Have The Guts To Be Great!
- Mar 29, 2022
- 6 min read
Written by: Taryn Roberts, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
REMEMBER, you were the born teller of your own tale, never forget that! So what tale are you telling right now? Is it the one you want to tell?
We were all born to be great; never was our life purpose to simply live life the way everybody else lives or has to live! Every single human being’s life is destined for more than we think it is!
Every single day, as the sun rises, we have a choice to make to sleep, eat, work repeat or do things differently!
Right now, more than ever, the world needs even more of us to unlock our potential and step into our greatness and truly believe that you are here for bigger, more meaningful things.
Let me ask you this, what do these successful thought leaders, celebrities and business people have in common? Tony Robbins, Bill Gates, Maggie Q, Jessica Alba.
They take care of their gut – that’s right, it isn’t sexy, it isn’t even attractive but your gut could be just the thing that is stopping you from unlocking your true potential!
Every single day, doctors and scientists are proving more and more that the gut could hold the key to our unleashing our potential more energy, greater immunity, improved control of our weight and body fat, improved sleep, overcoming anxiety depression, lifting brain fog, greater productivity and focus, and so much more! Can you imagine having some or more of any of these? What would you do? How much more could you achieve? Who would you choose to be?
Our mental well-being, is still not spoken about enough but here’s the thing, ever taken a moment to consider how your brain and gut look similar? That’s because they are, and they are connected by the vagus nerve; our gut talks to our brain and vice versa, so the reality is, if you are looking after one and not the other, things are going to go wrong! Ever not been able to focus, get easily distracted or feel like you are just burning out, in business and or in your life? But the good news is, if you heal one, you can make the other feel better great news, right?
Our gut microbiome is arguable, the most important discovery in many years but here’s the thing, we haven’t discovered it, we’ve rediscovered it. Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the gut” over 2500 years ago but we somehow lost our way from this for all manner of reasons lifestyle, diet, cleanliness, the environment and use of antibiotics to name a few.
When it comes to getting ahead and living the life we want to live, rarely do people think about their gut but burnout, anxiety, depression, are very clearly, modified by gut microbes, just as our appetite, energy and how well we digest foods are.
Not only that but do you get sick all the time, struggle to juggle it all? A positive of Covid was that it highlighted how important our gut system is to our immunity because ultimately, our gut microbiome is controlling it, sending messages, because more than 70% of it is in your gut, helping you fight infections, such as Covid, other bugs and even early cancers and other signs of disease!
So we know that having a diverse and bountiful population of gut microbes is essential for our wellbeing, it can give us that energy, focus and competitive edge even and more and more we are realising that we can use our microbiota to treat or even prevent diseases but how can we give it some love and optimise our gut health?
As Tim Spector says, “You can make big shifts in your microbiome by making big shifts in your diet”.
The reality is that we often try and fight this or don’t want to hear it but, as Hippocrates said, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” and boy has it never been so true!
1. Eat your veg up to 10 varied portions of fruit and veg a day is what we really need but if you aren’t there yet, build up to it so you don’t feel overwhelmed! Remember, small, consistent changes make lasting habits. The more green veggies the better, especially the leafy ones, as they are loaded full of fibre, which the good bacteria in your gut love to eat. Some great ones for you include leeks, asparagus, chicory, broccoli, spinach and artichokes. Fill those prebiotic fibrous shoes!
2. Ditch the sugar and junk! No surprise and no easy way around this but sugar is a bad gut guy’s heaven! Did you know that a healthy gut microbiome should have c. 85% good guys and 15% bad in many, this is flipped and guess what this can lead to sugar and junk food cravings? If you love a sweet treat, try and make it a gut happier treat, such as honey, dark chocolate, apples, berries, bananas, sweet potatoes, pineapple, mangos etc. More complex sugars tend to be more agreeable to your gut.
3. Be plentiful with probiotics! It can be good to rebalance your microbiome with a good quality pre and probiotic supplement and be sure to include in your diet, foods such as kefir, live natural yoghurt, tempeh, kombucha, pickled veg,
4. Don’t forget your prebiotics! Probiotics without prebiotics are like ducks without water! These guys feed your gut and have a super important job of managing your enteric nervous system. Good sources to incorporate include the veggies mentioned above, garlic, bananas, nuts, seeds, whole grains, onions, beans, lentils, chickpeas.
5. Recharge! Getting sufficient and consistent sleep is important; your body does a lot of its regeneration between 10.30 pm and 4 am, so aim to settle before this and get a good 7-9 hours every night to support your gut and overall wellbeing.
6. Never say no? Time to change that! If you struggle to find time for yourself then make some and your gut will thank you. Remember your brain and gut are connected so taking time to destress and look after yourself, be it working out, meditation, a walk-in nature, yoga, reading or a good bath with candles will all help you to destress and likely take you out of that constant state of fight or flight that many of us consistently find ourselves in, bringing your cortisol levels down nicely!
The bottom line is that if you look after your gut, your gut will look after you; not only will it look after you, but if you take really good care of it, it will enable you to unlock untapped power, energy, confidence and focus that you didn’t know you had or maybe had just forgotten that you used to have and even enable you to increase your longevity!
So remember, you are already great but unlocking the power of your gut will unleash your greatness to a whole new level and who wouldn’t love a little more of that right now.
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Taryn Roberts, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Taryn Roberts is a health and nutrition coach, empowering high performing women to achieve their dream bodies and next level life. Taryn works with clients to achieve total transformation, using her unique 3 step power method, which encompasses the power of gut healing, mindset and nutrition to ensure clients get the results they desire and deserve.
After the birth of her twins, her high flying corporate finance career became less of a passion as she realised that the part she really loved was unleashing the true potential of others versus her own progression. Juggling it all, an awkward conversation with her HR Director, that started with "what do you want more, the promotion or the pay rise" (not quite the discussion with her male counterpart) and an ever-increasing feeling of being unfilled and burnt out made her call time on her corporate career to follow her passion, get her qualifications in Nutrition and Health coaching, and help others to optimise their wellbeing so that they can truly live life and thrive.
She works with clients on a 1:1 and group basis and has also built a successful corporate well-being arm for her business, taking her closer to her vision of helping 1 million people to heal their guts, achieve their optimum well-being and truly thrive. Taryn works fully online with her clients globally.
