Focus on gut health to lose weight

[InsanityPolarity]

It seems so important to focus on gut health. Has anyone taken this approach for weight loss?
I’d have to look a bit more into it. Maybe download a book or look at YouTube.
If anyone has tried this with success, I’d love to hear how you did it. Or if anyone wants to try and has some ideas, please feel welcome to share.

Look up “What your doctor eats”. It’s an Instagram page and now also a book.

Whether or not it helps you lose weight (and I predict it will), focussing on gut health can only be a good thing! What have you got to lose?

I would really recommend reading Ultra Processed People - although not specifically about gut health or weight loss it has loads of compelling data about the impact of UPF on gut health and on weight.

Yes also recommend Ultra Processed People if you’ve not read it and the more recent book Ultra Processed Women.

Another advocate for Ultra Processed People and Michael Pollans stuff (ignoring the promo of his branded Zoe stuff although some of it may be good). I've lost almost two stone this year after a decade of climbing weight and increasingly severe Binge Eating Disorder. I feel a focus on eliminating UPF and on increasing fibre and diverse plant intake have helped to regulate my appetite and my food noise. Also increasing fermented foods. I feel increasingly in control of my body and as if eating less is a positive, not a chore.

I also think it's interesting that both bariatric surgery and GLP-1 meds appear to work so well due to their impact on the gut, hormones etc. I would love to see public healthcare attempt to research how to replicate these results with dietary and lifestyle interventions. I feel like there must be a way, but obviously there's no funding for that from pharma.

Definitely a very worthwhile approach in my opinion. There's a good UPF subreddit and you'll find plenty people talking about UPF, gut health and weight loss.

I also found focussing on gut health was a much more psychologically healthy approach than diet culture. It feels like an exciting positive step, not a dull punishment.

I'm not sure if gut health leads to weight loss or not.
I have two friends who did the Zoe programme, both post-menopausal women, slightly overweight but not largely so.
Neither lost weight and both had constant colds and viruses. Both have no had to stop due to developing other health issues

I spent the whole of last year (as a NY resolution) doing this, closely following the Zoe recommendations. My weight continued to climb.

I'm now back at a healthy BMI thanks to WLI. I still eat a gut friendly Mediterranean diet as I'm sold on the other health benefits.

A lady I work with has lost 5 stone
she had gut health issues and cut out gluten completely and didn’t eat anything processed and followed Slimming world and she said as she can’t physically eat junk loaded with gluten and processed food staying on the diet is much easier
she says she feels better and I have to say she looks about 10 years younger and amazing.

she also does this thing where she eats I think it’s 30 fruit, veg or fresh herbs in a week

I tried just focusing on gut health following lots of reading about the Zoe method and gut health doctor. I didn’t lose any weight over the 8 months I was religiously following it. I didn’t notice a big difference in how I felt either, though I’ve never had any stomach issues and as a vegetarian my diet was already high in plants, just not as varied as it should be.

I’ve recently gone back to calorie counting which worked for me years ago. I used the free version of MyFitnessPal last time but now I’m using the Nutracheck app which is around £35 a year as it has a better library of food and is more user friendly. I’m still eating a variety of plants but not counting them. My new thing is focussing on eating 30g protein per meal and 30g fibre per day. The idea came from Emma Bardwell (a registered nutritionist who recently released a book called the 30g plan). I’m noticing a big difference in how steady my energy levels are across the day and hunger between meals is reduced. I still need to calorie count because I’m 5ft1 and it’s so easy to eat more than I need to for weight loss.

I’m also trying to eat quite similar to this. @GuestSpeakers I’m a similar height to you. Are you actively trying to lose weight or maintaining? May I ask how many calories you are eating per day and any ideas for how you’re hitting your fibre and protein goals?

I’m actively trying to lose. My limit is 1,400 calories a day but sometimes i eat a little less. The weight is coming off very slowly, I’m averaging 0.6kg a week. It bothered me at first but now I’m 7kg down, I’m just glad I’m making progress.

I’m a vegetarian so protein is tricky. I’d find it a lot easier to just add chicken to meals if I wasn’t. I eat a lot of tofu and 0% fat cottage cheese (I love both but my DH doesn’t so I’ve had to leave him to his own devices for meals). Using nutracheck helps as there’s a surprising amount of protein in other foods and it all starts adding up. Things like wholewheat pasta (which tastes the same as white pasta to me) and rye bread have good amount of protein as well as fibre. Textured vegetable protein has been a game changer, the name always put me off but I used it to make some bolognese and chillis for the freezer. A serving of spaghetti bolognese is only 490 calories and I usually have room in my budget for some cheese.

