Gut bacteria and diet and will-power.

I have struggled with changing my diet. I thought to share what I learnt, in the hope it might help someone else.

I wanted to eat more healthily. I'd heard that a good thing would be more fruit and veg and less simple carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, crisps, cakes and cookies. The problem was I loved bread, cookies, cakes and crisps. I just couldn't resist them. I was so disappointed in my lack of willpower.

Gut bacteria seemed to me a trendy topic, so at first I ignored it. The idea is that the right bacteria in your gut help you digest your food. This is nothing new. It's been known for ages that cows and sheep can only eat grass because of a sophisticated relationship with the right bacteria. So the idea that there might also be bacteria in our guts, helping us digest our food, is not at all unreasonable. The trendy part is whether you have the right bacteria and what to do about it if you don't.

I'm a bit skeptical about trends. I wasn't convinced that changing gut bacteria was possible. But I do find my experience with changing my diet interesting. Something did change. Obviously its just one person's experience. It doesn't prove anything. But I went from feeling unbalanced if I ate salad/fruit, to feeling unbalanced if I didn't eat salad/fruit.

How did that happen? How did my feelings about a particular food item change from resistant to enthusiastic? Is it possible that my gut had changed and was giving off different signals?

Who knows. But what it says to me is that maybe it wasn't my willpower at fault. Maybe it was my gut bacteria objecting to something they weren't used to. Maybe I just needed to be patient, to keep persisting, and to give my bacteria time to adapt.

If so, there's hope for anyone out there trying to eat more healthily. If my experience is anything to go by, all you need to do is keep trying. Don't worry about the bad days, as long as you keep trying, gradually the momentum might turn in your favour and start helping you, rather than holding you back.

Good luck