Nutrition isn’t just about what you put into your body: what you put into your body is just as important. The Ultimate Nutrition Bible, by Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart, offers practical tips for achieving regular, healthy bowel movements that support your nutritional goals.
Are you regular? Many of us – almost 40% of adults – deal with the consequences of a functional gastrointestinal disorder that makes it difficult to clean our intestines. You don’t have to be a skater to know if you have a poop problem: the signs of poor digestion are as easy to spot as diarrhea and as difficult to overcome as constipation.
From excessive farting to skin problems can be warning signs of suboptimal digestive health. These digestive issues can hinder your fitness goals, whether you’re looking to lose or gain weight. They can also lead to cramps, heartburn and other pain. Bowel problems can even disrupt your routine and daily life: 40% of Americans canceled their 2022 plans when faced with uncomfortable bowel symptoms.
When the news broke, fitness and nutrition experts Matt Gallant And Wade Light Heart – Co-founders of BIOoptimizers – liberated The Ultimate Nutrition Bible, an unbiased and universal book for anyone trying to achieve their nutritional goals, we hoped the authors would include a comprehensive guide on how to turn food into healthy poop. They delivered on their promises, teaching readers the five stages of digestion and how to optimize them.
If you have a hunch that your bowel movements are not where they should be, this book can help you regularize them. But it’s not all poop advice: The Ultimate Nutrition Bible’s 36 chapters offer a comprehensive overview of the world of nutrition. Instead of focusing on a single approach to healthy eating and living, Gallant and Lightheart take the principles that make every diet work and show readers how to optimize a plan specific to their goals, psychology, and genetics.
“There are two key questions everyone needs to ask themselves,” says Gallant: “What is the right diet for me right now? And am I doing it the best way? We wrote this book to answer these questions and more.
This “and more” includes practices to improve your digestive health and promote regular, healthy bowel movements. Digestion plays a key role in the book’s exploration of nutrition – and Gallant and Lightheart draw on cutting-edge industry research in addition to their own experiences in the nutrition world as coaches high-level staff and athletes.
“During my own journey,” says Lightheart, a national bodybuilding champion, “I encountered digestive health issues while trying to take a high-performance vegetarian approach like that of a meat eater. It took Matt and I about four years to completely resolve digestive health issues.
Our bodies can turn food into poop without us asking – but doing it regularly and healthily requires us to optimize a complex, multi-step process. Gallant and Lightheart break down these digestive stages for readers – and show what approach we should take to them.
It all starts before our food even reaches our intestines – and the authors remind us to arrive at mealtime relaxed. Your nervous system is closely integrated with your gut, so even something as simple as chewing slowly tells your body that it should start producing the right enzymes for digestion.
The next stage is secretion, in which enzymes such as hydrochloric acid (HCI, or stomach acid in simple terms) and bile break down the food you have eaten. Although we can take a secondary approach and hope that these enzymes will do their job on their own, Gallant and Lightheart recommend ways in the book to stimulate the production and flow of HCI and bile.
Next comes degradation, as these enzymes finish their work. The problem is that our enzyme stores decline as we age – and many cooked, processed, and modified foods in our diets don’t contain the natural enzymes typically found in raw, unprocessed versions of these foods. This is where many of our stomach problems begin, as the lack of enzymes puts extra pressure on the intestine to digest food on its own. For those in this situation, it helps to take supplements that add enzymes to your body. The Ultimate Nutrition Bible provides guidance for tailoring your enzyme formulas to your goals, diet, and genetics, so you can achieve the best results.
Absorption occurs when remaining nutrients are absorbed and pass through your intestinal barrier. This barrier is only one cell layer thick – and it must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff to ensure your body gets all the nutrients it needs while still transmitting pathogens and food allergens.
Taking probiotics and eliminating inflammatory foods are two ways to strengthen your gut barrier, with Gallant and Lightheart sharing more practices in the book.
The last step, we all know it well: elimination. We’ll spare you the details here, but yes, the book also contains tips for optimizing this process.
Bowel movement is an essential part of human life – and doing it well is a fundamental part of improving your nutrition and achieving your goals. The Ultimate Nutrition Bible does not take the subject lightly. You shouldn’t do it either!
Obtain a copy of The Ultimate Nutritional Systemby Matt Gallant And Wade Light Heart, here.
M&F and the editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.
