Need a Gut Health Reset? 3 Ways Our Bodies Work from The Energy Paradox
If you’re feeling tired, you may need a gut health reset.
How do you know you need a gut health reset? You might feel like you need a change, and that change needed to be yesterday. Or, you might just be curious how to improve gut health. Whatever your reasons, the importance of gut health can’t be overlooked.
This post is all about a gut health reset!
Wondering How to Reset Your Gut Naturally?
Your gut health impacts SO MANY different areas of your life! Keep reading below to learn three ways our bodies work and how you can maximize your energy and feel better, long term!
Your body doesn’t work well when it is dealing with inflammation. In fact, you could be nutrient starved without even knowing it. Your body needs to absorb protein, sugar, fatty acids, minerals, and vitamins. You need all of these things to energize your body and brain.
If you do not have enough nutrients, your body gets inflamed. And, it’s a vicious cycle. Your body doesn’t have enough nutrients, so it get inflamed, and then because it’s inflamed it cannot absorb as many nutrients. And so on. Less begets less (Gundry, 2021, p. 46).
A Small Window into Your Gut Health and Inflammation
There are so many things that go into our health, that to focus on one you might miss the rest. However, your gut, in general, is where your food goes to digest. Let’s start there. And, in order to digest it has to go through a long tract including your upper and lower intestine. While it’s on the way, your gut is absorbing protein, sugar, fatty acids, vitamins, all the things. You need all the things to be the best version of yourself!
So, what’s the problem? Well, imagine that your gut wall is basically filled with an army of soldiers awaiting orders. We can call these soldier platoons villi. When the villi platoons are coordinated and efficient they have a good leader, adequate rest, and enough food to fuel them. Makes sense, right?
A Tired Gut Is a Tired You
The problem comes in when your villi soldiers are tired. When they do not have enough nutrition to power their swords. When they have multiple leaders giving competing orders. Uncoordinated vili can have swelling in the ranks, leaving certain parts of your gut unprotected and other parts overly crowded. “When inflammation runs amok, the villi that project off the gut wall can become stunted” (Gundry, 2021, p. 46). Poorly performing villi soldiers reduce your gut’s ability to absorb the nutrients it needs to stay at the top of your game, and keep inflammation at bay.
Across so many gut health doctors, health books, and gastroenterologists, you will hear something similar. We need more fiber in our diets. We are nutrient starved and fiber deficient. I was definitely lacking fiber too before learning more about gut health, whole foods, and why it all matters.
When You Miss Out on Fiber You Lose Out on Energy
If you are eating a low fiber diet, you’re probably eating mostly foods made up of fats, proteins, and sugars. these foods are digested by your gut quickly and easily meaning that you are using less energy to digest your food. And, in turn, less calories as well (Gundry, 2021).
The Cost of Trans Fats
Worse yet, if you’re eating food with trans fats, they take up space in your gut health soldier ranks by up to 20 percent (Gundry, 2021, p. 78). That’s a BIG number. You have less soldiers to digest your food, less ability to produce energy, and this amounts to an overall lower ability to function. So, that might be why there is that slump after a fast food run…
If you’re looking for a gut health reset meal plan, try making a concerted effort to add back MORE FIBER into your meals. Every day. Each meal.
What Does Fiber Have to Do with My Energy Level?
Fiber relates closely to our energy. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz has a whole book on fiber and why it’s one of the key ingredients to our health, called Fiber Fueled. You can find it here on Amazon. It’s an AMAZING book if you also like the science behind your health.
We are Eating More But Yet Under Nourished
Dr. Gundry, the author of the Energy Paradox also agrees that fiber is imperative to our health and energy. According to Dr. Gundry, hunter gatherers ate about 150 grams of fiber each day. This fiber kept their energy more stable so they could survive. It kept their bodies full. Contrast that to today, in which the average American eats about 25 g of fiber a day (Gundry, 2021). Our ancestors were getting 600% more fiber in their diets than we do today. And that’s the rub.
Our ancestors were getting 600% more fiber in their diets than we do today. And that’s the rub.
Dr. Kait
Slow Digestion Means a More Energized You
To understand why fiber is so important, there are probably a million things you could know but we can understand what we need to know by going back to the idea of the soldiers in your gut and their ability to react and follow orders from leaders efficiently and in coordinated fashion. When you eat meals with lots of complex starches like leafy greens, broccoli, snap peas, green beans, even sweet potatoes, their fiber is digested slowly. This slow digestion process keeps your blood sugar more steady. And, keeping your blood sugar steady helps keep you feeling energized all day (Gundry, 20201).
Fiber is a Bit Like Free Calories
You might say fiber is like free calories. According to Dr. Gundry, “For every pound of these fibers you eat, you make a third of a pound of new bacteria. Meaning, if you eat the right foods, a third of the potential calories you swallow is used to feed them instead of you. It’s like you get to eat 30 percent more food without gaining an ounce!” (Gundry, 2021, p. 52).
Who doesn’t want thirty percent of what they eat to go straight to energy? I know I do.
So, what kind of fiber are we talking about? Our bodies are made to eat a lot of fiber through something other than Metamucil. In fact, fiber is in A Lot of our vegetables and fruits, whole grains and legumes.
Unpacking Post biotics and Prebiotics
Particularly, echoing Dr. Bulsiewicz, short chain fatty acids, are amazing as a post biotic. These superstars can help to improve your gut health and restore balance in your gut (aka the microbiome). You can find food with short chain fatty acids like potatoes, 100% whole grains, beans, and more.
