0:00:00
 Hello, friends, and welcome to the No Wellness Wankery podcast. I'm Lyndi Cohen.

0:00:40
 And I'm Jenna D'Apice, joining Lyndi to talk about all the wankery in the wellness world.

0:00:45
 So much wankery. It's exhausting. Are you exhausted by it? I am, to be honest.

0:00:50
 I really am.

0:00:51
 If you're like us and you grew up in diet culture, which is dripping all around us, then maybe this is the podcast for you because we're going to be ditching anything that doesn't make us feel good, feel healthy, and helping you decide what is advice to help you lose weight and what is actually advice to make you healthy. So often health advice is just weight loss advice in disguise or eating disorder advice in disguise. It's all very sinister and nasty. So let's find the good stuff. And today we're talking about gut health. Gut health is huge. I feel like everything I read is like the stomach is the new brain and we don't have the research yet but it is coming and when it comes you don't even know what's going to happen. I'm like, oh my god. Well let's get into it And I don't know if you guys are on social media and you're seeing all this like gut health e-book, get my gut health e-book and these gut health supplements and everything, every issue in our life is pretty much being brought back to, well if your gut health was better you wouldn't have these issues. So let's try and work out where's the truth in this every second person has IBS. Well luckily not every second person has IBS. I don't know actual truth stats. Don't listen to me for any actual real statistics. But quite a few people do have IBS and just IBS stands for irritable bowel syndrome and you also have IBD which is irritable bowel disease and so these are two issues. They get lumped up together. Now IBS is going to be characterized by someone getting really uncomfortable gut symptoms so it could be things like intense bloating where you are in pain and discomfort or diarrhea or constipation, stomach aches and pain. So that excessive gas as well is also going to be lumped into that category. And so there's a whole

0:02:51
 bunch of people who struggle with that. The more and more people that I hear saying they have IBS is leading to more and more people working on their gut health. Like there's so many memes about IBS and all these things. It's like everyone has gut problems and everyone has all these little steps that they

0:03:07
 think are going to improve people's gut health. So what's the crux? What's the deal with gut health? Okay, so there are a bunch of people who have IBS or IBD, sure, okay. Let's just focus on all the other people. So the rest of us who occasionally maybe you get a bit of diarrhea or maybe you get a bit of constipation, something I do want to notice are two major things that are going to have a huge impact on your gut symptoms that you might not think of. One of them is your period. So before you get your period, you might notice that you get crazy diarrhea, okay, and then there's probably going to be followed by constipation. And this is due to those changing levels in your hormones that, you know, it's progesterone-based and estrogen, they're all just like surging and crushing, and it causes these really unpleasant gut symptoms. So I think a lot of people, they'll go, oh, I'm getting these really intense gut symptoms and not realizing that it's very much connected to your fluctuations in your hormone cycle. And so simply becoming aware of if there's a pattern if I get these kinds of symptoms. Am I constipated at a certain time of the month? Yes, we can kind of try and do some stuff around this, but if you're going to get diarrhea once a month from your period, that's just the way it is, unfortunately. The other thing is stress. Okay, so let's not underestimate the impact of stress on your gut. What they talk about is that your gut is your second brain kind of thing, and that is true. These two are very interrelated and stress is one of those things that can cause really unpleasant gut symptoms like diarrhea. And I think let's just tune into that as well. It's not always food. Now one of the issues I have with this whole gut health thing is how the advice is very much telling people to cut out whole food groups. And very often, it's without any kind of medical supervision. And it's people who are just like, oh I feel like I feel pretty fine with my gut. I feel maybe a bit bloated or I could feel better and they are the ones who are going, oh I need to heal my gut health, maybe my life would be transformed, I would have more energy, I would be better if I had better gut health. So then they go on these diets where they're cutting out things like dairy, gluten, sugars, fruits. And I just really worry about that kind of person because I reckon you could be giving yourself a whole bunch of health issues by going down that pathway.

