Jacqueline Whitehart - The 28-Day Gut Health Plan: Lose weight and feel better from the inside

Jacqueline Whitehart is an expert health-food writer and best-selling cookery author.

With a practical and light-hearted approach, Jacquelines books are full of helpful tips and advice, and are packed with her own fresh, healthy and delicious recipes.

Jacqueline is a busy working mum from Yorkshire who writes from the heart and from personal experience. Shes not perfect, or a perfectionist; her down-to-earth approach to dieting and cooking speaks directly to her many readers, and shes always happy to answer any questions her readers may have.

Jacquelines recipes are easy to follow with simple, readily available ingredients.

Jacqueline writes regularly on her blog, www.52recipes.co.uk, and has a weekly free-recipe newsletter.

Do you suffer occasional symptoms of gut sensitivity bloating, gas, cramps or loose bowels? Do these symptoms appear quite randomly yet you cant tie them down to a particular foodstuff? Perhaps you suspect you might be intolerant to some foods but sometimes you can eat them without suffering any problems. The good news is that this plan can help you pinpoint the level of your food intolerances, reduce the symptoms and feel better and finally slowly reintroduce the food.

Severe Food Allergies

If you have a severe food allergy, such as nut or egg allergy, or suffer from coeliac disease then you should be following expert treatment. This book is absolutely no substitute for professional medical advice. The book can still be used to find other intolerances as long as you first seek expert medical advice.

If your weight loss has stalled (or hasnt even got going), then your gut could be holding you back. Your digestive system is like your second brain, telling you what to eat and when. When those signals get confused because your gut is a bit toxic (sorry for the bad news), then it tells you to eat when youre not hungry and gives you irresistible cravings. Were going to give your gut a deep clean and find out the foods your gut likes and the ones it struggles with. As a result, your cravings will disappear and you will naturally lose weight. Its not uncommon for someone following the gut-health programme (but not thinking about weight loss) to easily lose half a stone.

Cutting out trigger foods also forces us to cook more real food. Do you believe your ready meal doesnt contain gas-inducing veg? Wrong. Its in the stock. Think your cereal bar is good for you? Wrong. It contains at least twenty ingredients including five kinds of sugar or sweetener.

But dont worry. I know you dont want to spend hours in the kitchen, which is why Ive included a whole section of easy and delicious recipes for you to try. My recipes are always fresh and simple, use common ingredients and have been tried and tested by me. All those faffy bits that restaurant chefs like to add to make their food look beautiful (but take half a day to prepare) theyre not in my kitchen.

Onions and garlic are two of the more common causes of a sensitive belly. They are potent, gassy vegetables and even the tiniest amount can set many people off. Ill introduce you to a new cheap and easy-to-get-hold-of spice that youve probably never even heard of. Add a pinch of this to a dish to add natural onion flavour, without the tummy consequences and without the chopping! What is it? Youll have to keep reading to find out!

Gut sensitivity affects as many as 10 to 15 per cent of people in the UK and that figure is rising. And that doesnt even include the thousands perhaps even millions of people with mild or occasional issues who just battle on and never visit the doctor or discuss it with anyone.

What Id like to show you in this book is a way to get to grips with the causes of your gut-health problems. For just one month, well cut out possible trigger foods and introduce them again in a controlled fashion. Youll get your own personalized guide to foods you can eat with no problems, foods you can eat in moderation and foods to avoid.

The trigger food groups that well be looking at are: milk, red meat, nightshade (such as tomatoes and chillies), gassy vegetables and wheat.

Please dont think, Thats it. Youre telling me not to drink milk or eat bread ever again. First of all, it is rare to be intolerant to both wheat and milk. And even if you find foods that you are intolerant to, youll hopefully still be able to eat them in small quantities. Youll know how to choose the right foods for you. Ill give you the tools to help you make your own choices. Its like drinking alcohol. We all know that it gives us a hangover the next morning, but sometimes we do it anyway. You might find that tomatoes give you a rotten tummy ache, but occasionally youll think its a price worth paying.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT DIFFERENT GUT SENSITIVITIES

One of the things that you quickly find when exploring gut sensitivities is that no two people are the same. How we react to certain foods and how our digestive systems behave is unique to us. Yet the mechanism is the same for everyone. And the root causes of all digestive issues are the same: inflammation of the gut lining, foods not being digested properly and the aptly titled leaky gut.

In this book, Ill look at the root causes of digestive issues and explain how this can lead to IBS-like symptoms: stomach cramps and bloating and also to inflammation throughout our body. Frequent headaches, sinus pain and achy joints can all be linked back to our digestion.

Heres a quick guide to the next 28 days. Dont worry, Ill guide you through every step of the way. For each day of the programme, you complete a Gut-Health Diary (see for examples). Its really important that you allow yourself five minutes every morning, and again every evening, to fill in the diary. It is this that shows you the connections between food intolerances and gut symptoms. Be honest with yourself.

FOLLOWING THE PLAN

For each phase of the plan there is a huge variety of recipes you can use. Step Up Recipes are a great place to start. The Step Up Recipes are staple recipes that you can start in the Rest and Restore phase and then add extra ingredients for Introducing phases.

In the Recipes section, youll find over eighty delicious recipes (over twenty for R&R alone). The recipes are divided into sections to match the phases of the plan. Each recipe also has an at a glance guide to which food triggers (if any) it contains.

REST AND RESTORE

The plan starts with seven days of Rest and Restore (aka R&R). These seven days are vital to allow your gut to start to rebuild and recover.

How to do Rest and Restore

Start taking probiotics. Only eat safe foods. Banish all five triggers completely from your diet:

• Lactose (Milk)
• Red Meat
• Nightshade
• Gassy Veg
• Wheat

What happens within your gut during this phase?

We are trying to reduce the inflammation in your gut during this phase by cutting out all possible triggers. The surface of your gut lining will start the slow process of rebuilding and becoming less porous.

Equally important is the addition of good bacteria in the form of probiotics. Adding probiotics improves the balance of gut bacteria by reducing the number of harmful bacteria.

What you should expect during this phase?

If you have other (non-gut) symptoms that you suspect are food- or gut-related, then you should see an improvement in these during the week. Because of the nature of gut bacteria, however, you might see discomfort and bloating actually increase during the Rest and Restore phase. Dont be disheartened. Think of this as the good bacteria starting to wage war against the build-up of years and years of bad bacteria. They might lose a couple of battles early on, but youve got more and more probiotics to put into action against the bad bacteria and eventually you will be victorious.