Your Gut Health May Be Standing In The Way Of Weight Loss: Here’s What To Do

Your Gut Is Your “Second Brain”

This gut-brain axis connection is something we look at very closely in functional medicine. This axis describes the special relationship between your gut health and how your brain functions. Because of how much the gut impacts your brain and mental health, some call the gut the “second brain.”

For example, anxiety and depression have been linked to lower levels of Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum in the gut. (7) It always amazes me what bacterial and yeast problems I find in the lab results of patients not coming in for gut problems but for brain problems like depression, anxiety, and brain fog. To have a healthy brain, you need a healthy gut.

Guess what — a huge contributor to weight gain is poor mental health. If your gut is unhealthy, your brain will not function well, which can lead to unhealthy weight-changing lifestyle choices, such as: (8)

• Less physical activity
• Sleep problems
• Eating disorders
• Soda consumption
• Alcohol consumption
• Smoking

Check out my Gut Feelings Supplement, designed to support a healthy gut-brain axis and balance your mood.

America: It’s Worse Here Than Anywhere Else

American diets are filled with highly processed foods, mysterious additives, lots of sodium, and unnatural sugars and carbohydrates. This inflammatory combo means that the microbes in American guts are very out of balance and more prone to unhealthy weight gain.

Just about anywhere else in the world, even the “unhealthy” foods people eat are better for us than some of the “health” foods in the United States. American diets are shortening American lives.

Krishnan adds:

“Most of the food we eat is covered with herbicides and pesticides, which are strongly antimicrobial. Everything around us works against us. The water we drink, with the chlorine and fluoride in there that acts as an antimicrobial… You go outside, and your neighbor is using Roundup around his or her garden, right? All of that is running off into your own drinking water.”

8 Strategies To Improve Gut Health And Start Losing Weight

Keeping your microbiome healthy keeps you and your body weight healthy. When your microbiome health decreases, your weight is bound to increase. Let’s look at the strategies you can implement right now to start maximizing your microbiome health, your weight management, and, by extension, your overall well-being.

1. Get Tested

Ask a functional doctor about comprehensive lab tests. Diagnostics can help you understand the root cause of your weight gain and gut issues.

You may consider yourself a health detective, but it’s easy to overdose on Google. Instead of self-diagnosing, ask about labs that help you quantify what is going on in your gut. You want an objective clinical look at why you feel the way you do. Then you can objectively treat that underlying problem.

For instance, blood and stool labs can give you a detailed look at your microbiome, the levels of your specific bacteria and yeast, rule out or confirm leaky gut syndrome, give insight into your food intolerances, and measure your autoimmune reactivity.

LISTEN: The Metabolic Recharge Protocol — Sustainable Weight Loss Without Big Pharma Side Effects

2. Cut Out The Junk

This one should be a no-brainer, but in case you need a little more motivation to avoid the drive-thru, know that one of the most important things you can do for a healthy microbiome is to avoid processed foods that cause gut inflammation and unhealthy weight gain.

Want to learn more about inflammation? Read The Inflammation Spectrum, my handy book about learning to love your body enough to nourish it with delicious, healing foods.

To avoid processed food, you must know what it looks like. Processed food includes:

• Fast food
• Frozen meals
• Processed meats
• Fried foods
• Cereals
• Chips
• Cookies
• Sweetened beverages or foods
• Most packaged items
• Almost anything a grocery store outside meat and produce sections

3. Consume Probiotics

Probiotics (AKA beneficial bacteria) have many health benefits, including balancing your microbiome and losing weight. Probiotic supplements restore and improve gut microbiota, and the “use of probiotics has been shown to reduce BMI (body mass index) and total body fat,” according to this recent study. (9, 10)

I am a particular fan of soil-based probiotics to broaden the variety of microbes in your gut.

“Increase the diversity of your diet in baby steps,” microbiologist Krishan suggests, “use some intermittent fasting, start going outside more, take your soil-based probiotic — just these 4 things alone will be a huge impact on your microbiome and your overall health.”

