Reset Your Gut in 7 Days: A Doctor’s Step-by-Step Protocol to Lose Weight

Bloating, cravings, fatigue, mood swings, brain fog. So many of these issues trace back to one root cause. That root cause is the gut. But the good news is that you can reset it in seven days. And today I'm going to give you the full doctor approved gut reset plan that helps to reduce inflammation, will help you burn fat, and help to support your digestion without expensive supplements or extreme cleanses. So let's dive in. Here's what most people don't realize. If your gut is not working well, then your body can't drop weight in the way that it should. It makes things really difficult for me. When my gut is off, I gain weight quickly, specifically around the belly, and I get really bad brain fog and joint pain. Oddly enough, when I get those three symptoms, it's like the perfect trifecta. I know something is off with my gut. Now, your gut is, is home to trillions of tiny bugs called microbes. And they help you digest food. They control your blood sugar, they control your weight, they control the inflammatory levels in your body. So when your gut is out of balance because of stress, that's my main culprit. Or because of sugar, processed food, even antibiotics. It can cause all kinds of problems. Problems like bloating and gas, sugar cravings, mood swings, brain fog, memory issues, fat stored specifically around the belly, low energy, poor sleep, even a slow metabolism and trouble burning fat. Over 70% of your immune system is in your gut, so going to impact immunity. You could get sick more often. Or when you do get sick, it's more extreme. It could result in food sensitivities, cravings, mental fog. I think it's really interesting to look at the impact of our overall gut and our mental health. You know, they're not close together, but they're definitely tied strongly with each other. A damaged gut lining can also stop you from absorbing important nutrients like protein, magnesium, B vitamins, and healthy fats. All things that you need for steady fat loss and a healthy metabolism. So if your gut is inflamed, your body's going to hold on to fat for survival mechanisms. When you fix the gut, then your metabolism can work more efficiently and your body can really just release and let go of that fat weight that's no longer serving you. If you've tried cutting calories, doing juice cleanses, taking all of these supplements, and you're still bloated and gaining weight, the problem isn't your willpower, it's that you're not following the right protocol to support your gut. At PhD weight loss, we create A customized plan that will support optimal gut health. Right now we're actually in the middle of conducting a gut health study and we're looking at the impact of our food on those gut microbes we talked about. What we're finding is that just six weeks after following the PhD weight loss method, folks, gut microbes look like the gut bacteria found in a lean individual, whereas when they started the program, it looked like the gut bacteria found in overweight obese individuals. So when we are carrying excess fat weight, we actually have specific gut bacteria that is not supportive of dropping weight. But you can make that switch, say, six weeks, and we can see a difference in that gut bacteria to the type of bacteria that actually supports weight loss. So if you think your gut is impacting your weight loss success and you think a customized meal plan guiding you on how to overcome that would be helpful, then you should check out PhD weight loss. Just go to the description and you'll see a link for myphdweightloss.com click that to learn more. All right, so let's dive in and let me walk through your 7 day gut reset plan. Now. I am always going to be honest and transparent for some folks, so seven days can really make a difference. For other people it might be seven weeks, and for some it might be seven months. So give your body time. When I say on days one and two, do this, you can try that for one or two days, but if it doesn't make the impact, then it might be one or two weeks that you need to take this action, or one to two months. Or it might be that you need outside support to figure out what's going in your system. But let's talk about this around, say seven days. But you are the judge of how long you need to take each steps. Days one through two would be removing the gut wreckers. So to begin healing your gut, you first have to take away the things that are hurting it. I talk about success through subtraction, right? Even with just in general our overall health. Sometimes if we can subtract something rather than add something. For example, if we can subtract the amount of sugar that we're consuming rather than adding a supplement, we'll see bigger moves with the subtraction than the addition of something. We all feel in today's society that we need to do more, that we need to add more, that we need to buy more, that we need to consume differently. Sometimes we just need to remove, eliminate, reduce, subtract. So days one through two is all about subtraction. Okay, so these are the foods that I want you to cut out for at least seven days, but again, it could be longer. And you might find some of them you can add back in, but some you need to keep out for a long time. Number one is gluten. Gluten. Gluten is found in bread, pastas, crackers. It's a protein found in these wheat items and a lot of people just can't tolerate them. I'm one of them. I cannot tolerate gluten. Number two is dairy, found in milk, cheese, creamy dressings, cottage cheese, yogurt. Number three, added sugars, especially in yogurts, protein bars, sauces, ketchup, salad dressings, spaghetti sauce. It's in a lot of things, seed oils like canola, soybean, corn, safflower, sunflower oil. Take those out and then alcohol. All of these items, gluten, dairy, added sugars, seed oils and alcohol, really trigger inflammation in the body. They cause inflammation in the lining of the gut, which tells your body to hold and store fat, specifically around the belly. Also, stop snacking. Give your body a break. Give your gut your liver a break. Digestion uses energy. Insulin levels are going to be elevated, which helps to block fat burning. You don't want chronically elevated insulin levels. So just give your body maybe four hours between a meal or a snack to just give it a break and time to heal and cleanse itself. Days 3 to 4. Consider adding in some gut healing foods. Okay, so now you've removed the problem. Now it's time to nourish the gut. So here are some foods to eat. Bone broth. You can make bone broth. You can buy powdered bone broth in these little tubes and you just dump it out and add hot water. We do that sometimes. And you can also get bone broth that's already made. You can get it in most of