Don’t waste your time counting calories. If you want to lose weight, the answer might be in your gut. ‎Trillions of bacteria live on your skin and in your ‎body, and so our bodies have more bacteria than human cells.‎ Your gut microbiome, for example, consists of microbes that live in your digestive tract.

Benefits of your Gut Microbes
Each person’s gut microbiome is considered to be unique, like a microbial fingerprint. It’s affected by your genetics and your environment. They help with the immune system, digesting food, breaking down fiber, producing hormones that help control appetite, and synthesizing vitamins, including vitamin K and certain B vitamins, and essential nutrients, including short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). 

Poor Gut Health Can Cause Obesity

Scientific evidence continues to emerge showing that poor gut health or dysbiosis can contribute to obesity. “Dysbiosis” refers to an unhealthy balance of gut microbes and often indicates a decrease in microbial diversity and a shift in the steadiness between “healthy” and “unhealthy” microbes.

How can your gut bacteria affect your weight? 

1. Your microbiome influences the way food is, digested, absorbed, and how dietary fats are stored.

2. Your microbiome may also impact the production of hungry hormones, such as ghrelin, which controls the feeling, either hungry or full.

3. An unhealthy gut microbiome can increase inflammatory markers which may lead to weight gain and metabolic disease. 

Studies’ Conclusions

Both human and animal studies have found that moderate-weight people have different gut bacteria than those overweight or obese.

Moreover, people with obesity tend to have less variety of gut bacteria than lean people. What’s more, those with obesity who have less diversity of gut bacteria tend to gain more weight than people with obesity who have more diverse gut bacteria.
A study found that those who were obese had different gut bacteria than their non-obese twins. In particular, obesity was associated with lower gut bacteria diversity, meaning there were fewer types of bacteria in the gut.
Another recent study found that the ratio of two types of bacteria in your intestines may determine how much weight you lose when given a particular diet.

Another study on 292 people found that those who were overweight had lower gut bacteria diversity and higher levels of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker in the blood.

In brief, many studies found that gut bacteria may play an important role in controlling body weight, and strong evidence links obesity to inflammation throughout the body. 

Improving the health of your gut lining will reduce chronic inflammation and protect against obesity and other diseases.

The gut microbiome has become a promising target for predicting, preventing, and for treating many diseases including obesity.

Diet is one of the determinants of gut microbiome variation.