This month in the Ladies that Lift Women’s Weight Loss Coaching Program we are doing a “love your gut” challenge.
It is all about digestive health.
The rules are simple, there are 3 teams;
Team A: Keeping it simple aiming to eat 1-2 servings of fermented food per day. This could be raw sauerkraut, kimchee, kombucha, kefir or live yoghurt
Team B: The diversity challenge aiming to eat 100 different foods across a week. You can read more about the importance of diversity for gut health here.
Team C: Are following the elimination challenge focussing on whole foods and eliminating gluten, dairy, sugar and alcohol – definitely the most challenging of the 3.
Members pick a team and then as a team motivate and encourage each other and we give a prize for the member who demonstrates the best personal growth across the month.
You might be thinking that this sounds like a lot of extra work.
I thought this was a weight loss program, where does digestion factor in?
We surveyed every member of our program since it started and 90% of our clients were suffering digestive issues when they joined.
This could be anything like bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, smelly flatulence, heart burn and acid reflux.
So again, what does this have to do with weight loss?
A whole lot actually!
Modern life is stressful, we eat suboptimal foods, we take painkillers and antibiotics not to mention other medications, we drink chlorinated water and alcohol.
All of these things can negatively affect the balance within our digestive system.
When we have a disrupted digestive balance, not only do we experience unpleasant digestive symptoms but it also affects our ability to lose weight – who would have thought!
Its also really important to note that just because you have no obvious gut symptoms, doesn’t mean you don’t have any gut problems. We all have stress, bad food and alcohol from time to time.
Without getting all sciencey on you – to lose weight, simplistically, you want to be burning more calories than you are consuming, however I have met many, many, many women who are doing this and not seeing results.
There are many, many, many reasons why, digestive health is just one of them.
Many women have food sensitivities which they aren’t aware of. It is not until they cut these foods out of their diet with consistency that they realise how these foods are affecting them.
Everything from improved digestive, to better looking skin, to more energy AND…
Weight Loss!
The reason being when are immune system is so busy reacting to the foods we are eating, it creates changes in metabolism which make us more likely to store body fat, especially around the middle.
There are a lot of things we can do about this but the main things are:
- Eating a diverse diet of plant based foods
- Regular consumption of fermented foods
- Avoiding common trigger foods like gluten, dairy and in some cases eggs, corn and soy (although we can react to anything!)
- Eat a diet rich in whole and unprocessed foods and eliminate sugar and alcohol which may affect the balance of good bacteria in the gut.
So if you suspect that your digestion might be giving you some problems with your weight loss, why not give our challenge a try OR apply to be part of our coaching program and do it with the guidance and support of a like-minded group of women.
Anna x
