The first two weeks of my gut reset with absolutely miserable....

This goes without saying, whenever you transition your body to a new diet, taking out something and potentially adding in, you’re body is going to have a reaction. This reaction may not be good at first, in fact, its worse before it gets better. A lot worse.

In my case, I thought I was a healthy eater, and I was, just not in the way I needed to be for my body. My body was depleted of nutrients because of leaky gut and therefore could not digest the normally easy digestible complex carbs like rice, beans, sweet potatoes, seed bread, oatmeal and etc. I kept thinking, these are good for my body and I need them for fuel, however my body was telling me otherwise.

The first two weeks of my gut reset were brutal. I was cranky, hangry, angry, couldn’t sleep well, got a rash on my stomach, developed some acne, had ferociously dry skin and actually had slight constipation for the two weeks. I kept thinking, what the hell am I doing? Like is this working or am I further making this worse?

But stuck with it. I kept being super consistent with eating 80% vegetables that were non-starchy, no complex carbs, refined or processed and no sugar. I was able however to add in dairy so that really helped supplement and give me a bit more sustained energy. Without that, I think I would have gone crazy.

I was also able to still enjoy the occasional red wine, drink coffee (which is never more than 2 cups a day), but focused more on water, green tea and other varieties of tea.

The focus was diet. Adding in nutrients, and taking out some nutrients that were further damaging my gut lining. That being said, keep in mind, every single person is different so take that into consideration when reading this as we all have a very diverse and different array of bacteria in our gut!

The hard thing for me was really focusing on being mindful when I ate or when I thought I was hungry. Listing to real hunger queues and not snacking all the time. With a toddler, I found myself snacking a lot more than I thought when I started to pay attention and track what was actually going in my mouth!

The other thing I noticed was how I stand up and eat a LOT! I also eat on the run a lot, which further slows down your digestion and can actually cause backups.

Stress eating and overall emotional eating was a big thing for me, it had been my entire life. I thought I had it, but then I realized I barely scratched the surface and would turn to things like peanut butter or chocolate when I was feeling stressed, anxious, sad, or even when I was hormonal. These start to cause problems if they aren’t nipped in the bud so I took this opportunity to really practice mindfulness with more meditation and more being present.

While this was VERY hard during the first two weeks because I felt in a constant fog, it eventually got better and became so much easier to recognize which I really found to be a win throughout this entire process.

While I’m on my 3rd week and I can say, I’m starting to feel more energetic, more mindful, feeling more clarity, happier and don’t have nearly the cravings I did before this process started. I even lost some weight and no longer feel bloated, which I didn’t expect. I don’t use a scale, but all of my clothes fit even better than before which is a great feeling!

I have weeks or perhaps months to go, but as I said in the beginning, I’m taking this time to really be present and take it all in for long term learnings throughout this process.

Until next time! Can’t wait to share more updates!

XX

Angie