The following are some healthy-gut tips that I have shared with my clients over the years.
1. Don’t follow a diet like the paleo, keto, or low-carb diet: I don’t generally recommend that you follow any particular kind of diet. You may look at my Candida Crusher book and think to yourself, “But, hang on a minute, he recommends the MEVY diet.” The MEVY diet refers to meat, eggs, vegetables, and yogurt. However, I never say that people should rigidly stick to the MEVY diet. I encourage modifying the diet to suit your purposes. I’m not the food police.
2. Use smaller plates: If you want to be lean and mean, try and eat smaller servings. Using a smaller plate can help you to adjust psychologically to eating less. And remember that the best exercise you can do is to push your plate away.
3. Focus on the quality of your food, not the quantity: Always be fussy about the quality of the food you’re eating. Even if the best option isn’t brilliant, you can still make the best food choices for the circumstances. Watch out for buffets because it’s easy to overeat, and the hygiene may be suspect. Quality is more and more important as you get older. 20-year-olds can get away with eating a quantity that wouldn’t be a right for a 60-year old.
4. Snack on yogurt: Yogurt can help build up the beneficial bacteria in your gut. It reduces inflammation and inhibits bacteria and yeast. Eating small amounts of yogurt has been shown to boost the immune system as well. Eat sour, Greek yogurt, perhaps with a few berries and some Manuka honey. Don’t opt for yogurt full of artificial sweeteners.
5. Add sprouts to your diet. Sprouts are a fantastic food full of enzymes that improve digestive function while cleaning up the stomach and small intestine. I try and eat sprouts every single day
Further readings:
- The Connection Between Your Mood And Your Microbiome
- Gut Health And Your Mood: What’s The Link
- Putting An End To Binge Eating: 10 Steps You Can Take
- Anxiety, Depression & Candida Connection
6. Try and match up a regular behavior with a healthy habit. For example, whenever my father went out for a drive, he would have an apple. You could try the same thing or design your own healthy association. It could mean having a drink of fresh, filtered water every time you go to the kitchen. Or maybe it would mean always throwing a piece of fruit into your bag when you’re out running errands.
7. Be picky when you go out for food. Don’t sit there and suffer in silence but there is no reason you can’t politely decline to eat food that is going to make your health suffer. Many people have told me that they don’t want to put someone out or embarrass, but I think it’s important to speak up in your own best interest.
8. Don’t eat well for five or six days a week and then have a massive “cheat day” full of fried chicken and soda pop. That’s not a great idea. If you are going to “cheat,” have something small. Small amounts of less-than-healthy food are acceptable. But remember the 80/20 rule, even 90/10 rule, 80 to 90% of what you eat should be very good. A small percentage can be not so good.
9. Not every sensation is hunger. If you feel that stomach growling sensation is most likely the motor reflex that occurs when your body is cleaning out the digestive tract, it’s not actually that your body needs food. It’s good for your gut not to be always peppered with food. It’s the key to keeping your weight down is by curbing and controlling the appetite.
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