So you’ve heard about this amazing diet from your favourite health expert and you’ve already committed to starting, but could you be about to make things worse without even knowing it?
The truth with many diets is your body isn’t prepared to handle them and lost in the excitement of how good you think you’re going to feel and how much weight you’re going to lose, we rarely stop and think, what’s going to happen to us if we eat all these foods at once that we’ve never eaten before?
To help you avoid the tummy pain, constipation or the uncomfortable bloating we’ve prepared this list of 8 common mistakes people make when starting a healthier diet and how to solve them (spoiler alert: don’t go crazy on anything and give your body time to adapt).
1. Too much fiber: Adding too much fiber or any prebiotic food at once is hard to handle for your body because you don't have enough of the good bacteria (probiotics) that you need to metabolise it, which may lead to bloating, generating gas, pain and constipation. To avoid this, start progressively eating a small amount of fiber and then increasing a bit day by day. To speed things up you can also supplement with probiotics that include common probiotic bacteria like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria to help increase the population of good bacteria you need to handle all that fiber faster. Finally, drink a lot of water and walk every day to keep your gut happy. If you’re still confused between Prebiotics and Probiotics, think of Prebiotics as food for the good bacteria and probiotics as the good bacteria that metabolises that food. Prebiotics are just a type of fiber that passes through the body undigested and promotes the growth and activity of friendly gut bacteria.
2. Adding legumes or too much legumes: legumes are definitely not for everybody as they are very hard to digest (even when soaked), creating issues like excessive gas and constipation.
My recommendation is to completely avoid them at the beginning, and if you want to add them later on, do so gradually and not at the same time that you’re adding anything else for the first time.
If you do start eating legumes, track and see if you have any symptoms and if so take them out of your diet. It might be they’re just not right for you and that's ok, remember we are all different.
3. Fermented foods: fermented foods are great for you and your gut because they’re high in probiotics and prebiotics, but if you go too hard on them you’ll run into trouble creating stomach pain and discomfort. Instead add these foods little by little and in small amounts to let your body multiply the good bacteria to be able to metabolise them properly.
4. Too much fruit: fruit is healthy but only in small amounts, remember that even though they’re nutritious they are usually high in sugar. If you’re increasing your daily intake, stick to low glycemic fruits that contain less sugar like berris, lime, lemon, coconut, cherries, grapefruit and pomegranate.
5. Bone broth: is very high in histamine which might make it very hard to digest for some people. When overdone, an excess of bone broth can help develop a histamine intolerance which might leave you in a worse position than before, generating stomach pain, bloating and constipation.
For bone broth I recommend the same concept we talked about for legumes. If you want to give it a try, dissolve just a little bit in water and track how you feel.
6. Light products: as a rule of thumb, light products are usually worse than the original version because of all the harmful additives and chemicals they contain. A common additive most light products have are artificial sweeteners, which won’t be labeled as sugar on the packaging but will raise your blood just like sugar, making you have a sugar crash later.
7. Gluten and dairy free packaged food: not because they are gluten and dairy free products it means they’re a healthier version of any packaged food. To replace dairy and gluten, companies use a long list of preservatives, chemicals and inflammatory oils to try to achieve the same taste and texture of the original product. When buying these types of snacks, make sure they don’t have inflammatory oils (any oil that is not olive,coconut or avocado) or other preservatives that are probably more harmful for you than the dairy or gluten you’re trying to avoid. This should be seen as a game of which one is more inflammatory, to which the right answer is neither one of them.
8. Too much of anything: oftentimes when someone makes a change in their diet they tend to obsess about an ingredient or have too much of a food they’ve never had before. A common example of this behaviour is eating too many nuts, like almonds. So it’s common to see someone having almonds for a snack, as well as almond butter, almond milk and then cookies made with almond meal. This overflow of almonds is something your body isn’t prepared for and doesn’t know how to handle. You have to understand that in your health journey balance is the key.