Research

Mixed

Pre-diet daily gut microbiota plasticity is significantly higher in very successful weight lossers on a low-fat diet compared to unsuccessful losers, but this correlation is not observed for low-carb diets.

If you are starting a low-fat diet, your gut's natural day-to-day variability might predict how well you will do. Those with higher variability before starting tended to lose more weight. This is not a reason to avoid low-fat diets, but a hint that individual gut dynamics matter.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Pre-diet microbiota plasticity was significantly higher for VS subjects on the low-fat diet compared to US subjects... There was no difference in pre-diet plasticity between weight loss success groups for the low-carb diet.
Jessica A. Grembi et al. · Scientific Reports · 2020

Why this rating

Statistically significant in discovery cohort (p=0.033) but not validated in the second cohort due to sampling differences.

Source

Gut microbiota plasticity is correlated with sustained weight loss on a low-carb or low-fat dietary intervention

Jessica A. Grembi et al. · Scientific Reports · 2020

DOI 10.1038/s41598-020-58000-y

rct · n=122Cited 39×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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