I use the Mob App for inventive recipes but I’ve also decided to accept that sometimes my diet is going to be incredibly boring. I don’t always have the bandwidth to think about meals and macros during the week so there are a lot of repeats. I meal prep dal, curry, chilli and bolognese for the freezer and use knock off souper cubes to freeze in portions and I already know the calories/ protein/ fibre for those before I start adding things.

Id love to hear more about how you get your 30g per meal as a vegetarian! I find it tricky when calorie counting

Have you tried getting AI to do it for you?

I have a different diet but I put something into ChatGPT along the lines of 'make me a weekly meal plan, 3 meals a day, pescatarian, whole food, 1500 calories, minimum 30g fibre 90g protein' which it did in a matter of seconds, then I got it to make some tweaks (e.g. 'plant milk only') then it made a shopping list for me.

Here you go OP - this is from Milli Hill’s substack “Unprocess” and I’ve just copied and pasted some of the relevant bits. Well to be honest the whole article is relevant but as you have to be a paid subscriber to access it I don’t feel like I should copy and paste the whole thing!

A new study from a team at University College London (that includes the author of Ultra Processed People, Chris van Tulleken), has focused on the question of whether a diet of minimally processed food (MPF) will have a different impact on weight loss than a diet of ultra processed food (UPF), even if both diets follow national 'Eatwell’ guidelines in terms of their nutritional content.

In the study, 55 adults, all of whom were living with overweight or obesity, alternated between two eight week diets, one of which was almost completely based on UPF - for example ready meals, boxed cereals and snack bars; and the other which was all freshly prepared MPF, for example overnight oats, and homemade spaghetti bolognese.

In both diets, participants were given more food than they were thought likely to eat and told to eat as much or as little as they liked. And on both the UPF and the MPF diet, their meals complied with the NHS ‘Eatwell’ guide.

On both diets, both UPF and MPF the participants lost weight.

But on the MPF diet, the weight loss was significantly higher.

In fact, during the MPF diet, weight loss was almost double.

And here is a link to the study:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03842-0?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Thanks everyone. Some really interesting info and things to think about.
I do generally try to eat mpf but the bread, crackers and some sugary stuff sneaks in.
I know I have to calorie count initially for portion control as I can have too much rice or potatoes on my plate and I realise I do have to up my protein to stop myself from snacking.
I want to look more into gut health specifically around fermented food, let’s of veg but I suspect gut health improves once processed sugar is eliminated or reduced.

@wholeeverything
eating less is a positive, not a chore
For me, this is the holy grail of health.
Although it’s only been a week, I’ve cut out 80% of the UPFs I was consuming and I’m really not missing them.
Whoever claimed that eating one square of high cocoa content dark chocolate every day will block your desire for more ordinary, sugar/laden chocolate (Cadbury’s etc) was 100% right!
I‘m even beginning to enjoy dark chocolate.
In terms of weight, I’ve lost 3lb.

Same here, exactly. I am also sold on the health benefits , but it doesn’t help with weight loss unless you previously had a poor diet, does it. I’m now researching what eating plan to try alongside it, to lose three stones.

My god, I completely forgot I asked that question, subsequently asked AI to design me 30g protein salads for veggies, and was about to post about that here, before seeing your response to my question! Brain fail! Anyhow it works great! Although tbh as a flexitarian I think I may just succumb to the religion of chicken breasts for six months, it's so much easier.

I 100% agree. However I'm pretty sure my nightly square of dark choc was giving me nightmares. So now I have it stirred into my porridge a few days a week with some raspberries. Decadence!

I think perhaps it depends on why you gained the weight.

To an extent, everyone who is overweight had a poor diet in the sense of eating more calories than expended.

I find a lot of people gain weight because of some life change which just makes their old, active lifestyle more difficult. Like being a parent.

But if, like me, your overeating is to do with psychological issues around food, emotions etc., I do believe that gut health is very significant in healing these issues. Your body begins to feel nourished and satiated and not driven by brain dopamine cravings (apologies for the dumb pseudo science, but that is the gist of the actual science I've read).

Additionally, if you have only a moderate amount of weight to lose, it's much easier to accidentally not be in a calorie deficit and so consciously calorie counting is far more important. If you are very obese, you tend to lose weight simply by eating like a person of normal weight, dessert and all. So you can rely on hunger and appetite cues (if you fix these) and lose weight.

Who knows though, really. I just wish as much money was pumped into researching these things as into for profit medication.