Discover ways to improve your gut health with Fitlife Foods, serving the Southeast U.S. region with delicious meals delivered right to your door.
Keeping your gut healthy is an integral part of your body’s overall well-being. The good news: You can affect the health of your gut with your dietary and lifestyle choices, often much more quickly than you’d think.
If you’re experiencing gastrointestinal discomfort or other symptoms, you definitely want to get your gut health in check, but it turns out that gut health plays a much bigger role in our bodies beyond digestion.
In the last few decades, scientists have learned more about the complexity of gut health and the gut microbiome. Our gut is responsible for so much more than simply digestion and elimination. In fact, gut health can affect overall immune response, mental health, susceptibility to certain diseases, and more.
Because of the mass of neural tissue and neurotransmitters that line the gut, scientists have dubbed it our “second brain.” The amazing role gut health plays in the regulation of our bodies continues to be researched, but one thing is definitely clear: Eating clean for a healthy gut is a primary way to support your overall health, digestion, and mood.
What is Gut Health?
Gut health generally refers to the physical state and function of your gastrointestinal, or GI, tract. People often become concerned about the state of their gut health when they experience GI distress including symptoms such as gas, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation.
However, because of the vital role the gut plays in the overall function of the body, keeping your gut healthy should be a priority even when you aren’t experiencing discomfort.
Today, when discussing gut health, you’ll often hear about keeping the gut microbiota or microbiome balanced. So what is the gut microbiome, and how can you keep yours balanced and healthy?
What is the Gut Microbiome?
When you’re learning about gut health, you may come across the terms “gut microbiota” and “gut microbiome.” These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they do have slightly different meanings: Microbiota refers to the trillions of microbial cells that every human being harbors, while microbiome is the term used to denote both these tiny microorganisms and the genetic material inside them.
Around 300 to 500 different species of bacteria live in every human’s digestive tract. The exact mix of species in your gut is unique to you, and much of your microbiota have been with you from birth! While some bacteria are harmful to our health, without a balanced mix of bacteria in our guts, digestion simply could not occur.
In addition to making digestion possible, having a wide variety of good bacteria in your gut enhances your immune system function, improves mood and balances mental health, combats obesity, and more. While you are born with microbiota in your gut, your diet and other habits throughout your lifespan affect the microorganisms in your gut. So how can you keep your gut microbiome healthy, or restore it if you’re experiencing GI distress?
How Can I Improve My Gut Health?
There are many ways to improve your gut health that also contribute to your overall well-being, including getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, avoiding antibiotics when you do not need them, quitting smoking, and lowering your general stress levels. Food choices also play a major role in gut health.
Dietary Guidelines for Improving Gut Health
Your diet has a huge impact on gut health, and you can take steps to improve your gut health when making choices about what to eat.
First of all, it’s important to avoid foods that you don’t tolerate well. If you’re not sure if you have a food intolerance, but you’ve been experiencing prolonged GI symptoms, you may want to test yourself for any food intolerances with a trial elimination diet.
In addition to avoiding problematic foods for you, a key way to improve gut health is to reduce or avoid processed, high-sugar, and high-fat foods.
Eating plant-based foods and lean proteins can promote a healthy gut. A diet high in fiber is one of the most important factors in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome.
Specific Foods for Improving Gut Health
Specific foods that will help you improve or maintain gut health include high-fiber foods such as legumes, beans, peas, oats, bananas, berries, asparagus and leeks. Onion and garlic are also healthy for the gut.
The probiotics in fermented foods and drinks like kombucha are also helpful for your gut. Just make sure your kombucha doesn’t have added sugar! With probiotics, you are adding “good” bacteria to the gut. Fermented foods include kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt, tempeh, pickled vegetables, miso and kefir.
Finally, collagen-rich foods such as bone broth and salmon are great for promoting gut health. Overall, a primarily plant-based diet that avoids added sugars and highly processed foods is best for gut health. The Mediterranean Diet basically fits the bill, so it’s worth trying if you’re trying to promote health in your gut microbiome. Eating some animal-based protein is fine, but your gut will benefit from lots of plant-powered meals!