0:05:25
 And do you feel like if you cut things out, then that's how people sometimes develop intolerances? If they haven't had it for ages and then they have it again and they're like, oh, now I feel sick.

0:05:36
 I reckon it can cause a whole bunch of negative symptoms. So let's say for example, you're eating normally and you're like, okay, my gut feels kind of okay but I'd like to transform my life with the gut health sales pitch. And then you cut out all these foods and as a result, sometimes people end up eating quite differently. So let's say you add in, you go vegan or something which is often sold as a gut health solution. You end up eating so much produce, vegetables and fruit, you can actually get so many fructans in your diet, you can get so much fiber in your diet that suddenly your gut's like, I don't like this and can have these really bad negative symptoms. So let's say you're having like these vegan bowls and smoothie bowls and dates and snacks, the load of fructans could get pretty large for you. So I think that's something to be really mindful of as well. Can we be giving ourselves intolerances? I think that's kind of a controversial idea but you can imagine that your gluten load which is your ability to actually handle a certain amount of gluten would go down if you're having less and less gluten then your body is not used to having gluten. So let's say you have just a piece of bread, your body could go, whereas before you cut it out of your diet, you're fine to have a piece of bread and now after going on a restrictive diet you suddenly find that just one piece of bread is going to do it to you. So yeah I do think we are giving ourselves intolerances by doing these controlled elimination diets and even something like FODMAPs. I don't know if you guys know. You know what FODMAPs is? I was going to mention FODMAPs because I wasn't actually sure if

0:07:09
 it is linked but I've heard low FODMAP gut health in the same sentence.

0:07:13
 Okay, yeah, so let's explain it. So we have, have we talked about this before on podcast?

0:07:18
 No, not FODMAP.

0:07:19
 Oh, okay, cool. Okay, so we have, FODMAP is an acronym that, let me make sure I get it right, fermentable oligomony monodisaccharide and polyols.

0:07:29
 Okay, no one's ever said that.

0:07:30
 I think I get it, FODMAP. Oh, I hope I got that right. Anyway, so it's a whole bunch of food chemicals that are found in a whole bunch of foods that contain carbohydrates. So it's anything like, you know, it's going to contain gluten and lactose and fruits, fruit sugars and those fake sugars like polyols, those fake sugars that you find in diet soft drink, all these kinds of things, they can have a different reaction in people's guts. So they tend to be quite fermentable in the gut that can cause these negative symptoms. By reducing the amount of these FODMAPs in your diet can actually help relieve your gut symptoms. Okay, that's just a very complicated way of saying that sometimes people have too much of a certain kind of thing. For some people, it could be onion and garlic, the primary FODMAPs that are impacting them and simply reducing how much garlic and onion they have can have a huge transformation. Does that mean that they need to also cut out gluten and dairy and all those other foods? No. And this is what we're seeing with the low FODMAP diet, where as people go to set a low FODMAP diet, it's a highly restrictive diet. You first have to start with an elimination phase where you really pull back on all the FODMAPs, and then you can slowly start to reintroduce things. This is a bit that most people forget to do though, and they spend their entire lives leading this restricted low FODMAP diet and a it's not healthy and b I actually find it can lead to things like binge eating also allergies we're trying to avoid certain foods for we've got celiac disease or we've got something like dairy intolerance so we can't have too much I actually find that these food restrictions these food rules unfortunately can also cause binge eating on the very foods that you are trying to avoid something else to be

0:09:17
 and then FODMAPs are things that ferment in the gut

0:09:19
 and that's bad. Oh, I'm glad you raised this. So there is a- Help me. So let's say you don't have any negative gut symptoms, like you and me, right?

0:09:28
 Yeah.

0:09:29
 Okay, I'm okay.

