Fuel

I’m going to take a detour from cycling this morning, just think of it as a little excursion on a back road, not sure where it leads, but it might be interesting…

One thing I’ve found while on my search to improve my gut health, is many of the people who are now at the forefront of digestive health got into it because like me they had a bout of food poisoning. Not your everyday food poisoning – if there even is such a thing – but the kind of infection that doesn’t go away on its own, and even when it finally does, the bad bugs have made a wreck of your insides and overall health.

The one year “anniversary” of my bout with food poisoning was yesterday. For most of the year I’ve struggled to leave it behind and to get back to normal. More progress has been made on that front in the last two months than most of the other months combined and I’m very grateful for that.

Without the help of several books and blogs I wouldn’t be on the mend. For anyone else struggling with digestive issues I recommend the following:

Digestive Health with REAL Food by Aglaee Jacob – a thorough and informative, yet easy to read manual of all things related to digestion. This booked really helped me to understand the how and why I was sick and how to eat my way back to health.

Fast Track Digestion by Norman Robillard – Robillard is a microbiologist and this book focuses on the science of digestion and how to figure out what food to eat that you can tolerate and what foods are likely to promotes symptoms. He also includes tables of foods by category to make it fairly easy to figure out what you should and shouldn’t eat. Many people have had great success with this diet.

Mark’s Daily Apple website and books by Mark Sisson. Sisson is the guy behind the Primal diet. Think of Primal as a first cousin to Paleo, but more tolerant and forgiving. I really like Sisson’s approach, plus he seems very knowledgeable and writes well. I’ve used his book (The Primal Blueprint) to expand my knowledge base about the diet part of this new way of living.

I would add “this way of eating and living” isn’t just for people who are sick or recovering, but for anyone who is not functioning as optimally as they would like – especially the Mark’s Daily Apple website (and other’s he references).

And since it almost always comes down to the bike, I would tell you this “way of living and eating” provides better fuel for your pedal turning engine. I’m experiencing that every time I ride.

Keep on pedaling.