Gut Microbiome - How to Control Hunger When Losing Weight

Written By Nick Rawn

The importance of a healthy gut is often overlooked when it comes to intense exercise, losing weight, or building muscle but a bad gut will leave you hungry, tired and fluffy so lets change that.

Over the last half century, the Western diet has put microbiome diversity in a body bag and buried it six feet underground. Our gut microbiome plays an equally important role in bodily function as the engine does in a car. This not so little 3-pound bundle of bacteria, viruses and fungi in your gut has its hand in energy production, inflammation and body weight control among several other bodily functions. The western diet of sugar, ultra processed foods and antibiotics at every inconvenience has purged microbial diversity; and with it our energy efficiency, ability to cool inflammation and is strongly associated with cravings & weight gain. Fortunately for you I’m not a doomsday pessimist so after a breakdown of why this plays a part in the health crisis we find ourselves in today, I’ll get into how you can avoid being a part of it.

Summary for the attention deficit:

  • You gut microbiome influences energy production, mental energy, inflammation, body weight control, appetite suppression (and a lot of other things)

  • A “Healthy Gut” is generally defined as a diverse one, and one that produces high amounts of Short Chain Fatty Acids

  • Different bacteria & fungi in your gut are “fed” by eating different types of foods

  • A diet that is high in ultra processed foods feeds the “bad” bacteria, while starving the “good” bacteria – over time, this leads to a non-diverse microbiome… A diet high in whole, non-processed foods does the opposite.

  • Simply adding more whole, natural foods to your diet tends to not do a great job of re-diversifying your gut… rather, you need to decrease consumption of ultra processed foods to “starve” the bad bacteria in order to make room for more good bacteria

  • What’s good for the gut? Prebiotics, fiber, fermented foods, resistant starches, or to put it simply; a diverse diet of natural foods

  • Finally, you can take all this information, figure out how to eat these foods while hitting calorie & macro goals without hating what you eat, write yourself a meal plan and put together a grocery list with everything you need, or you can just download Miloza and we’ll do it for you.

The Modern Gut

It’s as diverse as the average chalet in Aspen during ski season. As bland as your newly modernized town full of “luxury” apartments and minimalist coffee shops. As competent as your boss trying to share their screen over Zoom. But it wasn’t always like this. Over the course of the last century our gut microbiome has seen a massive decrease in diversity. So much so that experts who studied remains of a World War 1 soldier found that his microbiota signature resembled both primate & hunter gatherer gut microbiota signatures but found no signs of a modern gut (Bubbs, 2019). That is, when he walked earth 100 years ago, his gut better resembled humans born 10,000-200,000 years ago than it did compared to humans today. Why is this bad? The human gut evolves far faster than the human genome, and 99.5% of human evolution occurred during a period of constant famine & 99.99% occurred prior to the mass adoption of ultra processed foods -

when our brain receives signals from our gut it still reads them as if we are living 10,000 years ago.

In short, our bodies developed a set of expectations over millions of years that need to be met to function properly and our non-diverse microbiomes are not living up to those expectations. The modern gut and ultra processed diet have led to hormone imbalances causing us to overeat and an oxymoron where more energy consumption seems to not lead to an increase in energy.

Micros are as important as Macros

If the first time you began dabbling in nutrition was by looking at the advice of social media fitness influencers or body building coaches, you probably heard a lot of “calorie deficit is required to lose weight,” “eat .8 – 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight,” and “eat carbs before your workout.” Are those generally true statements backed by science? Yes - but they leave a lot of information out.

When the average person hears “eat more protein” they will go out and buy protein powders, bars, pastas, chips, and anything else that has protein on the label. While these accomplish the goal of eating more protein, they are killing your gut microbiome. This can lead to inflammation, bloating, mental fatigue and an unsatisfiable appetite. This goes for protein you get from the refrigerator as well - the consumption of processed meats, like sausages and lunch meat have been correlated with mental and physical fatigue (1).

Now when I say these protein products are killing your microbiome diversity, I don’t mean they are blowing it up like Oppenheimer in ’45; What I am saying is that they are starving it. Like any living being, the bacteria in your gut has to eat to survive and if certain bacteria does not receive the proper food source, other types of bacteria will start to take over.