Can probiotics help with weight loss? Yes, some probiotic strains support healthy management, especially weight loss from visceral fat burning.

Supplements are great, but adding probiotics to your diet is great, too. If it’s fermented, pickled, or cultured, it has good bacteria in it. Eat fermented foods, including:

• Sauerkraut
• Kimchi
• Kombucha
• Kefir

Although some people with dysbiosis don’t do well with these foods or have to lay off them temporarily while healing, many others find them to be great microbiome supporters.

4. Consume Prebiotics

Prebiotics essentially promote the growth of healthy probiotics, which play an important role in healthy weight management, by offering yummy “food” for probiotics to feast on in the form of fiber. Beneficial short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are made when you eat healthy prebiotics and dietary fiber.

Load up on nutrient-dense prebiotic leafy greens, such as:

• Spinach
• Kale
• Leeks
• Swiss chard
• Watercress
• Artichokes

Other high-fiber prebiotic foods include whole grains, legumes, garlic, and onions.

5. Intermittent Fasting

Personally, I’ve found that intermittent fasting (IF) regimens have a positive effect on gut microbiome dysbiosis and stubborn weight gain. This involves food restriction for set amounts of time to allow for better gut healing and a microbiome reset. (11, 12)

Talk to a dietitian or your doctor before trying a new diet.

I’m a huge fan of IF. For more guidance, check out my book, Intuitive Fasting.

6. Sparingly Use Antibiotics And NSAIDs

Many of us spent our younger years on antibiotics for every sniffle or on over-the-counter pain pills like ibuprofen for every ache and pain. Both antibiotics and NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, like ibuprofen) may impact your microbiome balance and lead to weight gain.

Limit antibiotic and NSAID use. This limitation is essential in providing a good environment for your microbiome. In special cases, you may need them to survive, but doctors have historically over-prescribed antibiotics and over-recommended NSAIDs.

Krishnan explains:

“We, of course, completely overuse antibiotics. In prescriptions, in food processing, in cattle farming — in all of these areas we’re exposing ourselves towards awful antibiotics.”

See also these other anti-gut culprits and how to minimize them to optimize your microbiome’s health.

7. Evaluate Stress

Eating clean can’t completely heal your gut if you’re still chronically stressed. Constant stress has been shown to suppress the immune system, weaken gut lining permeability, and increase weight. (13, 14, 15)

I suggest finding ways to regularly de-stress, including these fantastic stress relievers:

• Mindfulness meditation
• Tai chi
• Yoga
• Spending time outside
• Reducing screen time, especially before bed

“Going out for a walk or a hike, going outdoors in a natural environment,” Krishnan recommends, “that interaction with nature is so powerful for your microbiome.”

8. Try Natural Medicine

Natural medicine is often superior to pharmaceuticals that lead to adverse effects and addiction. Using herbs may promote gut health and healthy weight management without those nasty side effects.

Some of my favorite gut-boosting natural compounds include:

• L-glutamine
• Slippery elm
• Marshmallow root
• Deglycyrrhizinated (DGL) licorice
• Green tea (chock-full of anti-inflammatory polyphenols)

These are great natural substances that can help repair the protective lining of your gut and lead to a healthier body weight.

READ NEXT: Are Fat Burners Safe? Ingredients To Look For And What To Avoid

Kick the Stubborn Weight for Good

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to losing weight and regaining your holistic wellness. We are all different. Customized natural solutions are at the heart of functional medicine, which can help you tweak and augment your diet and lifestyle to get your gut and weight where you want.

Ready to try something that works for sustainable weight loss? Join my 3-Day Better Belly Challenge, a transformative program designed to help you kick the stubborn weight for good by developing a healthy gut and better habits. For just $19.27, you'll gain access to a live, interactive call with me, Dr. Will Cole, along with gut-friendly recipes and continuous support from our expert team. Don’t miss this opportunity to start your journey towards a healthier belly and a healthier you. Click here to sign up now!