Nutrition & Gut Health 101 

You are what you can absorb, not necessarily what you eat.
When looking to nutrition to get you closer to your goal be it reducing body fat, increasing muscle, increasing strength, improving quality and longevity of life, there is a plethora of information
and methods out there on how to achieve this that more often than not claim to be ‘the best way’.
As the saying goes though, ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’, and the same goes for nutrition and training – there are many ways to achieve your goal and regardless if they are ‘ideal’ or not, most things will work for a period of time.

There is no single perfect method or approach, but there are some basic principles that hold true that can help you make better decisions.
When talking about what you eat and how it affects you/how you’re going to respond and how your digestive system plays a major role.

Let’s take a basic look at the digestive system:

Mouth – This is where your digestive system starts (although technically digestion starts as soon as you look at or think about food). As you chew, you produce more saliva that helps break down the food to make it easier to deal with further down the track. This chewing process also stimulates enzymes in the gut and gets your body ready to further digest and absorb whatever the body needs out of the food.

Stomach and Small intestine – After food leaves your mouth, it gets pushed down to the Pharynx and Oesophagus and makes its way to your stomach. The stomach secretes acid and enzymes to continue the process of breaking food down and changing it to a consistency of liquid or paste. From there, food moves to the small intestine.
The small intestine is where most of the magic happens. Whatever food you have eaten, this is where the majority of the nutrients contained in these foods are absorbed. The importance of good gut bacteria is absolutely essential to produce these enzymes that break down and absorb your food as well as supporting your immune system so no nasties get absorbed into the body.

Large Intestine and Colon – This is where all of the waste product left over from the digestion and absorption passes through so it can be excreted. As the waste carries on through, our bodies absorb any remaining water.