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 types of bacteria. They help you digest food and train your immune system, and they produce special substances called short-chain fatty acids that protect your gut lining and calm down inflammation. There’s even this thing where these microbes help make some of the chemicals that affect people’s mood.
So you’re basically carrying around a whole ecosystem inside your gut, 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 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 issues.
Every meal, I’m either feeding the good bacteria or the bad ones. Bulking taught me that the source of my calories matters and the microbiome is a huge reason why. Real food with fiber and the same calories from junk food do completely different things once they’re inside your body.
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.
