The 28-Day Gut Health Plan: Lose weight and feel better from the inside. Jacqueline Whitehart

       WHAT DOES YOUR GUT-HEALTH SCORE MEAN?

      9–10 Severe

      Disrupts your everyday life.

      You may already be under the care of your doctor, and if not you should consider it.

      The Gut-Health Plan may help you but you should also take medical advice. Be prepared for the programme to take longer than normal, and to find many food sensitivities.

      7–8 Moderate to Severe

      Although your gut health doesn’t bother you every day, you suffer more often than not and are always thinking about it.

      The Gut-Health Plan should help you to get to grips with your gut-health. You are likely to find one or more food sensitivity.

      3–6 Mild to Moderate

      Your gut health doesn’t affect you every day. But it is slowly but surely getting worse. You might find that it gets worse during periods of stress and uncertainty and at inconvenient times, such as when you are on holiday.

      The good news is that this programme can help reverse the flow and help you understand and improve your gut health.

      1–2 Mild

      You may suffer from occasional symptoms. You are unlikely to have any intolerances. If you feel that your gut health is getting worse, then this programme will get you back to optimum gut health.

THE 5 BIG TRIGGERS

      During the 28-Day Gut-Health Plan we are concentrating on the five most common food triggers for gut health:

      1.Lactose (Milk)

      2.Red Meat

      3.Nightshade family (tomatoes, (bell) peppers, chilli peppers, aubergine)

      4.Gas-producing (gassy) Vegetables (onions, garlic, broccoli, beans)

      5.Wheat

      We are concentrating here on food intolerances as opposed to allergies.

      An intolerance:

      With food allergies, you are either born with them or develop them as a young child. The reaction to foods is intense with only a very small quantity. Your food allergy may have involved medical treatment of some kind, although there is no cure. If you have an allergy, it is very black and white. You know about it and are hopefully receiving medical support. For our purposes, being coeliac is definitely an allergy. If you have an allergy, you can still find support for other possible food intolerances in this book and hopefully find recipes that support your allergy and your lifestyle.

      Remember that any food intolerances develop from an underlying gut-health problem. You can inherit gut-health problems or they can be caused by the foods you eat and the lifestyle you follow. This is why gut-health symptoms tend to worsen as you get older.

      We start to mend the gut by first introducing probiotics. These will improve the bacterial balance. Foods will be digested better and are less likely to come into contact with the gut wall. Although probiotics will improve your entire gut, it is a slow process and doesn’t deal directly with any food intolerances you might have developed.

      For this reason, in addition to the probiotics, we start the 28-Day Plan with a 7-Day Rest and Restore phase that removes the five common food triggers from your diet. By removing the intolerance (the food that your body considers most toxic), we can reduce the inflammation in the lining of the gut. It is only then that the gut can start to heal.

      When the gut has started to heal and symptoms have reduced, we can then reintroduce trigger foods gradually and see what effects they have on YOUR body. The aim of the programme is not only to improve the health of your gut, but also to understand your own specific food intolerances so that you can learn to balance the foods you eat with the effect they have on your body.

      We introduce food groups in a particular order, with the trickiest and most difficult triggers to diagnose coming last – gassy vegetables and wheat.

       LACTOSE (MILK)

      Lactose or milk sugar is a sugar found only in milk or milk products.

       Milk vs Dairy

      A common misconception, however, is that anything made from milk contains lactose. Which is why some people may be confused and eliminate all dairy from their diet.

      Dairy does define all food made from milk. However, in ‘hard’ or solid dairy products such as butter or cheese all the lactose has been removed. If you think back to domestic science, or perhaps even the nursery rhyme, milk is split into curds and whey. Curds is the solid protein and fat and contains no lactose.

      An even simpler definition is:

      ‘If you have to cut it with a knife, it’s safe.’

       Milk (lactose) foods to avoid

      Milk, all types including skimmed and semi-skimmed

      Cream

      Custard

      Fromage frais

      Ghee

      Ice cream

      Margarine

      Sour cream

      Yogurt

      Milk or white chocolate

      Soft cheese such as cottage cheese, cream cheese, halloumi

      Additionally, check the ingredients list on: cereals, baked goods, crisps, cooked meats and soups. Look out for any of these in the nutritional information, as they all signify lactose: casein, caseinates, sodium caseinates, hydrolysed casein, milk powder, milk solids.

       Safe dairy foods

      Butter

      Hard cheese such as Cheddar, feta and Parmesan

      Note that eggs are not a dairy food, contain no lactose and can be eaten safely.

       Using lactose-free milk to simplify the removal of milk lactose from your diet

      Lactose-free milk is now commonly available in every supermarket and is a really simple way to cut out lactose from your diet and see if it makes a difference to your gut health. You can also buy lactose-free yogurts, soft cheese and cream.

       RED MEAT

      Red meat can be problematic for your gut health for two reasons:

      1.Red meat is simply one of the hardest things for your gut to break down and digest. It is often the case that occasional small quantities of red meat are OK for all but the most sensitive digestions. But increase the quantities, eat it late at night or together with a large, fatty meal and the likelihood of a problem increases hugely.

      2.The other problem with red meat can be bacterial. This could mean that you have a problem with one meat in particular, be that beef, pork or lamb. This sometimes happens if you’ve had a bad bout of meat-related food poisoning in the past. The gut becomes colonized by the bad bacteria and you stay sensitive for years afterwards. Probiotics really help here as they can reduce or eliminate the problematic bacteria.

      On the plus side, it is unlikely that you will have to eliminate red meat entirely from your diet. Just remember moderation is always the key to avoiding problems with red meat. If you do have a