10 Gut Health Resolutions for 2026
As we step into a new year, it's time to focus in on one of our most vital yet often neglected aspects of health: our gut. In today's world, where health is more important than ever, nurturing your gut health is not just a resolution; it's a pathway to a healthier, happier life.
This year, let's look beyond the usual 'eat better' and 'join a gym' resolutions. Let’s dig into practical strategies designed to heal and maintain a healthy gut.
The health of our gut is linked to so many aspects of our well-being, from immune function and hormone balance to mental health and avoiding chronic disease. These resolutions aren't just about short-term fixes, they're about making lasting changes that will benefit you for years to come.
But where to start? From elimination diets and a proper sleep routine, to identifying the root-cause and trying a natural healing protocol, here’s a list of 10 gut health resolutions that will put you on the right path for the year ahead.
1. Try a real food or elimination diet
We all know that nutrition has a massive impact on our overall health. The quality of foods we choose to fuel our body with impacts the quality of our microbiome - the collection of microorganisms in our gut that breakdown and absorb nutrition, synthesise vitamins, support our immune system and protect us from bad bugs. When we eat real, whole and nutrient-dense food, we are giving our body access to the fibers, vitamins, minerals and nutrients that our microbiome needs to thrive.
So what do I mean by ‘real, whole and nutrient-dense’? I mean vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, meat, herbs, spices, healthy fats and fermented foods to begin with. While foods like eggs, grains, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes and dairy are tolerated by some, these are the foods that should be the focus of a basic elimination diet. Why? Because they are foods that are most likely to cause you issues if you have a compromized digestive system. Eliminate for 2-4 weeks and notice how you feel. Then, re-introduce one food group at a time and take note of any symptoms that you experience. Instead of eating processed foods, try to add in more protein, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables as a way of crowding out the empty calories you may have been eating before.
Be careful not to become reliant on overly restrictive elimination diets for symptom management though, as this can have longer term impacts on our microbiome. Read: 5 signs you’ve been on an IBS elimination diet for too long
Elimination diet quick-start plan
If you are not sure where to begin, here is a simple 7-day starter plan that almost everyone with gut symptoms can try:
Base every meal around protein (such as fish, poultry, red meat) + cooked vegetables + healthy fats
Remove grains, legumes, dairy, nuts, seeds and eggs for 7 days
Keep fruit to 1-2 servings per day
Drink 1-2 litres of water per day
Aim for 3 regular meals and avoid grazing to help motility
If symptoms flare during the first week you can try adding in the following:
Digestive enzymes with meals
Bitters 5-10 minutes before meals
Peppermint tea or ginger tea after meals
Then, re-introduce one food group at a time and take note of any symptoms that you experience. If you are looking for meal inspo, checkout our Paleo Meal Plan.
2. Incorporate fermented foods
Probiotic-rich foods are a great way to help repopulate the gut and improve the balance of beneficial species in your microbiome. Good quality organic and additive-free yoghurt, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, miso, microalgae such as spirulina and chlorella, tempeh and kimchi are a few examples of fermented foods that we use with our clients. If you haven’t tried them before, incorporate a small amount of at least one type of fermented food each day to boost your gut health.
Remember to start with small quantities of fermented foods as many people with sensitive tummies experience bloating or gas initially when introducing them. Slow and steady wins the race here.
Many people with SIBO or histamine issues can experience symptom flares with ferments. If this is you, consider starting with gentle alternatives to fermented foods, such as soil-based probiotic strains like Bacillus coagulans, low-histamine probiotics like Lactobacillus plantarum and prebiotic vegetables that are typically well tolerated, like carrot, pumpkin and zucchini/courgette.
3. Work on a proper sleep routine
Sleep is completely underrated when it comes to gut health and healing. We should be working towards closed eyes by around 10pm and 7-8 hours of good quality sleep each night. Why? Because physical repair and regeneration of the body, and especially the gut, happens while we are asleep. Have you ever gone to bed with a bloated stomach or abdominal pain and woken in the morning with neither? That is the healing power of rest.
