Dealing with years of digestive pain, I definitely found tricks and tips of how to soothe an upset tummy. And while I am no longer in constant pain now, I find that when I want to feel adventurous or test out a food on my digestive tract, these tricks still come in handy.

So when you first feel a twinge of pain, ate too much, ate something you know your sensitive to but just couldn't resist (it happens!) here are some tricks you can try to bring your tummy back into balance.

1. Digestive Enzymes- I don't always suggest digestive enzymes as I have seen a lot of individuals dealing with digestive troubles begin to rely on them and get hooked on them. This leads the body to think that it doesn't have to work so hard producing digestive enzymes so getting off of them can be difficult if you're eating multiple at every meal. But, this handy supplement can support a troubled digestive tract for a short amount of time or an evening. When you find you have eaten a large amount of food or something just isn't sitting quite right, digestive enzymes can be an aid to boost your digestive power to break something down in your stomach that is having a hard time digesting.

2. Apple cider vinegar- ACV really just is a cure all for so many ailments. I have read so many articles recently on just how wonderful ACV truly is for our body. Often times, acid reflux or difficulties digesting a high protein meal can actually mean that you need more acid in your stomach to break down your food (not less, throw out those Tums!). Putting a 1 tsp-tbsp. of ACV diluted in a glass of water and sipping it before or after a meal can add some acid power to your stomach to help break down a meal and diminish any pain. You can even add a few drops of liquid stevia to it to make a refreshing drink. Yum!

3. Ginger- Ginger tea, ginger root, ginger capsules, ginger syrup. There are many ways to get your ginger in. Ginger stimulates the digestive system to produce more enzymes to facilitate digestion. It also helps stimulate more bile production, which can aid in making any digestive pain go away by increasing your ability to break down your food. When I travel abroad I take ginger capsules with me and they work fairly quickly in helping with a digestive woe. You can also make sure you have some ginger tea with you or if you're home break out some ginger root and start chewing. I would just suggest to stay away from ginger chews with the added sugar; the sugar takes away from the benefits of the ginger.

4. Deep breathing- Much of the time digestive pains can be due to trapped gas from possibly eating too fast. When I was going through the worst of my digestive troubles, you could often find me face down, lying on the carpet breathing into my belly. Deep belly breathing can begin to relax the muscles of your stomach switching your whole body into a relaxation response, which is what is needed to turn on digestion. When you're going through any kind of digestive upset, try to remember to breath through it. The added thoughts of "Ow, this hurts, I wish this would go away, why is this happening" causes the body to tighten even more which can in turn worsen the pain. Try lying on the ground, placing your hands on your belly, and just focusing on watching the rise and fall of your belly and feeling the support of the floor beneath you. This too shall pass.

5.  Activated Charcoal- Speaking of trapped gas....activated charcoal will be your little miracle worker. It will bind and absorb to any chemicals or gas or whatever it is that is upsetting your stomach thus diminishing the stress being put on your digestive tract and decreasing pain. Just make sure that if you're taking any medications to take this away from your medications as it will decrease the efficiency of your medications being absorbed as well. Its powerful stuff!

Just remember to add in some extra self love when you're going through any digestive pain. Loving yourself up through the process of learning what does and does not work for your body will help you to move forward from any digestive and eating experience with so much compassion and patience for your unique journey living in a body.

I would love to hear from you! What have you found has worked to help you when you're having a digestive upset?

I find more and more these days my clients are finding they are sensitive to the foods they are eating every day.

Eating the foods we are sensitive to can cause low grade inflammation in the body and cause all sorts of bodily and emotional distress.

Watch this episode of Gut Guru and learn about how you can spot and identify a food sensitivity without all sorts of medical or blood testing (which can sometimes miss the foods we are sensitive to anyways).

Have you discovered any food sensitivities? How did you learn from your body around what foods did not work for you? I would love to hear about your experience discovering and learning from the foods you have found simply don't digest well in your unique system!

I have learned over the years that it doesn't matter how healthy I am eating, that if I am eating quickly or when I am stressed, I have a difficult time digesting my meals.

Check out this video that it is not just what we are eating that contributes to healthy digestion but also how we are eating.

Please comment below: Have you noticed a difference in your ability to assimilate a meal when you are eating when you are relaxed or stressed?  I would love to hear from you!

