3 Quick & Easy Gut Healing Meals!

Having a happy gut can go a long way to feeling better and managing health issues. Chronic inflammation often goes hand-in-hand with chronic illness, causing pain and a host of other symptoms throughout your body.  Eating to feed your gut well, requires quality, healing foods.  Many of my clients don’t have time to cook, don’t like to cook, or don’t know how to cook.  Thus, resorting to high fat takeout, processed, packaged foods, or skipping meals altogether.

A meal doesn’t have to be a five course, table linen, Martha Stewart–inspired affair.  Of course, there is always the food bar at Whole Foods.  But that can get old too!  Preparing a meal does not have to feel like a colossal chore.  A

Onions provide a healthy dose of prebiotics.

little pre-planning, shopping and prepping on the weekend, can supply you with quick, healthy, gut healing meals throughout the week.  

Why Plan and Prep?

Thinking ahead assures a more nutritionally sound week, rather than losing out on important nutrients from take out,or packaged foods, which also supply “anti-nutrients”. 

Including cultured or fermented foods in your diet, keeps your gut healthy and prevents dysbiosis, which is an imbalance between healthy and unhealthy gut bacteria, and fungi, that leads to leaky gut, and many other gut disturbances and health conditions. 

Try to incorporate some gut healthy foods on a daily basis.  

• Cultured foods, such as coconut yogurt or goat milk kefir
• Fermented foods, such as Japanese fermented vegetables, sauerkraut, or kimchi
• Cultured beverages containing favorable live bacteria, such as kombucha

Here are a few key ideas:

• If you suffer from gas, or bloating, or other tummy problems, try a comprehensive digestive enzyme supplement about 15 minutes before your meals. 
• Keeping a daily food and symptom diary, if  you have digestive issues, can help to sort out what foods may be connected to what symptom.  Usually, several weeks of the journal is necessary to find patterns. It’s important to note that each person with gut issues will have to determine which foods are triggers for their condition.
• Slow down and be mindful during your cooking and eating of the meal.

Mindful Eating eases digestion

• Mindful eating means paying attention to your food, on purpose, moment by moment, without judgment; no media, electronics, magazines, newspapers, checking email or anything that would distract you from the food while you are eating. Pausing to pay attention, allows you to be fully present, in a relaxed state which is necessary for smooth and easy digestion.
• 

  Gratitude Journal

  Keep a gratitude journal entry for each day.  Gratitude journals have become very popular.  Why use one?  Choosing to live from a place of gratitude brings peace to your mind, body and spirit. 

• Make it a goal to finish eating dinner no less than three hours before going to bed. Doing this is an aid to weight loss and helps reduce the chances of acid reflux (heartburn) from undigested food still sitting in your stomach.

The three meals here are designed to be easy on your digestive system, and simple to make! 

Mahi Mahi

The Mahi Mahi goodie is easy and tasty,  with little to no cleanup! Having guests over for dinner? 

Feel free to double or triple the recipe for guests or for eating the next day. 

Since grain can be difficult to digest for certain individuals, it is grain free. Therefore, easy on the tummy.

Serves 2

Broccoli Cauliflower Soup

Soups are not only great because they are warm in the chilly winter months, but they can pack in a lot of veggies and healing ingredients like spices and bone broth.  Additionally, soups are easier to digest because they are cooked and blended, which takes some of the workload off of the digestive system.

The soup uses frozen broccoli and cauliflower florets and they work wonderfully.  It can be doubled or tripled with no problems, and frozen in jars for later use.  

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 yellow diced onion
• 2 garlic clove
• 4 cups broccoli florets
• 4 cups cauliflower florets
• 2 cup bone broth, can be purchased at most grocery stores
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 4 tsp sea salt

Optional: 2 chives, extra olive oil and/or extra sea salt for topping, black pepper.

Instructions:

1. Set a large stock pot on medium-low heat.
2. Dice the onion, mince the garlic, then add to the pot with the olive oil.
3. Stir occasionally for about 5 minutes until the onions are translucent.
4. Add the broccoli and cauliflower, bone broth, coconut milk, and sea salt.
5. Turn the heat up to medium-high and let cook until the vegetables are fork tender.
6. Use an immersion blender or transfer to a separate blender and combine until the soup is completely mixed.
7. If using, chop the chives and sprinkle on the top of the soup with an extra drizzle of olive oil and sea salt.

Recipe: Alexa Fredrico

Easy Paleo Breakfast Scramble

The easy paleo breakfast is packed with beneficial fats like avocado, fiber from the veggies, and a big dose of pasture raised meat to provide a type of fat that heals the gut.

Try adding Chia seeds into the eggs provides even more fiber.

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 8 oz. pasture raised ground pork/lamb 
• 1 c. shredded sweet potato or butternut squash (or carrots for low-carb)
• 2 c. hearty greens (dino kale, collards, or chard)
• 10 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 eggs, whisked
• sea salt & pepper, to taste

For garnish:  chopped chives/scallions, avocado

Directions:

In a cast iron pan or nonstick skillet, cook the meat over medium heat until brown and crumbled.  Add the shredded carrot/squash and the greens and cook until wilted, about 3 minutes.  Add the cherry tomatoes and stir to warm them, about 30 seconds.

Turn the heat to medium low and add the eggs.  Stir gently until eggs are just set.  Season with sea salt and pepper and top with garnishes, as desired.

To add more fiber:  mix 2 Tbsp. chia seeds in 1 Tbsp. filtered water into the eggs before putting them into the pan.  

Recipe: BareRootGirl

I hope you enjoy the recipes!  Use them in good health!