Let’s talk about some nutrition-related changes in your life you can make TODAY to make you feel better.
And if you’ve already tried all these tips and are still feeling like crap - let’s talk. This tells me we have some deeper imbalances to tackle - I can help you ! Book a Free Discovery Call today.
5 Nutrition Tips for Better Health
1. Drink enough water.
Optimal hydration is crucial to maintaining every organ and system in your body. Insufficient hydration can have negative effects, such as cloudy thinking and fatigue.
Drink half your body weight (in lbs.) in ounces of water. As an example, if you weigh 140 lbs., your daily goal is 70 ounces of water.
If you live in a dry climate or exercise a lot, you might need to increase the amount of water you drink.
Ideally, drink room-temperature or warm water. Room-temperature water is more readily available to the body for hydration, while cold water causes the blood vessels around the stomach to constrict, which can slow down absorption.
Consider adding electrolytes to your water. Our body needs electrolytes to hydrate appropriately so that fluid stays in the body - otherwise it can be just peed out in the urine.
2. Start your day off with a warm glass of lemon water.
Let me tell ya, whether you’re a coffee or a tea drinker, I HIGHLY recommend having a warm lemon water first, and THEN enjoying your beverage of choice. Try it for 2 weeks and see if you feel a difference!
I made a video with the exact Lemon Water steps HERE . A quick summary: cut an organic lemon into quarters. Use 2 lemon quarters per mug, squeezed fully. Fill half the mug with room temperature or cold filtered water, then top off the other half with freshly boiled water.
Bonus: add ~6-10 drops of trace mineral drops or a pinch of sea salt to help with hydration!
A few tips: firstly, make sure you add the cool water first, since heat will destroy certain compounds like Vitamin C. Secondly, you don’t want to brush your teeth for about 30 minutes, since your tooth enamel can be damaged if the pH is not neutralized.
3. Chew your food.
Does this sound obvious? Probably. Yet so few people actually take the time to chew! We eat in a distracted state - scrolling on our phones, catching up on a podcast, reading/writing emails, watching Netflix, rushing in the car… We tend to scarf down food and not let our digestive system truly kick in.
Your mouth is where digestion begins. Enzymes are released in your mouth to start the breakdown of food. Your teeth and saliva help kickstart most of the work, so your stomach doesn’t have to work overtime to break down foods to smaller pieces. Not chewing properly can lead to downstream issues like gas, bloating, acid reflux, and long-term can develop into an H. Pylori infection or gut imbalances like SIBO or candida overgrowth.
As often as you can, try to eat mindfully. Take a few deep breaths before eating, express gratitude, look out the window, dive into the flavors and textures, and appreciate that you have access to such delicious nutritious foods!
Pro tip: try to have no more than 8 ounces of water with your meals. Slugging water with your meal allows you to “cheat” by chewing less, since the food is easier to swallow.
4. Avoid inflammatory foods.
Inflammatory foods can lead to leaky gut, skin conditions (acne, eczema, rashes), fatigue, digestive disturbances (bloating, constipation, diarrhea, dysbiosis, etc.), allergies, joint pain, headaches, anxiety, depression, weight gain or unhealthy weight loss, and other unwanted symptoms.
Foods that I would recommend for everyone to AVOID include:
Sugar (especially cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, agave)
Artificial sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, etc. - products like Splenda, Sweet N Low, Equal, and many others)
Gluten
Conventionally processed dairy
Non-organic soy
Non-organic corn
Hydrogenated and polyunsaturated vegetable oils (avoid all these oils at home and in packaged foods: sunflower oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, rapeseed oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran oil, margarine)
Alcohol (I know, this is a toughy for me. If you drink, try to stick to small amounts of organic wine, tequila, and vodka)
5. Eat your food in the right order.
The right order helps control your blood sugar! With BETTER blood sugar control, you feel fuller for longer, you are able to curb cravings, you feel energized, your acne and skin issues improve, you will have better hormonal balance, improved fertility (for both women and men!), you will have fewer wrinkles, reduce inflammation and slower aging.
To help control your blood sugar after your meals, you want to focus on a specific order of eating foods: veggies first, protein and fats second, starches and sugar last.
As an example, if you’re having chicken, broccoli and rice: eat the broccoli first, chicken next, and rice last. Another example could be pasta, meatballs and a side salad: eat the side salad first, then the meatballs, then the pasta.
You can have a bit of the carbohydrate as you eat the veggies and protein, but really focus on eating the carbs at the end of the meal.
Nutrition Tips Handout
Wfew, that was a lot! Here’s a printable handout:
Each one of these habits takes a lot of work to incorporate into your daily routine. But once you realize how much better you feel, it will become so much easier to incorporate them all. It will become a habit.. the good kind of habit!
Ready to feel amazing?
Every one of my clients comes to me at a different stage:
Maybe all of this sounds overwhelming, but you really want to feel better and be healthier. That’s ok! Baby steps. We experiment with how to set yourself up for success.
Maybe you’ve tried all of this - maybe it even seems totally basic - and you still feel like crap. This tells me there are underlying imbalances and we have some deep healing to do! Stool testing and food sensitivity testing may be in your future. Let’s talk!
If you want personalized nutrition coaching to improve your digestion, feel better mentally, have more energy, and take the worry and guesswork out of what you are eating, I can help you. Let's work together!
BUILD A BALANCED PLATE EBOOK
Want to get the exact diet I recommend for my 1:1 clients for better gut health? Understand how much protein to include on your plate? How to balance out carbs & fats? Download the eBook Build a Balanced Plate: Avoid Gas & Bloating below!
Comments