I love fermented foods, in fact I have them in some form everyday, usually in the morning. This is a staple in our Monthly Membership Program where we put together a 2 part series to show the importance and benefits of fermented foods.
In this show, in 5 minutes I offer my 5 best tips explaining the benefits of fermented foods and why they should be implimented in some form every single day.
5 Tips in 5 Minutes:
Examples of Fermented Food:
Before I get into adding fermented food to your daily diets I thought it would be beneficial to give you a few examples, which include: Sauerkraut, Kimchi, Miso, Kombucha, Kefir.
Immune System
Our immune system, in large part has much to do with our gut flora, ability to digest and break down foods so they can heal our bodies. If you are having issues with your immune system, meaning you're commonly susceptible to the common cold, flu or any other bugs, viruses or dis-eases on a regular basis, you should consider how healthy your gut is. Implementing fermented foods will improve your immune sytem in a significant way.
Bowl Movements
We should have bowl movements every single day. I understand this isn't the case for many, which is why it's so important to add fermented foods to our diet. The best time to have a movement is first thing in the morning, this is when our body is relaxed the most and it's the best time to clear out anything that may be still in our system from the day before.
Adding fermented foods to our daily diets and routines will improve our ability to have movements on a consistent basis, flush out toxins and have our entire internal system working as efficiently as possible.
Preparing Your Body for Food
The most important meal of the day, without a doubt, is breakfast. When I first start working with someone I ask them how frequently they eat, when is the first time they eat and so on. It's no shock most of us don't eat in the morning. A coffee, possibly a pastry or nothing until late morning, or early afternoon is a regular occurrence.
When I ask someone that doesn't eat breakfast 'why?', the most common answer is along the lines of 'I just can't eat', 'I can't stomach food when I first get up'. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is, it's not a habit to eat in the morning, we're simply not used to having food in your system that early. Which is nothing more than a habit.
And the second reason is because our body really isn't ready for food, so we need to prepare it properly. This is no different than warming up before a workout. Think about warming up your digestive system before you put food in it. You can try something like lemon water in the morning, or in this case fermented foods to get your gut ready for digestion.
Gain Energy
We've all dealt with the afternoon crash, after lunch with colleagues, where we struggle to get through the rest of the day. The biggest issue here when we put hard to digest foods in our gut is, our body uses tons of energy to digest that food, which is why we want to take a nap shortly after.
This is much the same when we have a big ol steak or giant bowl of pasta late in the evening. Many times we don't sleep well after a meal like this because instead of healing our body as we sleep (which is what is supposed to happen) our body is working hard to digest that food.
By consuming fermented foods, we're actually able to gain energy because our body isn't spending so much of it on the digestion progress.
Lose Weight
Losing weight is another by product or benefit of consuming fermented foods. When we consume foods that are hard to digest or even living foods (raw food) that need help digesting as well,