0:09:30
 Yeah, cool. So for people with a healthy gut who don't have negative symptoms, what you want to be aiming for is eating huge variety in different, we'll talk about that in a bit more detail, and you do want to be having those fermented foods. Things like sauerkraut, or it could be a kombucha, or probiotics, or prebiotics, all the things are important. We can talk about that as well, by the way, if you want. But when you ask someone who has got a gut that's kind of like IBS-y, then those fermentations, that fermentation becomes a problem. Right, so they shouldn't be having the kombuchas and the miso soups and all the fermented things.

0:10:04
 Well, probably not things like our sauerkrauts and stuff.

0:10:07
 No.

0:10:08
 I feel like when I have sauerkraut, it doesn't sit well in my tummy.

0:10:11
 It doesn't sit well. Okay. And this is the thing we're going to come back to.

0:10:14
 When it comes to gut health, when it comes to anything related to your health, I might be a dietician and an expert on nutrition, but you are absolutely expert on your body. And we're going to get all this random advice and fermented foods are good, but if sour crap makes you feel like crap, that's not for you then. And fundamentally, all health comes down to is, can you get good at listening to what your body is telling you and take into consideration the diet advice? But what is your body telling you? Because that's the real way you're going to get to health.

0:10:47
 Yeah, because sometimes every single person's stomach chemicals would all be different and be like,

0:10:51
 I don't like that. Yeah, the other thing is, I can't tell if I'm going to be able to explain this in a simple way but I hope I can, it's the load. So gluten load is a topic that you might have heard of. I've heard of this. Okay cool, so it's like let's say I have a big bowl of pasta and I have some garlic bread to start off with. The garlic load, the garlic load, the garlic garlic load is going to be high as well. But the gluten load of that entire meal might be quite high. So you might go, oh, I can't eat pasta, I can't eat bread, I can't eat gluten. But it wasn't the fact that you had gluten, it's just that you had so much gluten in one sitting that it was just too much. And then what people do is they cut out gluten completely, but you could have tolerated a small amount. It's also like what you eat during the day. So if let's say you have gluten throughout the day and then you might have, okay, just one piece of bread and suddenly that bread gives you negative symptoms. It's not the bread, it's just you just had an accumulated amount of gluten throughout the day and that matters as well.

0:11:52
 So does your gluten load like reset when you go to bed?

0:11:55
 I don't know if it's resets when you go to bed. It's just I guess more related to your digestive process and how quickly it can leave your body. But it can accumulate over a few days. By insight, the clock doesn't reset at 12 o'clock, Cinderella. But yeah, that's just like another nuance to it all. So anyway, basically what I want you to know is please don't get sucked into buying like a gut health e-book online. And just noticing as well how gut health has very much become controlled by diet culture. Because influencers have realized they're telling us, you need to lose weight, you need to count calories. That is not something we want to buy into anymore, but they can sell us weight loss through health mechanisms. So you might sign up to this gut health protocol and it's like, you can't eat anything, basically. And basically what it is, it's just like, well, you're going to lose weight from doing something like that, but you're going to be on this crazy restrictive diet that's not at all healthy for you. Just be really careful that a lot of gut health is diet culture in disguise.

0:13:02
 I remember, I don't even know who this was, some gut diet protocol situation. The rules was you could only eat fruit first thing in the morning because otherwise other things would like ferment, it needed to ferment in the stomach by itself before other things were added. I think this is an Ayurvedic idea. Yeah. It could have actually been

0:13:40
 something to do with a colonic. Remember when colonics were a thing? Oh yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it was a really fun thing to do.

0:13:53
 Yeah, it's like you could only have

0:13:57
 fruit and then I had like, oh now I've

0:13:59
 had to have my fruit in the morning and Oh, I really don't buy into that. No, that's silly. No, your body's quite complex. I don't know if you realize it can grow an entire baby. It can like grow from when you're a baby until you become an adult. It can do really complex things.

0:13:51
 I just don't buy it. So the stomach isn't like a tiramisu with just like layers and when something goes on something can't go on top.