You might be thinking, but wait a minute, I’ve heard of prebiotic supplements, but what is a post biotic? A post biotic is a type of beneficial bacteria that helps to support the body’s natural processes, aiding in digestion and providing essential nutrients.
What is a post biotic? A post biotic is a type of beneficial bacteria that helps to support the body’s natural processes, aiding in digestion and providing essential nutrients.
Dr. Kait
Why You Need to Know What Short Chain Fatty Acids Are
Short chain fatty acids are literally micro superstars when it comes to your energy production and gut health. They contribute to about ten percent of your energy production (Gundry, 2021, p. 52). In addition, butyrate, one of the three short chain fatty acids that your gut produces, is also a big deal to drive down your inflammatory hormone production (p. 52-3). Meaning, not only are short chain fatty acids powering you throughout the day, they are also keeping your inflammation at bay. Yep, inflammation and fiber are closely related! As fiber increases in your diet, inflammation typically will decrease in your body!
Let’s go back to the soldiers waiting for orders in your gut. If you are giving them order after order after order through the food you continuously snack on throughout the day, it may be hard for them to keep up. Furthermore, if you are eating a variety of foods, and they are ultra-processed foods and therefore slowing down your soldiers inherently through their makeup, your gut is going to have an even tougher time.
Ultra-Processed Foods Lead to Less Energy
Ultra-processed foods throw your body all its energy at all the same time. Since, ultra-processed foods are all absorbed quickly, your energy factories (mitchondria) will rush to keep up (Gundry, 2021). The result is less good fats and proteins are absorbed because the soldiers are inundated with demands.
Won’t I Feel Hungry If I Fast? How Long to Fast to Reset Digestive System
The big question is, won’t I feel hungry if I fast? Like, that’s not eating right?? It’s not not eating, it’s just eating later. According to Gundry (2021), “the vast majority of people today are inadvertently bombarding their cellular energy system with too much fuel” (p. 63).
It’s Not Just About What You Eat, It’s Also About When You Eat
In The Energy Paradox, Gundry asserts that your fatigue is related to your gut soldiers being overworked, under-nourished, and disorganized. And that all relates to both WHAT you are eating and WHEN you are eating (2021). He relates this to an episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel are working at a chocolate factory. Thanks to the glories of the internet and youtube we can make this come to life with a little magic embedding.
When Too Many Nutrients is a Bad Thing
In the clip, Lucy and Ethel are trying to package candy’s while they roll off the conveyor belt. As the belt gets faster, they are not able to keep up and eventually start shoving chocolates in their pockets, their mouths, and their shirts! Dr. Gundry compares this scene to your gut soldiers, working to digest your food. As they get bogged down putting candy anywhere they can find it, they lose chocolate (read: nutrients), store chocolate in places it shouldn’t go (read: increased fat), and eventually get exhausted (read: fatigue).
“There are only so many places to put all those chocolates to wrap later…You see, you only have a limited number of fat cells… and they can only hold so much fat or they literally burst…which you guessed it, provokes inflammation.”
Dr. Gundry, 2021, p. 84
Yep, inflammation is related to a lack in fiber and a lack in energy. However, by giving yourself time to digest, refraining from snacking and eating consistently throughout the day, you are training your gut and your body to be metabolically flexible. And, metabolic flexibility is a really good thing.
How to Get More Bang for Your Buck at the Gym
Metabolic flexibility is so important, it can even make the difference between reaping the benefits of your exercise or not. In one study, participants who were insulin resistant (i.e. metabolically inflexible) did not get benefit from exercise whereas those non-insulin resistant peers did (Gundry, 2021). Does this mean you should not exercise if you snack a lot? No, but it does mean that you might consider giving yourself time between when you eat, to allow your body time to digest and process all the energy it is getting from that amazing food you will be making!
Instead of Doing a 3 Day Gut Cleanse at Home…Try Adding More Fiber Rich Foods to Your Daily Meals
Yes, everyone loves a good cleanse. But, here is the thing. A cleanse is temporary, and then often people go back to their old habits and ways of doing things. Your gut health can change quickly, but to stay healthy and grow even more healthy, gut health is a long game. It adapts and evolves to your patterns and habits.
Your gut health can change quickly, but to stay healthy and grow even more healthy, gut health is a long game. It adapts and evolves to your patterns and habits.
Dr. Kait
Rather than doing a 3 day gut cleanse at home, try adding more fiber rich foods into your meal rotation regularly. If you’re a recovering over-achiever like me and want to be even more of a go getter, try swapping – yes that’s right, swapping- an ultra-processed food (like pizza rolls) for a homemade fiber rich food (like lemon garlic hummus).
Mediterranean favorites like olives, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, mushrooms, and vegetables with melatonin like leafy greens are all excellent choices for a gut health reset. These gut healthy foods all have the ability reset your gut and protect yourself from fatigue (Gundry, 2021).
Planning on How to Reset Your Gut Naturally
If eating healthy is feeling overwhelming, we are here to help at Kait’s Cupboard! When you are not sure how to meal plan for the week, just type in a day of the week, and you’ll find a series of meal recipes that are easy, quick, and delicious.
If you are looking for a particular type of food, like um, tacos (who doesn’t love tacos), just search tacos and you’ll find gut healthy options at your fingertips. Again, easy, quick, and totally family friendly.
Better yet, each recipe comes with a list of superhero micro bacteria and plant points embedded within the ingredients, so you can feel good about what you are feeding your gut and your family!
Give Yourself a Gut Health Reset with Small, Consistent Changes
Little changes make a big difference. Pay attention to how you feel with these small choices and follow your gut, pun intended!!
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