Because I’m trying to gain weight the right way, I think about food a lot. And I recently learned about something that changed how I see eating: the gut microbiome.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are trillions of microbes living inside your gut, more than a thousand different species of bacteria. They help you digest food, they help train your immune system, and they produce special compounds called short-chain fatty acids that protect your gut lining and calm down inflammation. There’s even a gut-brain connection, where these microbes help make some of the chemicals that affect your mood.
So you’re basically carrying around a whole ecosystem, and what you eat decides which players get fed. Fiber, the stuff in fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, is food for the good bacteria. A diet that’s all ultra-processed junk feeds the bad bacteria, and when that balance gets thrown off it’s been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, gut diseases, and even mood problems.
Every meal, I’m either feeding the good bacteria or the bad ones. Bulking taught me that the source of my calories matters, not just the number, and the microbiome is a huge reason why. Real food with fiber and the same calories from packaged junk do completely different things once they’re inside you.
It kind of blew my mind that “trust your gut” might be more literal than people think. Take care of those trillions of tiny teammates and they take care of you.
The Global Pulse 