Gut health has become a huge topic of health recently and for very good reason. Literally everything we eat impacts us in every way imaginable.

Many people understand that if we eat unhealthy foods, we’re likely to gain weight and may not feel great physically. The food we eat also impacts our energy levels, moods, immune system, skin, sleep, and our ability to eliminate our waste, among other things.

Netflix recently released a short documentary called Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut. It’s a little over an hour and definity worth watching in my opinion.

It’s a great reminder of how our digestive system works and the role gut health plays in our overall well-being. They use “felt-mation” (kind of like claymation) and some animation to make somewhat gross topics entertaining.

They also provide concrete examples of how you can easily improve your gut microbiome and the significant impacts these changes can have on your physical and mental health.

One of the easiest shifts they suggest is eating a variety of fruits and vegetables each week with a goal of eating 20 - 30 different types of fruit and veg (combined) every week.

They use the acronym ABC to remind us to Always Be Counting these numbers, so of course I had to try it.

Most of the people that I mentioned these number to initially made comments indicating how impossibly high this 20 - 30 fruits and vegetables sounded to them, but it was actually much easier than I thought it would be.

If you make any type of vegetable soup or stir-fry, or go out for these foods, you can easily get 8 - 10 different vegetables in one meal.

We went out to Pho Boston and got Tom Yum soup and a ginger vegetable stir fry one night and had 12 different vegetables in just one meal.

It does take a little bit of effort and I personally found it more fun to document my fruit and vegetables in an excel sheet for a week, that I taped to the refrigerator. Yes, I’m that kind of a geek and it was very gratifying.

Pre- and probiotic foods are also very helpful to improve your gut biome, but that’s for another post :)

Action Steps:

• Check out the Netflix documentary if you have access.

• Notice how many different fruits and vegetables you eat in an average day and try to diversify a bit more than usual.