12 Nutrition Tips TO HELP GUIDE YOUR JOURNEY TO BETTER HEALTH

This is something I share with my clients to guide them on their journey to better health, starting from the inside out.   My wife said it’s really great information that I should put on my blog - so here it is… in summary form!

In short:  If you give your gut the right “information” then you'll find other aspects of the body will start to work and feel better.  Eating 'whole' foods such as meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and healthy oils whilst also avoiding processed foods means you'll start to notice the difference almost immediately.

I don’t expect people to do all the things listed below but by starting to implement some of these you’ll see a big difference!

1. Take Probiotics.  These are great for boosting gut health.  Pill form are fine and a good start, but even better would be to start adding fermented foods to your everyday meals.  Things like coconut kefir and sauerkraut are great and will really super boost gut health all the more.

2. Avoid problematic foods that can harm your gut. You want your body to be working as efficiently as possible and some food can affect your whole body negatively, including your moods.    

As a rule of thumb try to avoid excess of sugar, grains, dairy, industrial seed oils and be aware of pesticides (if you can buy organic, do). If you choose to avoid those altogether for a while, you can slowly re-introduce some dairy such as organic butter and some grains, like rice, at a later date to see how you feel when you eat them.  If the effect is not good, you might want to look at reducing it significantly or stop eating them.  This goes for all other foods you know don’t 'agree' with you. 

3. Introduce foods that reduce inflammation in the body - try cooking only with coconut oil and olive oil.  Try tinned coconut milk (min 55% coconut) for cooking curries or for using in smoothies, and increase other healthy fats like avocados and nuts.   Also up your omega 3's intake by eating oily fish such as mackerel, salmon, sardines or take a good quality fish oil.  This will all help your body reduce inflammatory reactions caused by any factors stress or inflammatory foods like sugar.

4. Adopt bone broths/stocks.   These are excellent for boosting gut health, joints and connective tissue as they are one of the best source of collagen, proline, glycine and glutamine, glucosamine, calcium, magnesium... and much more!!

5. Eat plentiful soluble fibre foods such as kumara, yam, carrots and use these types of foods for your carbs.   Reduce grain based foods such as bread, cereals, rice and pasta.   Rice is actually the least problematic food and if you choose to continuing eating it after the 4 week period, use in moderation.

6. Magnesium is useful for pain relief, muscle recovery and to aid with sleep. In food form is always best, such as kale, but it can be quite difficult to get the right levels ongoing so taking a supplement is good.

7. Supplement if there is a need.  It is hard to always achieve the correct balance of vitamins in your diet all the time so if you need to supplement with vitamins keep in mind that Vitamins A, E, D and K2 work best when taken together.  Vitamin K2 helps move the calcium in your bloodstream to your bones rather than your arteries.

8. Curcumin (from Turmeric) is also an excellent anti inflammatory and should be used on foods as much as possible.  Adding pepper with it to your food will help with absorption.

9. Iodine is usually lacking in most diets so eating seaweed is a great option to boost your levels and your immune system.

10. Cinnamon helps regulate your blood sugars.   This is an easy and tasty herb to add to smoothies and has many health benefits.  Choose it over chocolate for your coffee!

11. Add good fats when eating carbs.  When eating complex carbs, such as kumara, try to add in a health fat such as avocado or olive oil along with it to reduce the speed the glucose are released into your bloodstream - which in turn reduces your insulin response.

12. Time Restricted Eating or T.R.E. This involves limiting your eating within a window of time such as 9am-7pm. Aim for the window to be between 8-12 hours. This method is great for allowing your digestive system to rest and has been proven in studies to help improve metabolism, improve sleep quality and even help with fat loss even when the diet has changed. T.R.E also includes limiting drinks with calories such as red wine but drinking water is fine outside of these windows of time.

Thanks for reading!
Rich.