0:13:57
 No, I love tiramisu, but no, it's absolutely not. So your body, I mean, in your stomach, all foods are gonna get mixed and mashed together and you're fine, you can eat them in different orders. There is interesting stuff around when you have something with like a carbohydrate, if you eat it with protein, with fat, you can reduce the glycemic load because it changes the rate of absorption, but that's a different thing from what you're talking about. Can I say I put out a call out on Instagram the other day to reveal your big diet rules to me, and one of the ones that came back to me pretty consistently was like, I'm not allowed to have carbohydrates more than once a meal or twice a meal. Everyone seemed to have different rules about how much carbohydrates.

0:14:43
 More than once a meal.

0:14:44
 Yeah.

0:14:45
 Like, I got served a meal. Or I could only have it for breakfast, but then I couldn't have carbs at any other meal. Or I could have it for lunch and breakfast, but I couldn't have carbs for dinner. Or I could have one slice of toast, but I couldn't have two slices of toast. There was a whole bunch of this stuff. So when it comes to gut health, I need you to know this, your gut absolutely needs carbohydrates. It needs carbohydrates. Think of them as the fuel for your good gut bugs. And so one of the problems with these very low carb diets is that we're not giving your gut bugs good feel to munch on and they really do need that. So I will go into that. The gut health is interrelated to a whole bunch of very important things like immune health and your mood and your energy, big stuff, my friends. And I think there is some interesting relationship between a diet that's good for your mood, definitely including carbohydrates, including plenty of fiber and things and how it's

0:15:41
 related to your gut health. Another thing that I've heard that I wonder if this is true, I think that it is, you should be including a real different array of carbohydrates all the time. So sometimes when I'm in like the rice aisle, sometimes I get the brown rice but then sometimes I get the quinoa and sometimes I get the mixed pack. Oh I love that. And then I feel like it's really hard to do because like I want to just put oats in my breakfast every morning and I'm like, should be I have buckwheat or something random that I don't even really know how to cook. How do you get constant variety?

0:16:13
 Yes, variety is crucial when it comes to gut health and it's not just carbohydrate variety, it's all kinds of variety of foods. So I think, let's say we get a meal plan from Diaculture that's like, these are the perfect foods, the perfect day on the plate and we end up eating that food on repeat for weeks until we eventually can't stick to that diet anymore, inevitable. But basically I often get asked like what is the perfect, which is the healthiest carbohydrates and the healthiest carbohydrate is when you're constantly varying up which carbohydrate you have. The healthiest fruit is when you're constantly varying up which piece of fruit you'd pick and I think seasonality is a very interesting idea. Naturally the seasons are going to shift and your food, your intake should shift with it. So let's say you go, well, I'm only allowed to have berries because berries are low sugar fruit. The best thing to be doing is eat berries when they're in season, when it's peak summer and they don't cost $400 million and then later in the year, you just shift when it's citrus season, eat up and enjoy all the citrus and plums and all this beautiful stuff that comes in. But I think what we could end up doing is we eat the exact same food all the time because that's what's macro-managed, that's what's calorie controlled, that's what we have permission to eat. And not only does eating with the seasons and trying to mix it up help us stay more interested, it's a much cheaper way to shop. And I know grocery bills are going through the roof at the moment, so seasonality is a really kind of key thing for us to be doing. And the goal we often get given is to aim for 30 different plant-based foods in a week. That sounds like a lot. It's overwhelming. It does. It's easier to do than you think, but if you do buy the exact same ingredients every single week, do you do that? I do that. You've got your avocado, tomatoes, regardless of the season, iceberg lettuce, I don't know, whatever it is. Yeah, I get like avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers.

0:18:05
 I really just get apples, bananas, sometime an orange.

