Every conversation I have with someone who has a health concern or question leads up to diet.  I simply cannot stress enough how foundational gut health is to overall health and expression of life.  If you have skin issues, auto-immune issues, mental health issues, joint issues, fatigue issues, brain fog, immune issues, don’t poop at least twice a day with normal looking stools, low tolerance to stress, inflammation, your hair is dull, your fingernails are cracked, you have trouble sleeping, your child has developmental delays, or you have a diagnosis of “X” – you need to consider improving your diet and healing your gut.  YEP, that’s pretty much everyone on the planet at this point.

There are many reasons as to why a gut might get damaged and need support in healing.  This includes medications, chemicals in the food, hard to digest foods, stress, lack of biodiversity in good bacteria, pathogens, mineral imbalance to just name a few off the top of my head.  When your gut is not healthy and operating fully, it negatively impacts your neurotransmitters (which are produced in the gut), your ability to process and absorb nutrients, your immune system and your body’s ability to remove the toxins it comes into contact with daily.  When your gut doesn’t work as designed, it puts stress on your other systems and organs which further creates a state of stress in your body – basically keeping you in an unhealthy cycle.   When your body isn’t working as designed, you start to manifest symptoms of disease.

When you have symptoms of disease, the current model is to take something to make it go away or suppress it whether that something is a supplement or a medication.  If you want true healing, you have to support the body to work the way it was designed to work.  That means feeding it foods that support health.  That means removing foods that make it hard for the gut to do its job.  That means reducing your overall stress exposures.  That means changing the way you view your manifestion of symptoms not as something to get rid of, but as an indication of a possible root cause so that you can work to heal that.

I know it’s not easy to change habits and preferences.  I also know it’s not easy living with conditions that dim your expression of life.  You CAN have better health and eat wonderful food at the same time.  You just have to shift your mindset around food, how you view it and how you use it.   A good place to start is to just eat whole foods and leaving the boxed/wrapped food at the store.  Once you get the hang of that, then you can dive deeper into eliminating other foods that might not be serving you well (such as grains or dairy) and adding in more nutrient dense foods such as fermented veggies.  Don’t get caught up in a decision fatigue cycle around trying certain diets – just eat whole foods to start.  Give yourself 30 days if that makes the mindset shift easier.

One other piece of advice – you might actually feel a bit worse after starting. This is your body adjusting and kicking out all of the stuff that it needs to eliminate.  When you start to exercise, you feel sore when you start because your body is adjusting to the new ‘norm’.  Cleaning up the diet is no different in that regard.  Be patient with the process.  Some of us have spent a lifetime neglecting our guts, it’s going to take longer than a few days to correct the issue.

If you would like some individual coaching on changing your diet or your child’s diet, I am available to help!!  You can book a consult with me and we will develop a plan together that works for you, for your family/lifestyle and you’ll be able to move through some of the hardest steps with my support.  Click HERE to invest in your health today.  ~ Amy Y.