I decided to cultivate good bacteria in my gut –

A few months ago, I heard from a friend about a new food trend, with a focus on take care of the intestinal microbiota. The care with dysbiosisthat is, the imbalance of gut bacteria, has popped up in my life ever since, and I decided to do an experiment: test the main diet I found with this clipping to understand what the hype is.

Weight loss, health and intestinal microbiota

The selection process was called 3 phase dietdeveloped by nutritionist and neuropath Eduardo Claas. Through a conversation via Zoom (his office is in Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul), he explained to me how the process came about and why he decided to offer this methodology through an online course through the platform myflow.com.

Mainly, he told about the decision to follow the studies on the functioning of the intestine and its influence on a person’s weight, the inflammation of his body and a series of other health issues, often treated in isolation – and not in isolation. integrative way.

“We wanted to bring a simplified language to people about the relationship between the intestinal microbiota and weight loss”, he explains. “It’s a delicate area to talk about on the networks, weight loss is always a taboo. People are fixated on what science delivers the most – and what science delivers most today is the caloric deficit, that is, the reduction of calories in the diet to generate weight loss.”

However, for Eduardo, the issue of weight loss does not stop there. It is necessary, he explains, to be careful with the digestive system and nurture it grow the bacteria who will collaborate for this slimming almost naturally. He says that the best way to explain this process is using the analogy of the classroom: it’s as if your gut were a class with students of different profiles, some more diligent others who need a little more patience to learn.

Unlike the caloric deficit, the relationship between the microbiota and weight loss has not been scientifically proven, but there are numerous studies that already work on this relationship. Eduardo says that, in this process, the procedure is usually to take theory into clinical practice and monitor the results, because, just as caloric reduction has its benefits, it also has its setbacks. “Many people who are in a caloric deficit end up gaining weight because they are not focused on regulating their microbiota,” he says.

Gut care, of course, is not something new either. Many ancient theories and philosophies, like ayurveda itself, talk about the importance of intestinal care for good health – not just for weight loss itself. In addition, more recent studies make a direct connection between gut health and mental health a personal one, so much so that this system has been called the “second brain”: the number of neurons and the amount of hormone production that is in charge of the intestine is such that it regulates our mood as much as those produced by the brain.

“A intestinal modulation has scientific validation in insulin resistance, which is an extremely important factor in the weight issue, and in subclinical chronic inflammation, which is a process that is often not traceable by conventional tests”, he says. “It is not uncommon for patients of mine to report that in addition to losing weight, pain has decreased, memory and disposition have improved. And that’s because we reduce the inflammatory load when you do a protocol focused on modulating the person’s intestine”.

Eduardo says that the weight issue is just the tip of an iceberg. For him, when talking about slimming, this is just a detail within a generalized health improvement. Often, the inflammatory process of a person’s organism is so high that not even the caloric deficit helps with weight loss. Food maturity, in this regard, is essential for the microbiota to be regulated, for weight to actually drop and for a person’s body to function more easily and better.

“My protocol starts with adjusting the microbiota in the first place. Afterwards, I see what caloric deficit I need to do. My work is a starting point, not an arrival point. Even if the person loses weight, he has to understand that this is a starting point for a nutritional maturity thinking about our gastrointestinal system, otherwise, it remains averse and the person loses weight, gets fat, gets weightless and gets fat…”.

The 3 Phase Diet in Practice

After the chat and with all the necessary material to carry out Eduardo’s protocol, I decided to start the first of the three phases on a Sunday: a three-day period of 100% raw food (i.e. from natural/raw foods only). I would start the day with a mixture of water and propolis extract on an empty stomach, going through an enzymatic juice breakfast (made with cabbage, pineapple, papaya, lemon and ginger), followed by a fruit for breakfast, leaf lunch and raw vegetables, a morning juice repeat and, finally, a lunch repeat.

It is important to say that I had already gone through a food re-education process a few years ago and that I became a vegetarian 3 years ago. Not eating meat was more than normal for me. I turned my nose up a bit at green leaves and some vegetables, but I accepted the challenge – as well as drinking the green juice, which has always been somewhat controversial, in my opinion.

My main fears were giving up coffee (I drank an average of three cups a day), my obligatory bit of semisweet chocolate after breakfast and lunch, and weekend foods, like pizza, which is one of my favorite foods. favorite things in life. Still, overall, I ate in a well-regulated way and without exaggeration.