the grocery stores now. Bone broth is good because it includes collagen, glutamine, minerals, glycine, things that help to rebuild the gut lining. If you're going to consume veggies, make sure that they're cooked. When you cook your veggies, it's going to be easier to digest and help to reduce inflammation. I would avoid a lot of raw veggies depending on how bad your gut really is. Even lettuce can stick to the gut lining and cause some ir. So if your your gut is pretty bad, I would remove the green leafies as well. Raw broccoli can create a lot of havoc in the gut. So if you have Heartburn, you're going to be like, oh great, she gave me an excuse not to eat broccoli. I would say if you just love it, then give it a rest for a little bit and see the difference. And then if you add it back in, start with cooked and I would avoid raw broccoli. Onions and garlic offer a lot of good nutrition and can help to feed the good gut bacteria and boost digestion. Some people again though with sensitive guts can't tolerate onions and garlic specifically, like if you're following a FODMAP diet. So just something to consider again, I'm just throwing it all out there because we have all types of guts. And then ginger and turmeric can be helpful. They calm the gut, support the liver. You could make a ginger tea, a turmeric tea even, or you could take a supplement if you want to. But in general, these foods just help to support the body lower cortisol, which triggers inflammation in the body and is strongly correlated with belly fat storage. On day number five, you could try a gentle fast, try a day of reset and what it could look like is maybe just 12 hours between your last meal of the day and your first meal the next day. So what this would look like is stop eating at 7:30 at night and then don't eat anything again until the morning. You could do a little bit of a longer fast if that is easy and you like the feeling. This would be like a 16, 8 fast. What I mean by this is 16 hours of not eating and then an 8 hour window of eating, eating these gentle, healing foods. When you do fast, you just want to consume water, tea. If caffeine and coffee doesn't trigger your gut, it does for mine. So I avoid it. But if you seem to be fine with that, you could do some black coffee and that would be okay. The reason why fasting can be helpful is because it gives your body a break, your liver, your gut a break, so it can start to repair and work on the lining. And it's just one of the fastest ways to lower inflammation and reset your hunger signals. Now if you are on a weight loss journey and you find that when you do attempt to fast, it causes bingeing, and overeating, overcompensating, then it's just not the right tool for you and you can still heal your gut and not fast. All right, day number six is to focus on restoring the gut, the good bacteria. So now that your gut is cleaner, it's calmer, you can work to repopulate it with the Good guys. So you could consume some sauerkraut or kimchi, maybe just one to two tablespoons a day, if your gut is super sensitive, even less. But being consistent with it and small amounts will be really helpful. You could add in some plain Greek yogurt or some kefir. Just make sure that it's plain, it doesn't have added sugar in there. And then you could also play with a soil based or spore based probiotic which is gentle and doesn't bloat the body. I like the probiotic called seed. It has prebiotics which feed the good bacteria, the probiotics. So you could check that one out. And then I like mega spring spore biotic as well, is a really great one. And why this matters is because the good gut bacteria helps to digest your food, it helps to control cravings, it balances blood sugar, it supports fat burning hormones like we've been talking about them. So without supporting the gut, without eating well, then you're going to find that you're trying to lose weight with a broken engine. This is why just eating less doesn't really work. You're just going to find if you eat less, which a lot of people are doing on these medications, you're going to lose a lot of muscle and your metabolism is going to still be broken. So when you get off these drugs, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. All right, day seven is to reintroduce slowly and intelligently. Remember, it's likely that you're going to need longer than seven days if your gut has been inflamed for a long time. So take this slowly. But now that you've given your body a good break, you can start to rebuild. So you could add back in some fiber rich foods if you really want to, like some Zen basil seeds, some chia seeds, you could eat more prebiotic foods like asparagus, plantains, onions, leeks. But I would not jump back in really ever to the high processed, high sugar, high gluten containing foods because you're just going to undo all the great work that you've done. And then I would be remiss if I didn't talk about lifestyle habits because lifestyle habits, how you live your life impacts your gut. But you know, for me personally, if I share my story, I eat well, I move well, I sleep pretty well, but I've got a good amount of stress in my life and that has what has caused inflammation in my gut. So we got to talk about the lifestyle factors. Number one, is to make sure you're moving, you're walking. 30 minutes a day helps with digestion, helps to lower blood sugar. Getting adequate sleep. At least seven to eight hours of sleep a night. The gut lining can heal while you're sleeping. If you have trouble with sleep. I have an episode that I've done focusing on sleep. Just go into the description and click the link to watch that video. Space your meals four to six hours apart. Give the gut time to heal and just cleanse itself. Start your day right. We dehydrate through the night, so consuming about 16 ounces of water is helpful for your body, your brain, your gut. And you could stick some lemon in that water. You could make some ginger tea the night before and drink that upon awakening. It just helps to support stomach acid gut motility. You could add a little bit of of sea salt into that lemon water. That's going to be really great for the body. And then just build meals around protein and healthy fat. Think protein and healthy fat first. It really helps to stabilize your blood sugar levels and reduces fat storage overall. So now that your gut is back on track, it is time to focus on healing your metabolism. Watch this video here where I walk you through how muscle helps to control your blood sugar even at rest. It'll change the way that you look at weight loss forever. Remember to subscribe to this video and share your comments below. I want here how's your gut? What have you done that has improved your gut? And what questions do you have? See you in the next video.