When people find out that I am a nutritional counselor, I suddenly feel like they are nervous to eat in front of me.  Like I have all the answers and what they are doing is supposedly wrong.  I want to dispel that right now, that I never judge what someone else is eating. 

I have learned through my journey and relationship with food that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone else.  I don't live in your body, I don't truly know what your body needs from moment to moment (I do however love teaching how to learn to communicate with your unique body).

At the beginning of my gut healing journey, I was told how mucus forming dairy was and that it could be causing some of my issues.  You want me to give up my yogurt!? I loved my sugary added yogurts and the first time I heard this I was not ready to take that advice.

I tell you this story because it took me another 3 years to actually experiment with completely taking dairy out of my daily eating habits to find out that indeed dairy and I are not friends.  When we are ready to deepen in our relationship with food and ourselves we will.  What I have learned through my client's and my own process with the gut is to be patient and to give yourself plenty of time.

Embrace where you are now with your relationship with food.  Sometimes it may just be too intense to look at how you are nourishing yourself because it may be a protective blanket covering up some intense emotions that you are just not ready to deal with yet.  And that is totally fine!  Love yourself up and know that you are doing the best you can in this moment to take the very best care of yourself.

I wish I had been told this more on my journey to heal my gut.  Every time I had a digestive upset I felt like a failure and that all my effort to heal was for nothing. But every decision, every effort, every choice I made in the direction of listening, of tuning in to myself, especially in the moments that I was in pain and I didn't want to listen, brought me closer to myself and to my body and what it truly wanted.

So if you find yourself eating in front of me, just know that all I wish for you is an enjoyable experience with that food. We are all at different phases and stages in our relationship with food and I find the journey beautiful and full of deep wisdom and knowledge for who we are and the stories we bring with us from childhood.  It is all right there on our plate.

The stomach lining changes over about every 5 days, your taste buds change every two weeks, every day you shed over a million skin cells, the uterine wall for a woman sheds every month.  We are constantly changing and from day to day we are never living in the same body.  How will you begin the process of coming into relationship with your body and your gut for who they are and what they need today?

I was a double major in theatre and psychology in Undergrad.  My first day in one of my psychology classes, written in bold on the black board was do not diagnose yourself, others, your friends, or your family.  The teacher went on to explain that by the end of this course we will think we have every disorder and so does everyone around us.  It was a great way to start the course and remind us that knowledge is power but it can be misinterpreted and abused. 

There is so much information on nutrition out there on the internet and in books that those who have not gone to school for nutrition are starting to give advice to those around them on what they should be eating.  Sure, there is the basic advice like eat more whole foods and vegetables that can be helpful.  But, lets face it.  We honestly don't know all the facets of what causes health in a human being.

I have had to break out of "giving too much advice" myself and learn to rely on my own client's gut intuition and body wisdom for what they know does and does not work for them.  We hear stories every day of individuals living until they are 100 and they did nothing special in particular to live that long.  We have studied centenarian cultures and the reasons they live so long are a mixture of components, nutrition only being a small piece.

Several people I've known in the health and nutrition world, who ate well, practiced yoga, and meditated got cancer and passed away.  So the next time you read the latest health article, take it with a grain of salt.  The very next day, month, year the same researchers may come out with another research contradicting everything they once said.  Thus, there is no need to compare the way we eat to another human being.  What causes health for one person may cause sickness for another.

So let's stop comparing, judging, and shaming others for what they choose to nourish themselves with.  The only person who knows what is best for them is that person.

I have been eating whole unprocessed foods sans of gluten, sugar, and dairy for a long time now because this is what feels good in my system now.  There were a lot of vegetables I thought tasted disgusting when I was a kid.  I was a very picky eater when I was little and I lived off of pasta with butter and chicken nuggets. 

When I first started to try out new vegetables I thought kale was too bitter, radishes were gross, and I did not like leafy greens.  These days if I don't have vegetables at every meal, I am less satisfied with my meal and I feel like I don't have as much energy as I typically have when I am eating vegetables all day.

It took me years to get to this point.  But at the beginning of changing eating habits to food choices that are cleaner and come from the earth instead of a box, you kind of have to ignore your taste buds just a little bit.  I know this sounds counter intuitive to everything that I teach, but if your diet is filled with processed foods and lots of sugar your taste buds have become accustomed to those foods.   

