The summer months, filled with sunny days, sandals, flip flops and sun dresses are the perfect time to embrace the raw food trend, fill up on infused water and spend lots of time outside.
It’s also a great time to adopt a few healthy habits to boost your digestive system and help you feel slimmer.
Here’s where to start:
Drink lots of water
It seems simple, but drinking more water can play a big role in helping you feel better. Ample water helps flush out toxins through the body and maintain a continuous detox process through out the day. It provides energy and prevents that feeling of sluggishness and laziness often experienced mid afternoon, and it also helps fill you up and prevent you from reaching for sugary snacks, vending machine chips, or an afternoon latte.
Eat smaller portions
Even if you need to eat more often, but opt for smaller portions, the result will be that you don’t ever finish eating with that overstuffed, ate too much feeling. This is the feeling that often overshadows are feeling of slimness, and more than that eating too much too fast can lead to bloating, which further exasperates feeling too full and like we ate too much.
Drink diluted apple cider vinegar
Whether you do this just to start your day, or between meals as well, apple cider vinegar has a lot of great benefits. It can help reduce excess acid in the stomach, offering an alkalizing effect, it an help keep cravings at bay for that sugary after dinner treat, and when consumed first thing in the morning, it gently stimulates the digestive system, while acting as a detox aid as well. When we eat first thing in the morning (especially carbs), without first stimulating our digestive system, it can set you up for a cycle of craving during the rest of the day, marked by sugar highs and crashes. You can also try drinking Kombucha or anything fermented.
Eliminate Dairy
Not only does dairy make many people feel bloated, and disrupt digestion, but it also can have inflammatory affect within the body, stimulating reactions such as gut problems, cramping, diarrhea, and an overall feeling of achiness and sluggishness. If this sounds like you, it may be a good idea to avoid dairy and eliminate this extra burden on your digestive system, as well as help cut down on your gut inflammation and increase your energy.
Avoid heavy carbs at dinner
Carbohydrates are the main source of fuel for our body. As such, they are designed to fill you up, and when you are eating the proper kind (i.e. whole grain carbohydrates), to provide a steady source of slow digesting fuel. In the evening though, when we are winding down and getting ready to go to bed, we don’t need this heavy source of energy, and don’t want to have a pile of slow digesting carbohydrates sitting in our cells as we prepare to go to sleep. Instead, choose lower carb options at dinner, and fill up on vegetables and fruit that are packed with nutrients and water instead. You can save the carbs for the rest of the day when you will be using the fuel.
Drink tea, not coffee
As a stimulant, coffee can be irritating to the digestive system, often causing bloating and excess gas, and more than that, will give you the energy high followed by a crash, which will simply make you feel tired and lethargic. Instead of coffee, opt for herbal tea or detox tea such as ginger or marshmallow root, both of which aid in digestion and help heal the gut. If you need coffee for the energy boost, instead try matcha tea to experience the buzz without the crash and burn.
By: Laura Peill – (Check out her blog Chronicles of Passion & Facebook)
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