0:18:09
 Okay, now I'm going to challenge you and anyone listening to each week, just like one new vegetable or one new fruit. If you've got kids, you can get them to pick one weird fruit or vegetable they've never seen and add that to the basket, try to find a recipe around that, a bit of effort. But even if they just pick one new fruit or vegetable, try that. And people always go, what's the healthiest yogurt? What's the healthiest muesli? I was like, I'd like you to mix it up. Why don't you try some different brands and do porridge one week and then go for a muesli another week or maybe do a chia pudding. Don't if you hate chia pudding, whatever. But the point is there is no one perfect way to eat. The goal is to try and mix it up. That said, I do have my muesli every single morning because I love it so much. I make it at home and so what I try and do, I've got the recipe on my blog by the way, you just type in like best muesli recipe. Best muesli ever. You'll find it at lindygoland.com. And I just try and mix up the seeds and the nuts I use. So like sometimes I'll use like linseeds and chia seeds and pumpkin seeds. The next time it's like macadamias and cashews. So that I'm constantly trying to get that difference. And just my muesli alone, I reckon I'm getting at least eight different plant-based foods in one meal. Wow, there's eight different ones in there. When I was in a bit of a rut with breakfast and I was looking on your app, Back to Basics, and there is so many different recipes in there. Like I would have never thought that a chia pudding would have just been something that I could have for breakfast. Oh yeah, or as a snack or just like something delicious to eat. Yeah, I think sometimes we struggle with recipe inspiration. We want stuff that's like super simple and quick and minimal washing up and by the way Back to Basics is all those things so you can give it a go. But we all get stuck in a rut, don't we?

0:19:54
 It's so easy to just think, oh, at the moment I'm just like, oh, I'll just get some salmon and I was like, every week I'm just like, I want to get salmon, have some salmon and some vegetables. But then when I have a look through Back to Basics, I'm like, there's actually so many things in here

0:20:06
 I could be eating. Yeah, let me give you some fresh ideas. Yes. It doesn't cost a million dollars either.

0:20:11
 Keep the spice up.

0:20:13
 So can I talk to you a bit more about probiotics? Do you know what a probiotic and a prebiotic is?

0:20:19
 Yes, so a probiotic, I always get a bottle when I have antibiotics. Yeah.

0:20:26
 And then I have them, and that's all that I do. Okay, pro tip if you are doing that, you actually want to leave a bit of a gap between, you don't want to have your probiotic as you're swallowing. The pharmacist did tell me that. Why is that? Well, the antibiotic can actually destroy the probiotic before it actually makes it into your gut. That makes total sense. Yeah, they said I had to have it like two or three hours apart. Yes, cool. Do that. And so a probiotic is just basically good gut bacteria. So you've got like billions of different bacteria and like fungis and like crazy bugs living in your gut and they do good things. Now we want the good bugs to be in higher numbers. And so probiotics is just basically one way to help us support that good gut bugs, I'll call them actually. And so a probiotic is a Greek yogurt or some yogurt that has lactobacillus, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly but you'll see that's not added in, it's already in the yogurt. No it is added. Oh they added it. They do add it in. So you do want to find a yogurt that's got a probiotic added in. So if you look on the back of the ingredients list, you're going to find some Greek words that are really long and you can't pronounce them which ingredient doesn't mean it's bad for you that's diet culture for you. Yeah that is that is real. Yeah you have those probiotics well I think one of the best sources of probiotics is a yogurt, something you eat anyway. Now when it comes to supplements with probiotics we are very much at the beginning of our understanding of probiotics and eventually my belief is that we are So you would do a test and it would tell you which exact strains you need depending on what you have. We do not have the research to back that up and anyone who's claiming that they do have the research, they don't. So at the moment when you buy certain specific strains, you need to look at what is that strain, what evidence is there for whatever condition it's trying to treat. You can't just get a probiotic that's going to fix a million things. So for example, Leo, my son, he started daycare and any parent would know when your kid starts daycare they get sick all the time and it's hectic and you pay lots of money and then you've got a sick, sad child. So I did cite him on a probiotic and I did some research into finding one that was specific to fewer sick days, reduced length of the time that he is sick for, related to like coughs and runny noses. But that's all, it's not going to fix all other things. So there's one for eczema or other things that they have. Really? I didn't know this. Yes, it's very strain specific and I think this is what we do is we go and we spend all this money buying probiotics and you try to think you're doing the right thing. You've got to find the right strain and this is why I think you should very much speak to a dietician, a nutritionist, somebody who specializes in this area instead of someone who's just going to give you a whole bunch of supplements and claim it's a gut health protocol.