Make Your Gut Happy With Delicious Dinners Delivered to Your Door
With Fitlife Foods, a healthy, plant-powered and fiber-rich diet has never been easier to achieve. There’s no need to spend hours prepping vegetables in the kitchen; Fitlife Foods has you covered with delicious meals delivered to your door. Check out some of our yummy, gut-healthy meal choices below.
Try the High-Fiber Veggies & Pickled Red Cabbage in our Delicious Pork Bulgogi Bowl
Eating high-fiber vegetables and fermented foods are some of the top scientist-recommended methods for improving your gut health through nutritional choices. The Pork Bulgogi Bowl from Fitlife Foods is a super tasty and healthy way to keep your gut biome happy!
This delicious dinner features Korean-style roasted pork with a high-fiber punch of honey-sesame broccoli, steamed carrots and green onions. Your gut will thank you for the probiotic-packed pickled red cabbage, and your taste buds will rejoice in the spicy gochu sauce. A high-fiber mix of brown rice and quinoa finishes the bowl.
A medium serving of the Pork Bulgogi Bowl has just 410 calories, 39 carbohydrates (32g net carbs), 26 grams of protein, and 17g of fat. If you agree with any of the many five-star reviewers of this dish, you’ll absolutely love the taste of this high-fiber, gut-healthy dinner!
Delight in Seafood Night with Simply Grilled Salmon or Miso Glazed Salmon
Collagen-rich salmon is a boon for your gut health. No need to prepare it yourself — have it delivered to your door with Fitlife Foods.
Our dairy-free, gluten-free, low-carb Simply Grilled Salmon features fresh Atlantic salmon grilled to perfection and served with quinoa, roasted Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kale, so in addition to the lean, healthy protein, you’ll also get a fiber-packed set of veggies.
The Simply Grilled Salmon contains only 430 calories, 20 grams carbohydrates (14g net carbs), a whopping 43 grams of protein, and 20g fat.
Another great choice for seafood night is Miso Glazed Salmon. This dairy-free, gluten-free meal is gut-healthy from top to bottom. Not only do you get the collagen-rich, lean protein from salmon, but since miso is a fermented food, you also get an added probiotic punch! The seasonal veggies and brown rice/quinoa mix offer your gut lots of healthy high fiber too.
All of this gut-health goodness contains 410 calories, 32 grams carbs (28g net carbs), 30 grams of protein, and 19g of fat in a medium serving.
Enjoy our Plant-Powered, Gut-Healthy Impossible Bahn Mi Bowl
Eating vegan has never tasted so good! When you’re craving Vietnamese, your tummy will thank you for choosing the plant-based Impossible Bahn Mi Bowl from Fitlife Foods.
This dish features deliciously satisfying lemongrass “meatballs” served on a fiber-rich bed of turmeric rice pilaf with probiotic-packed pickled carrots. Our dairy-free sriracha mayo for dipping finishes off this delicious vegan meal.
The Impossible Bahn Mi Bowl packs in all the gut-health goodness for only 370 calories, 39 grams of carbohydrates (30 net carbs), 17 grams of protein, and 16g of fat.
Enjoy Gut-Healthy and Delicious Meals From Fitlife Foods
Sometimes it’s fun to prepare your own healthy meals, yet it can often feel like another item to check off your too-long task list. When you add grocery shopping and meal planning to the mix, it can feel like a full-time job just to feed yourself! When you’re too busy to prep and cook, let Fitlife Foods take over.
With the customizable Fitlife Foods menu, you can always find delicious prepared meals to promote a healthy gut and a healthy life. By using the filter to sort the menu for any additional dietary preferences, you can eat clean and avoid food allergies or intolerances with ease.
Imagine how good it will feel knowing a tasty, gut-healthy meal is waiting for you at the end of a long day — without spending hours in the kitchen prepping and cooking!
Keep your microbiome happy. Browse the Fitlife Foods menu to find your gut-healthy favorites today.