Setting up a sleep schedule where you limit screen time and blue light exposure at least an hour before bed is a great place to start. Create a bedtime routine that helps you to relax, clear your mind and get to sleep quickly. You might like to try reading, listening to calming music, journaling or meditation. Then finally, ensure your room is really comfortable, cool, dark and quiet. This is the perfect recipe for gut-healing sleep - read more sleep tips HERE.
A practical gut-healing sleep routine
Here is a simple evening routine that supports digestion, reduces inflammation and helps to ease GI symptom flares:
Stop eating 3 or more hours before bed
Consider magnesium glycinate at 200-400mg, 60-90 minutes before sleep
Reduce blue light by using dim lamps and no overhead lighting
Do 5 minutes of box breathing (4-4-4-4)
Sip chamomile or peppermint tea
Keep your room around 18-20°C as a cooler room improves gut motility
4. Adjust exercise to match where you are at with your gut health
Exercise is a tricky topic when it comes to gut healing, so we’ve written an entire blog post about the effects of exercise on gut health and healing here. The summarised version of that blog is this; if you are trying to heal your damaged gut, exercise ONLY works if it is not an added stressor. This means exercise should make you feel energised, not exhausted afterwards. So, if you are working on healing your gut, try moderate exercise - the stuff that will improve gut-function, according to science.
Moderate exercise can be walking, swimming, pilates and yoga (try THESE postures for better digestion) practices that focus more on stretching, breathing and postural control. But really the best thing you can do is listen to your body and not overdo it with exercise.
What to do when you Are bloated, constipated or flaring
On days where your gut is misbehaving, try one of these lighter forms of movement:
For constipation:
Gentle rebounding for 1-2 minutes
Abdominal massage in clockwise circles
15-20 minutes of brisk walking
For bloating and gas:
Cat-cow for 10 slow cycles
Knees-to-chest holds for 30-60 seconds
Child’s pose breathing to expand the diaphragm
5. Incorporate stress-management strategies daily
If you have plans to work on your gut health, it is usually because you have frustrating or embarrassing symptoms like bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea or reflux for example that can be really stressful. Poor gut health can also bring about brain-symptoms like worry, low-mood and anxiety. For this reason it is important to incorporate stress-management techniques into your day. Options that our clients like to use are meditation, deep breathing, journaling, watching a funny or uplifting movie, listening to music you love or EFT (emotional freedom technique). The trick is finding an option for stress management that works for you and your lifestyle.
These techniques move the body away from the sympathetic nervous system stress response of fight, flight or freeze, to the parasympathetic nervous system response, allowing you to rest, digest and heal.
Nervous system resets you can do in 60 seconds
These are mini pattern interrupters we have found to be helpful for our clients:
Physiological sigh: one deep inhale, then a second sharp inhale, then a slow exhale
Cold face rinse: splash cool water across forehead and/or eyes for vagus nerve activation
4-7-8 breathing: 4 seconds inhale, 7 seconds hold, 8 seconds exhale
Humming for 30 seconds: stimulates the vagus nerve instantly
Supplement supports to consider for stress:
L-theanine (100-200mg) for anxious gut days
Magnesium glycinate (200-400mg) for relaxation 60-90 minutes before sleep
Phosphatidylserine (100mg) 60-90 minutes before sleep for high stress and poor sleep
These are gentle, safe tools many clients find stabilizing while working on deeper root causes.
*Please review all supplement suggestions from this blog with your qualified healthcare provider.*
6. Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins
Toxins from our environment can contribute to gut dysfunction. They irritate the gut lining, which acts like a second skin inside the body and stops harmful toxins entering our bloodstream. This means that limiting your exposure to things like herbicides, pesticides, phenols like BPA and fluoride, as well as pain relievers with Aspirin, Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen can reduce the overall toxic load on your gut and give you space to heal.
Eating organic foods where you can to reduce herbicide and pesticide exposure is a really good place to start. Focus in on removing the ‘Dirty Dozen’ first as these are the foods with the highest levels of residual environmental chemicals.