0:23:23
 There is a lot of supplements.

0:23:24
 There's a lot of supplements, a lot of major, huge claims being made with very little evidence.

0:23:31
 They say like there's not the science yet to back up gut health so therefore, it's not really something you can go see your normal maybe GP about because it's not really what they're spruiking is yet. So people go to more natural professionals for these type of topics and some of my friends go and they just sold like legitimately $1,000 worth of supplements. Is that something that they could be getting in fruits, vegetables and foods without spending

0:23:55
 $1,000 on tablets? Yes. And in the industry, we call that expensive wee because let's say you're chugging down a thousand supplements, it's very expensive and anything your body doesn't need, you end up excreting and there's a whole bunch of stuff like collagen which is currently getting sold for skincare health and there isn't research to back it up really. There's not nearly enough research. There is some good research about collagen and joint health. So that's something that I say.

0:24:24
 But I've read that you can't even absorb collagen through the stomach.

0:24:28
 Yeah, exactly. Many of them you can't. It's a whole money-making kind of thing at the moment. Personally, there are some key things that we should be focusing on when it comes to gut health. Getting enough fiber, crucial. But not getting too much fiber. But not getting too... Well, yeah, but building it up slowly. So you can't go from a low-fiber diet to a hectically healthy high-fiber diet, but that transition would be too much for your body to handle. So you slowly wanna introduce it. And this is another reason why going on crazy diets where you change everything overnight doesn't make sense. We do wanna just progressively. So maybe like, why don't you start by making a muesli? You make it once a week, it takes me five minutes. The house smells amazing, you feel smug. I feel so smug because I'm like, oh, look at me, I am healthy. And then I eat it for two weeks and like, great. It's such a like a low, anyway, what I'm saying is start with something small. It's like, I'm just gonna get in like a healthy gut health breakfast sorted. Yeah, with carbohydrates, please my friends, do that. And then that's gonna set you up. You don't have to go on these crazy changes and add in all this fiber all of a sudden. And the other thing is getting enough fruit and vegetables and produce and mixing it up, have some yogurt and enjoy it. Make it enjoyable for yourself so you actually do it more consistently so that your bone health is better when you're older as well. So in the whole gut health sphere, bloating... Oh, good question. Bloating. Bloating. Because this is often one of the reasons why people are like, go on the gut health diet. Okay, some degree of bloating is totally normal and natural and to be expected. So your bloat by the end of the day is going to be so much greater than when you start the day. That's normal. That's not like an issue with your gut. When you eat food, your gut's going to be naturally distended because of the fermentation and the processing that's happening in your gut.

0:26:20
 Okay?

0:26:21
 But I think we've been told that any bloating is bad for us. This food won't make you feel bloated. It's okay to feel a bit bloated. When it starts to feel uncomfortable and painful, that is when it becomes an issue. And if it is, please don't just Google gut health stuff. Go see a dietician or a nutritionist who specializes in gut health. They will be the person to go and speak to and get them to go and teach you how to do eliminations appropriately so you're not restricting your diet and doing crazy things. And while we're here, can we talk about gas? Can we talk about farts? Let's talk about farts.

0:26:52
 Okay.

0:26:53
 So in diet culture, like when you have high protein supplements, I don't know if you've ever noticed, your farts smell so bad.

