Feed your gut to improve your health

Morning! Welcome back to MBAI!

While researching topics for you, I came across different books on how to feed your microbiome. In a previous post, I dressed a guide to a healthy microbiota that included different ingredients to include in our diet and a couple of useful lifestyle advice that are always worth mentionning (!).

Admittedly though, it is not easy and I find myself struggling to apply my own list - because I'm too damn busy with work, family, and life in general!!
I'm also not in charge of menus and the cooking as my DH has taken on those responsibilities while I look after LO when I'm back from work!

However, this summer, DH and LO went on a second sunny holiday - without me as I couldn't take any more time off work in this busy period (mind you, any period is busy in medical communications!); I took that opportunity to find myself the 'Best' microbiome recipe book to test for you (and for me).

By Kristina Campbell

Written by a scientist - very important for me that it should't be by another self-professed nutritionist, this cookbook explains why, what, and how to do it, with laid out menus for a total of 6 weeks!
Also very handy are her tables of food to enjoy / avoid / limit, which I now refer to several times a day!

Please note, this is not a diet to lose weight per se, but the good habits you will pick up from it will lead to a healthier gut. (For more information about healthy gut and weight, come over here.)

The well-fed microbiome cookbook is also divided in two phases designed to first repair your gut, then to revitalize it:

1. Repair the gut section is for people who may be suffering from diverse gastrointestinal issues such as IBS, IBD, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating, or constipation. (IBS: irritable bowel syndrome; IBD: inflammatory bowel disease, e.g. Crohn's or ulcerative colitis.). The recipes follow a low FODMAP diet, adapted with a special IBD diet that has shown excellent results in people with IBD. This diet is advised to be followed for 6 weeks only.
2. Revitalize your gut is about choosing the right ingredients to feed the most beneficial species in your gut so they proliferate and take over the bad ones' territory. This diet is advised to become the new normal.

And if you are keen to experiment with fermenting your own food, this book is definitely for you!

I will share with you my favourite recipes over the next few weeks. One thing I can tell you is that they were sooooooooooooo easy to make and they were absolutely and incredibly delicious (and right now I'm salivating thinking back to how buttery my butter chicken was, mmmm)!

All I need now is to convince DH to change his habist (!) and cook them for us...

Have you ever followed a special diet? Which one was it and what result did you obtain?

See you next Monday,