How Belly Bugs Make For Weight Loss

August 9, 2018 Ashley 0 Comments

For a few weeks there, I was doing really well.

Really. I was on my weight maintenance A game. My cravings were controlled. Recreational food reducing was on fleek. I was rationing calories, seemingly seamlessly. But, then, after a trauma to my hand tentacle (pointer finger), I had to go on antibiotics. (Yeah. It was that deep an injury. Another story for another time…) But there was a piggyback injury to this one that I hadn’t even considered might happen. And that was the fact that I was killing off all the gut bugs responsible for my general health. The result? A total throwing off of my body chemistry – to include food and mood. Within five days, I was spiraling, dietarily speaking. It was like – out of my control. The notion of not stuffing my face seemed inconceivable. Suddenly, I was 25/8 PMS level Miss Pessimistic and perma-bloated. And that was when it hit me. (And by “me”, I mean my soche media feed.) It arrived like a perfectly timed digital gift from the fitness info gods, right into my lap (before that too could get fat from my new and horrifying snack habits). And it came in the form of rhetorical question I knew I had to answer with my wallet next wegmans trip:

“Are you getting enough probiotics?”

Let me ask you. Or, better yet, let’s check for the litany of symptoms to see if you’re suffering from them too. Because, until I got my hands on some of the stuff, I sure was. To name just a few, there’s the massive gas. I don’t just mean booty tooting, either. Worse. It’s that feeling like a boulder’s lodged in your belly. Not only do you feel heavy, failing to move toxins along and used food out’ve you, but your energy’s spent. You feel depleted. Your skin goes icky. You get sickly. And your lady bits get itchy while yeast feasts on ’em. As a result, your workouts suck (when you manage to talk yourself into actually doing them) and your mood is shrew level dreadful at all times.

Enter the magical cure.

So, off I went to procure some probiotics.

Why? Because A.) the chick in the article I read said she felt relief in three days and B.) I remember my mom feeding me yogurt through my youth during times I was ingesting meds that decimated my friendly flora. As a vegan, yogurt stopped being an option a while ago. But now? Now, there are so many options for non dairy probiotics you can eat, drink, or swallow. (Granted, I dunno if ingesting “live cultures” is technically vegan, but I gotta draw the line somewhere, seeing as veganism’s purpose for me is only half about compassion – the other half’s about health.) And, after I bought my biota builder, you wanna know how many days it took me to recalibrate? One and a half. Compared to that other chick’s three. I mean it’s totally not a competition. (#ButITotallyWon) For real, though, I shiz you not. It happened that fast. And, speaking of shiz, if that’s a thing that’s not been happening much for you, you can look forward to that hellish spell ending. (Which also means you can finally bid that igneous feeling lump in your tummy goodbye.) Expect a cinched in midsection and mood improvement of such massive proportions that you wonder if you’ve gone manic or your man spiked your coffee this morning. For the past two days, I’ve been on a craving free cloud of pleasant energy, even though all the externals of my life are exactly as they usually are. Every meal felt like just enough. Midday naps felt less necessary than usual. I wasn’t even getting my usual social or mental exhaustion after a full day of doing two jobs and talking to innumerable humans. I felt like Bradley Cooper in “Limitless”.

And why? Why would probiotics offer this? It’s simple. As mentioned above, we need bacteria (the kind kind) in our gut to survive and thrive. And, while antibiotics may kill the inimical ones in our system, they also boot out the benevolent ones. No good guy gatekeepers down there to manage havoc equals gastric gases building up. And, sure enough, not even 24 hours after restoring my flora, I could feel that fact on a very somatic level when the symptoms suddenly were magically absent. And you wanna know the really interesting thing? They always say the comeback makes you even stronger than you were before the hardship happened. And this is kinda like that. See, all those cravings and problems I had when I was on cephalosporin haven’t actually been limited to that injury. I get ’em plenty throughout the year. They pop up often. During times of stress. During times I’m not macro balancing. During times my sleep or general eating schedule’s thrown off. During times of other illnesses. And, the truth is (much like many a vitamin or mineral deficiency), most of us probably aren’t getting the probiotics we need on a daily basis anyway – even when we aren’t ill. Stocking our innards up with the proper proportion of them ahead of time’s the best preventative remedy against all those aforementioned effects that’re the enemy of weight loss.

So what should you get?

Well, while the vitamin aisle generally has a lot’ve options, I like to down mine in delicious form. For example, root beer kombucha is a beautiful way to get your daily dose with an effervescent twist. However, there’s two issues with that. The first’s the added bloat factor. (Which may already be an issue for you.) And the second’s that it gets pricey. So, what I do is save it for my “treat-yoself” days and alternate it with the fermented edible options more often – like kimchi, sauerkraut, or this savory Sriracha sauce packed with probiotics. I kinda like plopping any’ve those in my soup or even enjoying it as an app while I wait for my regular, unfermented veggies to cook.

So, what’s the lesson here?

To de-gas your abdomen after antibiotics with a dose of probiotics?

Sure. But if you want to feel awesome all the time, munch those bugs on a daily basis.