How do you fix this?

Trying to simply add more whole foods and fiber to your diet will likely not produce the results you are looking for. Dr. Marc Bubbs had a great analogy for this in the book PEAK, he said “You can think of the balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria like seats on a bus. Once the renegade (bad) bacteria find a seat, they’re incredibly difficult to kick off” (Bubbs, 2019).

If you want to change your gut microbiome, you have to start eliminating the foods from your diet that are consistently feeding the “bad” bacteria while at the same time introducing foods that feed the “good” bacteria.

With all of that said, I’d like to make it very clear that I am not saying protein powder, bars, pastas, etc. are bad. These products are not inherently bad, but relying on them as a primary source of protein will start to do more harm than good. Instead, they should be used as a supplement to protein sources like non-processed meats, seafood, eggs, and beans, not a replacement for them.

Fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, kombucha have also shown to be extremely beneficial to microbiome diversity (2).

The Science Behind It

I don’t like to get too science-y on here but this shit is interesting so let’s get into it - Our audience primarily consists of people who want to look good and feel good so lets to focus on how your microbiome controls appetite and allows you to feel good while doing it.

What makes us feel hungry

If you look up Leptin, or GLP-1 you’ll likely feel like you are a fifth grader trying to understand an Ivy League biology vocabular so let’s simplify it a bit.

Leptin: a hormone released from body fat that is used to maintain your ”normal” weight. Rather than sending short term hunger signals between meals, it regulates appetite and energy expenditure over the long term. Your brain wants leptin levels to stay flat because that means your body weight is not changing. When you lose fat, you are releasing less leptin which causes huge increases in appetite and food intake. On the other hand, much like an addiction, when body fat increases and Leptin production increases along with it, your brain becomes accustomed to the new dose.

GLP-1: Heard of Ozempic? Well it essentially mimics the GLP-1 hormone. GLP-1 is released as a response to eating. It triggers the release of insulin and acts in the brain to reduce hunger (sends short term signals to the brain telling it to chill with the hunger).

Pancreatic Polypeptide (PP): released after eating a meal, suppresses food intake and gastric emptying (tells the brain you are full, keep you full for longer)

What am I telling you this?

A diet that promotes a diverse microbiome has been shown to produce higher amounts of GLP-1 and PP than a Western Diet, even when the calorie and macronutrient intake is the same. A study done in 2023 found that, even when in a calorie deficit, when losing body fat, and leptin levels shrinking, a diet that promotes a diverse microbiome did not lead to an increase in appetite (3). Let me make that clear:

Lose fat without being hungry

Energy Production

Short-Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs): Are produced in the gut by fermentation of dietary fiber and resistant starches in the large intestine. SCFAs maintain the integrity of the gut barrier, mucus production and protect against inflammation. Brown adipose tissue activation (type of fat that when activated, produces heat and does it by burning calories), whole-body energy homeostasis, control of appetite, and maintaining the integrity of the BBB (brain-blood-barrier; shields the brain from toxic substances in the blood, supplies brain tissues with nutrients, and filters harmful compounds from the brain back to the bloodstream) have all been attributed to SCFAs (4).

A gut with a diverse microbiome produces large amounts of SCFAs. Butyrate, one of three primary SCFAs, is burned in the mitochondria on intestinal cells and produces Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) which is often referred to as the “energy currency of life” as it is the energy source of all living cells. Butyrate is linked to the activation of mitochondria and energy expenditure enhancement by activating PGC-1alpha, which regulates energy metabolism and supports fatty acid oxidation (the process your body uses to break down and use fatty acids for energy) (5). So, even when less energy is being absorbed in a diverse gut, a larger proportion of it comes from SCFAs when compared to a non-diverse gut.

To put the above very simply; SCFAs impact your body’s fuel efficiency. Eating a western diet full of ultra processed foods is like trying to run an F1 car using the cheap gas you put in a four door Honda.

 

In summary, eat your f**king vegetables.

If you made it this far you’re probably sick of trying to look better at the cost feeling worse. Let’s change that. Miloza launches very soon, drop your email below and you’ll be the first to know when it’s live.

Nick Rawn
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