Mixed
Long-term adherence to healthy low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets results in transient microbiota shifts that revert toward baseline composition, demonstrating microbiome resilience despite sustained weight loss.
If you are trying to lose weight and keep it off, know that your gut bacteria will likely bounce back to their original state after the first few months, even if you stick to your diet. This 'resilience' might make long-term weight maintenance harder. Focus on sustainable dietary habits rather than expecting your microbiome to permanently change to support weight loss.
After these initial shifts, the microbiota returned near its original baseline state for the remainder of the intervention, despite participants maintaining their diet and weight loss for the entire study. These results suggest a resilience to perturbation of the microbiome’s starting state.
Why this rating
Randomized clinical trial (DIETFITS subset) with 12-month duration and 16S rRNA sequencing, though limited to a subset (n=49) and using 16S rather than metagenomics.
Source
Long-term dietary intervention reveals resilience of the gut microbiota despite changes in diet and weight
Gabriela K. Fragiadakis et al. · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2019
DOI 10.1101/729327
Related findings · Mixed
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