0:27:01
 Oh my goodness, they're sour.

0:27:03
 I don't know. It's so hectic. And so that's often something that happens from like gym bros or anyone who's having too much protein. It's a negative symptom where like your gut bugs just aren't that happy when this is happening. They don't need that much protein. No, they don't need that much protein. You're wasting your money on these supplements that are highly processed and anyway that's the whole thing. But some flatulence like farting a bit is normal. I think what do we we all make lots of farts throughout the day. I thought I've heard that you fill up a balloon every day. That's I mean maybe more for something. But farting becomes an issue when it's smelly, right? You know there's like foul smelling farts, that's more of a problem. But if you're just releasing gas, that can be actually a good thing. That is meaning that there's fermentation happening in your gut, that the good gut bugs are doing their thing. So gas in and of itself is not bad, it's when it smells bad, that's when it's an issue.

0:27:57
 I have never thought about that before in my life. Is it kind of like the same as like, I don't know how many people have tried to make kombucha, when you have to release the gas because it's fermenting.

0:28:05
 Is that what's happening in our stomach? That's a really nice example. I really like that. That is what's happening. I did not know that. And we want fermentation and we want gas to be produced. Yeah, it's very important. My boyfriend tried to make kombucha and he didn't release the thing.

0:28:21
 And then when he opened it, the whole thing exploded.

0:28:23
 Oh no, that's a smelly mess.

0:28:26
 Release the gas.

0:28:27
 Release the gas, everyone. And hopefully it's not too smelly. And if you do, lift up the sheets, so your partner is okay. That's what I do.

0:28:35
 Cool, and then just quickly with prebiotics.

0:28:37
 So prebiotics are the foods that probiotics eat. Oh, I did not know that. That good gut bugs eat. So we actually, that's fiber, that's carbohydrates. So if we're eliminating carbohydrates, we're often eliminating fibrous foods from our diet. And so what are we allowing our gut bugs to eat? Not that much. We need to be going for that nutritional variety that's going to give us those prebiotics into our diet. Oh, and you're going to notice now in a whole bunch of food products, they're going to go, prebiotics added, prebiotics. You can add prebiotics in like the form of inulin, but also anything with fat.

0:29:15
 What's inulin?

0:29:16
 It's like an ingredient that often gets added. It's not too thin a star but you'll see it gets added to a lot of products.

0:29:25
 So that they can write that on the label?

0:29:26
 Yeah, it's a whole thing these days. Whereas like basically you don't need to buy a product that says it's got probiotics on it, just eat fibrous foods and you're going to tick that box.

0:29:35
 So if someone is listening to this and they're thinking they have gut problems, where should they start at a base level without going too extreme?

0:29:45
 Firstly, I would get curious about your stress levels and your hormones and see, okay, is there anything that's happening here? You might want to track, you make an appointment with a specialist dietician who specializes in gut health, who's like that's their thing and they're going to be the right person. And then in the lead up to meeting up with them, start to become really curious about your symptoms. You might wanna track how many bowel movements am I having a day. There's something called the Bristol stool chart. You can check that out. It's like what level is your, what's your poo at? And then record things like, do your fart smell? When do you feel most bloated? And you might wanna just keep a really basic food diary. We are not looking at calories. We're not looking at that kind of thing. What we are looking at is just like, we are looking at quantity because sometimes it's about the load of how much of a certain nutrient you're having. I know someone that ate like a very high vegan diet and their farts really smell and they said that's because they were so healthy. No. Is that true? No. There would be a lot of fermentation happening in that gut. That means they're having too much. Yeah, it'd be too much. I don't know of a scenario where your farts are going to smell bad because you're so healthy.

0:30:55
 Okay, and that's our first, squash.

0:30:57
 Yeah, that's a squash.

