Podcast: What is the Biome and how can it Help You Lose Weight?

The biome is all those trillions of microscopic organisms that live in your gut. They help you digest food and have a big impact on cravings, weight gain or loss and our behaviour.

It might be that your biome is working against your goal to lose weight and be more healthy. It might be contributing your carb cravings and making it difficult for you to stick to your healthy eating goals.

The good news is that the biome can also help with weight loss.

How do you get a "helpful" biome instead of a "working against you" biome?

Smash your 2023 weight loss goals workshop:

https://www.drorlena.com/weight-loss-goals 

Ready to give yourself the gift of success and health in 2023? Book a call here: https://bookme.name/drorlena/healthy-you-healthy-family-program 

Transcription of Podcast

Please note this transcription is generated by software. There may be some errors. I hope you find it useful.

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. Super excited to chat to you coming live from, Hmm, not quite sunny, Spain. Okay. Today I want to talk to you about the bio. What is the biome and how can it help me lose weight? Also, I'm gonna add, how can it help me lead a long and healthy life?

What is the biome?

let's start from the beginning. What is the biome? The biome is, or are all of those literally trillions of bugs, which may be bacteria? There may be other things, and they live in our gut. Now we have a whole universe in inside of us, and it's amazing to think. We think of ourselves as us, but actually there's all of these organisms inside of us.

And what do these organisms do? Basically help us digest food. Now, obviously they didn't do it just to help us. They're there busy living on the food that we are eating. now, in the last 20 years, people have really started researching and having a look at Biome and how it has an impact on so many different areas of our life, how it may help us to gain weight and crave fruits, crave sugary high, you know, junky tub foods not great, or it may help us support weight loss and it also may have other.

Our biome can influence our behaviour

Like helping us to feel less stressed and helping us to feel happy, and it may influence our behavior in much more subtle ways than we realized. So let's have a look at weight loss and think about how the biome impacts weight loss. So you have all of these different bugs inside your body. And if you are eating in one way, so for example, let's say you're eating the standard American diet, which is full of lots of meat, maybe processed meat, lots of processed foods.

Your biome might be driving your sugar cravings

Then you have a certain type of bacteria and and bugs in your gut, and they are not helping you lose weight because they want more of that food. And so they're driving those cravings. They're helping you drive those. Now on the other spectrum, you've got totally different bugs in your bio and they are helping you actually lose weight.

You want a biome that helps you lose weight.

They're helping you get to your normal weight. And so the question really becomes how do you change from one to the other? And another question to ask is, how do we know this? Well, they have done lots of studies on mice, in particular, these poor mice. They get fed horrible things and they get to be really super.

And then they get some poo from a thin mice injected into them or you know, put up their bottom and then they find that actually they lose weight. So there's lots of really interesting animal studies out there, and people have started experimenting with poop transplants in humans as well. Now it is a slightly controversial area, and it's not in my opinion, where you need to go.

How do you get a biome that helps you lose weight?

It's just an interesting fact. It's interesting to think about it, but there are so many interesting studies around this area. , but really the big question in my mind is, well, how do you get, how do you create a biome that is helpful for you because, and why do you want to do it? Well, it's gonna help you naturally lose weight, and it's gonna help you find eating healthy foods easier.

So it's win, win, win, win, win, basically. and in fact, I was talking about this in my Healthy You Healthy Family program yesterday, my group coaching program, and one of the ladies was saying, Hey, you know what? I'm happy to sort of not eat sugary things at the moment, and my husband is very supportive and he has decided that over the Christmas holidays, he's gonna do less baking in order to support me, but I don't want to be in this situation the whole time.

I don't want to have to ask my husband to do this. And one of the other ladies was saying, yeah, but you know what happens? You get to a stage where you actually just don't want. Eat the sugar. You are like, yeah, I, it's not a big deal for me to say no, I'm happy not eating whatever it is, cookies or candy or cake or anything like that.

And part of that, part of that reason that that happens is partly because you are, you've retrained your brain to realize that life without sugar is okay. You've retrained your body, but part of it is your biome. The lady who's been in the group for a while has really been working on healthy eating for the last.

And her biome is now in a stage where she's like, okay, I'm happy not to eat other my biome. My body is basically saying, I want healthy stuff that isn't sugar. And that is a journey to go on and that's the journey that I support people in The Healthy You Healthy Family Program. Okay, back to the biome.

How do you get a healthy biome?

Well, there are lots and lots of things that you can do. to get a healthy biome.

Eating a healthy diet full of fibre will help you get a healthy biome

But the big number one thing that I think you should be doing is eating a healthy diet. Now, in case you haven't heard me talk about a healthy diet, because I don't think I have talked about it in detail for a long time.

Come to the Smash Your 2023 Weight Loss Goals Workshop

If you come to the workshop, the smash, your 2023 weight loss goals, I will be talking more and really asking you how are you eating and showing you some of the changes that you can do. But essentially, Eating a plant-based diet, and that doesn't mean you never get to eat meat. It means you're getting most of your calories from plants.

And I particularly teach the Mediterranean style diet, which is like a subsection of plant-based diet. The difference being that you're getting all your fats from. Extra virgin olive oil. And so what does that diet look like? It looks like lots of fruit and vegetables, but in a way that is healthy and tasty and you are enjoying these foods.

This is like the end goal. This is where you get to, you're eating olive oil, whole grains, which is good for your bio. Those whole grains have fiber in them. Your biome likes fiber. A healthy bio likes fiber. You are eating lentils and legumes and pulses. And on a side note, I know a lot of people say, oh my goodness, I can't tolerate nuts or lentils, or legumes or something else.

