How
often have the “experts” preached that to those who have
been yo-yo dieting their whole lives? People say that and people end up
feeling as though they’re losers or just don’t have enough
will-power, or worse, have been convinced that they’re simply
addicted to food.
Well,
guess what? None of the above is an absolute. Those physicians who
have bothered to take the time to read their own research will never
say those things to you. Instead, they’ll tell you the truth:
You
can diet and count calories (or, points) till the cows come home, but
if you’re missing one thing, you’ll never be able
to lose your belly fat, let alone sustain any fat loss. Why? Because
you have to generate the right kind of bacteria in your gut in order
to lose fat and keep it off.
When
you eat, the bacteria in your colon digests the food. There are,
literally hundreds of different kinds of gut bacteria, but for ease
of understanding, we’ll divide them into two major categories:
Bacteriodetes and Firmicutes. I’ll desginate them B
and F.
If
you have excessive amounts of F in your gut, no matter how many
calories you cut from your diet, you’re going to gain weight over
time. F bacteria thrive on simple carbohydrates, you know, all the
sugary stuff that most of us eat all the time. Including, pasta,
rice, grains, white sugar, white flour, dried fruits and fruit juices
as well as soda and so forth. The F bacteria turn those calories
into fat that ends up in the buttocks, hips, thighs and
abdomen. The B bacteria don’t absorb the simple carbs and pass
them out of the body, unused.
The
solution is to stop focusing on calories and focus on growing the B
bacteria and ridding the body of the excessive F.
If you want to know how to do that, successfully, you might want to read my next blog.
Dr. Esther