0:30:58
 Yeah, so basically what I'm saying is make sure you get professional support. Don't do this alone. Don't get sucked into this idea that you have to spend all this money on these weird supplements or that you have to get special food. The best diet is one that's constantly varied and mixing it up and changing. You don't even need to buy into the whole like sauerkraut kombucha thing. If you don't like it, don't eat it. That's fine. There are so many other things like that aren't expensive that you can have. Like you can have like carrots and peas and you know bags of frozen berries or whatever. All these like cheaper foods that you can fully have. Legumes, oh my goodness, legumes. Super cheap. I have a whole, if you go into my pantry, my entire shelf is just legumes.

0:31:39
 Yeah, they're so good for every meal.

0:31:40
 Yeah, every meal. And they count towards your serve of veggies for the day. And they're so filling and they're great for your gut. Now, if you're someone who's got an IBS kind of thing, you might not be able to have legumes. So this is why you need to speak to a professional.

0:31:53
 Speak to a professional. Don't diagnose yourself on the internet.

0:31:56
 That's it. And guys, I think we've really kind of got into that in quite a bit of detail. But as always, if you have any questions that you'd like us to answer on the podcast, please do send us a question. Find me on Instagram at nude underscore nutritionist. Send me a DM. And if you can, leave a voice message asking us your question, and we'll be able to answer it in the podcast, hopefully helping you a little bit. And we do love to end each episode on a little bit of a good note. We have slammed some things. Lots of things. Lots of things. So you want to end on something good and something we've been seeing a lot, well obviously across Australia's just had their summer, whatever summer is happening in your part of the world, but like groups of people meeting in the morning at beaches or walks. Like I'm seeing this sprout up all over. Some of them it's called like a little, like a 5 a.m. club or there's these groups that just go for swims. And these are huge groups, like we focus a lot on the negatives of social media. These are groups of people that don't know each other that are finding each other on the internet and like meeting at a local spot near them at like 6 o'clock in the morning

0:33:02
 to start their day in a really positive note.

0:33:04
 Yeah, for enjoyable movements in a way that's not about like how you look. So I think one that's really hit it off, which is brilliant if you're in Perth, it's called Seagulls and Seagals. And Tara, I think she's the founder of it and she started off with having like eight people going for a swim at 5.45 in the morning in like the cold water and recently had like 125 people going to go do a dip all together. It's just a nice way of building community, building movement and you're right, they're happening all around the world. We'll speak about Australia but in Sydney I know there's a silent disco that I think happens at Tamarama in the morning on a Monday morning that you can go to. There's things like No Lights No Lycra that's been going on for a while, which is like a disco rave, a sober disco rave. You never know, there's probably something happening in your area where you can kind of go and connect with like-minded people to do something like good for your soul and good for your health that isn't about trying to look good in the gym. We love this. Because it's so much about who you surround yourself with and if sometimes I find myself if you're thinking or none of my friends doing much exercise or my partner's not doing much exercise I don't have any friends to do things with we don't have to worry about that anymore. Have a little Google search there is groups of people doing exactly what you want to be doing. Yeah! Go say hello. It's time to like mix it up. Try something new. If you hate going to the gym, stop doing that. Stop it. If you're sick of your hot girl walks, go do something else. I do like hot girl walks. I do too. Alright guys, thanks for tuning in today and thanks for all your support. I'm Lindy and I'm Jenna. We'll see you next time. Bye. Do you feel like you know what you should be eating but like you feel completely out of control with food? You're either eating perfectly or you're face planting into the fridge. Well, if you've got binge eating or you're struggling with emotional eating, I can help. Check out my program, Keep It Real. I've got lots I can teach you and hey, you don't have to be a binge eater for the rest of your life. You can get 20% off Keep It Real when you use the code PODCAST when you check out via the website and because I don't want this to be just another failed attempt for you, I'm offering a 30-day money-back guarantee because you know what, failed attempt for you, I'm offering a 30-day money-back guarantee because you know what, you've just got to give these things a go, no risk, give it a try, check out KeeperReal.