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Why "Eat Less, Move More" Doesn't Work for Your Body or Your Digestion in Perimenopause
Perimenopause changes how your body uses fuel, and eating less can backfire with blood sugar crashes, stronger cravings and unpredictable digestion. Here's what actually helps instead.
3 min read
Winter Bloating: Why You're More Bloated in the Colder Months
If your clothes around your midsection feel tighter by mid-afternoon, your digestion has slowed to a crawl, and you're reaching for seconds of something warm and stodgy - you're not imagining it, and it's not a lack of willpower. For a lot of people, the colder months come with more bloating, more sluggishness, and a gut that just feels a bit off. Here's the thing: winter genuinely changes how we eat, move and digest. Once you understand why, it becomes much easier to feel co
2 min read
How Much Fibre Per Day Should You Actually Eat? Are You Getting Enough? And What 30 Grams a Day Actually Looks Like
Most Australians fall well short of the recommended 25-30g of fibre a day - and it shows up as bloating, sluggish digestion and low energy. Here's what 30 grams actually looks like in real food terms, and simple ways to get there.
4 min read
Gut Health Quiz: What Is Your Gut Trying to Tell You? Take the 2 Minute Quiz
Most people live with gut symptoms for years without understanding what's actually driving them. Bloating after eating every meal. Unpredictable bowel movements. Food that used to feel fine suddenly causing problems. Energy that crashes mid-afternoon. These aren't random. They're messages — and they tend to follow patterns that point to a specific gut type. I created the 'What's Your Poo Telling You?' quiz to give people a starting point to understanding the why. A way to ma
3 min read
Perimenopause and Bloating: Why Your Digestion Changes in Midlife
Bloating, a slower gut, a stomach that feels unpredictable - digestion really does change in perimenopause. Here's why it happens, and the gentle, food-first steps that help.
4 min read
How to Know if your Gut Needs Healing: 10 Signs of Bad Gut Health (and it's not just bloating)
For most people, they don’t just wake up knowing “my microbiome is out of balance.” Instead, you might start to notice daily little annoyances — bloating after meals, unpredictable bowel patterns, fatigue that no amount of coffee fixes, or skin that suddenly reacts to everything. Your gut is not just a digestion organ to break down and absorb nutrients from your food. It impacts and influences your entire body, from immune response, to hormones, mood, inflammatory response, a
4 min read
Prebiotic foods: the fuel your gut bugs are looking for to reach optimal gut health
I want to talk about something that doesn’t get nearly as much airtime as probiotics — but is just as important, if not MORE important, for your gut health: prebiotics. You can think of prebiotics like fertiliser for your gut garden. While probiotics are the good bacteria themselves, prebiotics are the food that helps those bacteria thrive and do their job properly. Without them, even the best probiotics can struggle to make a meaningful impact. So what are prebiotics? Prebio
4 min read
Fermented Foods & Gut Health: How Fermentation Supports Your Microbiome
If there’s one topic I could talk about all day every day, it’s fermented foods and their powerful role in gut health. Fermentation has been used for thousands of years in many different cultures to preserve food — but it also happens to be one of the best (and most economical!) ways to support your gut microbiome naturally. What is fermentation? When foods like cabbage, milk, or tea are fermented, beneficial bacteria (called probiotics) grow and multiply. These probiotics ca
2 min read
How Can a Gut Microbiome Test Benefit Your Health and Well-being?
Why test your gut microbiome? We live in an information era. As more and more knowledge comes to light about our gut and microbiome and how it impacts our health, many of us want to know more, and understand more. A gut microbiome test identifies what type of microbes reside in your gut, and whether they may improve health or contribute to poorer health outcomes. Your gut is home to many trillions of microbes, and many million genes - all of it unique to you. Even identical
5 min read
Meet Karen Ball: Clinical Nutritionist Specialising in Gut Health and Perimenopause
If you are new here and wondering who is behind The Foodie Nutritionist, this one is for you. I am Karen Ball - a clinical nutritionist with a particular passion for gut health, the microbiome, and helping women feel at home in their bodies again. How it started My interest in natural health goes back further than most people expect. My Year 10 work experience was with a local naturopath in Hobart, Tasmania. I remember being fascinated by her apothecary of liquid herbs, and t
2 min read
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