The Microbiome Dieting: The Trend to Lose Weight

Holidays are fabulous, but the holiday weight is something we all dread. After all the feasting, you set a regime to cut down on certain foods and join the gym. The real struggle starts when that one slice of pizza is calling you for another nom-nom moment.

The time of feasting, merry-making, and more feasting is around the corner. After everything is over, you will go back to worrying about ways to get rid of the unwanted mass.

Losing weight with friends is helpful as long as we lose together. Don’t you hate it when they are losing, and you are still looking at the same numbers on your scale or going at a slower pace than them?

We blame our metabolism and we should. Metabolism is something many of us have been struggling to manage.

Do not be discouraged by the fact that your metabolism is dropping five percent every ten years. We bring good tidings. The new way of losing weight called microbiome dieting is all the rage now

What Is Microbiome Dieting?

This new trend of dieting is a three-phase program that can help you lose weight and restore your gut health as well. The idea is to eat the right food to maintain your gut microbiome health.

In short, you can call microbiome dieting as weight loss with a high metabolism.

There are trillions of bacteria and microorganisms that are responsible for digestion, appetite building, immune system, and the speed of burning calories.

Through the microbiome diet regime, a balance is maintained between friendly and hostile bacteria in your gut. It helps in improving digestion and discourages inflammation in your bowel system.

Microbiome dieting is what one would call a cutting-edge emerging science. It holds the key to good health, physically and mentally, and the secret behind a tenable weight loss.

The Four Essential Rs

1. Removal: Remove all food and toxins that may throw off the balance of your gut microbes such as, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and some medications.

2. Repair: Begin the intake of plant food and supplements that can help to repair the intestinal walls and give support to the microbiomes. Repairing is essential as the partially digested food may cause permeability to the lining of the intestine leading to inflammation.

3. Replacement: To obtain optimal digestion, you need to replace your regular diet with digestive enzymes like herbs and supplements. That will improve the bacterial behavior in your gut.

4. Reinoculate: Re-establish your gut with good bacteria for nourishment with food and supplements rich in probiotic and prebiotic.

Three Phases of the Program

Phase 1
The first phase lasts typically for three weeks, focusing on the four R’s. That is the most crucial stage aiming to remove unhealthy gut bacteria and replaced with healthy digestive enzymes.

Usually, you will be cutting a lot of food and toxins in this phase. The list of food to avoid includes sweeteners, grains, dairy, eggs, and gluten

Fill your gut with organic and plant-based foods like asparagus, onion, garlic, and leeks. Fermented foods are rich in probiotics, such as kefir, yogurt, and sauerkraut.

Supplements you need to include in your diet should be rich in zinc and vitamin D as well, like grapefruit seed extract, oregano oil, and wormwood.

It’s not just foods you need to avoid. You will also have to stop using chemical-based cleaning products and go for natural ones.

This phase calls for strict discipline on following the dos and don’ts.

Phase 2
Phase two will go for four weeks, expecting your guts to be healthy by the end. That will allow some flexibility on your diet.

Some foods that you avoided on phase one can be re-introduced in this stage like dairy foods and gluten-free grains.

Ninety percent of the time in this period will be spent on avoiding foods from phase one that damages the gut microbes.

Here you can relax your food curfew and start having most vegetables and fruits such as melons, peaches, sweet potatoes, yams, and mangoes.

Phase 3
The last period is usually called the “maintenance phase.” It’s the final stage that requires you to tune up for a lifetime.

The duration of this stage has no limit, and it aims to help you achieve a long-term weight loss.

When you have reached this stage, be assured that your gut microbes are healed to a great extent.

Compared to the foods you avoided during the first stage, you will have to bypass about 70 percent of the food. Make sure you avoid processed foods and food products with added sugar.

Know the Pros and Cons of Microbiome Dieting

While microbiome dieting improves the health of the gut microbes and helps in a substantial weight loss, the program is considered to be expensive and restrictive as well.

This program aids in maintaining a nutritious food regime, improving gut health to a considerable level. Microbiome diet controls the intake of sugar, which improves bowel function.

Following the microbiome, regime improves your eating habit making you avoid unhealthy foods and enhancing the intake of fresh fruits, vegetables, and organic foods in general.

This diet program can help your immune system fight against diseases like type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart disease as well.

However, effective the program is, your diet will be restrictive, mostly in the first phase. You will be required to eliminate a large portion of food from your diet.

Maintaining a strict microbiome diet can be expensive and moreover; the benefit of the diet has a lot of unclear results.

Food List of Microbiome Diet

Foods you can eat are:

• Fruits: Avocados, apples, oranges, nectarines, rhubarb, tomatoes, kiwi, grapefruit, cherries, melons, mangoes, coconut, berries, pears, and peaches.
• Vegetables: Leeks, sweet potatoes, garlic, onion, carrots, radishes, asparagus, yams, sauerkraut, and fermented vegetables.
• Grains: Buckwheat, millet, brown rice, and wild rice.
• Dairy products: Yoghurt and kefir.
• Proteins: Organic, free-range animal proteins
• Fats: Seed butter, flaxseed, olive oils, and sunflower.
• Spices: Turmeric and cinnamon.
Foods to avoid during the diet are:
• Gluten
• Soy
• Sugary foods and sweeteners
• Processed and packaged foods
• Trans fat and hydrogenated fats
• Corn
• Potatoes
• Peanuts
• Deli meat
• Fruit juice
• High mercury fish
• Eggs
• Starchy fruits and vegetables