How to Identify and Manage Trigger Foods for Better Gut Health

If you’re feeling sub-par, the issue might be in your gut. Recent research reveals that even our stress response is linked to gut inflammation and gut health. 

Fatigue, bloating, and digestive issues can all be caused by an imbalance in our gut microbiome. 

Your gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that help digest food, regulate hormones, produce neurotransmitters like serotonin and even train your immune system.

When your gut microbiome ecosystem falls out of balance, either due to stress, diet, antibiotics or toxins, symptoms that extend far beyond digestion can start to emerge.

Studies link gut dysbiosis to fatigue, skin flare-ups, mood swings, sleep disruptions and even autoimmune conditions.

This growing field of gut-brain research is what makes identifying your trigger foods so powerful. It’s one of the fastest ways to calm inflammation and reset your entire system.

Luckily, an imbalance can be balanced. What we eat can make a huge difference in how we feel and whether the flora in our gut is flourishing or floundering. 

WHAT IS A TRIGGER FOOD?  

If you’re not feeling top-notch, it’s possible that you might have eaten something that’s not playing nice with your body, thanks in part to the makeup of your unique gut microbiome or your genetic predispositions.

A trigger food is any food that makes you feel tired, sick, or just a little off. It “triggers” or sets off an adverse reaction in the delicate chemistry of digestion that leads to your body breaking down and extracting nutrients and energy from what you consume. 

Trigger foods aren’t always obvious. They can be traditionally “healthy” foods. 

While processed foods, refined sugars and hydrogenated oils are common culprits, so can “healthy” options like almonds, nightshades, eggs or even kale for some people. 

That’s because trigger foods often work through immune or histamine pathways, not allergens.

For example, high-histamine foods like spinach, fermented foods or aged cheeses can cause flare-ups in individuals who have trouble breaking down histamine properly.

FODMAPs, a group of fermentable carbs found in foods like onions, garlic and apples, can cause bloating, gas and pain for those with IBS or sensitive guts.

Even gluten, found in whole wheat and barley, can trigger symptoms in people without celiac disease but who still have non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

It’s not that the healthy foods mentioned above are “bad.” They’re just mismatched for certain people at certain times—especially when the gut is inflamed or healing.

This is why identifying your trigger foods isn’t about labeling something good or bad. It’s about understanding what works for your body right now.

It's why an elimination approach is so useful—it helps isolate which foods quietly disrupt your body’s rhythm at a point in time.

Modern diets are built around levels of fat and sugar that our bodies are not designed to consume. And each body is different. For one individual, a veggie and or nut can be a trigger foods while for another it's dairy or kale.

It’s simple enough and a worthwhile endeavor to understand and identify what your possible trigger foods may be.

IDENTIFY YOUR TRIGGER FOODS

The easiest way to identify your trigger foods is an elimination diet, during which you temporarily remove specific foods or food groups from your diet and monitor the results. Based on your symptoms, we have different families of foods we recommend eliminating (and other foods we suggest leaning on during this period). 

By removing and reintroducing foods into your daily diet, you’re embarking on an incredible adventure/experiment to see how what you eat impacts how you feel, look and provide energy to your body. By exploring your food sensitivities, you’re building your own data set to better fuel and care for your body. 

A guided elimination diet is the gold standard for identifying trigger foods. Bala's elimination phase lasts 14 days. The reintroduction phase can last up to 4-6 weeks, depending on your body's response to each reintroduced food.

To maximize the impact of your elimination diet, we recommend tracking sleep, digestion, mood, energy and any physical symptoms. This gives you a personal roadmap to what helps and hinders your well-being.

YOUR NUTRITIONAL ROADMAP

During this period, we can’t stress enough the importance of keeping a journal! We often suggest monitoring what you eat, when you eat it and how you feel. These information sources will help you analyze your food sensitivities and manage trigger foods. After all, we are notoriously bad at estimating the number of food-related decisions we make every day.

Knowing your trigger foods doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat them again! It simply equips and empowers you with the knowledge to understand your body and the consequences of your daily choices around food.

As always, protecting and leveling up your health is a life-long and ongoing process. We can’t wait to keep learning and improving our expertise in personalized nutrition with you.

WHY MANAGING TRIGGER FOODS MATTERS

When you identify the foods that trigger inflammation or fatigue, something powerful happens. You reclaim control over how you feel and you build the wisdom to know how to get back on track when you fall off.

All matters of digestion get easier to manage. Same with energy and cognition. You sleep better. You wake up ready to go and can sustain that energy throughout the day without an afternoon crash.

You start seeing patterns and know how to proactively respond. It's not just about what to avoid. It’s about building body wisdom.

Once you’ve gone through an elimination diet, you have a blueprint you can return to whenever life throws you off track. Whether that's after an illness, a season of stress or a period of less-than-disciplined eating. You’ll know what foods bring you back to center.

An elimination diet is one of the most empowering things you can do for your health. The knowledge you gain from it will stay with you for life. 

SUMMARY

• If you are struggling with poor digestion, low energy, frustrating skin or aches and pains, the reason could lie within your gut microbiome
• Many people struggle with hidden food sensitivities that quietly disrupt gut health over time
• The culprit could be a specific food or class of food, otherwise known as a trigger food, that's causing gut inflammation
• The gold standard for testing trigger foods is to remove the food and then reintroduce it systematically
• This process is the gold standard for isolating potential food sensitivities, managing trigger foods and reducing gut inflammation
• Managing trigger foods doesn't have to be complicated when you have the right plan

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FURTHER READING

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