Did you know that regular exercise and movement can have a positive impact on your gut by increasing the diversity of the gut microbiota? Exercise can also help stimulate the digestive system – promoting more efficient digestion and alleviating symptoms like bloating and constipation.
Exercise can also have a positive impact on mental health, which in turn can benefit the gut as stress and mental health can have an adverse effect on the health of your gut. To highlight this connection, Yakult has partnered with health performance coach David Birtwistle, to share his top five fitness tips to help keep your gut happy and support your overall wellbeing.
Pre-workout
Before you even start working out, Yakult’s Dr Emily Prpa recommends that you need to make sure your body has the right fuel. Your body will need energy, so ensure your plate includes carbohydrates. This could include oat or rice cakes, pasta, bread or rice. Carbohydrates provide you with glucose – your body’s main energy source. Pairing carbs with protein before workouts can help improve performance and recovery.
Eat a complete meal containing carbs, protein, and fat two to three hours before you exercise. Meals can include lean protein, roasted vegetables and wholegrain rice or pasta. If you eat 45 to 60 minutes prior to your workout, choose foods that are easy to digest and primarily consist of carbohydrates and some protein. Options include wholegrain cereal and milk topped with banana; whole-grain bread or crackers with nut butter and fruit preserve/jam; or a protein smoothie with milk, banana, berries and protein powder. Within one hour, opt for Greek yoghurt and berries or a piece of fruit. These choices will help prevent any stomach discomfort during exercise.
Warm up
Always start your workout with a warm-up. This can be some gentle stretches, eventually working up to some more repetitive movements and lunges. This will help to prepare you mentally and physically and increase your heart rate, and therefore your blood flow, to enable more oxygen to reach your muscles.
Allocate around 10 minutes for the warm-up and include movements such as cat cow, reach through, YTW and hip flexor lunges.
Build your strength
Muscle strengthening exercises, which includes using weights of some form, whether that be your body weight or equipment, are important as they can help you maintain the ability to perform everyday tasks. Exercise in any form can help the gut, while strengthening exercises may also reduce gut inflammation and slow down the rate of bone and muscle loss associated with ageing. Incorporate weights into your workout as even using a can of beans or a filled water bottle will create some weight in building up your strength.
If you’re including strength exercises as part of your routine, then you should dedicate 15 minutes to it. Try exercises such as half-kneeling overhead presses with weights and a three-point dumbbell row. Repeat eight times across four sets with small breaks in between.
Incorporate cardio
While cardio may seem daunting to beginners, a simple walk, light jog, cycling or swimming all contributes towards cardio exercise. Cardio consists of moving quickly enough to raise your heart rate, breathing faster and feeling warmer. Physical activity also increases blood flow to the muscles in the digestive system, which helps move food along the digestive tract.
Bursts of 15-minute cardio can help raise your heart rate. If you’re at the gym, try short intervals of rowing, cycling or running. These can all be modified depending on your fitness ability, so start small and build up over time.
Make time to do cardio at home
For the days when you can’t get out the house or you don’t have a gym membership, try building cardio into your daily routine at home.
If you’re at home, you can do jogging on the spot, burpees or mountain climbers. Again, these can all be modified depending on your fitness ability, so start small and build up over time.
Nutritional tips
As you look to get ‘gut’ active this year, Dr Emily Prpa has shared some small dietary tweaks that could help to support and maintain good gut health and overall wellbeing in conjunction with exercise. Not only does exercise benefit your gut health, it can also help reduce the risk of other health concerns including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer. It can also lower your risk of early death by up to 30 per cent.
“A diverse gut microbiome is associated with better overall wellbeing and can help to regulate inflammation and support the immune system," Dr Prpa said. "Our gut microbiota is as unique as our fingerprint, with only 40 per cent being the same as anyone else’s. Its role includes fermentation of non-digestible dietary fibre, synthesis of some vitamins [such as vitamin K and some B vitamins], and absorption of nutrients. It also allows the ‘good’ bacteria to compete against the ‘bad’ and helps maintain the immune system with 70 to 80 per cent of our immune cells found in the gut.”
Just after your workout, you should eat foods that are a good source of protein to help muscle repair. If you’re planning to have a main meal, then consider eggs, chicken or fish. Otherwise, good snack options include a handful of mixed nuts and dried fruit, Greek yoghurt with fruit and wholegrain cereals, or a type of nut butter on rice cakes.
Hydration is also essential to replace fluids lost. Introduce water-rich fruits and vegetables such as watermelon, tomatoes, strawberries, oranges and cucumber as a post-workout snack. Your gut will love them too.
Add more plants to your diet
It’s easy to up your plant points by simply filling half your plate with salad or vegetables. A balanced diet is key to feeding the bacteria in the gut, so adding in foods that feed the gut microbiota can help support gut health, as well as give the body the nourishment it needs when it comes to physical activity.
Remember it is all about INclusion not EXclusion, so think about what foods you can add to your diet to create diversity. For example, scatter nuts and seeds on top of your salads or in your soup, have your daily shot of Yakult and add a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables.
