Three gut health rules that can help you lose weight

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Boosting your gut health with live yoghurt, prebiotic foods, and fibre can support weight loss naturally. Photo / 123rf
An increasing amount of evidence suggests that good gut health is key to shedding the pounds. Here are three easy tips from our nutritionist

If you’re trying to lose weight by the age-old method of eating less and exercising more, you might be missing a trick.
There’s mounting scientific evidence that gut microbes are an important factor in determining your weight.

While we aren’t able to control the exact composition of our microbiome, it’s becoming increasingly evident that a healthy gut is an important factor in successful weight management. One study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that participants with more bacteria belonging to a group called Prevotella than those belonging to the Bacteroides group lost weight and body fat more easily than people who had equal amounts of these bacteria.
Moreover, an unhealthy digestive system can lead to dysbiosis, a proliferation of potentially harmful bacteria causing an imbalance in the microbiome, resulting in issues with digestion and an increased risk of chronic disease. Research also suggests that dysbiosis contributes to obesity as the body’s ability to regulate appetite is disrupted.
Here are three simple rules to quickly improve your gut health to support weight loss.
Increasing the richness and diversity of our gut bacteria is the best way to improve overall gut health, which in turn aids digestion, influences how fat is absorbed and stored and regulates appetite hormones. The quickest way to achieve this is by eating foods that contain the live bacteria our guts need to thrive, also called probiotics.
You might be tempted to reach for one of the many probiotic supplements available now, but according to Zoe, the nutrition company which conducted the largest nutrition study in the world, there’s not yet enough good-quality research to suggest they can help with weight loss. Instead, they advise eating fermented foods like yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and some aged cheeses like cheddar and Parmesan, which contain a wide range of live, probiotic bacteria.
Tips
Although prebiotics sound similar to probiotics, they perform very different roles in the gut. Prebiotic foods contain resistant starch (RS), a carbohydrate the body can’t easily digest, which ferments in the gut to feed the “good” bacteria. They also promote weight loss in a number of other ways. As resistant starch is hard to digest, your body will use up more energy trying to break it down and because it hangs around in the intestine for longer you won’t feel hungry again as quickly, so you may eat less overall.
Prebiotic foods include apples, slightly underripe bananas, leeks, garlic, onions, asparagus, barley, oats and cooked and cooled rice. Apples contain a prebiotic called pectin, which animal studies have found to positively impact obesity. So something as simple as eating an apple a day could actually help you lose weight.
Tips
We know fibre is good for our guts, usually in the context of keeping our bowel movements regular, but how can it help with weight loss? Soluble fibre, a type of carbohydrate that absorbs water forming a gel in the stomach, makes us feel full and prevents overeating. It can also bind to cholesterol, a type of fat or lipid, in the gut preventing it from being absorbed into the bloodstream. Maintaining healthy blood lipid levels is an important factor in obesity prevention.
Tip
The recommended daily fibre intake is 30g, but the average Briton manages just 19g. Here are some easy ways to get that extra 10g of fibre a day.
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