Functional Nutrition For A Healthy Life

Functional nutrition is a holistic approach to nutrition, which encompasses lifestyle, activity levels, stress levels and habit change to facilitate improved overall health in the presence of chronic disease. Functional nutrition differs from standard dietary nutrition in that it takes a more holistic approach to health and nutrition, looking at many lifestyle factors that play into health improvement.

Pros of Functional Nutrition

Functional nutrition provides individualized nutrition, habit, and lifestyle recommendations to meet a clients unique needs
Easier to implement for clients because it takes into account personal preferences and individual needs
Practitioner looks at the food a client eats in the context of overall lifestyle goals to ensure that the client is nourishing their body in a way that is do-able for the long-term.

Cons of Standard Dietary Recommendations

One size fits all approach to diet and nutrition
The RDA of recommended nutrients is far too low to provide therapeutic results.
May be difficult or cumbersome to put nutritional recommendations into practice because standard advice does not take into account food preferences, food sensitivities, food intolerances, root causes of symptoms or your unique history.
Calorie counting and avoiding fat (fat is an essential nutrient) are crash diets which lead to long-term weight gain.

3 Tenants of Functional Nutrition

A focus on real foods, with the goal of reducing and eliminating processed packaged and fake foods. For optimal health, we need to be focusing on obtaining nutrients from our food. Foods with natural fiber, foods with vitamins, minerals, whole grains, high quality clean proteins and healthy fats.
Taking care of your gut microbiome and optimizing digestion so that you are able to absorb and use the nutrients your body is taking in. Its important that we support our gut health with plenty of un-processed foods, an active lifestyle and healthy lifestyle choices.
Supporting long-term healthy lifestyle choices through healthy habit formation. Promoting healthy sleep habits, reducing stress, increasing movement and physical activities are all important to overall health and vitality. These healthy lifestyle habits support our nutritional choices and increase our well-being.

As you can see, functional nutrition is growing more important in our society because it all comes down to our bio-individuality and how we as individuals respond to certain nutrition and lifestyle choices. What's healthy for one person, may not be ideal for another. As a functional nutrition practitioner, I help my clients to explore what works for them and reach their full potential to obtain their nutritional and lifestyle goals.

About Me

My name is Jennifer Smith and I'm a Holistic Nutritionist, Biblical Health Coach and Functional Nutrition Practitioner, who helps clients with gut health, blood sugar and metabolic balance.

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