How To Plan Your Gut Health Journey
Let’s talk a little bit about the practicality of deciding when and how to start your gut health journey. First of all, “starting to work on your gut” can mean a million different things. Maybe for you it means getting stool testing done, maybe it’s a major overhaul of diet, it could be testing out removing dairy. Whatever “working on gut health” means for you, the decision to even get to the point to do something, happens through a variety of other layers, choices, and priorities.
So for me, the question has to be: what is the priority for you in your health right now? This is going to help you understand if working on your gut…or something else…is the next thing on your list or not.
What is the most important thing that you need to work on right now?
It might not be your gut. And that’s okay. It might be the gut. Point being, there are so many different things that you need to be able to have space to focus on, when it comes to your health and well being…not every single one of those priorities gets to be number one all of the time.
Here are 3 things you can think about:
- What physically hurts you or feels uncomfortable? Do you get bloated when you eat? Does it cause you discomfort?
- Emotionally or mentally, what do you feel uncomfortable with? Do you feel self conscious around food?
- What do you already have proof of? For example, do you have a test telling you something specific that needs to be addressed?
Maybe it’s something very specific like focusing on getting better sleep. Maybe, you can’t think straight in order to do more work on things because you’re so tired. Great. Start with sleep.
Maybe it’s hormone health, or getting more protein in your diet. Maybe it’s working on your circadian rhythm or a new supplement routine.
Whatever it is (and there is no wrong answer!) this is your starting point. Then you go to the next thing on the list. Every time you check something off your list, and you move on to the next thing, you are creating more and more and more space, for the next thing to be even more successful and easier for you to navigate.
Your Priorities Can (should) Change
Here’s a great example to prove this point. A lot of my clients are on really specific elimination diets to help heal their digestive system. One of the first things I say to them is “your elimination diet is only as good as your reintroduction plan. If you have to stay on this type of elimination diet forever, we’re not doing our job”. So in the beginning of a gut healing journey, priorities might look one way. Towards the middle and end, it might look a completely different way.
Lean in to this idea. The ability to be flexible is going to go a long way. When we get too rigid around our “rules” it can do more harm than good.
The take away is to do one thing for a period of time, allow it to make an impact, and then move on doing something different when it’s time.
Whatever you decide to take action on…make sure you do it 100%! Until it’s time to switch things up, do something 100%. Otherwise you’ll always be left wondering if you just didn’t implement properly. It ends up being very stressful and leaving you feeling like you’ve failed over and over again.
Cheering for your health always!
Kylie
PS: you can use this free guide to help you get started if gut health is your next priority!