Em The Nutritionist: "You Can't Optimise Your Way Out of Chronic Stress or Exhaustion With a Spoonful of Fermented Vegetables"

My clinical work has focused heavily on IBS, bloating and eating disorders, but it wasn't one specific client that made me decide to launch a gut health business; it was the fact that almost everyone who came to me for nutrition advice seemed to mention their gut somewhere along the way.

Bloating, constipation, discomfort, irregularity. Even when that wasn’t the original reason they had come to see me.

It made me realise that we can be very quick to treat health as lots of separate compartments. We think about our skin over here, our mood over there, our digestion somewhere else. But the body doesn’t work like that. The gut is involved in digestion and nutrient absorption, but it also communicates constantly with our immune system and brain.

So now, if someone tells me they are bloated, my first thought isn’t simply, “What food should we remove?” I want to zoom out. Are they getting enough variety? Are they stressed? Sleeping? Moving? Are they constipated? How quickly are they eating? Often the symptom is only one piece of a much bigger picture.

That is probably the biggest lesson I wish more people understood: don’t just chase the symptom; look at the whole system.

I come from a family of cooks and grew up around food in a really hands-on way, and so a huge amount of my gut health philosophy started at home without me realising. We ate a lot of variety because that was simply how my family cooked. Vegetables, beans and lentils were used to stretch meat, make meals go further and keep food affordable.

Below, I share my top tips for improving your gut health: simple, actionable hacks that'll slot easily into your day-to-day. Because boosting your wellbeing needn't feel complicated or like a chore.

Em The Nutritionist's 7 Top Gut Health Tips

1. Aim for diversity over perfection

My first tip is diversity over perfection. Rather than obsessing over one “superfood”, look at how many different plants you eat across a week. Vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils, wholegrains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices all count. One incredibly easy trick is to stop automatically buying the same five vegetables every week. Swap one or two each time you shop.

2. Train your gut like your body

The second is to train your gut like you would a muscle in the gym. If you’ve been eating very little fibre and suddenly double your intake overnight, you may feel bloated and uncomfortable. That doesn’t automatically mean fibre is “bad for your gut”. Sometimes you simply need to build up gradually and let your digestive system adapt.

3. Think about how you eat, not what you eat

Third, think about how you eat, not only what you eat. People spend hundreds of pounds changing the contents of their plate while eating lunch hunched over a laptop in six minutes. Sit down when you can. Slow down. Chew. Give yourself a moment before rushing onto the next thing. Digestion is a physical process, and the state you eat in matters too.

4. Don't overcomplicate it

Some of the most fashionable gut-health advice right now is actually based on very old-fashioned ways of cooking. Bulk your bolognese out with lentils. Throw beans into a soup. Add frozen peas to a pasta. Use herbs generously. These are inexpensive habits that naturally increase the number of plants and different fibres you’re eating.

My nutrition training gave me the science behind why those habits matter, but I think the practical lesson is really simple: you don’t need an expensive “gut health” shopping basket. Some of the cheapest foods in the supermarket are some of the most useful.

5. Focus on addition, rather than restriction

I always like to think about gut health through the lens of addition, rather than restriction.

Instead of looking at your lunch and thinking, “What should I cut out?”, look at it and ask, “What could I add?” Could you add a handful of rocket to your sandwich? Some chickpeas to your salad? Seeds to your yoghurt? Frozen vegetables to your dinner? An extra piece of fruit during the day?

Those tiny additions accumulate. You’re increasing diversity without completely changing the way you eat.

This is an important shift, because gut health has become associated with long lists of foods people think they shouldn’t eat. For most people, constantly removing foods is not the answer. I’d much rather somebody ate a broad, enjoyable diet consistently than followed the “perfect” gut-health diet for two weeks and hated every minute of it. Think nourishment before elimination.

6. Prioritise food first

My rule is: food first, habits first, then supplements should make life easier, not more complicated.

I launched Epetōme because I felt the supplement aisle had become unnecessarily complicated and also very untrustworthy. Do we know what's actually in these things? Are you getting what you pay for? Huge ingredient lists, different powders, multiple capsules, things that needed refrigerating. It can make people feel as though looking after their health needs to become another full-time job.

With my gut health supplement, I wanted the opposite: something simple enough that people could actually stick to it and also a brand they can trust. One a day, no refrigeration, carefully selected probiotic strains and a capsule system designed to deliver them effectively so you get what you pay for.

But I’m also very clear that a supplement is exactly that: a supplement to the foundations, not the foundations themselves. I would never want someone taking a probiotic while thinking they can ignore their diet, sleep or lifestyle.

7. Look beyond food

Last but by no means least, make sure you remember to look beyond food altogether. Sleep, movement and stress are gut-health behaviours too. You cannot optimise your way out of being chronically stressed and exhausted with a spoonful of fermented vegetables.

The advice I would deliberately leave out is anything suggesting you need to “detox” your gut, fast for days or remove enormous numbers of foods without a clinical reason. Your gut generally needs consistency, diversity and nourishment, not punishment.

Final thoughts?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that gut health is only relevant if you have digestive symptoms. Your gut is doing something every single day, whether you’re thinking about it or not. It helps us digest food and absorb nutrients, interacts with our immune system and communicates with the brain through the gut-brain axis.

Think of looking after your gut a bit like brushing your teeth. You wouldn’t brush your teeth intensively for a two-week “reset” and then stop for the rest of the year. Gut health is similar. It’s not about a January detox or a cupboard full of supplements. It is the boringly brilliant things you repeat most days.

Eat a few different plants. Add rather than remove. Move your body. Sleep. Slow down when you eat. Then do it again tomorrow. That consistency is where the magic really is.