Why Improving Your Gut Health Could Help You Lose Weight

The health of your gut significantly influences the health of the rest of your body.

When working optimally, the right balance of gut bacteria helps you to digest your food properly, absorb nutrients, keep out bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, avoid food sensitivities, reduce allergies, eliminate toxins and ensure effective digestive function.

But did you know that your gut health can also influence your weight?

Here’s why improving your gut health and rebalancing that bacteria could be the key to unlocking lasting weight loss, plus how you can heal your gut and shed weight more quickly and easily.

What’s the connection between gut health and weight?

Clearly, if your entire body is healthy, you’re much more likely to be at an optimal weight for your body shape. However, there are some specific ways that having a healthy gut can help you stay slim.

1. Gut bacteria help with digestion

The bacteria in your gut help you process every scrap of food that crosses your lips and determines how many nutrients and calories your body absorbs. If you have the right balance of bacteria in your gut, you’ll nourish yourself from the inside and find it easier to maintain a healthy body shape.

2. Gut bacteria help with appetite control

A healthy balance of bacteria in your gut influences how much of the so-called ‘hunger hormones’; leptin, ghrelin, peptide YY (PYY) are produced by your body. When they fall out of whack, they can lead to overeating and weight gain.

3. Gut bacteria shape your food choices

Those gut bacteria also ‘ask’ you for certain foods, depending on their own nutritional needs. This is great if we’re talking about healthy bacteria who are asking for fresh fruits, veggies and other produce. But not so good if it’s that unhealthy bacteria asking you for junk.

4. Gut bacteria affect insulin sensitivity

Healthy gut bacteria have a positive influence on your insulin sensitivity so if they’re in balance, you won’t find yourself reaching for the biscuit tin or snacking on other sugary foods quite as often.

What causes our gut health to fall out of balance?

There are many factors which can negatively impact our gut health and lead to these types of symptoms.

This includes:

• High intake of processed or ‘junk’ foods
• Chronic stress
• Personal use of antibiotics
• Antibiotic use in the food industry
• Eating a limited diet
• Drinking too much alcohol
• A lack of exercise
• Smoking
• Not getting enough sleep

How to keep your gut healthy and lose weight

Here are four easy ways you can get your gut back into shape and lose weight.

1. Eat more fibre

Fibre helps to nourish those microbes in your gut and helps to keep them diverse so you can digest your food properly, achieve your ideal weight and feel great.

Make sure you include plenty of wholefoods in your diet such as fresh fruits, vegetables and wholegrains.

2. Slash your sugar intake

Processed sugars feed the ‘unhealthy’ bacteria in your gut and starve the healthy bacteria that you need to stay slim so avoid them whenever you can.

Instead of cakes, biscuits, juices sweets and other sugar-filled snacks, switch to healthier wholefoods like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds instead.

3. Enjoy fermented foods

Boost your gut health naturally by increasing your intake of fermented foods.

Consider trying kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, olives, miso, yoghurt and sourdough bread to add those live microorganisms back into your gut.

4. Consider a supplement

A supplement is a great way to add those essential gut bacteria if you struggle to eat enough fresh produce, you’re not a fan of fermented foods or if you’d like additional support when it comes to losing weight.

We offer three popular supplements that can help:

1. InternaFlora

InternaFlora is an easy-to-take capsule which contains healthy saccharomyces boulardii yeast and olive leaf powder to nourish gut bacteria. It also contains biotin and vitamin D which help boost your metabolism so you feel more energised for those workouts.

[Note that this supplement isn’t suitable for vegetarians or vegans, although it is dairy-free and gluten-free.]

Find out more about InternaFlora here.

2. Pro Flora

Boasting 4 billion viable organisms per capsule, this vegetarian-friendly probiotic provides a specially tailored blend of eight live cultures to help rebalance your gut bacteria and get you back into shape more effortlessly.

Perfect for travel, there’s no need to pop this probiotic supplement in the fridge- simply store at room temperature and you’re good to go!

Find out more about Pro Flora here. 

3. Flora Kids

If you struggle to take capsules or you’d like to help kids to get into shape, consider taking our popular Flora Kids.

This tasteless powder is perfect for adding to milk, cold water and food and contains a blend of viable organisms from seven strains of healthy bacteria. Every sachet contains 1 billion live cultures plus (fructooligosaccharide) fibres.

Find out more about Flora Kids. 

 If you could use a helping hand when it comes to losing weight, it’s worth considering your gut health and taking steps to keep it balanced.

Eat plenty of fresh produce, avoid sugar, eat fermented foods and take one of our advanced supplements and you’ll be surprised by how much better you look and feel.