PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR GUT HEALTH

Focus on your gut health and analyse how it responds to certain inputs from diet and lifestyle changes. Ultimately, the gut is the gateway to the body and if this is compromised everything else will be too. That's muscle growth, fat loss, recovery, performance and health. If you're noticing similar patterns emerging within your gut you need to start listening.

Here are some examples: If you constantly have a knot in your stomach, suffer from diarrhoea and find food goes straight through you this could be stress related. Under stress due to the "fight or flight" response your body will increase the amount of stress hormones in the system, sending blood to areas away from the gut. In doing so it becomes harder to digest food properly, leaving you with these symptoms. You need to address this because it is not a healthy way to live your life, it will also hamper your progress significantly. If after ingesting certain foods you find your stomach becomes inflamed, upset, you feel lethargic or uncomfortable it is likely that this food type is an issue for you. The reasons as to why can be vast. For instance, some people find eating berries gives them intense headaches. However this is often when they are over ripe, where the tyramine content has become elevated, triggering this response. With oats people can experience symptoms of IBS (Bowl Syndrome) yet that is often down to the phytic acid which can be suppressed by soaking the oats in water several hours before ingestion. There are endless examples, but you should always pay attention to how certain foods make you feel and address it rather than ignore it.

This will help you grow much faster, burn fat more effortlessly, improve your health and ultimately enjoy the whole process more.