If there was one thing you could do to improve your health as a whole…

I’m talking about waking up in the morning full of energy - and keeping it throughout the day.

No longer having to skip riding roller coasters with your grandkids...

Or saying “yes” to your dream European vacation because your joint pain is gone.

If you could fix one thing to get all of the above, would you do it?

The answer is “YES!” and here’s what that one thing is.

Your Gut Health.

Take a second and slip into your anatomy mindset…don’t worry if you failed this in school :D

The path from your esophagus, down through your stomach, and finishing through your small and large intestine creates - maybe, just maybe - the single most powerful path through your body.

It's like one long street where a few of your health's most important players live.

On one corner in a spacious 5 bed, 4 bath (it's big!) lives the majority of your immune system.

Catty-corner to your immune system is where the majority of your body's "feel-good" chemicals call home.

Your Hormones, who control your hunger and cravings…as well as your metabolism, live 1 house over.

And, of course, you can't forget about Digestion. Their house is where your body recycles the food you eat into the nutrients it uses to sustain itself.

Keeping your gut health community clean, healthy, and happy can help you build one healthy, happy body.

But - as in every town - there's one not-so-friendly neighbor who lets his house go.

You know…the house who's grass is growing out of control.

There's an old couch on the front lawn and there's boards over a broken window because they’re too cheap to fix it.

If you don't keep your gut health community nice and clean, it begins to attract more of these neighbors.

Eventually, they can overrun your community and create a BIG problem.

These not-so-good neighbors are better known as Inflammation.

To show you just how detrimental poor gut health & inflammation can be, I want to share a personal story with you.

A story about my mom.

Growing up, my mom struggled with many health ailments.

Chronic back pain, rheumatoid arthritis flare ups, and debilitating migraines to name a few.

She tried the normal ways of dealing with these problems such as medications, going to the chiropractor, and even considered surgery.

But nothing helped.

She had enough and decided to take health into her own hands.

She completely changed the foods she was eating and started to exercise more.

Within 4 short weeks, she transformed into a new person. A person I jokingly call ‘Supermom.’

Seeing her transformation is what inspired me to study exercise science in college and pursue helping women transform their health so they could experience what my mom did.

But I always wondered, “what exactly was it that caused such a drastic transformation with my mom?”

And my research kept coming back to two things.

First, migraines, chronic back pain, and rheumatoid arthritis are all ailments caused and made worse by chronic inflammation.

Second, one of the leading causes for chronic inflammation is poor gut health.

By changing what she was eating, she reduced her inflammation and improved her gut health.

This was the one thing that changed everything for her.

But most people on the internet don’t want you to believe better gut health and lower inflammation can be so simple.

They want you to believe you need their secret potion.

Here’s why…

There’s been an explosion of gut health discoveries over the past 5-10 years that have done wonders for improving your health.

As with everything, discoveries often lead to misleading information.

Misleading because the most common advice is to add to what you're already doing.

Like taking an expensive probiotic.

Instead of getting to the root of why you have poor gut health and inflammation in the first place.

And that’s most likely from something you're already eating.

So rather than adding more things to the mix to mask the problem, what works is getting to the root of the issue by removing the problematic foods altogether, letting your body heal itself, and then reintroducing foods to see what works best for your body.

This is what I call the 4R System to help kick inflammation out of town and heal your gut.

If you keep picking a scab, the wound will never heal. The same works with your gut.

By removing the problematic foods from your diet (you stop picking the scab), your body can finally start to repair itself.

Some of the most common problematic foods are:

After removing the problematic foods, it’s time to let your body restore proper gut health and heal itself.

With restoring proper gut health, stress is one of the biggest causes of poor gut health.

So, on top of removing problematic foods, adding a few stress management strategies can make a big difference.

Activities such as being out in nature, journaling, meditation, and yoga are all great forms of stress management.

Have you heard of gut bacteria? These are the little guys living in your stomach (weird when you think about having something living inside you that's not a baby, right?) that help break down the food you eat.

With poor gut health, you have less good bacteria and more bad bacteria.

After removing the problem foods, and some of the bad bacteria with it, it’s time to start repairing by adding more good bacteria to your gut.

Eating foods high in pre and probiotics can make a big difference...

Foods like:

Finally, it’s time to start reintroducing some of the “problem-child” foods.

You might be asking why you’d introduce something that wasn’t good for you before.

Great question!

First, If your gut is healthier, you can often eat more variety of foods without causing inflammation or other problems.

So by testing, you can understand what foods work for your body again.

And which foods don’t.

Second, you probably don’t want to go the rest of your life without ice cream or bread, right?

So by reintroducing, you can begin to eat more variety of foods - the ones we all love.

I’d be a rich man if I got a quarter for every member who asked me, “Ben, I’ve tried everything at this point…can I really change and improve my health?” before starting.

And I get where it’s coming from.

You’re experiencing a health issue that is making you feel like an imposter. Not like the real you.

And you want, more than anything, to feel and look like your old self.

But whether it’s been 12 months…12 years…or longer feeling this way, nothing you’ve tried has worked the way you wanted it to.

And it’s left you wondering, “do I have to get used to this version of my body for the rest of my life?”

But whatever you’re struggling with:

The solution might just be through having a healthier gut and less inflammation.

And the best part?

You don’t need to change everything to start seeing progress.

If you take one thing from this to improve your gut health and lower inflammation, it’s this:

Remove one food you suspect your body doesn’t love. Not forever, just for a week. And pay attention to how you feel.

That single change can tell you more about your health than another supplement ever will.

Because a healthier gut is a happier gut.

And a happier gut is a healthier body.

Your friend and coach,

Ben Miknis