[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen it comes to weight loss and even adding lean muscle mass, everyone immediately goes to making better food choices and training more frequently.
How many of you have thought to address your digestive system for improved body composition?
Just think about this for a moment – you are now eating all of these new healthier ‘super foods’ but if your digestive system isn’t working efficiently, you can bet your bottom dollar that you wont be benefiting from them as much as you should be! If your digestive system isn’t performing at 100% you wont be able to digest or absorb the fats, proteins and carbohydrates as effectively as possible. This may result in you progress being much slower.
Signs and symptoms that your digestive system may need improvement:
- Bloating
- Indigestion
- Constipation
- Food allergies
- Diarrhoea
If you are suffering from any of the above regularly, chances are you could do with addressing your digestive health. Start by looking at the foods you eat. Cut out all junk food and fizzy drinks. Are you stressed? Increased stress levels can cause digestive problems – managing and implementing better sleep strategies could help with this. This should almost certainly benefit your digestive system. But there are also some great supplements on the market to help with aid and repair of the digestive system. Make sure you seek professional advice on this before buying and using them.
Lets take a look at one of my own clients for a second, we had addressed his nutrition and training and still weight loss was pretty slow. So I got him to fill the Impact health MOT which has a series of questions regarding the digestive system, this immediately pointed out he was having digestive issues – I decided that the best course of action to help fix this was by using L Glutamine and a good quality pro biotic. Within 4 weeks, weight was coming off more consistently and the bloating around the naval and abdomen had almost gone – resulting in a much smaller waistline. We didn’t change anything else other than this, training and nutrition remained the same. It’s very important when making changes that you don’t do everything in one go, otherwise you won’t be able to quantifiably know what is and isn’t working for you.
Sometimes, working from the inside to make the outside look better is the best solution. Make you body healthy and then let it get to work on helping you to burn excess fat and add lean muscle mass.
Richard Gunter