The way foods are manufactured and processed these days are made to be addictive.  They are filled with the perfect ratio of fat and sugar to light up all of your dopamine receptors and make you feel happy and want more.  But this feeling is not sustainable as they also mess with blood sugar stabilization and eventually will cause you to crash a few hours later in which you will then want to reach for more of those foods to get your high again.

It takes time to slowly get your taste buds to sense the subtler taste of natural fruits and vegetables.  When your taste buds have been overloaded with really intense flavors from preservatives and processed foods, it makes sense that vegetables just won't taste as good.  But if you give it time, eventually when your diet is 80% whole natural foods when you go to eat something from a box it just won't taste as good as it used to. 

To start this process, begin just by eating a vegetable at every meal.  You can do whatever you want with it.  If you don't like raw, then cook it, steam it, sauteed it, bake it.  Do whatever you want to it.  Basically, you will be crowding out the food that drains you of vitality and health and adding in food that will increase your energy in your body.  So if you really have to have some potato chips, eat them with some steamed spinach or if you love to snack on cookies in the afternoon have it with some red pepper.  While this may sound strange, you might begin to notice that the spinach and the red pepper tastes better than the cookie or the chips you thought you wanted.  Slowly your taste buds will change and you will naturally crave the foods that make you feel sustainably good and happy in your body.

Many conversations have come up lately around perspective.  My nephew is two years old right now and so ultimately his perspective of the world thus far is all he knows (and to him is totally correct).  I have had heated arguments with my parents in the past all based off of what we both were perceiving as truth in the moment when, let's face it, there is no universal truth.

I have come to realize that sharing my perspective in the moment is actually quite vulnerable.  I am sharing how I perceive the world and define myself in that moment.  We all have our own perspectives that can bump up against each other and no one's perspective is ultimately "correct."  How we view the world or a situation is just a chance to get to know ourselves in the present.  It is when a perspective becomes a belief so strong that it cannot be challenged or questioned that I think we start running into problems.

It has particularly been this past year that I have begun to question the things I told myself I believe in and the things I have refused to question in the past.  This has kept me stuck in my own development and growth as I often find myself going through the same thought processes over and over again.  By questioning my own perspectives on things, I have been able to see others perspectives more and then ask myself if this is something I want to believe or not while still respecting the other person's perspective and that what they think is true for them even if it turns out it is not true for me.

Let's take dietary theories for example.  In the past I am someone who would demonize certain foods and tell myself and others that those food items are never to be touched.  After years of working with others and their relationship with food, I have come to realize this advice really really doesn't work.  We need a little space in our diet to let ourselves have fun and eat something that is outside of what we typically eat on any given day.  I see my clients now having more success in being able to eat whole nutritious foods more often, consistently, for a longer period of time because sometimes they allow themselves to eat whatever the hell they want!

This is so crucial to beginning the process of tuning in to your body, tuning in to your gut brain and listening on a deeper level, what does my body need in this moment? (not what I think it needs).  I find that when individuals get so stuck on eating a certain way (vegan, vegetarian, paleo, high carb, low carb, high protein, low protein, etc, etc, etc) it actually causes more harm than good.  When we get stuck in eating a certain way, we miss out on the opportunity to tune in to the body and ask it what it wants.  Our minds override our guts and tell us logically if I am defining and perceiving myself as strictly a vegan then I cannot eat that piece of fish that my body is asking me to eat.

Lately, I have tried to get out of my own perspective on what I deem as "healthy" and listen to my bodily response after a meal to see how my gut liked what I ate.  This takes away the judgment or worry around what I am eating because any time I eat something it is just an experimentation.  If I eat some nut butter and get really emotional and lethargic afterward then that is just information for me on how I respond to that particular food.  I ultimately feel empowered afterward because I now have the information to choose on any given day how I would like to feel based on what I know of how my body will respond to certain foods.

The next time a repetitive thought pops up in your head, ask yourself is this really true?  Challenge your perceptions, challenge your thoughts.  If you find yourself eating the same things every day out of fear that this is the way you must eat, then perhaps challenge that perspective and try something new that you haven't eaten in awhile and notice your bodily response.  There are no "wrong" choices, it is just a matter of learning and listening to what works for you and only you.