Journaling for gut health

The many benefits of keeping a gut health journal.

What does journaling have to do with gut health? You might be surprised…

· Tracking trends: Writing down what you eat and how you feel can be a great way to discovering patterns to good days and bad days, and the real triggers behind them. By keeping a gut health journal for a couple of weeks, it is easier to see which types of food and eating patterns make you feel good, and which don’t. This can help to prevent you from making unnecessary dietary exclusions, which often cause more harm than good.

· Promotes mindful eating: Writing down what you eat can help you to become more aware of what, and when, you are eating. Not only does this help us to focus more on enjoying what we eat, but becoming more conscious of what we are eating has benefits for our general health as well as gut health and can also be useful if you are trying to maintain a healthy weight.

· Tunes in: Our gut health isn’t just about the what we eat. How we feel in our gut can be affected by how we feel in general. Writing down how you’re feeling, as well as how you’re eating, can help identify important factors in our gut health. It can also help you to organise thoughts, and process worries, which can help to keep our minds, as well as our guts, healthy.

· Enables support: If you do experience problems with your gut health, having a journal to hand can be useful in helping you to describe your experiences to others who can help you. It can also help to take the embarrassment out of the discussion!

1) Buy yourself a beautiful journal that inspires you to write in it every day

2) Write. Start with the day and time. What were you doing? What did you eat? How did you feel before and after? The little details can help to draw out patterns and better understand our gut health.

3) Reflect. At the end of the week, look back through your journal. This may help you to find patterns and trends to help you better understand and manage your gut health.