I mailed my poop for Viomes $279 gut health test the report had me flip my entire diet

As a health and wellness writer, I’ve tried (and done) just about everything.Bryan Johnson’s Longevity Mix.

A parasite cleanse.Jennifer Aniston’s viral workout.

I’m no stranger to the less-conventional trends and am willing to try anything at least once.So, when the opportunity arose to ship my poop to a lab for an Advanced Gut Intelligence Test, I said yes.

Happily.But a few years ago, I probably wouldn’t have considered it.Growing up, I was actually quite close-minded about most health trends — and stuck on a very rigid diet.

This was partially because I had a lot of food noise, and also because it seemed like everyone around me was drastically cutting out food groups for fear of intolerances or weight gain.When I was 16, dairy was the enemy, nut milks had taken over every café, and my feed was full of girls talking about bloating and “hot girls have IBS.” I decided I had a dairy intolerance and cut it out cold turkey.In college, I wanted to undo the freshman fifteen I’d gained while eating my way through Europe and Australia.

So I went gluten-free — mostly because other girls my age were doing it, and I’d convinced myself cutting carbs would help me lose weight.A few years later, I was eating a diet primarily made of salads, seafood and the occasional sweet treat.I was maintaining my weight, and beyond the occasional bloating or slump in energy (having a toddler may have something to do with that), I seemed okay.

Still, something felt off.Over the past year, I’ve become much more interested in gut health, thanks in part to a telling conversation with the founders of Gut Oggau, a biodynamic agriculture and herbal wine estate.It got me thinking beyond how food affects how I look — and more about how it affects how I feel and think.The gut-brain connection is well studied, yet for so many years, I had never really stopped to ask myself a much more important question: What should I actually be eating to nourish a balanced, healthy gu...