As summer approaches the diet begins....

As summer quickly approaches people are thinking about that summer body and fitting into those fitted clothes or shedding a few pounds to feel more confident on the beach. It’s around this time the health magazines and social media go crazy for the next fad diet and as a result in the office salad boxes, smoothies, and Tupperware containers become a common appearance as the dream body diet commences!

What we often find with these diets is that we hear all the great weight loss stories and convincing media and for a select few they work extremely well, but for the majority why do these diets fail?

Let me ask you a few questions:

• Do you find you only lose a small amount of weight, but your friend following the same diet gets great results?

• Do you have a lack of energy on your diet?

• Do you find it hard to focus?

• Do you get constipation or loose stools?

• Do you feel bloated? Does your face feel bloated when you look in the mirror?

• Do you find sometimes your clothes feel even tighter even though you have been eating healthy?

These are all symptoms of food intolerances. Simply put, those healthy salads, smoothies, and 15-minute meals contain products that just don’t agree with your body and create an inflammatory response.

What is inflammation?

Just like being stung by a bee your body produces antibodies to handle the bee sting and protect you, and you experience swelling and soreness. Your body responds to food intolerances in the same way, except rather than your skin. It’s your internal digestive system is compromised - swelling and inflammation take over your digestive system. If you suffer from food intolerances (which many of my clients do), you have to remove these from your diet if you want to look, feel and perform at your best. You can eat all the healthiest foods that are farm grown, organic grass fed, but it makes little to no difference if you are intolerant to that particular food - you are simply adding fuel to the flames.

The bottom line is diets have to be individual, and they have to take into account your needs from a digestive perspective.

A successful diet must:

1. - Meet YOUR energy requirements so you can sustain YOUR lifestyle

2. - Remove any foods that cause YOU digestive issues, discomfort and inflammation

3. - Aid in healing YOUR body and support YOUR digestive system

4. - Contain foods that work with YOUR body type and metabolism

5. - Meet YOUR vitamin and mineral requirements

These points are fundamental for a successful, sustainable lifestyle for foods you can eat every day, not just a one-off the diet. With my clients, the starting point for their journey is to run what is known as an IgG or food intolerance test. This blood spot test gives me the insight into what works for a client and what foods they should avoid. The reason it is such as great test is that is shows which foods create an inflammatory response (antibodies) in your body. Once we have this information, we can tailor a customised diet to suit their specific life style, including stress levels, body type, activity levels and job. This is just one of many tests I use to create the ultimate version of yourself and feed your body with what is specifically needs. I think its also important to look at:

Digestive function – what state in your digestive system in? Do you have leaky gut? To you have low good bacteria?

Liver function – How well does your body process food? Does it have issues processing proteins and fats?

Hormones – Do you have the right level of hormones for your age?

And many more..

If you would like to feel your best, look your best and create more energy and performance in your life send me a message or go to www.bperformance.co.uk for more information.

Mark – Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner