This may end up long winded, if so, feel free to jump to TDLR.
I am on the upper end of the healthy weight range but had been steadily putting on a few pounds a year for the past decade and reached a point of being unhappy with how I felt and looked. I also realized that throughout college and my early and mid 20s, I didn't like sweets, sugary drinks and unhealthy foods, which made weight maintenance a lot easier, but now I can't get enough. After falling off the bandwagon many times of trying to not binge eat at night, I vented to a friend at brunch who works in microbiome research (yeah, I know) who was explaining our gut and the impact that it has on our cravings, our habits, our weight, etc. I thought she was spewing some antiscience, optimistic future facing potential research, but I watched a documentary (The Invisible Extinction) and figured I'd give it a shot and see how I felt. At this point, my focus wasn't on weight loss, but just general fear mitigation as the documentary made me feel like I was going to die (and, frankly, had some problematic speculation on autism, but i digress).
It's been a few months and oh. my. god. I feel INCREDIBLE. Physically and mentally. I am a cheese ADDICT and late night binge eater and, at the point of writing this, its around midnight and I don't feel a single craving or urge. I've actually become weirdly obsessed with nuts, which I'd never been an eater of, and have a nuts drawer in my kitchen that are my go to snack. I can truly say that this renewed focus on gut health and my microbiome has changed my life and relationship with food. I think, for me, the worst part about being on a diet or trying to lose weight is that there are very few things that you are meant to DO, just lots of things you are meant to stop doing. For microbiome health, there are definitely things you should stop doing, but really it's about incorporating things that are good for your gut, which completely changed my relationship with food. Food is no longer calories, but fuel.
I think there are some claims around gut health that are wild science fiction, so take some with a grain of salt, but I would HIGHLY recommend incorporating a more gut friendly approach to your life and seeing if you have a similar experience. It's been about 3 months, but I started feeling the dietary stability after only a few days.
The changes that I've made are eliminating artificial sweeteners (I'm a sucker for splenda coffee and diet coke- probably 4 a day) which took some time to adjust to but now I'm just as happy with unsweetened coffee. I drink kombucha (absolutely hated the stuff until I tried "real" kombucha), try and ensure I am having 30 different plants per week, very little alcoholic beverages and 1 probiotic item (yogurt, kimchi, etc) per day. And that's (for the most part) it. I'm already a vegetarian, so the central premise of the most important thing to avoid is antibiotics/ antibiotic treated meat wasn't necessary for me.
To be clear- you lose weight through CICO. But if you're on a general health journey or can't seem to cut cravings, you have nothing to do lose by seeing if improving your gut health aids in that journey. The more research I did, the more I realized how absolutely horribly I was treating my gut by destroying my microbiome with my diet soda, wine, added sugar, etc. I actually can't imagine myself ever even WANTING a diet coke or "junk food" ever again as I just feel so good and am able to eat insanely "heavy" things in moderation where in the past I'd go crazy (for dinner, I had a huge slice of sourdough bread with ricotta cheese, cantaloupe and fig. I had one and felt satisfied and ACTUALLY FUCKING STOPPED).
TLDR: My friend got me hooked on giving a shit about my microbiome and now I drink kefir like it's going out of style and pooping like a champion.
EDIT: I bolded the part about antibiotics as I realize that I treated it as a side note since I don't eat meat, but that it's, like, the primary cornerstone of most of the reading material on the microbiome. Antibiotics destroy everything- good and bad. And antibiotic treated meat does the same. So I wanted to emphasize it in case anyone actually decides to give it a try.
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