This 30 Plants a Week Hack Helped One Woman Lose 227 lbs — How It Can Work for You
“I’m pain-free and have so much stamina … and it feels easy!” — Vicki Sheerin
Fed up with diets but still wish you were at a healthier weight? Here’s an amazing hack to try: Eat 30 plants a week. Turns out, that’s all it takes to radically improve your microbiome, the collection of 100 trillion microbes that call your body home. Current research, including some on identical twins, “shows that the microbiome plays the biggest role in determining the number on the scale—bigger than carb intake, exercise or even calories,” says nutrition expert Stephen Perrine, author of The Full-Body Fat Fix.
Perrine adds that this variety-focused version of a plant-based diet (which, by the way, doesn’t exclude animal-based food) boosts the microbiome very quickly, triggering rapid changes in bloat, energy, fat burn and overall health. Florida mom Vicki Sheerin says increasing the variety of plants she eats was the key that allowed her to drop 227 pounds. Keep reading to learn how you can use this twist on a plant-based diet to meet your health goals.
Why your microbiome is important
While your microbiome is invisible to the naked eye, “it contains 70 to 90 percent of the cells in your body. Just 10 to 30 percent of the cells in your body are actually human,” says Perrine. So it’s no wonder the microbiome exerts a powerful influence. Our bodies rely on it for help with “everything from digestion and immunity to regulating weight, mood and inflammation.”
What makes one microbiome healthier than another? It’s all about the quality, quantity and diversity of microbes. To get more and better microbes, we need to consume a wide variety of the plant fiber and antioxidants that make beneficial microbes thrive. “We’re still not sure why, but people with the healthiest microbiomes eat at least 30 different plants a week,” shares Perrine, noting this was one of the first discoveries of UC San Diego’s American Gut Project, a huge database of microbes and health info helping scientists learn how to build the best microbiome.
The research behind 30 plants a week
To prove varied diets make a big difference for our microbiomes and waists, scientists compared Californians eating a typical low-plant, processed American diet to the Hadza tribespeople from Tanzania who eat over 600 unprocessed plants and animal foods a year. The California group had 277 types of gut microbes; the Hadza group had 730 types. Women in both groups burned the same calories through exercise, yet the Californians had 38% body fat and the Hadzas just 21%.
Translation: The more variety you get, the lower your body fat automatically goes. “It can be as simple as buying fruit salad instead of apples, mixed nuts instead of almonds,” says Perrine. “Have fun with it!”
How 30 plants a week boosts weight loss
1. Inflammation reverses
We hear a lot these days about how processed diets cause inflammation that makes us achy, foggy and prone to disease. More surprising: Inflamed tissues release chemicals that block weight loss, says Perrine. These chemicals make it hard for blood sugar to be burned for energy — so energy falls, sugar is stored as fat and we inch toward type 2 diabetes. The same chemicals also keep the hormone leptin from killing hunger.
The good news? “A healthy microbiome is the master controller of inflammation.” Its microbes produce special cells that literally reverse inflammation, per a Columbia University team. Eat 30 plants a week, improve your microbiome and watch your well-being soar as unwanted fat finally disappears.
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