your gut bacteria and to aid weight loss with that.

Dietitians recommend more fiber in your food to nourish and strengthen your gut microbes. It will make them more productive and helpful, providing you better digestion and nutrient absorption, which will help you to obtain a healthy weight.

Of course, simultaneously, you should limit or better altogether avoid any kinds of temptations as processed foods and high-sugar foods(even if they contain added fiber). Instead, you should choose to eat real and fresh vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Aim for a minimum of two to three servings of whole grains, which supplies 20 to 30 grams of fiber a day for you. These foods are also rich in prebiotics, which is a type of fiber that feeds your gut bacteria, making them thrive on.

Some plants, like sunchokes, onion, garlic, and leeks, are packed with prebiotic too. Whole-wheat breakfast cereals are also good sources of fiber if they are organic and non-chemical.

Always try to support your beneficial bacteria helping them to thrive by eating foods rich in antioxidants named polyphenols.


3. Polyphenol-rich foods

Polyphenols are micronutrients that we can get from certain plant-based foods that can enhance or help in healing digestion issues, weight management complications, neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

We can find them in all brightly coloured vegetables as well as in coffee, green tea,  cocoa, celery seeds, flaxseed meal, chestnut, and dark chocolate.

 

4. Pick probiotic-rich foods

Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that provide all sorts of powerful benefits for your body and brain.

There are various healthy probiotic foods you can consume.

The best way to provide them is by frequently eating fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles kefir, tempeh, and miso.

A good source of probiotics is also the Kombucha. It’s a tea beverage that is consumed in many parts of the world, but especially in Asia. Kombucha is received by fermentation of black or green tea drink and thus have a big range of health benefits.

One excellent snack is the mixing of plain Greek Yogurt and pomegranate seeds plus one of your favourite berries.


5. Remove inflammatory foods

You need to cut off the sugar and starch from your diet to retain hungry the harmful gut bacteria. Gut microbes produce a hormone called FIAF (fasting-induced adipose factor), which sends messages to the body to stop accumulating fat and helps burn them.

To boost FIAF production, nutritionists recommend, to leave all sugary foods and reduce to minimum starchy food. When keeping bacteria hungry, your gut makes more FIAF, and you burn fat.[18]


6. Cut out the inflammatory fats

The inflammatory fats, at all, promote the growth of harmful bacteria that causes weight gain and disease.

Research cites that one of the causes of overweight and obesity is a result of the presence of inflammatory omega 6s and lack of anti-inflammatory omega 3s in our diet. Harmful bacteria produce toxins called lipopolysaccharides (LPS) that provoke health issues as inflammations, insulin resistance, or pre-diabetes and, therefore, promote weight gain.

Cut out the inflammatory omega six fats like vegetable oils and replace them with healthful oils like coconut oil and extra-virgin olive oil.


7. Eat good fats

The good fats like omega-three fats and monounsaturated fats such as extra-virgin olive oil, almonds, avocados, coconut oil will help with reducing inflammation, providing healthy gut bacteria an excellent environment to their thriving.


8. Add more coconut

Studies confirm about anti-inflammatory and weight loss advantages from the intake of Medium Chain Triglyceride or MCT oils.

One of my favorite and easily accessible fats, coconut oil, and coconut butter, holds these amazing fat-burning MCTs.


9. Supplement smartly

Away from the many benefits (including fighting inflammation), omega three fatty acids can help for healthy gut flora.

You should surely supplement with an essential fatty acids’ formula if you’re not frequently consuming wild-caught fatty fish.

You can find professional-quality formulas in this store. By intake an excellent probiotic supplement, you can decrease gut inflammation while cultivating health and the growth of beneficial bacteria.


10. Control your stress and get plenty of sleep

Chronic stress and lack of sleep also contribute to gut imbalance.

There are pieces of evidence that your gut bacteria become influenced by your thoughts, feelings, and emotion. To ensure yourself less stress and a better emotional state, you should get 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep along with practicing your favourite stress-reduction activities.

Conclusion

The above suggestions are not miracle cures. Instead, they are the necessary actions that would lead to a balance in your gut microflora, which will help you to shed weight, achieving better health, and excellent body shape.

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