And if you’re really up for a challenge, swapping all of your personal care and home cleaning products to natural options is another massive change you can make on the way to limiting your exposure to toxins, and ultimately healing your gut.
The first 5 toxin-reducing swaps that make the biggest impact
If the idea of going low-tox feels overwhelming, start with these five swaps:
Switch to a natural dishwashing liquid and hand soap
Replace plastic food containers with glass, especially if you’re reheating in them
Buy organic fruits and vegetables for the Dirty Dozen only
Use a water filter. Even a simple jug filter can be helpful.
Stop burning scented candles and use essential oil diffusers instead
7. Only use antibiotics as a last resort and focus on building your immunity
Antibiotics are a lifesaver. A genuine last resort, emergency, life saver. But the overuse of antibiotics is having a devastating impact on our gut health. I was no exception. The year my gut health really deteriorated, I filled six antibiotic prescriptions (without any thought to rebuilding my good gut bacteria) and paid the price.
Antibiotics not only target bad bacteria, they also often have a damaging effect on the number and diversity of good gut microbes as well. This can cause serious problems because of the important role that a balanced microbiome plays in the proper functioning of our immune system and overall health. There is a growing body of science that links a lack of diversity in gut-friendly bacteria to conditions like IBD, asthma, obesity, allergies, leaky gut, depression, autoimmunity and countless others.
So this year (more than ever!) focus on building your immunity so that you aren’t so susceptible to infection and consider natural alternatives for low-grade infections before jumping straight to the big guns and potentially setting your gut health back another year.
Simple ways to support your immune system naturally
These strategies can reduce your susceptibility to infections:
Vitamin D (1000-2000 IU daily unless tested)
Zinc (15-30mg) during the winter or when your immune system needs extra support
Vitamin C (500-1,000mg) daily
Probiotic strains for immunity such as Lactobacillus rhamnosus
Daily sun exposure, especially in the morning
Avoiding sugar when sick because it can suppress immune cells for hours
8. Stop taking poor quality supplements - they don’t work
The supplement industry is a bit like the Wild West. It’s a lot of flashy labels, big promises and very little regulation to ensure what is on the bottle is actually what is inside. This means that many people end up spending money on products that are under-dosed, poorly formulated or full of with cheap fillers that offer very little benefit.
If you ever feel like supplements don’t work or you, the issue is often quality, not the concept of supplementation itself. Practitioner-grade supplements undergo proper testing, use effective forms of nutrients and contain therapeutic doses that are clinically tested. Most supermarket and influencer-branded supplements don’t do this unfortunately.
Poor-quality supplements often have low doses that are unlikely to create any physiological effect, weak or unstable forms of nutrients the body can’t absorb, long lists of fillers, gums, colors and additives, and some even list proprietary blends that hide how much of each ingredient you’re actually getting. Marketing terms like ‘detox’, ‘gut health’ or ‘immune booster’ are common in labelling and there is usually very little (if any) evidence behind them.
Good-quality supplements, on the other hand, are transparent, clinically tested, correctly dosed and formulated with bioavailable forms of nutrients your body can actually use. This is why working with brands trusted by health professionals is important. You’re paying for quality, safety, efficacy and results, not clever marketing.
Foundational supplements most people benefit from
While personalized recommendations are always best, there are a few supplements that support digestion for most people:
Digestive enzymes with meals: help to break down food and reduce bloating
Digestive bitters: stimulate stomach acid and bile flow
Electrolytes: support motility and hydration
Magnesium citrate and/or glycinate: helpful for bowel regularity and stress
When looking for good quality supplements, you can review our Fullscript Dispensary to save 20% OFF RRP (for those in the USA). You will need to sign-up to create a Fullscript account to access these products and discounts. Click the link below or visit: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/blindemann
9. Get tested to find your root cause(s)
There’s only so much the above mentioned diet, exercise and lifestyle strategies can do if you have serious or chronic gut dysfunction. And there is a limit to what self-diagnosis and intervention will achieve when you have a complex digestive condition.
