Everything We Know About Nutrition Is Wrong

It all starts with food. Gut Rules: an online nutrition course.

For years I suffered with my digestion and my health. And as strange as it is to admit this today, at the time I didn't think nutrition had any effect on my health.

Maybe it's because I thought I'd "tried everything."

I read a few books, listened to people's opinions, "experimented," and saw no results.

There were, of course, a few foods I knew would "wreck my stomach" if I ate them, but I had no idea that changing my diet was the one thing standing between me and feeling good, digesting properly, and healing myself.

I remember the first article I read, written by an American doctor who talked about inflammatory foods and the connection between them and an inflammatory state in the body. He talked about gluten, processed dairy, and something else I no longer remember.

What I do remember is telling myself that I ate those foods every single day, that I had never heard of inflammatory or anti-inflammatory nutrition before, certainly not from a doctor, and at the same time I knew that my disease, ulcerative colitis, is a chronic inflammatory condition.

Later in my research I discovered that poor nutrition is connected to every disease, and that any condition can be improved with the right dietary change.

From that day on, I started experimenting with new ideas about nutrition.

Over time I understood that everything I thought I knew about food was wrong.

The food industries have had an enormous influence on the narrative passed down to all of us, and we've gotten used to the idea that ultra-processed foods are even labeled and defined as healthy. And then I, too, figured that probably meant it was true. It's not.

What I can say for certain is that over the years, as processed foods and false narratives have spread, people have been getting sicker and sicker. And that's a fact.

70% of the population suffers from digestive problems. And honestly, if you ask your friends, and I'm guessing you usually don't talk about this, you'll discover that most of you are suffering. Most of us keep it to ourselves, and we mostly prefer to look the other way and deal with the symptoms and discomfort rather than change our diet.

Because where would you even begin.

It's completely understandable. Food is a very personal thing, something we're used to, and changing something comforting, familiar, and cozy shakes up our whole system, so we just want to forget the idea.

I remember, as someone who used to eat four slices of bread (avocado toast) with an omelet, that giving up bread and gluten altogether seemed insane to me. And at first it really was strange. How do you get full? What do you eat instead? But over time, not only did it all become clear, I started feeling so much better, including after meals. The changes I made didn't just make me feel better, they made the post-meal fatigue, the stomach pain, and the inflammation disappear, and my health improved at an incredible pace.

In our digestive system we host the microbiome, the environment of bacteria (hundreds of millions of them) responsible for our immune system and also our mood (90% of serotonin is found in the gut). When these bacteria thrive, we're in full health. When they weaken or fall out of balance, and less beneficial bacteria take over, our health and our digestive system begin to deteriorate.

That's how a leaky gut develops, that's how most of our health problems are created, that's how inflammation, overload, and the weakening of the body begin.

There are quite a few things that damage our digestive system, starting with inflammatory foods, foods that don't suit us, the wrong combinations of foods, unmanaged stress, ongoing emotional crisis, and so on.

There's no doubt that there's no single diet that fits everyone, because we're all completely different. It's enough for one person to be allergic to, or not respond well to, avocado for you to no longer be able to tell them that avocado is something healthy for them.

I created Gut Rules, an online nutrition course, to help people understand how to heal the body through food without being dependent on anyone else. This happens when we start to understand the food we eat, the effects of food combinations, the signs the body gives us, and how to work with them in our favor.

I know everyone loves easy solutions: some blood or stool test that tells you what to eat, some practitioner who decides for you, gives you a customized menu or an easy "method" that makes you lose weight and feel better.

But all of the above, even if it works, leaves the power in someone else's hands, and after a while we no longer know how to make changes, experiment, and figure out for ourselves what's right for us.

After all, the body is changing all the time.

What will you do a year from now, when you no longer respond well to what you're eating today? What will you do when, all of a sudden, your digestion stops working properly again? When the season changes? When you go through something emotional? How will you know what to do?

The idea of the course is to live in sovereignty, to turn you into the authority, the expert, and the architect of your own nutrition, body, and health.

It's an empowering, educational experience that comes from learning, experimenting, and embarking on a new adventure. There's nothing more fun, nothing that brings fresh energy into life, than learning something new and doing something good and empowering for yourself alone. Knowledge that improves who you are for the better, because you'll know what's good and right for you.

Changing my diet improved my health, but it didn't end there at all.

My self-worth improved, my self-confidence rose, and my experience of life became more and more positive.

Understanding food, knowing how to use it, how to cook it, how to enjoy it, not out of self-denial or restriction but out of a choice of abundance, made me into a new person.

And I want that to happen for you too.

Course chapters:

• Chapter 1 – Sovereignty in nutrition
• Chapter 2 – The digestive system (the microbiome)
• Chapter 3 – Habits
• Chapter 4 – Processed food
• Chapter 5 – What I avoid and why
• Chapter 6 – Food as medicine
• Chapter 7 – Rules of eating
• Chapter 8 – Foods to watch out for
• Chapter 9 – Natural nutrition
• Chapter 10 – Body and mind: digestion and emotional state