So often what's true in life is true in health and fitness (and vice versa). The noteworthy parallel I've found in my journey through both is a wonderful and sometimes maddening interconnectivity.

In other words, an amazing and at times frustrating relationship among seemingly unrelated things.The element that makes interconnectivity frustrating is that it seriously complicates determining cause and effect. If two, three, four, or five things seem to be creating an outcome together, how do you know if all are really essential? Or if the outcome is based on the addition of these elements in a prescribed order? Or if one is far more important than the others?When interconnectivity is involved, how do you know really much of anything?Nowhere is this more evident than in the evolution of weight loss. Initially, weight loss was seen as simple math: consume fewer calories than you usually eat, and you create an energy deficit. To negate the deficit, your body burns stored fat.When your body burns stored fat, you lose weight, right? Absolutely. But what's not so absolute is that consuming fewer calories creates an energy deficit.Here's where the element of interconnectivity affects things.A lack of sleep slows down your basal metabolic rate, the rate at which you burn calories. Furthermore, a lack of sleep has been shown in at least one study to increase your cravings for sweet and salty foods.This study, published in the journal Appetite, found an additional 90 minutes of sleep reduced overall appetite by 14 percent and a nearly two-thirds drop in desire for two types of food that are easy to overeat: sweet and salty foods.Just before Appetite released the aforementioned study, the Journal of Pediatrics published research done at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina that linked a lack of sleep to long-term weight gain.Here, researchers analyzed data taken from more than 10,000 subjects, first when they were 16 and then five years later. Originally, about 20 percent of the subjects slept less than six hours a night.Five years later, that group was 20 percent more likely to be overweight than those who had slept eight hours or more as 16-year-olds.But the concept of interconnectivity and weight loss does not end with sleep patterns. What's already in your belly in the form of bacteria may ultimately determine what gets done with the food you next put in your belly.In a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, obese women who altered their gut bacteria by taking a supplement of the healthy type of gut bacteria lost twice as much weight and body fat as obese women placed on the same diet who took a placebo pill in place of the supplement.The researchers theorize that the supplement not only changed the rate at which the gut bacteria used calories, but also that the composition of gut bacteria to some degree affects appetite.And the composition-of-gut-bacteria theory could explain here comes that element of interconnectivity again why yogurt is such an ally to a dieter. While yogurt especially Greek yogurt with over twice the protein of conventional types is seen as a health food, it really isn't that low in calories and a typical serving of anything other than plain usually contains at least 15 grams of sugar although about half is lactose, the natural sugar found in milk and milk products.But regardless of calories, it could possibly be the additional protein and also the priobotics in the yogurt that feed the good gut bacteria, negate the ingestion of some of the sugar, and lead to long-term weight loss, something substantiated by a 2010 Harvard study. In it, subjects who ate the same number of calories as other subjects but consumed one more serving of yogurt each day lost one pound every four years.Overall, the other subjects had gained weight four years later.Combine the above info with the fact that researchers know that refined carbs and a lack of fiber allow the bad gut bacteria that leads to weight gain to flourish, and you see where the old theory supposedly supported by math where a calorie is a calorie is a calorie needs to be thrown out the window.Now factor in that a study published in November in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that found regardless of whether they intentionally tried to lose weight or engaged in exercise, vegetarians lost nearly 7.5 pounds in the first month of the diet, and you really see interconnectivity.Is it the lack of refined foods that creates the weight loss? The absence of red meat, fish, and poultry? That most fruits and vegetables have so little fat? Or so much fiber?We may never know, but that may not really matter to you. What you need to do is determine what general pattern of eating works for you and then always strive to further refine it, while developing theories on how one dietary element affects another.