Eating To Optimize Your Digestion

We often take our digestive system for granted. When we eat whatever we want, mix foods that don’t play well together, drink periodically, and eat on the move we aren’t helping our digestive system to do its best work. 

The truth is our digestive system requires a careful balance and needs our help to function optimally. As a Certified Holistic Nutrition Consultant (C.H.N.C) I often see individuals with a variety of unexplained symptoms – they might have skin issues, weight issues, unexplained fatigue, allergies, and many other issues. The truth is a lot of these conditions start with the digestive system. 

Start thinking about how you eat. How many of these situations apply to you? 

1. You wake up in the morning and are rushing around to get ready. You eat your breakfast smoothie or bagel while running out the door.

2. You’ve been working hard all day and didn’t bring lunch so you grab something quick because it’s convenient. 

3. You get home after a long day at work and you’re exhausted. You make a big dinner and crash in front of your TV to eat it. 

4. You eat a huge meal because you’re starving and now you feel super uncomfortable and bloated. 

5. You go out to dinner and have already consumed 3 glasses of coke (or wine!) while waiting for your meal.

The truth is that we’ve all done this, I’ve done this. Even when working from home it’s so easy to find yourself looking up from your computer, checking the time and thinking “oh SHIT! I should have eaten three hours ago”. 

So, what can we do about it? We can work on optimizing our digestion to fall out of these traps. 

Problem 1: Eating While Stressed/Running Around:

Eating while in a rush is not the best way to digest your meal. Your emotions affect how you digest your food (I told you, this is a delicate balance). When you feel stressed your body releases cortisol, which is tied to your fight or flight response. What does this mean? It means that your body is so focused on managing that fight or flight, that there is not enough energy to be allocated to your digestive system, so your body is now digesting food with fewer resources. What happens when your body has fewer resources? Digestion can take longer and becomes less effective meaning the food stays in your gut longer. 

Additionally, chronic stress decreases the production of Hydrochloric acid in your stomach which means your stomach has less acid to break your food down.

Have you been feeling stressed lately? Try this:

• Wake up 15 minutes earlier, close your eyes and pay attention to your breath. Once you have noticed your natural rhythm begin to inhale for the count of 5 - pause - exhale for the count of 5 - pause and repeat 5 cycles of box breathing. Then sit down and enjoy your breakfast BEFORE tackling that to do list and enjoy a stress free start to your day.

Problem 2: Convenience Foods

We all know that convenience foods aren’t always the best choice, but when life gets busy it’s hard to not make food choices that are quick and easy. After all, you’ve still gotta eat! The problem is, a lot of these foods tend to be high in sugar and low in fibre and protein. 

As a result, these foods can cause a huge glucose spike, which then causes an insulin spike and overtime can lead to insulin resistance which results in decreased insulin effectiveness and your body storing more fat.  

Does your life feel super hectic? Try this:

• Set aside a dedicated block of time in your week to meal prep balanced meals with a good source of protein and fibre to prevent the insulin spike. Have your lunches pre-portioned out and ready to go in the fridge.

• Hate meal prepping? Cook up an extra portion or two at dinner and save some for lunch tomorrow or add your extra protein to a healthy salad to switch it up for lunch.

• Didn’t have time to prepare your lunch? Research a couple of go-to quick food options in your area that include an emphasis on protein and fibre to have in your back pocket.  

Problem 3: Distracted Eating: 

Eating dinner on the couch while binging Netflix? Studies have shown that when we eat while distracted, we eat more, we chew less, and we forget what we have eaten.

There are 3 major issues:

1. Eating more – when we overeat, we are asking our body to break down more food with fewer resources (HCL). We therefore get poorly digested food entering our intestines, which means that the nutrients cannot be properly absorbed, food stays in the intestines longer and we have more issues with our bowels.

2. Chewing Less – chewing is often the most overlooked process of the digestive system. Chewing starts the physical breakdown process of our food, so we can make digestion easier. Ideally, we should be chewing our food 32 times. While that seems excessive, focussing on what we are eating means that food is entering our body after being properly broken down.

3. We forget (or do not realize) what or how much we have eaten when we are distracted. We are more likely to go back for seconds or thirds and may be missing out on fullness cues. Then we feel stuffed and uncomfortable. Overeating causes a number of other issues, but we all know the main one – weight gain. 

Want to combat distracted eating? Try this:

• Carve out some dedicated time to eat. Catch up with your family members, listen to a thought provoking podcast, or enjoy some quiet moments to yourself to really focus and ENJOY what you are eating.

• Use your meal time to slow down, and let your mind decompress from the daily stresses of life or your to do list.

Problem 4: Food Combinations

We all have a couple ‘staple’ meals, such as steak and potatoes or pasta and garlic bread. You might not know this, but there is a right way and a wrong way to combine your foods.

Fat, protein, and carbohydrates all go through the digestive system in a different way, so to make things easier on our digestive system we should combine them correctly to make digesting our food as easy as possible for our system. 

The following chart shows the best way to combine your food:

Try to make smarter combinations, instead of a steak and potatoes, choose steak and leafy greens! Instead of pasta and chicken, have pasta with a variety of veggies! These small changes make it easier for your body to digest your food.

Want to help your digestive system work more efficiently? Try this:

• Follow proper food combining rules to the best of your ability. Especially for big meals or first thing in the morning, when you’re waking up your digestive system. 

Problem 5: Drinking with meals.

A holistic nutritionist once told me to eat like your pet, they do not go back and forth between water and food. They pick one and stick to it!

At restaurants, we often get asked what we want to drink first. But drinking a lot while eating a meal is making your digestive system less effective. The hydrochloric acid in the stomach is intense, but with every ounce of liquid we drink we dilute our HCL. When we finally have our meal, the digestive juices are so diluted that they can no longer digest our food efficiently and the whole process slows down.

This causes us to feel bloated, slows down our digestive process, nutrients are not absorbed properly and bad bacteria can gather in our gut.

Try this:

• Drink your beverages 30 minutes prior to a meal and 30 minutes after. This prevents your digestive juices from being diluted and keeps you well hydrated!

Following these small changes can optimize your digestion but like most things, it’s not an all or nothing concept. Enjoy your Christmas dinner. Don’t stress if you wake up a little late one day and must quickly eat while rushing out the door. If you follow these guidelines most of the time (even 60%) your system will thank you! Small changes to your eating habits will help optimize your digestion and help you feel and perform better!

Jess Faulds BSc, CHNC, PTS
CLEAN-19 Coach
jess@crushcamp.com