[dan00]

> What I'd like to know is why this reaction isn't more common among humans. I'm a fat person who's tried calorie restriction and all it does is make me tired and depressed. I suspect there's a good reason for that, and it has a lot to do with why I'm a fat person in the first place.

There're interesting stories about people changing their weight after a stool transplantation, without changing their diet.

The bacteria in the gut seems to have a deep impact how food is utilized, even which kind of food is preferred and how you feel eating it, but it also seems to work the other way around, that the food effects the kind of bacteria in the gut.

It makes perfect sense to work this way, on one side you prefer food you can better utilize, on the other your body is able to adapt to the available food.

So changing the bacteria eating different food should also be possible, but the change might be quite unpleasant, you certainly won't feel that well, it might take some time and you need quite a bit of will power to get through.

[JamesBarney]

Unfortunately the studies on stool transplants didn't replicate.

[elliekelly]

There's a great book about this called "The Diet Myth" by Tim Specter. IIRC he's a Professor of Genetics and specialized in twin studies and sort of stumbled into researching gut bacteria because he was fascinated by identical twins were one was obese and other was a healthy weight. It's mindblowing how little we know and understand about such an important topic.

Edit: If you're interested, this talk[1] he gave at the Boston Science Museum is what made me read his book.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEAdtGa549I