It's not in the calories...

How many times have I said this?  No seriously, how many?  There is no need to count calories, weigh your food, or register how many calories you have eaten and how many you have burned.  A balanced diet with natural, unprocessed foods is what you need - that and exercise.

A balanced diet with healthy foods does a lot more for you than just losing weight - if necessary.  Our guts are full of bacteria - they are essential for health - but not all of them are good bacteria.  Professor Tim Spector, a genetics expert at King's College London, believes that our gut bacteria is responsible for weight gain - and loss.  He has found that the type and variety of gut bacteria have an amazing influence on many health aspects:

"Microbes are not only essential to how we digest food, they also control the calories we absorb and provide vital enzymes and vitamins, as well as keeping out immune systems healthy," he says.

He believes that the right diet and exercise regimen allows us to change out individual mix of gut bacteria and turn it into one that benefits us keeping us healthy, happy and at an ideal weight.

We are all unique right down to our gut bacteria.  Even identical twins that are genetically identical do not have the same reaction to diet and food, meaning their gut environments are different.  Prof. Spector has studied 11,000 sets of identical twins over 2 decades.  If he put twins on the same high fat, high calorie diet, they didn't necessarily gain weight in the same way; after 6 weeks some will have gained anything up to 13kg and others as little as 4kg.

His main concern is that the modern diet is affecting the bacteria in our guts, compared to our ancestors, we only have a fraction of the diversity of microbial species living in our guts.  15,000 years ago, our ancestors regularly ate around 150 ingredients in a week.  Nowadays, most people consume less than 20 separate food items, and a lot of these come from processed foods.

Prof. Spector decided to test the effect a junk food diet has on our gut bacteria.  To do this, he got his son to help.  Tom Spector, a 22 year old student, volunteered to eat only McDonald's and Coke for 10 days.  By day 6 he said he felt bloated and sluggish and by day 8 he started to sweat after eating.

Prof. Spector said:

"Tom found that his assignments took even longer than usual. Friends remarked that his skin seemed to have a yellow tinge and he looked unwell."

By the end of the experiment, Tom had put on 4lb (1.8kg).  But what was even more astonishing were the test results on his gut bacteria.  The results showed that by as little as day 3, 40% of his gut bacteria had died.  What's more, the bacteria that were still alive were mainly the dangerous kind and levels of health-promoting bacteria had taken a nose dive.

For example; Tom's level of firmicutes - which create chemicals that fuel our cells with sugars, fatty acids, proteins and vitamins and therefore enabling the body's systems to communicate with one another correctly - had halved.

Meanwhile, Tom showed higher levels of bacteria associated with inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, cancer and damage to the immune system.  Prof. Spector also found that certain rare bacteria species flourished on the diet, including Lautropia - which is usually only found in immune-deficient patients.

Tom's gut bacteria slowly returned to normal after he began eating healthily again - but it took a while.

So, how do you improve your gut bacteria?

A natural, varied and balanced diet with no processed foods, for starters.

Exercise is also very important.  Nutritionists at University College Cork, Ireland, found that athletes on the national Irish rugby team had much more diverse gut bacteria than normal and lower levels of inflammation.  Prof. Spector also found from his studies on twins that the amount of exercise they took was the strongest factor in promoting the richness of gut bacteria.

Avoid Artificial Sweeteners.  Anything that is categorized as "food" but made entirely in a lab  can't be good for anyone!

Rats fed with artificial sweeteners at the recommended human doses for 3 months were found to have significantly lower levels and diversity of gut bacteria.  Israeli researchers discovered that artificial sweeteners can alter the balance of gut bacteria in mice, so that the bugs, in turn, release chemicals that RAISE blood sugar levels, and therefore increase the risk of weight gain and diabetes.

The good news is that dark chocolate is GOOD for your gut.  Participants in a study at Reading University, UK, were given cocoa extracts for 4 weeks, researchers found that their levels of beneficial gut bacteria had risen significantly, and their levels of potentially harmful bacteria and inflammation had fallen.

Just remember it has to be dark chocolate.

I can help you improve your health.  If you would like to make an appointment with me either in person or via Skype, just send me an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com