And the reason is normally because your bio is not used to eating it, you don't have the equipment to digest it. And once you start eating it and then incorporating it into your life, you find that you develop. So there is a little bit of a transition phase from going from not healthy biome to healthy biome, but the benefits of a healthy biome are huge.

They're gonna help you make it feel easy to lose weight. Now is that worth changing for? Yes, totally. So that is, You know where you get to eating healthily. Now on a not so great note. All of those processed foods and what I call quick release carbohydrates, so thinking about white flour and sugar and anything that really rapidly pushes up your glucose levels like white potatoes often do the same.

Sugar and processed foods aren’t good for a healthy biome

Those things are not good for your biome. They do not promote a healthy biome. They, they promote a less healthy biome. So sugar directly is not great for your biome. And lots of those processed foods have things like emulsifies in them, which are not great for your biome. So you want to be protecting your biome and nurturing your biome and going, okay, I have got a great biome and it's gonna make it easy for me to enjoy the healthy.

Leafy greens and colourful vegetables are great for a healthy biome

Now if we're looking at vegetables, there are two main different types of vegetables that are really good for your biome. Now, all vegetables are good for your biome, and I'm not including potatoes in my vegetable count. So number one, leafy greens. And I always talk about who is the cabbage green, who has eaten cabbage or kale or lettuce, but leafy greens, those fibrous foods that are full of fiber, that number one, fill you.

And number two, supply your bio with lots of healthy goodness to, for them to. . So leafy greens. And the other thing is eating a rainbow. That's all those lovely colored foods. So if you're thinking about black, it could be ogen or eggplant, depending on what you're talking about, or blueberries or blackberries thinking about red.

It can be tomatoes and cherries and grapefruit. Thinking about orange carrots, and pumpkins and squashes. So all of those amazing colored foods. Eating a rainbow is really good. . And the reason is that all of those colors have something called flavonoids in them. Now, there's different types of flavonoids.

In fact, I were linked to a really interesting article in the Facebook group, which shows you a different picture of all the flavonoids and which ones are good of them. Good, you know, what they, what they are good for. And some of them help you lose weight. They've shown that some of them help you lose.

but also they are good for your bio. Another amazing thing. So, and, and one of the things I would say as well is they have done studies where they have looked at mice and they have made the poor mice do yo-yo dieting. And so what they have done is they have them lots, made them get fat, then put them on a diet, made them get thin.

made them get fat, made them get thin, made them get fat, made them get thin until they reached this stage where they stopped getting thin. And it's almost like they have obesity memory. They find it really difficult to get thin. And what they did was fed them flavonoids and that almost reset. So that they could get thin again.

So they reset their biome and they managed to get the mice thin again. Now, obviously you are not a mouse, but it is just a really interesting concept that our biome is super impactful and it's another interesting story for you. They talk about how your biome can modify behavior. And there's one really interesting experiment that they did where they.

Took some poop from a cat, which contained something called toxoplasmosis, and they put it into a mouse. Now, normally a mouse is quiet and rashi and retiring and hiding in the shadows. But when it had the toxoplasmosis in it, it went out into the middle of the wherever they were almost saying, oh my goodness, cat, come and eat me.

And the thinking behind this is really that it was the toxoplasmosis that was driving the behavior. and it wanted to get back into the cat. And they think this is driven by something called the vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs from your stomach to your brain. And that's how the, the, the biome is able to modify our behavior.

And when you c when you cut that, you can't modify your behavior. But the good news is that if you have a healthy bio, it's more likely to support you feeling happy and in, in control of things rather than stressed. So it is just like one of those. Ticks. I say in, I'm always talking about, you can either go down the negative plughole or you can start to spiral up and you start building this framework of, oh my goodness, I'm eating healthily, I'm exercising, I'm sleeping, I'm thinking, well, and it all start.

Do you want a healthy biome that helps you lose weight?

You start to build up. You start to spiral upwards, and this is another tool in starting to spiral upwards. It will help support your weight loss and it will help you feel. Live long and feel invigorated. So your biome is definitely something that is worth nourishing. . So healthy eating all around essentially for weight loss and for long life.

It is so worth it. The benefits are amazing. Now, on a side note in the Facebook group, I asked people, hands up if you are somebody who eats healthly and still struggles to lose weight. And a lot of people put their hands up and said, yes, that is me. Now if you are somebody who eats healthily already and you are struggling to lose weight and you want support, the Healthy You Healthy Family Group program is ideal for you to really get that notch up so that you naturally lose weight and your energy levels go up and you are doing everything you can to lead a long and healthy life.

And I know that your health is important to you, and I know that it feels a bit like, oh my goodness, if only I could do. Everything would fall into place, but I'm too busy and I can't figure out how to. If that sounds like you, please come and book a call. Please come and book a call now and let me help you.

Are you looking for support to create a healthy life style that supports your weight loss goals? Book a call now!

Even if you just book the call, having the call is, super valuable in terms of helping you get your priorities right, and what will happen on the call is we will talk about where you are, where you want to get to, and then if you're interested, I'll tell you about my program and how I can support you on the journey to get to where you want to get to.

And it is a journey. It isn't something that happens in a week or two weeks Now, why is it a journey? Because life happens and you've got ingrained habits, but you can get there and having support. Really, really makes it so much easier. So I'll leave the link in the show notes, come and book a call. And also remember to sign up for the smash your 2023 weight loss goals.

I will leave a link in the show notes as well. Have a fabulous day. Go and eat some vegetables. Who is the Cabbage Queen today? Okay, bye-bye.