– (Hinterhaus Productions/Getty Images)

Right on the first day, I was doubly surprised: first because the propolis extract tasted as weird as I remembered from childhood, and having a glass of mixed water on an empty stomach didn’t help much. Second, because the enzymatic juice was much tastier than I imagined.

Eduardo reinforced in our conversation that the idea is not to starve, but eat enough at lunch and dinner to feel satisfied. That’s what I did. Even so, in the afternoon I felt like eating the extra fruit that the program recommends.

The first day was the hardest. Right after lunch, I started to feel a lot of headaches and nausea, as I had never felt before. Both in our first conversation and in the messages we exchanged afterwards, Eduardo reinforced that if the symptoms appeared it was because my organism really needed that reboot. I tried to keep calm and keep going, but by the end of the first day, I thought I couldn’t take it with so much nausea and headache. Also, I felt a sudden drop in blood pressure and ended up going to bed much earlier than usual.

On Monday, I woke up better, but still a little nauseous. Breakfast was difficult and I felt like I couldn’t continue after the first sip of juice. But, by some magic, it seems that my organism began to understand what was happening and after breakfast I already felt much more willing and in control. I was still a little weak – and the recommendation to avoid physical exercises in this first part of the process makes perfect sense – so I increased the volume of leaves and vegetables at lunch and dinner and continued.

What scared me the most was also the last part of this first phase: take 100 ml of milk of magnesia with water (or coconut water and mint) instead of an afternoon snack. The idea is to loosen the intestine and clean what was still there of bad bacteria. As I had never done this before, I got ready to stay at home, but a face-to-face class came up at the last minute and I had to attend. Still apprehensive, I drank the mixture and waited.

Interestingly, nothing happened that day. I continued with dinner, which was already a vegetable soup (the first hot dish in three days), and slept. The evacuation, for me, didn’t come until the morning of the next day, and it was much smoother than I imagined.

It was after that that I started to feel the biggest difference. My belly deflated in a way I’ve never seen before and I started to feel my body much lighter and more comfortable. I got to talk to some friends and it’s as if I had gotten rid of discomforts that I didn’t even know I had. Interestingly, on the morning of the third day I went to the doctor and had to weigh myself: 59 kilos. Nothing different there, considering that I already had that as my weight since the last time I weighed myself, last year.

From then on, I went to the second phase. In it, the food was already more similar to what I used to eat before starting this process: the green juice is still an important part, as well as the mixture of propolis extract (now also with lemon) on an empty stomach. More different: take a spoonful of apple cider vinegar with a little water before lunch and dinner and some basic prohibitions, such as avoiding any industrialized food, which contains gluten or white flour, milk or derivatives. The ideal was to avoid even sweeteners. Caffeine and derivatives were still prohibited.

This phase lasts 27 days and is where I (still) find myself. From what I’ve seen so far, the next phase doesn’t have major changes and is more of an “indefinite” maintenance phase. From then on, caffeinated coffees and teas can be consumed in moderation again, but I find it difficult to resume the habit, considering how horrible it was to stop consuming the beverage.

One point that Eduardo mentioned and that really caught my attention: I would no longer feel like eating things that were very appetizing to me before, like breads It is candy. I saw it happen first hand when, still in the first week after the first phase, I went to a bakery to have breakfast with a friend and I didn’t feel like eating anything other than what was stipulated for the moment.

Eduardo explains that, during this period, “escapes” can happen, as long as they are moderate. Of the 35 meals a week, 3 can be made out of what is agreed in the material. But I didn’t even want to do that. More than 15 days after I started this process, half apprehensive, half believing I was doing something crazy, I easily notice the changes. The main one is in the body. Although losing weight is not a focus, I feel that since the day I weighed myself I’ve lost a little weight (or maybe it’s body fat) – I feel almost all baggy clothes, for example. Another point is the provision. I thought I wouldn’t be able to function without my daily coffee, but I soon realized that not only is it not necessary, but it makes me restless and inflamed. I’ve been waking up great, sleeping even better, and feeling more focused than ever.. Skin has never looked so beautiful, and even my hair looks healthier.

The tiring and stressful days still come, but it’s like my body is better prepared to deal with it, so food is not an issue on my mind. I went through PMS in the middle of this whole process and the will of…