trigger foods
Taking Aim at Trigger Foods
Balancing Nutrients:
Rather than calorie restriction or counting macros, we will be balancing important nutrients like fiber, magnesium and vitamins you absorb from the foods you eat. It can be beneficial to track certain nutrients that you obtain from the foods you eat (not including supplementation) for metabolism, hormone rebalancing and other health benefits. You are welcome to use the tracker in the client app. The nutrients which are most important to get the Recommended Daily Allowance of are Magnesium, Vitamin D, Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Fiber. Use the Nutrient Tracker form in the Reference Guides module, where you'll see each nutrient, the RDA and where you can find these in your foods, notice how many of these foods contain similar nutrients.
Some Biology:
70% of your immune system is in your gut; therefore, if you experience gut dysbiosis or any sort of gut imbalance, it will cause intestinal permeability, or “leaky gut,” which contributes to many health ailments. Your body has one job. To keep you alive. It will do everything in its power to protect you at all costs. If it is overwhelmed, systems break down. Inflammation in the gut is no different than acute inflammation around a sprained ankle. Your body builds a defense mechanism to protect the injury and help it heal.
When certain foods (called triggers) cause inflammation in the gut, a wide variety of symptoms can result. If you’re struggling with losing weight, eating less is most likely not the answer. First of all, eat less of what? Eating fewer calories slows the metabolism. Metabolism is energy. People who already experience low metabolism will make it worse. The thyroid is the “engine” that drives metabolism, so if anyone already suffering from hypothyroid or slow thyroid, reducing calories is not the answer. This is also true for peri-menopausal and menopausal women who experience a slowing of metabolism.
So what do we eat? How do we build the most nutrient-dense diet in order to expect our bodies to react in a positive way? If you don’t eat the proper nutrients, your body doesn’t make them on its own. Things like B Vitamins, zinc, and amino acids.
Anything from bloating, abdominal puffiness, muscle and joint pain, skin issues, and brain fog to full-blown autoimmune conditions. Especially for people diagnosed with autoimmune disorders, the immune system is on high alert and will “attack” anything it believes to be foreign or harmful. Over time, unlike acute or short-term inflammation, chronic inflammation creates long-term conditions.
With or without an autoimmune diagnosis, you can experience inflammatory responses due to reactions to specific foods. Cortisol, the “fight or flight” hormone, can become elevated and cause chronic stress, which can create responses similar to autoimmune, along with chronic fatigue from overtaxing the adrenal glands (which make cortisol). Similar to autoimmune, this can cause gut dysbiosis and eventually become full-blown chronic conditions. Which takes us back to the opening fact: The beginning stages for all chronic inflammatory conditions is gut permeability, or “leaky gut”. The intestinal wall is only one cell thick, and on the surface are microvilli, which are like microscopic fingers, waving back and forth, moving food through the intestines. When inflammatory foods cause damage to the gut, the microvilli will become flattened, and space is created between the cells, allowing impurities from foods to literally leak into the rest of your body. There is now scientific evidence pointing to conditions as minor as gas and headaches to “bigger things” like depression, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.
So What are Trigger Foods?
The most common trigger foods that create an inflammatory response are processed sugars, gluten, grains, dairy, soy, and sometimes eggs, all of which are foods we are encouraged to eat on the Standard American Diet (ironic that the acronym is SAD). You don’t have to be allergic to these foods to experience a sensitivity, or inflammatory response. Which is why we eliminate these potentially problematic food groups in The Paleo Protocol, to determine what, if any, foods could cause us to not feel and perform our best.
Let Food be Your Medicine:
Instead, for 21 days, we will focus on healthy proteins and fats from animals and seafood, a variety of colorful vegetables and fruits (eat the rainbow), nuts, seeds, and unprocessed oils such as olive, avocado, and coconut oils. This gives you an opportunity to heal your gut from the inside out. Then we systematically experiment with each food group in the Renewal Phase to determine, once the gut is healed, if there are any adverse reactions.
You can then take this information forward for the rest of your life, knowing which foods make you feel your best and give you the most sustained energy throughout the day. You reduce chronic stress, sleep better, have more focus, have a better metabolism, less headaches and joint pain. You understand the difference between craving and hunger, and your nutritious meals will sustain you, so there is less need for snacking, and your body has the opportunity to “rest and digest” between meals. You’ll no longer have the need to count calories or macros or be a slave to the scale. Instead, you’ll have the knowledge and confidence to build a healthy, nutritious plate that works for your body.