Now we know ‘IBS’ is not a single disease with a single cause, it’s a whole host of different identifiable imbalances. And while the exact root-cause, or combination of causes, is unique to each person, the five most common causes of IBS are a great place to start and explain around 80% of all previously unexplained cases of gut dysfunction that have come through our clinic. That means there is highly likely a reason for yours!
But given the symptoms of each root cause are largely the same, knowing which one you have and how to address it is almost impossible without functional lab testing. And considering how far we have come in the last decade in both the quality of testing and interpretation of what is and isn’t harmful, there has never been a better time to get to the root-cause of your digestive symptoms using functional lab testing.
My goal for our blogs is to be educational and help people heal naturally. I write the blogs I wish I had when I was struggling. And in this vein, I want to share the two most common lab tests we recommend as a good starting point to helping understand what is going on with your gut health:
Comprehensive stool testing, like the GI Map by Diagnostic Sulutions Laboratory.
SIBO breath testing, such as Life Extension, SIBO lactulose breath test.
Having worked with thousands of clients healing from gut health imbalances, these labs remain our foundation for most clients because we see them identify imbalances that correlate with a clients symptoms, then we see these symptoms reduce when we work to address these imbalances. It is easy to argue against testing and interventions when you haven’t seen them be helpful clinically, but at this time I still believe that these labs are helpful for most of our clients, and it is hard to argue against clinical experience.
10. Try a natural protocol that addresses the root-cause of your symptoms
Natural supplements are often essential when healing serious chronic digestive disorders. But, they should never be the first step, which is why I only recommend them after incorporating all of the other strategies listed above.
There are three reasons we use natural supplements as part of our gut healing protocols:
Substitution: To replace something that is missing in the body or that the body is not producing due to gut damage, such as stomach acid or digestive enzymes.
Stimulation: To stimulate organs, glands and systems in the body to do their job, such as vitamins and minerals.
Support: Short-term aid for the body while function is being restored, such as liver and adrenal supplements which help the body respond to toxins and stress.
And when the underlying root-cause of your IBS symptoms is a gut infection like bacteria, yeast (e.g. Candida) or a parasite, adding natural antimicrobials is a very effective approach to pathogen eradication and long term gut healing. Using blends of evidence-based antimicrobials, alternating products throughout your protocol and using biofilm busters are all ways to make sure the bad guys are gone for good and you get your symptom-free life back.
And unlike antibiotics, the right natural antimicrobials won’t cause you long term microbiome damage that you’ll spend years repairing. This is the year to reap the rewards of being a herb-nerd.
What a real gut-healing protocol usually looks like
A full gut-healing protocol generally moves in phases and will include a number of the following supports:
Calm inflammation and support digestion, detoxification and motility
Enzymes, bitters, magnesium, glutamine, ginger, glutathione, etc.
Address root-cause imbalances
Natural antimicrobials
Biofilm disruptors
Prokinetics
Binders
Repair and rebuild
Motility support
Gut lining nutrients
Microbiome diversity through food, prebiotics and probiotics
Relapse prevention
Maintenance strategies
Travel and illness plans
Seasonal tune-ups
Knowing the general structure can help to prevent overwhelm at the thought of beginning a gut-healing journey with a practitioner.
I hope that these 10 resolutions give you a gut healing start to the new year. And if you’re up to finding the root cause of your digestive issues and interested in trying a personalized science-based natural protocol for gut healing, all of our practitioners work with clients one-on-one online so feel free to head over to the How We Work page to learn more.
#Bonus. Further your gut-health eduction!
We encourage and help all of our clients to become their own gut-health expert. We spend a lot of time on education during our consultations and love to feed your thirst for knowledge and problem solving skills. This is also why we have created resources, both free and paid, to help everyone (not just our clients) further their gut health education. This year, why not download our free Constipation Clear-out E-guide or our Methane SIBO E-guide to help take your healing to the next level. We also share a lot of education on our Facebook, Youtube and Instagram if you use these platforms.
And finally, if you’re feeling ready to work with an online practitioner, you can schedule a complimentary 15-minutre pre-consultation call to speak with someone from our team about your health journey and to learn more about our approach and how we support clients with gut healing.
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